Laura’s project Products of My Environment is based on her interest in her local urban waste and plant dyes. In the gallery, she uses broken garden parasols that were destined for the dump and second-hand fabrics that are dyed using home-grown organic flowers as well as food vestiges from her local cafés.

Two Steps, Twice,  an exhibition of new works and projects by ARC students Lorraine Elder, Breege Fahy, Laura Flood, Madeleine Hadd, Aisling McConville, Sorcha McNamara, Padraig Sinnott and Emer Wang, took place at the LAB Gallery from Wed 13 December 2023 to Saturday 6 January 2024.

The exhibition press release with full details of each project can be downloaded here and a gallery map with a list of works can be downloaded here
You can watch a video walkthrough of the exhibition on the LAB vimeo channel here
All video and photo documentation of the exhibition is by Louis Haugh

Breege Fahy has been a costume cutter and maker for thirty years. Her practice focuses on textiles and embroidery. The focus of Féile na Vulva is female body positivity and Vulva pride. Her main embroidered pieces are on the backs of costumes because so much of the reality of women’s bodies and work goes on behind the scenes.

Lorraine Elder is a Dublin-based artist whose work celebrates, and makes visible, everyday support structures and forms of labour – including the labour of women – that can often be overlooked.  Her research project So Without delves deep into layers of meaning that arise from moments of quiet contemplation and moments of chaos.

In Padraig Sinnott’s work, we are invited to enter into a dark world that makes no sense. Padraig takes us from the gallery into a fictional realm, which is organised around a cycle of repetitive events, such as family arguments. The work is designed to involve the viewer in a narrative about family and trauma, fusing theatre and sculpture.

Sorcha McNamara is a visual artist currently living and working in Mayo. She has no urge to add anything more to the world, only to take from what is left and make new shapes with it. Her project, Rigid-Body Dynamics, explores the transgressive possibilities of painting, specifically looking to dismantle how painting is framed, structured and positioned in any given space.

Madeleine Hadd’s project Rest, A Mind So Far Away focuses on aphantasia and dreaming. She exhibited a chapter from her graphic novel Faraway, collaged illustrations and an animation titled The Winds Know Not of Any Tire. This animation isderived from a specific moment in Faraway where the main character submits to her consciousness and successfully leaves the faraway pool.

Aisling McConville’s work originates in the striated layers of rock formations, where time and memory entwine. She grew up during the Troubles, a period when she remembers narratives to be quietly but surely compounded upon one another. She hews ‘mnemonic forms’ as a way of preserving her generational labour of the land. Carving from locally sourced wood, she attempts to unveil striated layers and undulating lines that are resonant of time and narrative.

Emer Wang is an illustrator from China. She worked for several years as a commercial artist, producing digital paintings and book illustrations, engaged in repetitive work day after day, using digital drawing to express the ideas of others. In her current work, she uses more traditional forms of drawing to tell her own story.