short residencies 2021.2022

Following an open call for proposals, the selected artists and creative practitioners are invited to our project space for 4-5 day long residencies. Used as a workspace, showroom, exhibition-performance-research or dream-space, the set-up will change in a fast turnaround, showcasing many creative positions. Each residency will be open to the public- at least at some stage- if the resident artist wish so.
With the lockdown having such a big impact on artists, the production of new work and the public interaction with contemporary art, the short residency programme hopes to help speed up the art ecology again. All short residencies will be documented on our website, together with artist statements and links. We will offer curatorial support and critique, match and invite interested specialists and help in networking.

Timetable residencies

Part 1: 27 September- 26 November 2021

1. Nathan Crothers 27- 30 September
2. Kate McSharry 01-05 October
3. Jill Quingly 07-11 October
4. Dorota Borowa 12-16 October
5. Karolin Reichert, 25-29 October
   Ben Craig, Finnegan, Yorek
   
6. Cathy Scullion 03-06 November
7. Vasiliki Stasinaki, Ronan Smyth 08-12 November
   
8. Niamh Seana Meehan 13-19 November
9. Ella de Burca 24- 26 November
   
   Part 2: 22 May - 08 July 2022
   
   
10. Stacey Mulligan 23-26 May
    
11. Stephanie Gaumond 28 May-02 June
    
12. Meadhbh McIlgorm 08-13 June
13. Fiona Gordon 14-18 June
14. Greig Burgoyne 20-25 June
15. Larry MacAree 27-30 June
16. Marie Phelan 02-08 July
    
    
    

About the artists

12-16 October2021

Dorota Borowa is a Polish visual artist based in Dublin. She received her MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Poland. Borowa exhibits both nationally and internationally, and has been awarded a number of Artist in Residence programs. Her works have been supported by the South Dublin County Council as well as by the Polish Ministry of Culture. In 2020, she was selected to run “Ice Painting” workshops at the Bengaluru Science Gallery in India. Recently, Dorota has been awarded the Arctic Circle Residency. Her paintings are included in the collection of the National Museum in Gdańsk, Poland.

Dorota Borowa works primarily with painting, drawing, printmaking and video. Borowa renounced her own mark from the painting process to step outside her own subjectivity. Instead of painting nature, she wants to create with nature. Different states of water collected in various places have created a vocabulary in Borowa's work - be it rain, ice or seawater. The unpredictability and limited control of Dorota's painting process make her works become a place between accident and design, between acceptance and destruction.

24- 26 November2021

Ella de Burca

Ella de Búrca (Ireland) works through performance, sculpture and poetry to focus on how humans construct meaning, particularly from a female perspective. She is especially interested in how we perform as 'viewer,' and the discourse surrounding active versus passive experiences. Her work is usually site-specific and temporary. She is currently pursuing a practice-based PhD at KU Leuven/LUCA Belgium.

Selected exhibitions and performances include: ‘Pirouette,’ The Hugh Lane Municipal Art Gallery, Dublin, Ireland, 2019 (solo performance), 'Flat As The Tongue Lies,' The Room Gallery at University of California, Irvine, California, 2018 (solo show) and 'Post-Peace' at the Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Germany 2017.
@elladeburca

20-25 June 2022
With a public live performance on Saturday, 25 June 6pm at PS²

Greig Burgoyne was born in Glasgow, studied at the Universität Angewandte Kunst Vienna, and MA Painting, Royal College of Art London. Taking anomalies of the space, he seeks to test, measure or expand alternative body/site relations with regard to drawing, its space and its conceptual frameworks. This is to generate non-hierarchical multiple entry and exit points of potential, expanding notions of drawing as between thing and event.
The results are immersive, be they absurd or beguiling, taking the form of films, performances, installations, text or sound works.
Burgoyne proposes new dialogues and frameworks that seek to generate a condition of becoming, translation and flux instead of stasis; a site of experience rather than solely location.

