Sample Studios hosted Cork Printmakers in The Lord Mayors Pavilion, Fitzgerald’s Park:
Host is an exhibition by Cork Printmakers hosted by Sample Studios in The Lord Mayors Pavilion, Cork City, nfeaturing the work of four artists: Aoife Claffey, Jennifer Cummins, Diane Keating and Rory O’ Mahony. These four artists are recipients of Cork Printmakers’ graduate bursary awards, from Limerick School of Art and Design and CIT Crawford College of Art and Design.
The Lord Mayor’s Pavilion is a small Art Nouveau structure, built in 1901 for the International Industrial Exhibition to host distinguished guests and visiting dignitaries. Situated inside the main entrance to Cork City’s Fitzgerald Park, beside Cork Public Museum, the Lord Mayor’s Pavilion is now a contemporary arts project space and gallery, programmed by Sample-Studios under their Tactic Visual Arts Programme. In partnership with Sample-Studios, Cork Printmakers invited their graduate bursary award recipients to exhibit their work at the Lord Mayor’s Pavilion in August in a slightly different format to usual, presenting work as part of the artists’ expanded printmaking practice. The artists’ work is exhibited in a way that visitors to Fitzgerald’s Park can view it through the windows, without the need to enter the building.
This exhibition is entitled Host: a word with different interpretations, relating to hospitality, exhibitions, events, internet servers and the life cycle of a virus or parasite. The exhibition is concurrently presented online following documentation the work, allowing people to engage and interact with the work in a deeper way. The placement of the work in an online space questions the traditional exhibition format: how can galleries present work and how do audiences engage with art in this new age of physical distancing and restrictions? The building becomes a host, in which the artwork is put out into the world via the internet, but also has a physical manifestation in the Lord Mayor’s Pavilion.
View the online exhibition https://corkprintmakers.ie/host
Supported by Cork City Council and the Arts Council of Ireland