In celebration of St. Patrick’s Day, The Embassy of Ireland presents the “Ireland‘s Eye” exhibition in collaboration with ISA Art Gallery and Jakarta Land. This art exhibition features the work of five artists from the land of saints and scholars. The inspiring artworks are showcased for the public at World Trade Center 2 Jakarta from March 16th to April 7th, 2023.
The five Irish artists, Lucy Peters, Mandy O'Neill, Michelle Malone, Myfanwy Frost Jones, and Orla Comerford, explore critical questions of climate change, globalization, social inequality, and rapid technological change from the unique perspective of an island perched between the European and American continents. The island of Ireland has made significant contributions to the worlds of knowledge, culture, and entertainment, providing a unique vantage point to shape an independent and creative vision.
In this exhibition, there are important questions around what constitutes our individual, communal, and national identities. What defines us? Is it the clothing we wear, manufactured on the other side of the world, or is it the equally globalized digital content we consume? Could it be our intimate family histories, which are intertwined with social histories, or is it found in our attitudes towards inward migration and the acceptance of new communities? Are we paying enough attention to the subtle changes in our environment that will impact our ability to produce food in an unpredictable world climate in the future?
The island of Ireland's recent history has much in common with Indonesia’s journey to independence. In Ireland, the revolutionary poets helped to imagine the new nation into being, while in Indonesia, the visual artists envisioned a singular nation from the myriad colonial and archipelagic histories and cultures of Indonesia. Today, the island nations of Ireland and Indonesia share a deep sense of cultural and artistic identity that is manifested in many forms, from music, crafts, storytelling, to filmmaking and urban arts.
Curated by Mark Joyce from IADT, Dublin. Mata Irlandia or 'Ireland's Eye' is an exhibition exploring the idea of the visual arts as a critical 'eye' on an increasingly connected yet polarizing world.
Featured artists
Lucy Peters (@lucky_lucy_peters) has a background in the fashion industry, and, like many people, she has become increasingly concerned with the vast volumes of mass-produced clothes that are consumed and casually thrown away. Her exploration of overconsumption has encompassed research into the practices of fashion retailers, including those that are closing down, and also the strategies that have been developed by charities to manage huge warehouses full of discarded, and often worthless, fast fashion clothing. Making It Laaaast is a series of soft sculptures informed by research into production and consumption practices and the physical architecture of fashion retail display. Her sculptures are made by methodically dismantling discarded items of clothing into material components, which are then slowly woven and knotted into large, textured forms. Each piece can take up to five months to complete, and each work is composed of material that has been recycled, donated, or discarded. In 2022, Lucy received a MA in Art and Research Collaboration from the Institute of Art Design and Technology, Dunlaoghaire, Ireland. Lucy’s work also featured in the Royal Dublin Society’s Visual Arts Awards 2022, where she received the Royal Hibernian Academy’s Graduate Studio Award 2022.
Mandy O‘Neill (@photomando7) is an Irish photographer based in Dublin, Ireland. Her work inhabits a space between social commentary and representational strategies, with an emphasis on the relationship between people and place. Much of her practice has evolved through extended artist residencies in schools and through engagement with young people. Her current research considers the themes of place, belonging and the impact of development on the landscape, through a photography-based study of the inner suburb of Cabra, Dublin. Mandy has an MA in Public Culture Studies and a BA in Photography. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. Selected exhibitions include Photo Museum Ireland, National Gallery of Ireland, Draíocht and CCI Paris. She received funding from Arts Council of Ireland, Dublin City Council, Creative Ireland and Culture Ireland and was winner of the 2018 Zurich Portrait Prize at the National Gallery of Ireland. She is currently undertaking a practice-based PhD at Dublin City University, funded by the Irish Research Council.
Michelle Malone‘s (@michelle_malone_) practice is based on her experience growing up in a variety of social housing systems in inner city Dublin. Her multi-disciplinary installations are comprised of sculpture, image-making, oral histories, audio and text. Her practice seeks to give material voice to working-class histories from the perspective of lived experience. It is her belief that the art industry needs to let marginalized people tell their own story. She believes that objects have a collectively known cultural value and that all materials are biased. It is her intention to instrumentalise and weaponise the shared meaning of materials and objects to visually tell working-class histories, and to create embodied empathy/identity for the subject matter. The ultimate goal of her practice is to enter authentic working-class symbolism into the artistic canon.
Myfanwy Frost-Jones (@miffytheartist) is an artist and oyster farmer based in the West of Ireland, Myfanwy’s work examines the relationships between land, landscape and ecology in
a rural space. Layering conflicting histories of colonialism and invasion with current issues of shellfish farming, biodiversity and coastal erosion, she works with photography and moving image installation. A multi award winning artist, Myfanwy studied at the Crawford College of Art and Design in Cork city. She is the recipient of the Royal Dublin Society Mason Hayes & Curran LLP CC Irlandais Residency Award 2022, Sample Studios Associate Residency Award, National Sculpture Factory Residency Award and the Backwater Artist Studios Moving Image Bursary in 2022. Her work has been shown as part of IndieCork, Living Canvas Dublin and Paris Photo with a solo show at the MTU Exhibition Centre and Studio 12 BAG Cork
Orla Comerford (@orla_comerford) is a multidisciplinary visual artist working across the mediums of video, audio, photography and woodwork. The exploration of glitch art and the question of who gets to see in high resolution are central themes in her practice. As a visually impaired artist glitch art and distortion of images is informed by how what she sees and how she encounters the world, is a distortion in its own sense. Orla has been surrounded by a passion for woodworking, and the passing on of generational woodworking skills in her family has been an important subject matter in her work, also referencing the history of people with visual impairments in ‘Institutions for the Blind’ being taught tactile crafts as a means of employment in a society with no access to other opportunities. While the artist’s video work asks the viewer to consider ways of seeing, it also focuses on the opportunities and accessibility that technology offers the visually impaired nowadays. Orla received first-class honors in Fine Art Media at the National College of Art and Design in 2022. She has exhibited work in the Royal Dublin Society Visual Arts Awards Exhibition and received the RDS Members Fund Award.
