Siun Hanrahan (DIT) - the 6 questions

1. Has working on this subject/theme altered your drawing process in any way?

My art-practice has, at time, involved drawing and I had hoped to use this opportunity to work on a non-textual part of a long-running work-in-progress, Babel. This may yet happen. Meantime, the changes involved an opportunistic narrowing of sources and an explicit re-viewing of past work.

2. Has the experience of a possible collaborative outcome altered your thinking/working methods in any way?

Not yet, but the possibility is exciting. 'Conversation' is at the heart of my art-thinking but my art process is a solitary one, a conversation with books rather than people. Collaboration promises new perspective on my thinking and process, and a loosening of same through engaging with the thinking and processes of others.

3. How has the experience of your practice being reviewed and viewed by your peers in Triptych influenced the work?

So far it has been strangely encouraging. To my surprise, a humble effort thus far revealed points of connection to the thinking and processes of others. Building on this in Loughborough is an exciting prospect.

4. Have you discussed this piece of work/process with anyone else in Triptych while carrying out the work?

No... I would like this answer to change.

5. Has anything you saw at the Triptych IMMA symposium influenced your thinking or process in any way?

A conversation with Triptych colleagues may do. Can making a virtue out of hte constraints of circumstance (few stretches of tie in which to work in a sustained way) be made to work for me?

6. What collaborative outcome would you suggest as being appropriate for this reserach group?

A range of themes, activities and outputs built upon small-scale shared interests. A larger scale context for and perspective upon these productive points of connection should be easy to achieve. Beginning with a large scale project incorporating our diverse interests seems less promising in terms of focus and quality of outcome.

TRIANGLE PROJECT: TRIPTYCH

TRIANGLE PROJECT: TRIPTYCH

Bernadette Burns (DIT) Triptych Project

Text to accompany Bernadette Burns work

A Limitless Wandering of Thought

And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven…

Standing midst the landscapes of ‘Jacob’s Ladder’, the overall impression they convey is calm and contemplative. Broad, apparently simple planes are juxtaposed to render foreground and a distant horizon. Writing, traced in paint, hovers within and above the layered landscapes. Many feature water and a distant island. Some look across a warm stretch of sand or yellowed grass, others look toward or through an open door.

The work of imaginative construction required by the simple landscape schema in works such as Colour Field draws you in; an expanse of bright yellow sand sweeps toward a narrow strip of sea with a hazily distant island beneath a darkening sky. A strong brown stripe running along the right edge of the painting, punctuated by red writing, seems likely to be a fence post in the immediate foreground, perhaps marking an entrance to the beach. The simple beauty of the scene is inviting. And yet my advance into the picture is refused. The simplicity of this imagined landscape is only momentary. The brown post of the foreground runs ambiguously to the sea, disrupting the fragile coherence of the scene. The shifting yellow plane of sand refuses to recede, becoming instead an upright plane with five blue lines scraped on it or through it. I am returned to the surface of the painting, an expanse of colour disrupted only by the texture of the paint.

The scripts, whose rhythm so often reflects that of the painting on which it sits – like ripples on the water of Crossing Over or the scratched grass of Travelling Light – promise to lead to the heart of the work. Narratives are inscribed, perhaps fragmentary and ambiguous, but central to many of the paintings. And yet the promise of these words is withheld; they cannot be deciphered.

Exact meaning and an exact topography are thus beyond reach, and a sustained imaginative engagement is invited instead. In works such as Upon the Water and Open Door II, a strong motif within Burns work - the doorway - suggests a kind of presence that is evident throughout ‘Jacob’s Ladder’. The doorway brings two spaces together, a beyond is brought close. This juxtaposition of physical spaces marks a particular kind of presence within the landscape, a presence to the immediate surroundings and an awareness that also wanders beyond its boundaries, whether remembering or imagining.

With the introduction of the ladder motif, this figuring of an active connection between discrete planes of thinking and being, or modes or presence within the landscape, is retraced. The ladder is not about escape or escapism. In paintings such as Between Here and There the immersion in landscape is too particular, emphatic and solid, and the ladder does not lead to another place. Instead, the ladder disrupts the landscape schema to actively figure a second possibility within that space, dreaming. An open horizon of possibility encountered within a particular place.

More whimsically, this space for dreaming within the landscape, anchored in the structures of a particular place but not simply of that place, is marked by disruptions such as the floating turquoise square of Crossing Over. Suspended midst blue water and an ochre shore, this ambiguous space is written into the surrounding waters and yet is a world of its own.

The particular places of these paintings are Sherkin Island off the coast of West Cork, Tipperary and Crete. The sandy shores and surprisingly high skies of Sherkin have long been a refuge and source of inspiration for Burns. An abandoned reservoir near her home in Tipperary is a growing presence in her work and recent trips to Crete are directly reflected in a number of small paintings and indirectly in the ladder motif emerging in the work. (The Jacob’s Ladder of the exhibition title and the paintings was inspired by Greek icons.)

