Abbey Road Studios artist hosts Kerry exhibition

Athlone-based artist Ciara Tuite recently launched her third solo show at Siamsa Tire, National Folk Centre in Tralee, Co. Kerry.

Known for her colourful abstract expressionist work, Ciara's latest exhibition "The Body Remembers' - investigates the body's ability to hold memory and how it affects the way we navigate the world.

It explores the idea that the body remembers what the mind forgets and delves into the physicality of painting itself and inherent mark making in humans.

The multidisciplinary exhibition showcases 26 paintings of varied sizes, accompanied by her poetic text. There are two 10-metre long installations, one a colourful carpet like feature, juxtaposed alongside a black and white sculptural piece of the same length which found its warped form through an artistic performance whereby Ciara moved through, in and around the paperwork.

Joe McGill, the award-winning Radio Kerry presenter opened the exhibition and acknowledged the universality of the themes at play and how these installations might represent the contrast of the smooth aspects of life against the rocky, often more interesting elements. McGill is a native of South West Kerry, residing close to where the artist has a base in Ballinskelligs.

Ciara, who is originally from Longford has been involved for the past eight years in the well known Cill Rialaig Artist Project in Ballinskelligs set up by Dr. Noelle Campbell- Sharp in 1992. She also has a studio in the midlands at the Abbey Road Studios, connected to the Luan Gallery.

The installations sit opposite two projections, again one black and white and the other in colour with the prominent theme of the animalistic nature of humans and forward movement through the ages.

"Movement and migration is in our blood, hence my constant interest in travel and by going between the midlands and Ballinskelligs on the edge of the country it often satisfies that urge to move."

This series of works is not only influenced by movement in the travel sense but also in the physical and artistic sense as she is referencing various art movements from the past like abstract expressionism, but further back again to the time people laid down marks as a symbol on sand, on the rocks and ancient cultures like the Babylonians discovery of 360 degrees and the Theariantrophic forms seen in prehistoric Egyptian times.

The amoeba shapes that feature suggests that she is going further back again, millions of years ago before humans existed, proposing that our body might remember the origins of life on earth. Either way, the work always comes back to influences from various cultures, travels, and ancestry. It encompasses all it is to be human and what our physical forms retain down through centuries.

The work is curated by artist Joseph Keating and is an accumulation of two years' work completed in the Abbey Road Studios, Athlone, and while on residencies at the Cill Rialaig Artist Retreat, Co. Kerry and The Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakerrig, Co. Monaghan.

"The Body Remembers" runs until October 25. You can keep up to date with Ciara's journey on www.ciaratuite.com and follow her @cicituite.