September 2020
An installation of work by Corban Walker and Kate McSharry.
This exhibition visualises the subtleties of the connections and interruptions that we experience through our encounters with others - occurrences that have changed drastically since the onset of the current pandemic. Groundwork explores an ongoing stream of thought in this regard. The simple acts of shaking hands, getting lost in a crowd, or meandering around busy spaces are things of the past for the foreseeable future. Walker's drawings remind us of his work Please Adjust (2011) where we experienced the idea of how 'one person's actions can have broad consequences that lead to adjustments of expectations in life and in art' - Culture Ireland (Corban Walker, Venice Biennale 2011). This is, once again, particularly relevant now. We are now required to stay separated, linear, almost stiff with our interactions. Here, we offer another way of viewing the ‘new normal’.
Corban Walker (b.1967, Dublin) graduated from the National College of Art and Design in 1992 and has exhibited extensively throughout Ireland and internationally since. He is currently based in Cork, where his practice continues to explore our understanding of and relationship with space and scale, regarding the environments we exist in. Representing Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 2011, he stated that his work there exercised the viewers 'in how they participate and communicate with their own surroundings'. View more of Corban’s sculptures and installations at corbanwalkerstudio.com.
Kate McSharry (b.1998, Dublin) is a final year student at the Centre for Creative Arts and Media, GMIT, Galway. Taking part in her first exhibition here at Sarah Walker Gallery, Kate will support Corban’s work on paper with a concrete text installation. The words have been chosen from a longer text piece called Groundwork, that will be available to view in the mezzanine or on her Instagram @kate_mcsharry.
'today I took a moment - ensconced orchestrated emotions dictated by another force my place somewhen, laid out bare a tinted view of this appealing world, surreptitiously awakens forgotten and slow' (extract from Groundwork, 2020)
