Emerging Forms by Aodan McCardle is a series of drawings using objects, the still life, as the catalyst moving from small pen sketch to charcoal drawing allowing the abstracted form to emerge.
The action of the drawing is almost defeated by the complexity and simplicity of the objects; plastic containers and rope. The rope is a repeated loop of woven material disrupted by knots and by its own tidiness or untidiness as the installation allows. The plastic containers are at once so similar to each other and yet lids have to be tried to find out if they fit.
Both objects have an inherent usefulness and yet both represent the throwaway. Their usefulness is challenged by temporary stasis between uses; the ropes are found, the takeaway containers no longer containing anything. Instead they become users of space itself, where space is rapidly becoming a premium within the economy of modern living.
Drawing these objects then inherently reconsiders their usefulness and at the same time pays them respect as materials beyond their initial intent.
Across the differing relations to drawing available to the viewer is a consideration of looking and responding, of drawing as an action in space and time the remnants of which are available in the environment. There is a sense of studio about the show, of becoming. It includes the drawn objects as well as the drawings which range in size from small notebook sketches to drawings as large as the walls and available paper can accommodate. Some of the drawings will be created in the gallery during the course of the exhibition which runs daily from 8th October to 7th November 2022.
About the Artist
For ten years my work has involved drawing and writing in a live setting often during improvised performance. I have exhibited internationally opening the Performance Festival at Beton 7, Athens 2015, at The Centre for Performance Philosophy Surrey 2016 and Nationally The Béal Festival commissioned the performance ‘Purgatory’ as a response to the work of Robert Ashley and I’ve had performances at Catalyst Arts, The Damer House Gallery, An Gailearaí and Artlink as well as outside of gallery spaces.
My PhD, Action as Articulation of the Contemporary Poem, examines how the body, through action, physicality and doubt, inhabits the poem and the reader or audience. It is in the poem and art as experience that we extend ourselves beyond intellect. The PhD concludes by examining the poetry of Art Curator and Critic Frank O’Hara via the work of artists such as Cy Twombly and Richard Long.
I have published two books of poetry and another due this year as well as critical and academic work on poetry.
My influences would be Carolee Schneeman for the use of the body as instrument of context, drawing and writing and Stanley Witney and Sandra Blow for the arrestingly direct power of work on canvas.
- November 07, 2022
