A new exhibition entitled Damnatio Memoriae - examining Bio-culture, Violence and Marginality in Contemporary Irish Culture - opens Friday September 6 at Ballina Arts Centre.
Damnatio Memoriae is the third solo exhibition by visual artist Conor O Grady in County Mayo since 2015. The exhibition features a series of gallery installations which have been created by the artist over the past ten years, tracing aspects of his career to date which have interesting curatorial and social connections to specific issues or events in contemporary society. It also includes a collection of sculptures, moving imagery, drawings and other works, many of which have never been exhibited or shown in Ireland before.
The title of the exhibition refers to the Latin term in which a person, organisation and even ideology can be systematically excluded from historical documentation. This act of sanctioned, passive aggression is the main reference point for this exhibition, which references themes such as consensual exploitation, marginality as well as institutional and actual violence in modern Irish society.
Discussion, dialogue and conversation are the main focus for O’Grady when exploring ideas. He uses active-research-techniques to re-interpret the transient, ephemeral media of discourse into multidisciplinary visual art and provocative actions.This is articulated in the tension that is produced by the fleeting nature of many of his works and research topics, the way in which those topics are represented and their relationship to the viewers, who at times may feel like passive, voyeuristic, bystanders but who are in fact active witnesses to the experiences of the underprivileged, marginalised and unheard.
Frequently this is expressed through extended-photography, interventionist-sculptural-practices, and moving imagery. Painting, drawing and other traditional media also play an important part in O'Grady's artistic processes. He studied Fine Art Education at the National College of Art and Design and Fine Art Practice at Dublin Institute of Technology, Portland Row.
Should you have any further inquiries regarding the exhibition, contact The Gallery, Barrett St, Carrowcushlaun West, Ballina, Co Mayo on (096 ) 73593 or email: [email protected]
