Concept

Engagement is a way of capturing attention, a way of alluring and a way of enticing to possess ownership. We could implement this as a way of attracting an audience, being drawn into a system and in turn be captivated. Such methods can include smoke screens, masquerade and stings.

We can be engaged in political upheaval and in contrast engaged to be married. Either way if one shows the willingness to engage then they are seized, arrested and caught, through an innocent human desire to absorb and be engrossed.

What happens when this engagement is done in a malicious, unlawful and corrupted way? When does the real become hyper-real? Entrapment is the process of this transition to occupy whether through political, artistic or personal systems.

What is the ethical concern over this? Is the viewer guilty for being engrossed in a piece of work that is deemed vulgar or inappropriate; a guilty pleasure? Is the accused guilty until proven innocent? Is the artist wrongly committed for a self-indulgent expression? Does this polarity repel or assist the convicted?

International artists have been invited to submit work which explores a subversive engagement, use tactics and trickery to captivate and which contests rules and laws of a system. Aesthetically, artists works entices the audience, engages them in viewing and ultimately entrap them into the work. Will the viewer be engrossed, cheated or convicted?

Works featured include traditional art forms of photography, painting and sculpture but also the contemporary processes of interventions, installations and new media.

Flyer

Flyer

Images from Israel, Cyprus, South Korea


Tracey Holland





Sheffield, UK


'Huldra'

Film triptych (made in 2013 for Magnetic Atlas Exhibition)
8.30"

This film was inspired by the story of the Huldra. Found in the folklore of Northern Europe and Scandinavia, it’s a tale about a female spirit called Huldra who inhabits the inner reaches of the forest, seen only by the unlucky few. She has various guises, sometimes having a long cow’s or fox’s tail, and appearing during violent whirlwind or deep fog or snow. One constant is that she is two distinct and different things expressed through her visible face and invisible back. 

He follows her song until deep inside the forest. As the woodcutter approaches she turns away, he sees she has no back; it is instead a star-filled infinite blackness. Now lost, he dies alone and frozen.

Here is a cautionary tale about searching for the elusive and insubstantial until lost for ever. The woodcutter follows the illusionary, echoed in the work by the mirror; we look through this to some other concurrent reality. The world is about what we can and what we can’t see, and the Huldra is a bridge between what we see and know for certain, and the unseen psychic reality or intuited truth of a situation – which is perhaps a definition of myth itself. 

William Hughes




Midlands, UK

'In this world there is nothing that is certain except death and taxes'   (2015)

Life size. Multimedia paper sculpture: made from printed fake Euros, pen, ink, watercolours.

€750

Hughes works in many mediums to create work that engages the audience and encourages them to ask questions of the subject matter. The work Hughes has created engages with the public on the theme of Migration and how it affects the migrant financially through the cost of buying a place on a ship/boat, but also how it can with many people cost their lives. This piece entraps the viewer of the work to make them think about the price of freedom in a capitalist society where money is everything. The viewer is entrapped on the theme of how finances can trap any of us in a life we wish to escape from. The migrants use money to escape but for many, money cannot save them from a watery grave as they try to escape war, famine or persecution. Hughes feels we are all trapped by our financial position, slaves to a currency that can’t and won’t protect us.


‘The struggle is real’ (2016)

Life size resin sculptures with lights

€900

Hughes wishes to engage the audience on the theme of manipulation and how we are controlled by the social environment that we live in, culturally, religiously and by nurture. By producing multiples, Hughes asks questions of how art is seen by the art market, either as mass production or through high and low quality works of art.

Hanjin Jo

Flickr

Facebook



South Korea

'Respiration'

Photographic paper

$ 900

The artist focuses on those vague boundaries and changes that emerge from in and out of the frame. To the artist, a frame is a dual space. Water-his most used medium- is the essential element that makes the aquatic life survive but also is the cause of death to living things. Aquatic lives have no choice but to live in the arctical space created by the artist and ends up like a studied specimen. His works are questioning a new perspective on society, which inspires us to look back on our lives and relationships. But in the end, it is up to each one of us to make a choice about how we see our world and the way we live our lives in it. 

Lou Hazelwood



England

'Part Coded and the Bi-Visual' 2015-2016

Part Coded and the Bi-Visual is an extensive piece of research and work investigating Victorian Children's Magic Lantern Slides and their proposed, by the artist, embedding of cultural values, morals and ethics of The Empire. The dramatic change of scale from their intended  purpose as childhood toys producing an image no larger than 20x25cm to large confrontational prints allows us to see the superimposed images anew. By introducing elliptical motifs and apertures through which we encounter the work,  we are drawn to think about the intersection of the Venn Diagram bringing opposing or unconnected ideas together and also the opening of a wound through which we see internalised worlds.



Mina Kim


South Korea

'Welcome'


A1 size (59.4cm x 84.1cm) pen on wood, gold. 2016

The hallucination endangered my mind. I can see some things what never end. for long times I have tried to prove my belief about hallucination. but it wasn’t make sense. How can prove invisible thing to visible? how can I show my invisible image what other can’t see? and it’s work for? anyway, welcome.

Sam Treadaway








s.n.a.r.e [ flight of fancy ]

Bristol, UK.

Tail feathers (Pigeon, Macaw, Cockatiel and African Grey), birdspike elements.

(Price available upon request.)

S . N . A . R . E [ Flight of Fancy ] is an architectural intervention - incorporating pigeon and parrot tail feathers with bird spike elements - which explores philosophical and moral issues concerning mankind's irrational and contradictory treatment of birds and other species.





Ruth Eckland





Emerald Hills, California, USA

‘The Bearable Lightness of Being'

Video, 7 minutes    

€800

A large, lumbering man experiences the physical grace accessible to him in a fluid environment. Following the subtle movements of the swimmer, the surrounding water and the filtering light, the camera reveals moments of sensual elegance, of dissolution and of effulgence. Divided into three movements, both the images and the music reflect these themes.

Tracy Bo Lee







South Korea

Paintings: 'Acting for Defense', oil on canvas, 116.8 x 91cm, 2015
Korea (Won) 5,000,000 Won

'Odious Dream', oil on canvas, 162.2 x 97cm, 2015
Korea (Won) 8,000,000 Won

Video:  'Wrapping Protection', single video, 00:05:00, 2015


I fantasize about the things I see and the emotion that I can’t see. Looking at people’s physiology through conversation and incidents is one of a way to project a shadow, and challenge to sympathize and communicate unconsciously.



Diane Maclean



St Albans UK

‘Dangerous Masquerade In Search of Peace’

3 photographic works each 12 x 8 inches (204 x 305mm) portrait,  mounted on 18mm thick board.

€600

In a former World War Two battlefield in France, an unidentified man in pierrot costume walked through fields and into a wood where unexploded bombs still lay buried. He climbed over barbed wire to enter the forbidden wood.  The final gesture to embrace a tree is symbolic of life, peace, and regeneration.




Christos Christou


Cyprus

‘Boundaries’

Acrylic
150 x 110 cm

$2000

Could be physical, mental, psychological, spiritual…
They set the space, the rules, the limits...


They can be reasonable, unreasonable, safe, unsafe, fair, unfair…


'Within the Walls'

Acrylic
150cm X 110cm 

$2000

Within the walls of a city… Break free
Within the walls of my life... Break free

Within the walls of my soul… Break free


Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)