Cake contemporary arts is pleased to present

Light and Dark

Discussions within the architecture of a false dichotomy

This exhibition brings together works by the artists

Maggie Madden, Susan Thomson, Yvonne Higgins, Terry Markey, Nina McGowan and Michele Horrigan and is curated by Mark Grehan.

The show introduces artworks that respond to the dramatic and atmospherical differences inherent in both the interiors of the Cake building and its surrounding environs. The show comprises of drawings, sculptures, multimedia, video and photography.

Susan Thomson

The Swimming Diaries is exactly 25,000 words long. It corresponds to the 25,000 metres or strokes I swam during the month when my Mum was dying, as if each stroke had somehow translated into a word. What was I trying to say? Did it really translate? Or is the swim itself perhaps impenetrable, untranslatable, in a language all of its own, one of water and muscle, energy and pain.

The book deals with the very private and also functions as a gift, an impotent gesture and a theatrical catharsis- or a contemporary version of tragedy. It is also a memorial. The Swimming Diaries is currently on display and on sale at Artbook @ P.S.1, New York

Thomsons practice is fundamentally grounded in writing, but unfolds into the visual and conceptual, video and film work. She is interested in the area where visual art and literature meet, whether that be in text based art, conceptual literature or in film. The psychoanalytic and autobiographical play a large role in her work, which explores themes of trauma and desire, the theatrical (and tragedy in particular), choreography and translation. Thomson’s work has been performed and exhibited throughout Europe and beyond including the UK National Review of Live Art, the International Video Art festivals of Alcoi and Valencia, Spain and X Initiative, New York. She has written for many books and publications including Circa, The Times and Women’s News.

For further information, please visit www.susanthomson.co.uk

Michele Horrigan

While resident in Buenos Aires with the RIAA project, Horrigan came into contact with Eduardo Catalano’s sculpture, Floralis Generica. Designed to mimic a flower’s reaction to light in nature, the huge eighteen-ton sculpture opens with the first light of day and slowly closes at sunset with the aid of hydraulics. The aluminium and stainless steel sculpture spans a colossal forty metres when fully open and is surrounded by a water fountain. The resulting video records the sculpture in its native habitat. The camera style is raw and distinctly uncinematic, mimicking the natural movement of the eye, scanning and focusing on one area before moving on again. The effect produced is simultaneously frustrating and engaging. Curiosity is piqued, as the full form of the sculpture is not revealed until the video’s end. Reflections of water and landscape are merged with metallic surfaces. Close-ups of burnished reflective surfaces make the object seem alive, a living breathing organism. This monumental Floralis Generica now becomes pliant and mouldable.

Michele Horrigan’s videos and photographs frequently set up a theatrical relationship to her subjects, probing specific circumstance and values of representation of familiar realities. She was educated at the University of Ulster, Belfast and the Stadelschule, Frankfurt. In recent times she has exhibited in Frankfurter Kunstverein, Limerick City Gallery of Art, RIAA Buenos Aires, the Royal Academy of Art, Copenhagen and Ritter & Staiff, Frankfurt. Since 2006, she is also founder and curatorial director of Askeaton Contemporary Arts.

Maggie Madden

Maggie Madden was born in Galway in 1976 and currently lives in Dublin. She graduated with MFA Painting from NCAD, (2004-06) and BA Fine Art, LSAD, Limerick (1994-98). She has an upcoming solo show in Roscommon Arts Centre in 2010. Recent exhibitions include Preponderance of the Small, Off Site project, Douglas Hyde Gallery 3, Make Shift & Bend, CGP, London, Timbuktu, Pallas Contemporary Projects, Dublin, After All, Sligo Art Gallery, The Space In between, Basement Gallery, Dundalk, Crawford Open, Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, Some Kinda Monster, Galway Arts Centre. Participated in Triangle Arts International Workshop, DUMBO, New York (2008), Artist Residency, Draíocht, Dublin (July-Dec‘07), She received a Travel Award from The Arts Council (2008, 2001), and Thomas Dammann Award (2007). Residencies include Artists colony, Costa Rica, (2001).

