“Apart from a slowly growing handful of devotees, only very few realise how closely glass creation can relate to landscape, to nature, to poetry, to the whole spectrum of artistic invention. The exhibition is not about technique, but about the way in which a well-chosen body of glass in all its different forms can be a touching and enriching experience.” Dan Klein

On the Edge is touring exhibition organised by Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum, Chinks Grylls and Mary Mackey in partnership with the Crafts Council of Ireland, which celebrates contemporary glass by artists from Ireland and South West England. It includes work by artists already established and highly regarded internationally, as well as emerging artists. Two and three dimensional works display techniques already familiar, and also show new explorations in using this medium that challenge our perceptions and excite our senses. The range of work in the exhibition reflects what is being made by artists using glass today, and whose work richly demonstrates the way in which glass can and is being used as a powerful creative medium for self-expression.

The works in the exhibition represent each artist’s most personal work, where the boundaries and technique of working in glass are pushed and stretched by constant searching. This exhibition reawakens our inquisitiveness about the marvel of glass – its ability to play with light, mimic textures and be transparent, opaque or full of colour.

There are twenty one artists in this exhibition, and the show has already been seen in the Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum, the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea, Torre Abbey in Torquay, the National Craft Gallery, Kilkenny, National Botanic Gardens in Dublin, Garter Lane Arts Centre in Waterford (May and June), Triskel Arts Centre, Cork (July) followed by Linenhall Arts Centre, Castlebar Co. Mayo.

The participating artists are Sean Campbell, Donna Coogan, Debbie Dawson, Róisín De Buitléar, Fiaz Elson, Sally Fawkes, Rosalind Grimshaw, Chinks Vere Grylls, Joseph Harrington, Susan Kinley, Mary Mackey, Caroline Madden, Emma O'Toole, Emmy-Gai Palmer, Colin Reid, Louise Rice, Killian Schurmann, Keith Seybert, Richard ‘Will’ Shakspeare, Suzannah Vaughan & Carole Waller.

Mark Cullen creates surreal installations that stem from his interest in science, space, technology, futurology, music and art. He attempts to slowdown the viewers engagement with art. He wants the viewer to become a participant within an immersive experience, to encourage a consideration of what it means to be a thinking embodied being, inside an artwork. What are the implications both physically and mentally? Ideas of place/site/space, embodiment, science/futurology/sci-fi and the imagination are explored in his work. The observers insertion in the work enacts a parallel insertion into a relationship with these ideas.

He is interested in transporting the viewer into a space where arts ability to stretch logic, time, material and experiential possibilities is apparent, and perhaps to entice the viewer into considerations of a cosmological nature.

Biography:
Mark Cullen was born in Dublin in 1972. Cullen works with various media. Works include MAIM XI for Irish Museum Modern Art, Temporary Portable Reservoirs at The Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, Dublin and Siege House, London, Cosmic Annihilator, an installation at Pallas Heights and Open EV+A (curated by Dan Cameron 2005) Limerick City Gallery. Recent works include Difference Engine, at Substation, Triskel, Blackflash at G126, Star Gazing at 52° North at Synaesthesia Sat, Workhouse Birr Arts Festival.

In 2005 he completed a Masters in Visual Arts Practices at DLIADT and was an award winner at EV+A 2005. In 2007 he attended a residency at El Levante in Rosario, Argentina. Cullen was curator of Darklight Digital Film Festival from 1999-2004. In 1995 with Brian Duggan he was the co-founding partner of Pallas Studios, Dublin. Pallas through their various guises and programmes have been key exponents of experimental art practice in Dublin.

www.pallasprojects.org
www.pallasheights.org
www.pallasstudios.org

He is also a director and curator of Pallas Contemporary Projects a space for experimental art in Dublin.