Everyone seemed to be in agreement that this year’s Visual Art’s Society (Vis Arts) Arts End of Year Show was brilliant. And even after a very successful open night the Vis Arts End of Year exhibition was still impressive on a quiet Saturday morning. Friday night’s launch held a full crowd, brilliant music and of course copious bottles of wine, providing a perfect start to the weekend. Amidst the chatter if the crowd, the art on the walls dominated discussions – and rightly so.
This was the 10th Vis Arts annual end of year show. As it is an open call to everyone – staff and students – the show provides an important opportunity both to showcase talent and bring together the artistic community of our university. Boasting a diverse selection of media and subject matter, there was definitely something for everyone’s tastes.
The society committee did a great job of giving equal coverage to the broad range of artists and their practice, filling three floors with everything from photography and collage to block printing and paint. Certain works showed a particularly exceptional talent and wouldn’t have looked out of place in any of the main galleries in Dublin.
Coming up the stairs of the gallery the first piece on show was the striking self-portrait by Choy-Ping Clarke-Ng. Poised in a precision fine liner and determined in her outward gaze, the portrait is powerful in its sense of character and simultaneously tenderly rendered with close details and a sparse style.
Sebastian McKimms photography was a compelling break away from the norm, his three portraits startling different. “35A:Elevator” created a very idiosyncratic portrait using the warped reflection of an elevator to abstract the subject. The other two were a mugshot-styled diptych and a low interior shot with someone turned away from the camera entirely. The work was highly thought provoking and evocative on both an aesthetic and conceptual level.
“Trinity Joyce” by Trevor Joyce is a playful mixed media scene depicting Trinity’s Front Arch. It was superb use of foreshortening, texture and idiosyncratic composition, skillfully drawing the eye into the picture. Topped of with a short quote from Ulysses to pin down a touch of Dublin, the picture is a most charismatic vignette of our city.
Stunning portraits by Tamara Alrawahneh and Ella-Rose Mills, or the little evocative landscapes and street scenes by Eva Comerford and Julia Deladiennée, also caught the eye. It’s clear that the level of talent of Trinity staff and students is very impressive.
“This is a really encouraging sign that the artistic talent in Trinity remains strong and will continue to be in the future. Curating this exhibition was of great enjoyment for me to display the students and staffs work”, said Sophie Mulcahy Symmons, the Chair of Vis Arts, speaking to The University Times. “This is my third year being involved with Vis Arts and hanging work for the exhibition. This year I think the works all came together well, considering the diversity, and there was great flow and continuity to the exhibition as you walked through it.”