Water – and its invitation to imagine freely - is common to all three places. Where they differ is in season and mood. Sherkin and Crete are rendered through the high skies and distant horizon of summer. The reservoir is a winter space. In Flow the skeleton of a tree is shrouded in a dark green that seems to remember dense foliage, or the rich humus underfoot of long-since fallen leaves. A sense of the horizon drawn near is given by the distinct band of light and dark lines running across the top of the painting. In the uncertain light, a rush of watery blue casts a spray of unravelling script. This is the misty blurring of winter, of drops that sit heavily on and fall wetly from twigs and sodden surfaces. And the space for imagining and remembering is differently configured. Here it is the seeping of one space into the next – the misty uncertainty of the boundary between distinct spaces and planes – that enables the limitless wandering of thought.

The paintings of ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ are specific – they capture a time and a place. And they are wilfully ambiguous, inscribing something of the remembering and imagining that may irrupt in or infuse a particular time and a place. What the paintings reveal and invite is dream-laden reflection in a landscape.


Siun Hanrahan

John Mayock DIT: Triptych Drawing Project

Anna Macleod Transparent Drawing for project

Anna Macleod: DIT: Response to 6 questions from Triptych.

1. Has working on this subject / theme altered your drawing process in any way?

I am coming to this project TRIPTYCH relatively late but the theme has helped consolidate some of the aspects of a drawing project already in progress: a reflection on the evolving architectural constructions in public houses in Ireland in response to the smoking ban, this social legislation for health and safety in the work place has changed the vernacular architectural landscape and altered the nature of social interaction in the pub.

2. Has the idea of a possible collaborative outcome altered your thinking / working methods in any way?

Not yet but I am interested in this project specifically because of the potential for collaborative opportunities.

3. How has the experience of your practice reviewed and viewed by your peers in Triptych influenced your work?

Ones work is constantly viewed and reviewed, it goes with the territory of
being an arts practitioner. The exciting aspect of Triptych is that it offers a platform for discourse on the practice of drawing with the opportunity for interdisciplinary and collaborative engagements.

4. Have you discussed this piece of work / process with anyone else in triptych while carrying out the work?

Not yet but I am looking forward to some dialogue about our postings.

5. Has anything you saw at the triptych IMMA symposium influenced your thinking or process in any way?

Unfortunately I was out of the country at the time and missed the symposium.

6. What collaborative outcome would you suggest as being appropriate for this research group?

A website / blog seems a logical outcome for a number of reasons, as suggested by Brian Fay it could be an educational tool and post graduate forum as well as providing possibilities for future collaborations with regular updates & information on evolving practices. It is important that whatever forum we use reaches a greater critical audience and will potentially lead to a broader pool for further collaborative opportunities.

6 Responses from Simon Downs.

1. Has working on this subject/theme altered your drawing process in any way?

In all honesty the ‘∆’ theme fitted into an existing research agenda I had been pursuing: that of technology disrupting existing design practice and culture. Although not trained as a typographer, typography is one of the most obvious places to play with these disruptive technological artifacts. As an area of culture it has been continually made and re-made through the action of technological disruption, while still retaining its creative origins in the act of drawing. The conceptual seed is realized through the act of drawing and finally disseminated through technology ‘x’, ‘y’ or ‘z’. The drawn form remains, and dominates, the broadcast technology is subordinate.
As such the very ambiguous vacuity of the ‘∆’ pandered to my interests.



2. Has the idea of a possible collaborative outcome altered your thinking/working methods in any way?

The prospect of so many peers ‘reading’ my work is quite terrifying. But all I can do is work and write honestly in the hope that someone will find something that sparks his or her curiosity.
My industrial practice has been founded on working collaboratively on scales from teams of thirty [large multimedia studios] down to two [me and a client]. In truth I’m not sure I can think of ‘work’ as a solitary activity.



3. How has the experience of your practice being reviewed and viewed by your peers in Triptych influenced the work?

Fear, panic and mind-numbing paralysis: peers are intrinsically more frightening than clients. A disappointed client merely goes away, peers stay and gift you with their thoughts. This awareness of ongoing scrutiny has engendered a degree of scholarly care in my practice that would normally be reserved for my written research.



4. Have you discussed this piece of work/process with anyone else in Triptych while carrying out the work?

I’m shamed to say I habitually use several of my colleagues as well-informed sounding boards. They are very tolerant.



5. Has anything you saw at the Triptych IMMA symposium influenced your thinking or process in any way?

As one of the Tracey Editors I am continually amazed at what people consider ‘Drawing’ and continually heartened by the uses they put it to. The IMMA symposium reinforced this view. Viva Drawing!



6. What collaborative outcome would you suggest as being appropriate for this research group?

I’m not sure that a single collaborative outcome is the point. Like humanity itself, we are best, strongest and most beautiful in our diversity. The power of the Triptych Project lies in this multiplicity: in a myriad of voices all calling out the word ‘Drawing’.
While I accept this is the sort of thinking that does not easily win research grants, it gains strength precisely because the outcome is unbounded and unpredictable.
Let us be mutual, but united.