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

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.