Ground Up 1
The Ground Up project arose from a desire to address the following questions in an artist-centred way;
How can contemporary art be brought to a rural audience, in a way that is accessible, but without compromising the art?
How can visual and contemporary art be viewed by a rural community within their own setting?
How can contemporary artists in rural areas overcome their professional isolation and address the need to acquire new skills within their own areas?
Rather than simply commission a number of unrelated, temporary artworks in rural contexts, I felt it would be more useful to initiate a process of discussion amongst artists. To this end the Arts Office of Clare County Council invited a team of artists to come together over a three month period to explore ideas, exchange information and hopefully push out the boundaries of possibility. Participating artists were Maria Finucane, Paul Forder, Fiona O’ Dwyer, Áine Phillips, Seán Taylor and Fiona Woods. These artists were working in a variety of media and brought differing levels of experience to the project.
The process centred primarily on discussion amongst the artists. It included a built-in mentoring process, which would allow each artist to work with a chosen mentor, and also an opportunity to bring into the discussions speakers whose work dealt with rural issues or relevant areas of art-making or locating. It was decided early on to conduct a number of these discussions in public. The process included two ‘seminar’ type days in which invited speakers gave presentations and were followed by input from the artists; for the third of these Public Dialogues as we called them, the Arts Office commissioned a public artwork in the form of a mini-newspaper, circulated with the Clare Champion. Called ground up, it featured an artwork or article by each of the participating artists and a number of articles and photo-essays by other contributors, including those who had addressed the seminars.
http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/cominfo/arts/groundup/index.html ]
While the seminars were poorly attended, despite extensive advertising, the publication reached into 22,000 homes and generated a huge response.
Fiona Woods
2004
COMMISSIONED WORKS
Shelters -Áine Phillips
Art Flight - Sean Taylor
Pink Sheds - Fiona Woods