UPCYCLED MEMORIES




So it happens sometimes that life feels suffocating because you have taken on too many tasks (me last month - sorry for the long silence!) and then you step out of the U-bahn one day, the sun shines in your face, there is music in the air and you enter a great space filled with art, knowledge and unreserved people (me last night) and you suddenly get your spark back (ahh :)

Following a spontaneous invitation by textile designer Olga Tiernan, who I interviewed the week before when travelling to Ireland, I found myself at the Irish Embassy in Berlin for the opening of Bungalow Bliss.  For this new exhibition Berlin-based Irish artist Adrian Duncan paired up with Olga to showcase a brief series of works based on a publication of Jack Fritzsimon's catalogue of plans with pre-designed Irish houses that populated the Irish landscape throughout the 1970s until the 1990s.

I was captured by the enthusiasm in which both artists re-interpreted the style of the buildings they grew up with and how components of particular memories translated into new works of art.  Adrian used photographs, collages and video installation to map styling details of the bungalows past which were an authentic expression of what was going on in Ireland at the time and Olga's centrepiece was a hand-printed canvas length with a repeated screen print design representing the cladding used on the outside of the houses.  Having grown up in a bungalow-style house herself Olga felt inspired by the pastel painted rooms of her childhood memories - hues she re-created for her piece and which illustrate how memories shape the cultivation of our aesthetic values and build the framework for creative inspiration.

Back in Dublin Olga co-runs the very successful screen-printing collective PRINT BLOCK, a membership based print studio that offers screen-printing workshops as well as affordable access to a fully equipped professional textile print facility.
PRINT BLOCK is definitely worth a visit should you happen to pass by Dublin and makes for a great & memorable experience... ;)

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