Curriculum Vitae

Born in Dublin, Ireland in 1962.

Lives and works in Cork, Ireland

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2013 - 'matter' at nag gallery, Basement, 59 Francis St, Dublin
2012 - 'Show', Copley St, Cork
2012 - 'Document', Fotogalerie Objectief, Enschede, The Netherlands.
2011 - 'Document', Queen St. Studios, Belfast (part of Belfast Photo Festival)
2010 - 'Art Box' Video Installation, (solo) Dunamaise Art Centre, Portlaoise
2006 - The Bodega, Coal quay, Cork
2004 - 'Continuum', Linenhall Arts Centre, Castlebar, Co. Mayo
1984 - 'My Own Photographs', Gallery of Photography, Dublin

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2014- 'Beyond 2' nag gallery, Basement, 59 Francis Street, Dublin
2013 - 'New Irish Works' Duo, Poppincourt, Paris.
2013 - 'New Irish Works', PhotoIreland Festival, 'Place' Ormston House, Limerick.
2013 - 'nag off site', private home, Wicklow, County Dublin
2013 - Photissima Venice in collaboration with Amy-d gallery, Milan
2012 - 'Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not)', Wandesford Quay Gallery, Cork
2012 - Launch exhibition at nag, gallery, Dublin
2012 - 'Hidden Meanings', Yan Chao Collection gallery, Beijing, China.
2012 - 'Crawford 100', Wandesford Quay gallery, Cork
2011 - 'Art Work Embassy', The Elysian, Cork (Art Trail 2011)
2011 - 'Place, Space', Backwater Artist Group show, Wandesford Quay gallery, Cork
2011 - 'Airports for Shadows', Cross Gallery, 59 Francis Street, Dublin 8
2011 - 'Document II', Fort Camden, Crosshaven Co. Cork
2011 - 1st Alliance Francaise Award Exhibition, Alliance Francaise, Dublin
2010 - 'Describing Architecture', Daylight Gallery, Dublin.
2010 - 'Right Place, Right Space?' at the Plastic House, Dublin.
2010 - 'Summer Show', Rua Red, South Dublin Arts Centre, Dublin.
2010 - 'The Thing That Bruises You', Back Loft, La Catedral Studios, Dublin.
2010 - 'Crawford College of Art & Design MA Show', Wandesford Quay Gallery, Cork
2009 - Gallery 44, Cork
2009 - '6 Perspectives on Light', The Greenroom Gallery, Cork Arts Theatre, Cork
2008 - Haydn Shaughnessy Gallery, Kinsale, Co. Cork
2007 - Cork Vision Centre, Cork
1993 - '8 European Women Photographers, 'Narrden Photo Fest (Bi-Annual), Holland

REVIEWS

Visual Artists' news sheet. October 2013.
Review of 'NEW IRISH WORKS" Book published to coincide with Photo Ireland's group show June 2013. ISBN 978-0-9576849-0-4

"The 'New Irish Works' catalogue proves an effective way to encounter the works of photographers working in series. In this regard I was drawn back to the pages presenting Roseanne Lynch's 'Place'. The silence of these enigmatic and elusive images- minimal, geometric tonal studies- leaves space for contemplation. It's compelling and sublime work- repeated viewing of which is rewarding. I was reminded of what Ansel Adams once wrote about his take on language and the image: " When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence"
Alison Pilkington.

Source magazine 2013 review of Show as part of THERE THERE by Dr Pippa Little

Enclave Review, Issue 7, Spring 2013

Zhang Kechun : The Yellow River
Roseanne Lynch : Show

Two exhibitions took place at the Cork School of Architecture as part of the There There series of photography shows organised by Stag & Deer which took place in a number of locations around Cork in October.

Chinese artist Zhang Kechun’s show The Yellow River consisted of ten photographs, stuck directly on a wall facing the glass frontage of the building. This exhibition space was light and airy and gestured towards the neutral space of the white gallery cube. Roseanne Lynch’s Atmospheric Intermediacies & Activation(s) In Space took place in what could be described as the bowels of the building. The light in the space was low and atmospheric, the walls an unfinished concrete, cables and wires lay exposed. The inside of the building remained unfinished, stalled at the stage before the surface adornments were to be applied which would have brought it into the shiny world of neo-liberal hyper-capitalism. The eruption of the shadow world of creative accounting and financial speculation through the seamless surface of global capital has resulted in a proliferation of these buildings- the ghost estates of Ireland, the ghost cities of China. The materials and style of the abandoned new build the unfinished wood constructions; the plasterboard; the insulation foam have found their way into the work of many artists. A feed back loop appears to be in operation, artists absorb the aesthetic into their practice, the resulting art work then gets displayed in the traditional space of the white cube or more ironically in the ‘pop up’ galleries which have been springing up in unused buildings around the country.