Inside drawing- The living contradiction

Meaning is invisible, but the visible is not the contradiction of the visible. The visible itself has an inner framework- membrane, and the invisible is the secret counterpart of the visible. It appears only within it.. one cannot see it there and every effort to see it makes it disappear, but it is in the line of the visible. The visible is pregnant with the invisible.
The visible and the invisible / Merleau-Ponty

The living contradiction is a five-day residency culminating in a series of works that respond to the site that is PS². Through installation, film and live performance Burgoyne’s practice is a rule based, process led but expansive drawing practice wrestling body, site relations and their subsequent paradoxes. Often verging on the absurd, the outcomes he sees as residual scraps of that forming and unforming that is the interplay between appearance and presentness. During his time in PS² he seeks to continue his focus on phenomenological concerns around invisibility and visibility e.g. what is present when we draw, and where is this actuality located.

The title of this new project, and his first in Belfast, derives from a term discussed by Emmanuel Levinas, living contradiction is namely the past orientated nature of our daily existence alongside a future directed intentionality, as such our lives oscillate between two fluid and divergent paths. In terms of drawing, Burgoyne seeks to both expand and paradoxically disperse the traditional trope of drawing as a means to cover. Contesting that drawing is a manifestation of surfaces or exteriorities, Burgoyne offers up situations that by the act of covering are in fact seeking to unconceal the thingness of drawing that resides within that materiality- its drawingness. In doings so, Inside drawing-The living contradiction offers a series of propositions in the form of installation, film and live performance less based on what has appeared or appearance per se, but instead indicative of drawing as an incessant coming into appearance. Between thing and event, object and subject, embodiment and worlding.

Recent projects in 2019-21 include:Delay#1 Spazio Mensa Rome (Feb21);The Volatile Gaze ]GAZE[ Artspace Shrewsbury UK (June/July21); Raid Galleria Bruno Lissi Rome (June21); Negotiations Paper Gallery Manchester (Nov/Dec21); Casting the castle Civitella Ranieri Foundation Perugia Italy (subject to rescheduling 2022) ; The Lowry Manchester (subject to rescheduling 2023); Spaceman Kunsthallen Bochum, Germany; Expect the unexpected The Lowry Manchester (with Sarah Sze, Yoko Ono & Gillian Wearing (June-Sept 2019); The sunny and the opaque Drawing projects UK (Nov 2019), Lost in space Other Art Network Kent (Sept 2019); Reality Hickster Projects Italy August 20219 ; Negotiations Arts Council England digital commission (March-June 2020); Papier Skulptur Verein Für Aktuelle Kunst Rührgebiet Oberhausen (VAKR) with Monika Gryzmala & Ignacio Uriarte) (Aug-Oct 2020) ; OK-NO Le Confection Idéal France (May2019); Edinburgh Arts festival (June-July2019). His work features in “Performance Drawing-New drawing practices’ published by Bloomsbury Books in autumn 2020.

27- 30 September2021

Nathan Crothers is an artist.

Artist statement
'A set up. A punch line. A stranger.
Crass aesthetics. A coffee cup. Another coffee cup.
Strong Language and adult humour.
Activities, which may exceed the boundaries of common sense.
Repetitious, repetitive, and repeating.
Meaninglessness-ness, A flat circle. Have fun.
Some text, not much reading, spelling things wrong.
Verfrumdungseffekt.
but I digress. The Absurd,
Sardonic wit. Ha. I was only joking.
Ideas of authorship and copyright.
The constructed-ness of reality, creative geography. popular culture.
Conceptual or non-existent, expressions of the capitalist system and its media culture
turned against itself, Merchandise. Value. Farce. Long pause… PowerPoint is boring.

These are all important elements of my art practice and feature prominently in my artist statement.'
Text:Nathan Crothers

28 May-02 June 2022

Stephanie Gaumond is a printmaker based in Derry, Ireland. Raised in Denver, Colorado she received her BA Fine Art from the University of Denver in 2010 and her MA in Printmaking from the Glasgow School of Art in 2012.
Selected exhibitions include: Abridged 0 - 73, Online (2021); Art Arcadia at St. Augustine’s, Derry (2018); Glebe Gallery, Donegal, Ireland (2018); SGC International Printmaking Conference, Las Vegas, NV (2018); Victoria H. Myhren Gallery, Denver, Colorado (2013); The Glue Factory, Glasgow, Scotland (2013); Mediakesukus Lume, Helsinki, Finland (2012).

