Cora Cummins
RETREAT
(Curated by Gemma Tipton)
Dunamaise Art Centre
Portlaoise
28 Nov 2009 – 20 Jan 2010
Cora Cummins exhibition ‘Retreat’ ponders the various significances of the idea of ‘retreat’. These meanings and associations span notions of a tactical withdrawal; vacations and ‘stay-cations’; regrouping and re-gathering resources; temporary or permanent ‘time outs’ from worldly concerns and the avoidance of conflict.
Looming cloud forms are a key image and metaphor – suggesting ‘trouble in paradise’. In relation to this, the exhibition can be understood as both acknowledging the need to escape to ideal spaces – imaginary or actual – along with a wry critique of how sometimes the notion of ‘retreat’ can be tied up with self-delusion.
Besides the topics and subject matter addressed by the artist in this exhibition, the show itself can be considered as a retreat of sorts. Comprising as it does of a redeployment of older works by the artist, interspersed with a new pieces, this exhibition can be understood as a bridging move or strategy. The new pieces re-punctuate and re-animate the older works – creating the potential for new meanings and new connections to made.
Returning to the motif of clouds and weather systems, this exhibition can be read in overall terms as concerned with the concept of the potential of in-between states and the ultimate impossibility of retreating from the flux and cyclical change of the world.
Cora Cummins. Born Carlow 1973. Lives and works in Dublin. Solo exhibitions include 'Means of Escape' (April 2008) The Lab, Dublin; 'A Thousand Islands in the Sea', The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon (July 2006); 'Someplace Somewhere' (2004);'Halved Hill' (2002); 'Various Fields' (2000) Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin. Graduated from DIT in 1995. 2003 MA Fine Art NCAD. 2002 IMMA Work Programme Studio Residency. Co-founder of Workroom Elsewhere with Alison Pilkington. Curation projects include ‘What Hiver’ (March 2009) Temple Bar Gallery Studio; 'Elsewhere from Here' (2004) Workroom, Dublin; 'All Yesterday's Partys'(2005) along with the Workroom Elsewhere publication project The Fold (2007).
www.coracummins.blogspot.com
Cora Cummins Retreat
Dunamaise Arts Centre, Church Street, Portlaoise, Co. Laois
28 November – December 2009
