Gasworks
Sean Lynch
10 April 2012 - 10 July 2012
Working in a similar fashion to a historian, Sean Lynch investigates a wide range of almost-forgotten historical subjects, marginalised characters and overlooked mini-drama's. Tracing and interconnecting seemingly disparate and idiosyncratic events and existences, his practice is also an act of storytelling: exploring local narratives with universal themes. Whether its with DeLorean Progress Report – the locating of remnants of the de-commsioned DeLorean car factory at the bottom of Galway Bay or A Preliminary Sketch for the Re-Appearance of HyBrazil - attempting of a fruitless search for a mythical island in the Atlantic, these anecdotal investigations involve reviving disregarded subjects whilst gently interrogating our understanding of the formation of history itself. Lynch is clearly interested in the loose ends within a historical social narrative: the footnotes that tend to be misplaced or go unnoticed, and how to mediate their presence.
During his residency, Sean will use the archives and special collections at Chelsea College of Art & Design to investigate the power of public response: how reaction and commentary which surround the contemporary artwork shape its afterlife and legacy, and in turn the effect this remembrance and mythology has had upon cultural production in recent decades.
Sean Lynch lives and works in Berlin and Limerick. Recently, the artist has exhibited at Crawford Art Gallery, Cork (2010), The Dock, Leitrim (2011), Project Space, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt (2010), and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2008). Sean has also gained public projects, including Me Jewel & Darlin' commissioned by Dublin City Council (2011/2012). He has also participated in group exhibitions, including Microstoria, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh (2011), Wake Amusements, Ben Maltz Gallery, Los Angeles (2011), Never The Same River, Camden Arts Centre (2010), The Irish Pavilion, Expo 2010 Shanghai (2010) and Autre Measures, Centre Photographique d’Ile-de-France, Paris (2009).
His residency is a result of a partnership between Gasworks and TrAIN (University of the Arts Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation), which is a forum for historical, theoretical and practice-based research in architecture, art, communication, craft and design, based at Chelsea College of Art & Design, London.
On Tuesday 29 May 2012, Sean Lynch gave a talk together with author Kevin Barry on the use of storytelling as a contemporary idiom. You can listen to a recording of the talk here.
