Platform Gallery, Tullynally Castle, Castlepollard will host a new exhibition by visual art collective Exquisite Colab runing from now until December 18.
The exhibition, Co Pilo, has been created by Ann Wingfield, Paul Roy, Lesley Wingfield, and Celine Sheridan.
The exhibition will be curated by Nicola Lane and Karl Somers and was opened by guest speaker Miriam Mulrennan, Manager of Athlone Art and Heritage on Thursday night, November 10.
The works shown here in Platform are a small selection of Exquisite Colab’s collective work. This exhibition travelled from the newly launched Abbey Road Studios in Athlone, where, under the title ’The Case of the Exquisite Corpse’ evolved from a week-long open studio event, culminating in an exhibition on the national Culture Night September 23.
The initial inspiration derives from the role and function of the suitcase, often a symbol of transition, not just in travel, but also a secret vessel of family history, of aged photographs and the artefacts of shrouded and ephemeral memory. Sometimes crammed with one’s entire existence, at the embarkation of exciting adventures or painful secretive escapes, sometimes bearing the poignant fragments of unknown pasts. This became the basis, but not the focus of the exhibition, wherein we touch on the baggage, both literal and figurative, the burdens and the sweet reveries, the overwhelming pain of sadness and loss, the journey as an artist to this singular point. This artistic journey looks back at the toys and pets, the pins and ribbons of childhood, the progressive development, the baggage we accumulate in life, the trials and the triumphs. The exhibition presents luggage tags, often likened to mortuary tags, emblematic of finality, and the cessation of change. The installations Anima I and Anima II, like childhood favourites, guide you back sometimes to precise moments, sometimes to grand sweeps of experience, and yet all still harking back to the dusty suitcase of old photographs, hidden away, containing all the myths, and tantalising glimpses.
The Exquisite Colab is a visual arts collective based in Westmeath, consisting of four visual artists, Celine Sheridan, Lesley Wingfield, Ann Wingfield and Paul Roy. Each of the four are practicing solo artists, with solo and group exhibitions shown nationally and internationally, including Berlin, London, China, Sweden, Holland, France, and the USA.
The Colab came together five years ago, primarily as a collective of artists involved in discourse on, and critique of, each individual’s work. This communication subsequently developed into an examination of the possibilities of artistic collaboration and the processes of such.
Initially, the approach taken was to work together, collaborating directly on artworks, with the goal of moving our collective artistic practice forward in oblique and interesting ways. To this end they found collaboration as a fascinating opportunity to do so. They also developed more elaborate and interesting modes of collaboration, often using objects and ideas as an initial inspiration for collective artworks, which often took off at vague and exotic tangents.
The Exquisite Colab has been involved in several successful projects and events, including collective collaborative exhibitions. They recently completed EveryonE, a Percent For Arts project. EveryonE is a self-published artist's book and includes art and writings from the Colab as well as members of the local Traveller community.
