TO IMPERMANENT COLLECTIONS AND SCATTERED ACQUISITIONS
To Impermanent Collections and Scattered Acquisitions
Spring Exhibition
20 March - 20 May 2024
Kunstverein Aughrim
Launching softly on the spring equinox, Wednesday 20 March, To Impermanent Collections and Scattered Acquisitions is an assembly line of works in progress and processes unspooled by Galway-based artist Marielle MacLeman. The exhibition constitutes a brief coming together of distinct material concerns from unfolding bodies of work dealing with the changing fates of the global textiles and forestry industries.
Working with found, salvaged or scavenged materials, MacLeman sources the ‘remains of the remains’; a discarded nursing uniform from a second hand shop in Zabok, a patch of grass collected from where Kamensko workers held their hunger strike, woodchips gathered from felled ash trees in the grounds of Merlin Park University Hospital. Every one of her core components is a bi-product of its tangled socio-historical context, an acknowledgement of the state of flux from which it originated. Through the application of care and labour, attention and skill, MacLeman carries that context through a process of material transformation, and in doing so, reclaims its potential to create new meaning.
MacLeman is currently developing two concurrent bodies of work. We are collecting today, for tomorrow is a collaboration with CIMO Centre for Research of Fashion and Clothing, Zagreb, and The Visitors is a new solo exhibition commissioned by the Butler Gallery, Kilkenny. Evolving elements of both of these bodies of work will be on view throughout the course of the exhibition at Kunstverein Aughrim.
Throughout her practice MacLeman charges traditional craft based processes with critical precision and conceptual rigour. Rooted in care, her works are applied studies of materials and contexts. From a pattern of silk leaves that fall and fade in the sunlight, to a tassel fringe made from the threads of an unpicked souvenir tablecloth, To Impermanent Collections and Scattered Acquisitions is a celebration of knowledge-in-the-making.
HOME INDUSTRIES
As part of this exhibition the artist has enlisted a small team of skilled needleworkers to form a ‘workforce’ to assist in the development of sculptural works for her solo exhibition in Croatia in 2024. Meeting as Home Industries during a series of paid embroidery shifts at Kunstverein Aughrim in spring, each worker will embroider a length of fabric which will be incorporated in a sculptural installation for the Center for Fashion and Clothing (CIMO) based in Zagreb.
SPRING PREVIEW
On Saturday 27th April Kunstverein Aughrim hosted a Spring Preview with Marielle MacLeman. This event was devised to offer insight into the research and processes that stimulate and underpin the artist’s practice, and offered a chance to meet the artist and participants of Home Industries, among other researchers, writers and art historians with a special interest in textiles and the soft arts.
The Spring Preview coincided with a screening of Deirdre O’Mahony’s new sound and moving image work The Quickening, which was presented as part of the Douglas Hyde Gallery’s Walls & Halls Tour at 3pm at the Foresters’ Hall in Aughrim.
Marielle MacLeman’s To Impermanent Collections and Scattered Acquisitions is on view throughout Spring 2024, closing on 20 May 2024. The exhibition may be visited during our opening hours 10am-5pm, Thursday-Sunday by appointment. Please email office@kunstverein.ie to schedule your visit.
Kunstverein Aughrim’s ongoing collaboration with Marielle MacLeman is made possible with the support of The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon.