Space CRAFT EXHIBITION AREA

Current exhibitions

Future exhibitions

Space CRAFT EXHIBITION AREA hosts a programme of exhibitions that focuses on showcasing high-quality innovative work. Each exhibition lasts for one month opening the first Thursday of every month and continuing until the last Saturday of every month.

PAST EXHIBITIONS

WATER COURSE & LAND LINES
An Exhibition by Alice Clark & Jane McCulla

County Down Crafts presents ‘WATER COURSE & LAND LINES’ an Exhibition by Alice Clark and Jane McCulla, at Space CRAFT the group’s Shop/Gallery/Exhibition Area, up the escalator at The Fountain Centre, College Street, Belfast, from Friday 2nd to Saturday 31st May 2008. Opening Hours: Monday to Saturday, 10.30am to 5.30pm
The Exhibition displays Alice Clark and Jane McCulla’s joint concerns and observations of man in the natural landscape. The use of clay in Alice Clark’s work corresponds to the hand built pieces by Jane McCulla. Both are concerned with natural form and the natural world while in Alice’s work the clay is raw and in Jane’s work the clay is fired.

ALICE CLARK
Alice Clark’s work for the Exhibition is a series of works on paper, board and wood entitled ‘WATER COURSE’. These are wall mounted mostly in pairs. The work is process led and relates significantly to the idea of interference of man in the natural world and the damage the earth sustains. On one level the work suggests land erosion and dried up river beds. But it also conveys a suggestion of the physical mapping of land as if seen from a great distance or, at the other end of the scale, the microcosm of root systems below the surface. The multiple reading is very much a part of the meaning of the pieces.
Alice Clark initially trained as a weaver. She won several prizes at the Royal Dublin Society in the 1980s and by 1998 had joined an emerging group of textile artists, Fibre 2000 which organised shows and workshops throughout Ireland. A desire to realise her ambitions to train as a fine artist lead her to undertake a Foundation in Art Course at the Belfast Institute of Further & Higher Education in 2001 and then on to a Degree in Fine & Applied Arts at the University of Ulster from which she graduated with First Class BA Honours in 2006. Alice’s Degree Show included a text based wall piece in clay. The intention was to use the context of inscribing to investigate the complex relationship between nature and culture considering patterns and rhythms of growth in the physical world and the way in which human intervention attempts to impose order on the natural world. The work sought to underline the degree to which culture undermines the sustainability of natural ecosytems.
Alice Clark’s practice has become very versatile and she is able to move freely between object making and image making in her search for appropriate responses to any brief.
In 2006 after finishing her Degree, Alice Clark succeeded in obtaining two commissions within the healthcare environment. The first was for seven pieces to be displayed in the new individual birthing suites at the Ulster Hospital’s Maternity Unit. These are tissue and stitch collages which have been transposed into photographic format. They make connections between the child and the natural world in a celebratory way.
In 2007 Alice Clark completed work on a triptych for the Carlisle Health and Wellbeing Centre in Belfast. Seasons of Colour are mixed media collage pieces mirroring the strong, saturated colour which is integral to the décor of the new building.

Jane McCulla
Jane McCulla’s work for the Exhibition is a series of ceramic works entitled ‘LAND LINES’. Her fascination with clay, and its ecological and archaeological connotations, is evident in the power of her sculptural work. Influenced by the great Land Artists and her own experience of remote landscapes and seascapes, Jane’s ceramic forms reflect her sensitive exploration of mankind’s mark on the landscape and his vulnerability to the whim of nature. Physical traces communicate man’s presence, but ultimately earthly cycles prevail. “I feel overwhelmed by the beauty, scale and miraculous intricacies of nature. Experiencing rural or remote landscapes and seascapes, I am fascinated by momentary glimpses, indexical traces, entropy processes and archaeological references, communication man’s presence and time. The latter and the cycles, rhythms and routines of life lead me to manipulate clay, earth’s primary material, with celebratory essence to relate a personal dialogue with my environment.”
When Jane McCulla graduated from the University of Ulster in 2006 with a First Class BA Honours Degree in Fine & Applied Arts, these concepts informed the series created for her Degree Show, Rhythmic Traces. The working process Jane developed to make these large scale works requires great care and patience. Layering grogged and coloured clay, she throws it on a large plaster batt to achieve stretched and fluid textures, mimicking the fluid movement found in the earth’s cycles and processes. Placed in a clay cradle, each piece dries extremely slowly before a biscuit firing, textural detail is encouraged by applying and rubbing off multiple glazes, and glass is placed to run during the final firing.
Influenced by the Japanese Bizen Technique, Jane has developed her own firing style, using clam shells as buffers between stacked ceramic forms wrapped in salt-soaked straw. Strategically placing salt-filled clay thumb pots during the gas reduction firing induces salt vapour, producing the exciting, serendipitous surface colours in which Jane delights.
Jane has established a studio near Greyabbey on the Ards Peninsula, County Down, and is developing a gallery space there as well as holding workshops. She works to commission and also sells work through galleries and retail outlets.