Nina McGowan

Nina McGowan is an Irish artist based in Dublin. She borrows elements from architecture and design to try to locate a visual currency for the 'now',and is concerned with 'where we are' when certain strains in taste and fashion are constantly resurfacing, while in the background, an aspect of culture speaks of the need to regain something that has slipped away. She is interested in this sifting of the past to chart histories of the present, where the past is never static but constantly open to interpretation, depending on one's position in time.

Education: 07-08: D.L.I.A.D.T: MA Visual Arts Practices. 04-05: U.C.D: H.Dip Landscape Architecture. 97-01: D.L.I.A.D.T: BA Fine Art. Exhibitions: 08: 'As Built Drawings' Wicklow County Council. 08: 'Let Be be the show of Seem' MAvis, Studio 6, Temple Bar Gallery. 07: 'Sculpture at Kells' Kilkenny. 06 ‘X-Mass the spot’ Draiocht Gallery, Blanchardstown, Dublin. 05: 'OFFSIDE' Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh lane. 01 ‘Concourse 01’ Dunlaoighre/Rathdown County Council Offices.

Terry Markey

Within recent series of work Terry Markey engages art makers in and around their own work spaces in an attempt to create Original work from unfamiliar sources with regard to their individual practices. The work “LAA”has taken the shape of fights, domestic arguments where the artists create fictional lives and live them out and challenges articulated as dares. For this work Markey presents the position of the lone individual exploring the notions censorship and responsibility. Taking the format of a comedy show topics and responses are purely spontaneous as the artist allows the flow of the experience dictate the direction of the work.

Terry was born in 1980 in London and lives and works in Dublin. He attended the IT Sligo Diploma in Fine Art in 2001, IADT Dun Laoghaire BA in Fine Art (Hons) in 2006 and did his Masters in Visual Arts Practices at IADT Dun Laoghaire in 2007. Solo exhibitions include, MAVIS Solo Show Studio 6 Temple Bar Studios and Gallery 2007. Selected Group Shows and film include, Nativity the market studios geoup show 2009,Thisisnotashop last group show 2009, Stray light “LAA 08” 2009, “Arc folds” film by Anita Delaney 2009 ,Smoke on the singularity. Unit H. Dublin 2009,Two person show Red Stra Berlin Germany 2009,“Track” Film by Susan Thompson 2009, White Rabbit, Cavan 2008.

Yvonne Higgins

Glimpses of Higgins’ childhood experiences are portrayed in her work; a recurring dream of an uncle with a goats head or her desire to hide when someone approached, not unlike a startled woodland creature. The fantasy world of her formative years was inhabited more by animals than humans. Here she assumed the role of the hunter & the hunted, the pursuer & the pursued. Yvonnes drawings are inspired by children’s books & botanical illustrations. The collaged animal heads are borrowed from a long forgotten collection of her brothers ‘A Living Countryside’ magazines, where photographs of animals in their natural habitat appear bizarrely staged. Using incisions in the paper, she places selected characters & scenery, like a theatre set, to create a layered landscape. As with memories and dreams, the imagery recalled in her work is fleeting. The sparseness of the work entices the viewer to create their own narrative and to imagine how the scene would play out.

Yvonne Higgins graduated from IADT in 2009 with a BA in Visual Arts Practice. Exhibitions include, 2007,"Dara" Group show at The Back Loft. 2008, "Made on Monday" Group show at Broadstone Studios.

Light and Dark: Discussions within the architecture of a false dichotomy is curated by Mark Grehan.

Grehan is a Dublin based Artist and Curator whose curatorial practice takes an interest in the relationship between architecture and Artwork. Among the exhibitions curated by Grehan are; Private worlds/Impossible tasks, Talbot gallery Dublin,2006, Some kinda monster, Galway arts centre, Galway 2007, Momentary truths from the perpetual view of extended space, AIDT Studio 6 Dublin 2007, "Giva he a sandfella, last day wild" (co-curated with Terry Markey),Market studios Dublin 2009, Urban Romance, Dare to joust, London, 2010.