Collette Nolan
Biography
Collette Nolan (b. Southampton 1962) is a Cork based visual artist working in the medium of video and installation. She completed her MA by Research at Crawford College of Art & Design, Cork, 2004-2006. She was awarded the 2008 Artists Bursary Award, Cork City Council to pursue a PhD by practice at NCAD and Research Scholar at the Graduate School of Creative Arts & Media, Dublin, (GradCAM) www.gradcam.ie She graduated in November 2012.
Recent projects/exhibitions include, Curator of the Annual LSAD Drawing Awards and Exhibition, Chapel Gallery, Limerick School of Art & Design. Live@8 Galway, curated by Ruby Wallis and Vivienne Dick. Tangents: How to Play, The Lewis Glucksman Gallery, UCC, Cork. Close To Hand, Curated by Dawn Williams, Crawford Gallery, Cork. Re:Public, Exhibition Curated by Daniel Jewesbury, A collaboration with GradCAM as part of Arts Research:Publics and Purposes Conference. Temple Bar Galleries & Studios, Temple Bar, Dublin. Animaux et Enfants Galerie B-312, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. ‘Then and Now’, Evolving Art Practices, Exhibition, Lewis Glucksman Gallery, UCC, Cork. SeeSound, Film and Sound Event. Cork Film Festival, The Guesthouse, Shandon, Cork. ‘In Context, ‘Souvenirs’ Printmaking Project with Curraheen Family Centre, Cork ‘In Context’ Residency Award, Cork City Council and Cork VEC. ‘In Two Places’ Solo Exhibition, Gallery North, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, England, The Art of Looking, The Lewis Glucksman Gallery, UCC, Cork, Sonic Vigil, In Tandem video collaboration project, St. Finbarre’s Cathedral, Cork.
She is a founder member and Director of The Cork Artists Collective. She has exhibited widely and has received many awards from the Arts Council of Ireland and the Cultural Relations Committee, Dept. Foreign Affairs. She has undertaken residencies at The Centre for Art & Nature, Spain, Progetto Civitella D’Agliano, Italy, Dominickowice, Cracow, Poland, Cork 2005 European Capital of Culture International Residencies Programme.
She was a lecturer in Visual Culture at NCAD in 2011-2012 she has been an invited visiting lecturer to Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, England, CCAD, Cork, LSAD Limerick, GMIT, Galway, IT, Sligo, and has been external examiner for Fine Art degree and MA at LIT, Limerick, and GMIT, Galway.
Statement
In my video art practice I examine the properties and creative strategies of play, locating the experience of play as a form of critical knowledge. The methodology involves sensory ethnography and a longitudinal video diary of my sons’s play from infancy to age 8 years. In order to examine subjectivity, intersubjectivity and the changing representations of children, their language and play and agency in childhood through the moving image I explore the ‘in-between’ spaces, the everyday and the undervalued places that are often dismissed as part of family life. Through a series of video art installations that examine remote and hidden areas of children’s play, I am drawing attention to the unregulated, unexpected spaces of learning and the unintended forms of tacit knowledge that go unrecognized as forms of discovery and ‘metacommunication’ in everyday situations. This enquiry attempts to explore the current discourses in play, drawing together the theories of play theorists such as J. Huizinga, M. Spariosu, H. Gadamer and B. Sutton Smith, and analyses the work of contemporary artists, that employ the strategies of play in a contemporary art context, artists such as Mike Kelley, Guy Ben-Ner, Dan Graham. Phenomenological and psychoanalytical approaches to filmmaking experience are explored by using the camera as a mobile fluid eye, re-positioning the camera, re-framing and using particular editing strategies in order to convey the experience of encountering the processes of bodily knowing in child play and play gestures. Rather than an implicit form of knowledge the research is focused on finding embodied knowledge gained through movement and the senses, creating specific situations in play that could generate new narratives other than the rhetoric of play as ‘progress’. The arrangement of the installation offers the viewer multiple possibilities to encounter the space of the work through activity, interaction and occupation. The observer becomes entangled with the subject and the subject with the observer. The research investigates the role of the artist in facilitating an engagement towards a form of social imagination, revealing these hidden spaces of knowledge, expression and reflection.
