Emulsion Exhibition: NCAD Print Students Impress on Opening Night
From May 1st to May 3rd, Segotia gallery in Rathmines saw an end-of-year exhibition organised and hosted by 2nd-year NCAD print students.
The title of the showcase, emulsion, can be defined as “a material consisting of a fine dispersion of minute droplets of one liquid in another in which it is not soluble or miscible.” With this title in mind, the artists that contributed to this exhibition presented a wide range of artwork exploring themes such as grounding, comfort, skin and tactile texture, as well as queerness and sexuality.
The free admission multi-media exhibition’s opening night ran from 6pm to 8pm and featured many talented individuals’ work which all have varied in theme, colour, medium, and backstory, all within the realm of printmaking. Each piece of artwork is convoluted in its own unique way; each piece has a story and a motive hidden beneath the surface. At this showcase, there is more than what meets the eye.
Martha Arnold, one of the artists featured in this display, chose to tune into the visualisation of subjects one might find intricate or difficult to discuss. Having explored her “relationship with domestic spaces and memories,” Arnold’s artwork questions how “unresolved emotions can leak into different aspect of one’s life, such as physical spaces and dreams.” She approached her artwork by combining numerous mediums to integrate intricate etched details into her prints which reflect her visualisations of her personal experiences.
Another student, named Sabrie Reid, focused on the aspect of masculinity through “a transgender and queer lens by using the body as both a site of conflict and intimacy.” He approached this piece of work by “experimenting with a range of printmaking techniques” as he ventured into elements such as 3D sculpting, laser cutting, and visual effects. Sabrie’s art mirrors his relationship to masculinity as it is in a constant state of evolving. Reid takes caution by presenting in a non-traditional way of manhood by utilising armor in this abstract artwork as “symbols of both protection and reflection.”
“My house stands as an embodiment of the tension within myself,” shared Olivia Boylan, one of the exhibitions contributing artists. Feeling trapped in her childhood home, the artists tackled the connection she felt with this domestic space as she faced difficulties and intricacies in her home as she grew and evolved over the years. She shared that she “needed to create a piece that would be as tangible as my [her] emotions which I often feel within the house.” Boylan uses her art as a tool to “work through my [her] emotions and how I [she] want to articulate them.” In complete greyscale, her piece tells a tale of entrapment and self-reflection as her self-portrait is curled tightly around herself in a plaster block home.
Laura Troy captures various shades of skin tones and textures as her labyrinthine prints “represent skin out of context.” The artist presents a deeper meaning with underlying significance “to make the viewer question what they were looking at,” she shared. Through painting and printmaking, Laura has spent recent months “magnifying and abstracting sectors of skin on my [her] body.” With a plethora of colour, material, and patterns, Troy’s artwork offers an enhanced viewing of skin and heightened perspective on the tones and tissues in which our skin consists of. The extensive attention to detail included in her work is pleasing to the eye and conveys colourful insight into what makes us physical human beings.
Emulsion provides a platform for these promising students to reveal their practices and learning through curating art, stimulating curiosity, vital questioning as well as reflecting. By engaging in these pieces, the contributors to this exhibition have established and evolved an elevated range of art which explores the realm of the technical title emulsion.
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