Coinciding with the aftermath of St. Patrick's Day 2024, The Embassy of Ireland to Indonesia presents Ireland's Eye 2024, an art exhibition spotlighting the talents of Irish artists. This year's exhibition marks the third installment of the series, showcasing the impact of Ireland's burgeoning contemporary arts scene.
Supported by the Embassy of Ireland for Indonesia and PT Jakarta Land, Ireland's Eye 2024 is coordinated and curated by Mark Joyce, an Irish artist and lecturer, and developed by ISA Art and Design-an art gallery and art consultancy firm in Jakarta. The exhibition presents works by emerging artists Patryk Gizicki, Katerina Gribkoff, Ethan McGarry, Asha Murray and Jan O' Connell who explore questions of environment, globalization, social inequality, and rapid technological change in their diverse mediums. These emerging artists employ an interdisciplinary approach to create works that resonate with the intricacies of our interconnected yet polarized global community, rooted in their own takes on the Irish identity.
Ireland's Eye 2024: Diverse Forms of Expression
Originally hailing from Poland, Patryk Gizicki moved to County Mayo, Ireland, in his childhood. His exhibited work, a series of photographs titled Stay Forever More (2023), is a reflection on his childhood and adolescence through an exploration of identity and confronting difficult memories. In the series presented, Giziki captures his yearning for connection and belonging-a "home", so to speak. Giziki questions what it means to be Irish, as he revisited the immigrant experience of his childhood, a time when foreigners weren't always met with open arms. However, the series also serves as a love letter to his hometown of Castlebar, along with its complexities.
Dublin-based artist Ethan McGarry presented a video art piece consisting of two videos playing simultaneously side by side with each other. Titled In Between, We Navigate (2023), the work compares the differences between conjured imagery of hopes against an exaggerated sense of reality. The two representations are taken to the extreme, where both are neither realistic or entirely false. Since the videos are played side by side, viewers need to devote their attention between the screens. Like what the title stated, the piece suggests that our existence is somewhere in between.
Part of her MFA project, Jan O'Connell showcases photography works titled Surrendering to the Symphony of Stone (2023). For the project, she moved to the remote West Kerry region to completely immerse herself in the powerful landscape. The work takes form of "portraits" of individual rock formations in West Kerry, which carry the land's history through its forms shaped by the dynamic interplay with the Atlantic Ocean. Through these portraits, O'Connell explores our relationship with the natural landscape.
In her pieces titled Feeling Tired, Lost, and Lonely and Because You're Worth It (both 2024), Asha Murray explores her experiences of feeling helpless against the shifting of time in the form of colorful rugs. The pieces are also accompanied by a video diary from Murray's own ever-expanding personal archive. The works look at how our experiences can leave us living with stagnant emotions and suspending our internal reality into a specific time in our lives.
Katerina Gibkoff utilizes plants and natural dyes in her work, particularly those she found in her garden in Ireland. For Paper Quilt with Plant Inks (2024), she created a manual for the ISA Art team to make inks with plants that are native to Indonesia, such as turmeric, telang, sappan wood, mangosteen, and eucalyptus. These natural dyes are then used to color uniformly-sized pieces of paper which are made into a bound quilt with a diverse color palette. The piece is also completed by collages detailing Gribkoff's garden. Studio, and images from the ISA Art team of the dye and quilt making process. Together, these pieces provide a broader insight into the artistic process that connects Gibkoff in Ireland and the ISA Art team in Indonesia.
Ireland's Eye 2024 is held at the lobby of World Trade Center 2, Central Jakarta. The exhibition is open from 18 March to 12 April 2024, welcoming visitors daily from 9 AM to 6 PM.
(alm/tim)