Residency Awardee | Joseph Fogarty
We inherit past traditions that are shared with others, and we then pursue future possibilities to define our individuality. As a means of exploring this idea of the past being with us and influencing our future, the artist uses both traditional and contemporary materials (wood, aluminium, stainless steel) found or appropriated from the built environment. Oak, cherry, and pine are representative of a link to the past and also convey a sense of the temporal. Juxtaposing the modern materials of aluminium and stainless steel resonates with the endeavour to change and develop whilst being inextricably bound to the traditions of the past.
My current work is an exploration of our relationship to objects. I am exploring this relationship in the context of a self-perpetuating consumerism that is one of the hallmarks of neo-liberalist economies. Our consumption of goods is facilitated through the promotion of brand and identity and is at best a manipulated choice that is creating what the French philosopher Jacques Ranciere (2011) calls ‘mass individualism’.
We are involved in a constant quest for completeness where the corporeal and the physical are used as substitutes for the psychological and the spiritual. It is the transient in pursuit of the intangible.
The work focuses on the cycle of consumption that epitomises our unfulfilling entanglement with the world of materiality. There is a transition from the state of expectancy and the potential of the acquisition of a new object to the mundanity of its everyday use-value.
This is symbolised by the stripping away of the carefully designed and engineered packaging. Using materials associated with the presentation and the transportation of goods I am exploring this change in status. By manipulating and altering the state of the materials I draw a parallel between the expectations we have as individuals and our expectations as a society.
Joseph Fogarty - Studio artist in GOMA, Waterford.
Education
2020 MA:AP (1st Class ) CIT, Crawford, Cork
2018 – 2014 BA Hons (1st Class) Visual Art. WIT, Waterford.
2014 – 2012 Art, Craft & Design VTOS, Durands Court, Waterford.
Awards
2018
GOMA – graduate artist residency award
National Sculpture Factory – graduate artist residency award
RDS Visual Art Awards – group exhibition curated by Amanda