Artist statement
'My practice investigates coded communication and pattern making through multiple printmaking mediums. I am drawn to visual methods of information sharing, how they have come to exist, and how we use them to connect'
@stephaniegaumond

14-18 June 2022
Fiona Gordon
'Who is she? What is she doing?

Outlining my own version of female experience through video and digital processes flips the restricted, minimized idea of femininity on its head and embraces the surreal and the bizarre. My work explores excess with reference to fashion iconography and the overwhelming amount of images of the female body and surrounding ideologies we absorb daily. The screen places performativity at the heart of self-presentation, played out in my practice by the ‘stay-at-home hun’ persona. She approaches femaleness in a chaotic, absurd and bizarre way to explore the chasm between women’s interior voice and expectations of exterior perfection.

Playing into the chaos of internet culture, I created an immersive virtual viewing experience for my graduate showcase revealing the unfinished, unseen elements of my digital processes to expose the hectic reality of our screen time consumption. Mirroring this with a lo-fi, trash aesthetic unmasks the plastic reality of the imagery we obsess over. Our thirst for churned out content raises the question: if quantity surpasses quality in our era of perpetual scrolling then must this content be ‘good’, must it be ‘finished’?'
@fnioagrdn
Vimeo

27-30 June 2022

Larry Mac Aree will inhabit the PS² space for the guts of a week. He invites you to join him in collage-making, watching early Dr Who episodes, looking through his old photo albums and building an Action Man house out of Lego. If you are lucky he may even draw your portrait. You can guarantee to be engaged in a range of conversations encompassing topics such as The Irish Famine and the assassination of JFK.

About Larry MacAree
Larry is a learning disabled artist and storyteller living in the L’Arche Community on the Ormeau Road. He is currently compiling his non-linear, multi-media life story with support from the University of Atypical and Unlimited. His book launch will coincide with a solo exhibition in the University of Atypical during the Bounce Festival, October 2022.
Larry has worked with PS² on several projects before in 'Right to create', 2021 and in 2017 in 'Let's have a show'.

Meet Larry (and Susan)

Tuesday 28th June
12- 3.30pm @PS²

Thursday 30th June
2pm - 5pm @PS²

Friday 1st July
11am - 12pm
St George's Market: Wander around Larry's favourite stalls followed by a cuppa

12.30- 3pm @PS²

For more information contact Larry’s niece Susan: susanhughesartist@gmail.com

08-13 June 2022

Meadhbh McIlgorm is a mixed-media artist/maker. Her work is influenced by phenomena that move beyond the tangible – in particular the ephemeral nature of light, shadow and reflection. The unique qualities of glass, including its fragility, lend themselves to creating a narrative around these phenomena through sculptural objects, installation and photography.

Meadhbh studied Craft Design and History of Art at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, specialising in glass and graduating in 2013 with honours. She received DCCoI Future Makers Student Award (2013) and has shown work in several national group exhibitions including the RDS Craft Awards, Sculpture in Context (2014), ‘Solas’ (Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford, 2015/16) and The Ireland Glass Biennale (2019-20). In 2020, she held a solo exhibition, ‘Rituals of Preservation’, at Pollen Studio & Gallery. Recent projects include Liminal [Space] Belfast (2020) which she curated and produced. Originally from Dublin, Meadhbh has been living and working in Belfast since 2015 and is a studio holder at Queen Street Studios.
Meadhbh McIlgorm
@champagne_clouds._

01-05 October 2021

Kate McSharry
'My practice is tough to concretise. Art is a universal language yet also a unique experience as our interpretations are affected by knowledge and environment. I am interested in how we establish context collectively when engaging with art.