Collette Nolan (b. Southampton 1962) is a Cork based visual artist working in the medium of video and installation. She completed her MA by Research at Crawford College of Art & Design, Cork, 2004-2006. She was awarded the 2008 Artists Bursary Award, Cork City Council to pursue a PhD by practice at NCAD and Research Scholar at the Graduate School of Creative Arts & Media, Dublin, (GradCAM) www.gradcam.ie She graduated in November 2012.
Recent projects/exhibitions include, Curator of the Annual LSAD Drawing Awards and Exhibition, Chapel Gallery, Limerick School of Art & Design. Live@8 Galway, curated by Ruby Wallis and Vivienne Dick. Tangents: How to Play, The Lewis Glucksman Gallery, UCC, Cork. Close To Hand, Curated by Dawn Williams, Crawford Gallery, Cork. Re:Public, Exhibition Curated by Daniel Jewesbury, A collaboration with GradCAM as part of Arts Research:Publics and Purposes Conference. Temple Bar Galleries & Studios, Temple Bar, Dublin. Animaux et Enfants Galerie B-312, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. ‘Then and Now’, Evolving Art Practices, Exhibition, Lewis Glucksman Gallery, UCC, Cork. SeeSound, Film and Sound Event. Cork Film Festival, The Guesthouse, Shandon, Cork. ‘In Context, ‘Souvenirs’ Printmaking Project with Curraheen Family Centre, Cork ‘In Context’ Residency Award, Cork City Council and Cork VEC. ‘In Two Places’ Solo Exhibition, Gallery North, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, England, The Art of Looking, The Lewis Glucksman Gallery, UCC, Cork, Sonic Vigil, In Tandem video collaboration project, St. Finbarre’s Cathedral, Cork.
She is a founder member and Director of The Cork Artists Collective. She has exhibited widely and has received many awards from the Arts Council of Ireland and the Cultural Relations Committee, Dept. Foreign Affairs. She has undertaken residencies at The Centre for Art & Nature, Spain, Progetto Civitella D’Agliano, Italy, Dominickowice, Cracow, Poland, Cork 2005 European Capital of Culture International Residencies Programme.
She was a lecturer in Visual Culture at NCAD in 2011-2012 she has been an invited visiting lecturer to Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, England, CCAD, Cork, LSAD Limerick, GMIT, Galway, IT, Sligo, and has been external examiner for Fine Art degree and MA at LIT, Limerick, and GMIT, Galway.
Statement
In my video art practice I examine the properties and creative strategies of play, locating the experience of play as a form of critical knowledge. The methodology involves sensory ethnography and a longitudinal video diary of my sons’s play from infancy to age 8 years. In order to examine subjectivity, intersubjectivity and the changing representations of children, their language and play and agency in childhood through the moving image I explore the ‘in-between’ spaces, the everyday and the undervalued places that are often dismissed as part of family life. Through a series of video art installations that examine remote and hidden areas of children’s play, I am drawing attention to the unregulated, unexpected spaces of learning and the unintended forms of tacit knowledge that go unrecognized as forms of discovery and ‘metacommunication’ in everyday situations. This enquiry attempts to explore the current discourses in play, drawing together the theories of play theorists such as J. Huizinga, M. Spariosu, H. Gadamer and B. Sutton Smith, and analyses the work of contemporary artists, that employ the strategies of play in a contemporary art context, artists such as Mike Kelley, Guy Ben-Ner, Dan Graham. Phenomenological and psychoanalytical approaches to filmmaking experience are explored by using the camera as a mobile fluid eye, re-positioning the camera, re-framing and using particular editing strategies in order to convey the experience of encountering the processes of bodily knowing in child play and play gestures. Rather than an implicit form of knowledge the research is focused on finding embodied knowledge gained through movement and the senses, creating specific situations in play that could generate new narratives other than the rhetoric of play as ‘progress’. The arrangement of the installation offers the viewer multiple possibilities to encounter the space of the work through activity, interaction and occupation. The observer becomes entangled with the subject and the subject with the observer. The research investigates the role of the artist in facilitating an engagement towards a form of social imagination, revealing these hidden spaces of knowledge, expression and reflection.
