Student of the Year ExhibitionPam Carroll & Áine Maher
For over 40 years, The Student of the Year Award has been given by the Lavit Gallery to a graduate of the Crawford College of Art and Design, who shows promise and potential. Past recipients of this award have included - John Burke, Eilis O' Connell, Vivienne Roche, Maud Cotter and Bridget Flannery to name but a few. In 2010, the decision was made to jointly nominate Pam Carroll and Áine Maher for this award, which takes the form of an exhibition at the gallery, (from which no commission is taken on sales) and a cash prize sponsored by Parfrey Murphy & Co. Chartered Accountants. The exhibition by the latest recipients of the award will be officially opened at the Lavit Gallery on February 1st by Liz Meaney - Cork City Arts Officer.
Having moved to Ireland in 2004, Pam Carroll's entry into art college followed a long marketing career in England, where she originates from. Carroll's sculptural work explores the human conscience, which she believes is at the very core of Man. She works with a range of materials and found objects as diverse as lead, wire, monkey fur, leather and pigment, evoking tension by combining materials which are often at odds with each other. She explains how the use of metal in her work, lead in particular, "has taken on the role of containment: of a skin in either holding in or shutting out the world around it." Since graduating in June her work has been acquired by both the Office of Public Works and Europol (the Law enforcement agency of the European Union) for their headquarters in the Hague. This latter acquisition was in the form of a purchase prize, awarded after a Europe wide competition.
Áine Maher's work is lens based but also engages with both painterly and sculptural elements. Light, line and plane are used to impart space while physical three dimensional elements are often used to accentuate the form. The imagery used moves between that of the domestic interior and the architectural, while having an atmospheric ambiguity. She describes her minimal work as "aspiring to rouse contemplative solitude". In a review of the 2010 CCAD Degree show, the critic Aidan Dunne marked her out for special attention - saying If the phrase "the poetics of space" didn't exist, one would have to invent it to describe her work, which is exceptionally well-judged, subtle and persuasive. Her work has been acquired by both the Office of Public Works and the Cork Institute of Technology.
Usually held in early autumn, the moving of this annual exhibition to February will afford recent graduates more working time between their end of year degree show and this their first professional exhibition. We look forward to what promises to be a very interesting show, which will provide us with an opportunity to see and support the work of these artists, at the beginning of what will I'm sure be long and successful careers.