Poetry allows the space for energy to build and be expelled through an articulated riot-of-sorts. This project is a continued response to one of Peter Schjeldahl’s Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light essays on concrete. My approach to this exploration ‘an observation: artist as masochist’ is open-minded and reactionary; experimenting with ideas of concrete as a material, concrete being activated by its context, and concrete as a character. I presented the first of this series in September with ‘a consideration: all is fair in love and war(?)’ at Sarah Walker Gallery in Cork.
On graduating with First Class Honours in Contemporary Art from the Centre for Creative Arts and Media at GMIT in June, I was shortlisted for the RDS Visual Art Awards 2021 and will undertake a curatorial residency at Sample Studios in Cork during Spring 2022.'
@kate_mcsharry; website is coming soon

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13-19 November 2021

Niamh Seana Meehan is a visual artist based in Northern Ireland. During her residency she will stream a daily podcast on soundcloud.

Artist Statement
'I work in-between visual art, writing and performance. A central theme within my practice is the slippages involved within the translation of thought to text. Textual projects I create often want to jump off the page and form into characters. The characters become catalysts for discussion and by implementing performative methods it enables them to anticipate their narrative. Will they be a performance, an audio work, a sculpture or remain textual?'
@niamhseanameehan

03-07 June 2022

Stacey Mulligan explores in her work the ideology of archetypes and forms of its disruption. Using film, sculpture, and physical action, she is investigating gender as a complex concept, experimenting, and questioning our understanding of stereotypes in our current society.
Inspired by the deceptively feminine sport of cheerleading, (traditionally an all-male activity), she is exploring the conventional, masculine characteristics of aggression and strength.

'The formal qualities of balance, weight, tension, mass and time are reflective of the conditions I must master in order to successfully complete the actions of my performance in my video, “Form, Aggression, Tension, Repeat”, 2021. It seeks to push beyond my body’s limits to reveal its true potential of endurance. I intend to experiment with performative action and the notion of strength and endurance of the human body. I believe projection work can also play a part in my practice as I believe light-dark experimentation can be an interesting way to demonstrate the black-and-white world of gender archetypes.'
Text: Stacey Mulligan

02-08 July2022

Marie Phelan is a mixed media artist who works primarily through drawing, installation, audio, and lens based media. Her work is informed by places within the landscape that hold unconventional memories where she considers the diversity of human beliefs, often challenging our understandings of reality. Her practice is built around temporary site-specific explorations combined with studio based actions. She infuses research from cultural histories, archaeologies, mythologies and land-based folklore to meditate on past and present creating work that engages in a dialog around identity and social relationships.
Her enquiries are currently centred on sites with Otherworld connections, the teachings of magical organisations such as the Order of the Golden Dawn, and Astral Projection as a means of non physical travel.

About
Marie has a multidisciplinary background having studied Engineering, Digital Design and most recently completed an MA in Art and Research Collaboration through IADT, Dublin (2020). She has received Awards from the Arts Council Ireland, Creative Ireland, Carlow Arts Service, Artlinks and Kildare Arts Service. She has produced Limited Edition publications, Digital Audio Artworks and exhibited at Castletown House, Kildare (2021); The Lab Gallery, Dublin (MA Show) (2020), The Complex, Dublin (2017); Sculpture in Context, Dublin (2016); PhotoIreland Festival (2014). Since 2011 she has been part of the collaboration McLoughlinPhelan.

25-29 October 2021

Karolin Reichert, Ben Craig, Finnegan, Yorek
The German-Northern Irish family collective includes Karolin Reichardt, Ben Craig, Finnegan (5) and Yorek (5 months). They live, work and play in Berlin.

Artists statement
'Karolin mixes traditional textile techniques with an experimental approach in vibrant colours. Beside her work as an artist and educator, she collaborates as ‘Boat and Balloon’ with her partner and fellow artist Ben Craig. Ben likes to scribble, make models and build toy car racetracks, challenging the limits of simple materials such as pens, paper and cardboard. His passion for Lego is met by their son, Finnegan, who is also an enthusiast for space and crocodiles. Finnegan is currently interested in the interplay of drawing, sound, participatory sculpture and performance - a wild mix he refers to as “making a show”. His main audience consists of his younger brother Yorek, who is curious about what’s going on and happy as long as there is a comfy place for napping somewhere. '
@boatandballoon

07-11 October 2021

Jill Quingly

Jill Quingly is an artist who works with photography and installation. She holds an MFA in photography from Ulster University. She has held solo exhibitions at Belfast Exposed and at Seen Fifteen. Her work has won the Jill Todd Award and the ESPY Student Prize and has been nominated for the Magnum Graduate Photographers Award, the Prix Pictet and the Unseen Dummy Book Award.

