Demesne
Seamus Nolan
February 16 - March 22 2008
Seamus Nolan’s Demesne is created out of discarded cardboard and considers the distinction between waste and possibility, examining the role of landscape in the process of objectifying a concrete relationship with the external. The work considers the notion of a temporal relationship with place, looking at how the leisure or tourist industry assimilate the transitory experience of living in nature while the actual culture of historically nomadic people is situated outside of a legitimate public experience.
In Demesne, Nolan examines how cultural landscapes are reassessed with changing economic and demographic patterns and lifestyles. He investigates the politics of culture, with specific emphasis on how the element of inclusion and exclusion affects identity, produces subjectivity, creates meaning, determines truth and history, and distributes knowledge. In this exploration of the dichotomy of nature and culture, Nolan draws our attention to how landscape, space and places are implicated in the production of these ideas and how they are understood and assimilated. The caravan position in the landscape denotes this conflict as an object of impermanence and transition, speaking of the blurring of boundary between man and landscape, human and animal. In a broader sense, Nolan touches on the issues surrounding the consequences of the individuals’ right to private property and what happens when these rights are not attainable or accessed by certain groups of people. The right to private property confers control of an object to the individual and empowers individuals to make decisions about the use of the resource and by extension they act as an agent in society. Place becomes a social product formed out of these relations between people, community, agencies, and institutions. The structuring of space thus strengthens or weakens social boundaries, accentuating social division and conversely defining what is 'other'.
Originally sited in the Wexford Arts Centre, in November '07as part of the Inaugural 2006 Emerging Visual Artist Award, an initiative in partnership between Arts Council Ireland, Wexford County Council and Wexford Arts Centre Seamus Nolan created Demesne as a new body of work for the solo show awarded to the winning artist.
Text by Seamus Nolan an Catherine Bowe
Biography
Born Kilkenny 1978, Seamus Nolan is an artist living and working in Dublin. He graduated from the National College of Art and Design with a first class honours degree in sculpture in 2004.
Recipient of an artists bursary from the Arts Council '06 and '07. He has been awarded a studio placement by Independent Artists’ Studios in Temple Bar, a residency at the Irish Museum of Modern Art and reipient of Wexford County Council’s inaugural Emerging Visual Artist Award 2006. Recent work includes 'Art in the life world' exhibition, the old swiming pool, Ballymun Dublin, Feb '08, Group show, The Kerlin Feb '08, 'Demesne' in the Wexford Art Centre Oct '07, 'Nature
Reserve' for Europalia Brussels Oct – Dec '07, 'Platform 2' Bailieborough Co Cavan Nov '07, 'Synnesthesia sat', Birr Co, Offaly Sept '07, 'Pilot Archives' Venice / London 2007, 'Hotel Ballymun' temporary public art work commissioned by Breaking Ground, Ballymun, Dublin, March '07. EV+a Limerick, 2006, 'Artcirq / Seamus Nolan' in the Project, Dublin Nov 2005, and 'Communism', in the Project Dublin, Jan 2005.