Roseanne Lynch at a talk she gave at Copley Street spoke about the space itself being on show. Her photographs occupied this space in a very subtle way. She exhibited four large-scale pieces, three photographs and one sheet of aluminium. The sheet of aluminium was a dull silver monochrome which reflected back aspects of the space and possibly alluded to the use of silver based processes for capturing images in the early years of photography. Two of the photographs, which were printed onto vinyl stuck directly to the wall, were placed side by side. They depicted an architectural space, which looked very similar to the space of the exhibition; on turning my back to them I discovered they seemed to have been taken from about the spot where I was standing. The place where the third photograph was taken was harder to identify, it seemed to be a photograph of a wall, perhaps it was a photograph of the wall that it covered? The photograph seemed to picture both scars and gouges on the wall and scratches on the print itself. Lynch can be seen to be using the photographs to prompt the viewer to spend time looking at the space of the exhibition as opposed to the work displayed. At her talk she spoke about attempting to get the viewer to experience what she experienced, so the photographs are used as tools, as a way to prompt the viewer to pay a heightened attention to the space itself. Entering an exhibition space asks of the visitor that they become more attuned to their surroundings, that the perceive things with a heightened sensitivity. Do the photographs actually do anything to increase this attention to the surrounding environment? The placing of the photographs in the space in which they were taken foregrounds this question- but it would be lost once the photographs were moved to a different location. They function in this particular space, they are site specific and I’d propose that the show is an installation. Boris Groys in Politics of Installation describes the functioning of the artist’s installation.

“The installation transforms the empty, neutral, public space into an individual artwork—and it invites the visitor to experience this space as the holistic, totalizing space of an artwork.” The photographs in Zhang Kechun’s show measured approximately 24 inches by 16 with a white border of approximately one inch. The prints had a beautiful quality, they seemed to combine sharpness and diffusion, and suggested to me a particular dewy quality of skin. They invited a dual mode of viewing, to look at them as photographs, to admire the particular surface quality of the print, but then also to look through them- to encounter the photograph as transparent and look through them to the scenes depicted. A group of people wearing orange swimming hats accompany a portrait of Chairman Mao balanced on a black rubber ring, the water and sky are virtually indistinguishable from each other, the horizon disappearing into the all over washed out foggy haze; a man sits in small pagoda, atop a structure, which looks like it was built by giant termites; two men up to their chests in water approach a circular stone ruin, perhaps the giant leg of an unfinished bridge. As a viewer I can see through the picture to the scene depicted but I don’t have the ‘local knowledge’ to interpret what is happening within this scene. I can’t know if the diffusion of the light is a result of pollution, if the flooding is the recent result of global warming, dam building or something stretching much further back in time. Zhang Kechun in his statement about the work available at the show describes how in following the course of the river with his large format camera he was able “to quietly watch on the river for the season, stare at it through this journey.” The artist through the use of photography is given the opportunity to look for longer, to spend time in a particular place. The photograph is the result of this time spent watching but it again it seems to be an aid to an increased, heightened appreciation of a place as opposed to an end in itself.

Catherine Harty is a Cork based visual artist.

                                               

RESIDENCIES

2011                           The Guesthouse, Shandon, Cork – curated by Stephen McGlynn

2004                           Artist in Residence, Belderrig National School, (by Ceide fields) County Mayo

2000                           Artist In Residence, Lucan Educate Together School, Co. Dublin.

AWARDS

2011                           1st Alliance Francaise Photography Award Laureate, Ireland

COMMISSIONS

2010/2011                  Public Art Commission by Cork County Council, Fort Camden, Crosshaven, Cork

                                                     

PUBLICATIONS

2013                          New Irish Works PhotoIreland exhibition catalogue.

                                 Enclave Review, Review of Show, Catherine Harty visual artist

                                 Source magazine review of Show as part of THERE THERE by Dr Pippa Little

2012                          Shortlisted for MONO Vol 1 by Gomma publishers

2010                          Backwater Twenty-10, A Celebration of 20 years of Backwater Artists Group, Backwater

                                 Artists Group, Page 43                       

1991                          A Day In The Life Of Ireland, Collins Publishers, Jennifer Ennwitt & Tom Lawlor (Editors),

                                 Pages 54-57 and 158-159

CURATING

2011                          Memento III - James Barry Centre, Cork Institute of Technology, Cork (co-curated)

2011                          Ducking Paddy - Cork County Council Offices & Fort Camden, Cork (co-curated)   

EDUCATION & QUALIFICATIONS

2010                          Fine Art Masters by Research, CIT Crawford College of Art & Design, Cork, Ireland

1984                          Higher National Diploma in Photography, Napier University, Edinburgh, Scotland

TEACHING

2007-current              Lecturer Fine Art, Photography Department, CIT Crawford College of Art and Design,

                                 Cork.

2007-current              Lecturer, Photography Elective, Cork Centre for Architectural Education- CIT/UCC, Cork

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

2010                          Facilitator for Fort Camden Educational Residency, Cork County Council in association

                                 with CIT Crawford College of Art & Design, Cork

2005- 2007                 Facilitator and Research Assistant, Lewis Glucksman Gallery, University College Cork

1999-2005                  Artists Panel, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin

1998-2005                  Art Facilitator, VEC/Stewarts Hospital Services at Ronanstown Community Training and

                                 Education Centre, and Lucan Educate Together School, Co. Dublin

1988- 2008                 Freelance Photographer in Ireland & Britain              

1984-1988                  Staff Photographer, Independent Newspapers Plc, Dublin