Artist statement
'My practice explores the consequences of making simple creative gestures in architectural space. I subvert the assumed purposeful context of space being represented or read with the making of basic interventions which aim to alter experience from the practical towards imaginative possibilities.'

03-06 November 2021

Cathy Scullion is a visual artist and curator based in Belfast. Taking a multi-disciplinary, conceptual approach to her work, Cathy explores ways in which material and process can be used to examine internal and external factors that determine the relationships we have with others. Time, process, and tactility are important in the creation and display of her work.
Recently, Cathy has been exploring ideas of embodiment theory through practices like weaving and stitching. With a focus on the physical and ‘ritualised’ actions involved in these processes, Cathy has been using gesture and movement to question factors that might influence who has agency of voice.

She graduated with a first-class honour in Fine Art from Ulster University in 2018 and has been a member of Vault Artist Studios since then. She received graduate awards from Seacourt Print Workshop and Belfast Print Workshop, has exhibited nationally and internationally and has received awards from Arts Council NI and Freelands Foundation UK. She is the co-founder of Second Collective Belfast and is currently undertaking a Masters in Art Research Collaboration at IADT Dublin.

08-12 November 2021

Vasiliky Stasinaki, Ronan Smyth

This residency is a collaborative of an artist duo. Both artists felt that after the deeply fraught year of the pandemic, they are both seeking to re-connect and expand their practices by encouraging conversations to happen and nurture themselves within a supportive, generous and open environment, through exchange of ideas and dialogue.

'During this residency we encourage visitors to interact and participate. This could be through watching us make, engaging in joint discussion or contributing in any way they feel like. Having studied together, we have been able to identify common themes of autobiography, collective identity and cultural politics that feed each of our individual practices. With this opportunity, we are exploring the use of traditional textile making as a way of attaching, wrapping and stitching these ideas together. We consider our time within this space as an experimental form of collaboration that aims to imagine our process as a form of ceremonial procession, with the material outcomes acting as celebratory or ritualised offerings. We intend to develop a body of work that records the remnants and traces of our time producing, conversing and performing within the space. The final embodiment will be presented as an expansive textile tapestry, that will be punctured by and adorned with a collection of personal thoughts, images, symbols and objects that have been collected and considered during our making process. It is through using (and reusing) these, we are presenting ourselves, along with audiences an opportunity to revisit and question the creative strategies that have felt so necessary in navigating our shared experiences of isolation, uncertainty and self-preservation. Inspired by the contribution of activist and folk practices within textile history, this opportunity with PS² will allow us to explore the DIY ethos and communal significance of sites of remembrance, resistance and tribute.'

Open call- now closed

We encourage all artists and creative practitioners, professionals and amateurs, individuals, groups or organisations to submit a proposal. The short projects do not have to be a finished product or have a fixed outcome. In the contrary, they might only be a first step for further projects, a test run and experiment of a process, performance, initiative or forms of display.
For PS² this is a great opportunity as well: to see a wide variety of cultural expressions, to make new contacts and to open up the (art)space for more diverse activities.

PS² will provide
-its project space
-equipment: data projectors/ tvs/ media players/ boards/ stuff/ internet / tool box/ coffee machine, messy storage contents....
-practical assistance and invigilation
-web presence
-small fee.

Unfortunately, we are very limited to contribute to any travel costs or accommodation.

Please send your proposal what you would like to do during your residency (max 300words) + max 7 images + links, all in one PDF (not more than 4MB), with the subject header 'short residencies' to: info@pssquared.org
Please indicate which part/month would best suit you.

Deadline for applications: 04 September 2021

PS² has initiated similar projects in the past, giving artists and creatives the chance to experiment and test a project idea and open it to the public : 9-5 residency, 2009; Rehearsal room, 2013/14; and short residencies, 2019.

Image top: Izzy McEvoy, 2019