echo
echo
Hyde Bridge Gallery
Exhibition opening Saturday Oct 7th 2023 12noon Closing Oct 28th
Two Person exhibition by Celeen Mahé & Sarah Ellen Lundy.
A collection of artwork created during the Primary Colours Art Education Residency 2023.
The exhibition is supported and funded by Sligo County Council Arts Service
Artist Bio/Statement
Sarah Ellen Lundy
Lundy is an experimental cross disciplinary artist working primarily in visual media with parallel practices in sound, performance & film & essentially preoccupied with the natural world; her pedagogical work endeavors to generate environmental empathy through creative engagement whilst her expanded studio practice explores the esoteric elements of ecology through a feminist lens; she operates from the Furr Factory Studio in her native South County Sligo, a space she has established in the same building her father once founded in order to run his Taxidermy craft.
Exhibition statement:
This body of work continues Lundys aesthetic of the macabre in minimalist muted or mono tones; a seasonal nod to Samhain, it explores life cycles & mortality in a non-morbid manner.
Lundys works operate through setting up a series of metaphors & prompts on the cyclical nature of existence & the formalistic similarities throughout the natural world, demonstrating inherent interconnectivity.
The use of natural materials in the exhibition echoes the preserved flora and fauna specimens the artist used in her school residency to inspire creative responses through weekly introductions to native taxidermy & herbarium pieces presented in the classroom.
Celeen Mahé
Celeen Mahé is a visual artist based in Sligo. She was awarded a six-month studio residency from the Sligo Arts Service, at The Model Sligo in 2023. Most recent exhibitions include a group show Materiality, Collaboration, and Agency at Exhibition Laboratory Helsinki, and solo show The Shape of a Pocket at SIC Gallery, Helsinki. In 2022 she was awarded an Agility award from the Irish Arts Council. She received a Visual Arts Bursary from the Irish arts Council in 2020. She holds an MA Fine Arts from University of the Arts Helsinki, and a BA (hons) in Fine Art Sculpture from Limerick School of Art and Design.
Artist Statement
Celeen Mahé works within the mediums of sculpture, painting, collage, textiles, and printmaking. Engaging intuitively with materials, the abstract qualities of surface, texture, color, and form aim to create work that is poetic and open ended.
Her process is a place for slowing down, rebuilding, and dreaming, where one can move past definition towards something personal and fragile, a place where thoughts and feelings meet. This exhibition presents a selection of her most recent works on paper. Her experiments with collage are born from a desire to make meaning emerge from a fragmented present.