GAVIN MC CREA ART
Visual artist Gavin Mc Crea was born and grew up in Sion Mills, Co Tyrone in Northern Ireland. Now lives on the West coast of Ireland were he pursues his love of surfing and painting. He has a BA Hons with a 1st in Fine Art from IT Sligo, and was awarded The Hyde Bridge Gallery Graduate Award Solo exhibition 2017. Solo shows include Innermost Limits at The Hyde Bridge Gallery, Sligo, Intertidal at Ballina Arts Centre and Alley Theatre, Strabane and most recently Speed Power And Flow at Ards Art Centre, Newtownards. Most recent group shows were Mind Breath Beat at 126 Gallery, Galway and Minecraft Show, through Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny.
Concerned with connections and human relationships with place, Mc Crea draws upon a range of embodied memory’s associated with place and movements established from a lifetime of immersion in the sea through surfing. Although practiced and honed, each new surf session challenges these embodied movements through ever changing factors, winds, weather, tidal ranges and wave sizes. Each session differing movements and responses are brought to the fore, whilst intuitively traversing the wave face. No two waves ever repeated across a lifetime, this much like the painting process, were no two outcomes can be repeated, differing stretchers, paint qualities, brush marks and mood. In creating the work, he is interested in the sense of place and space, encompassing both past, present, old and new.
Embodied movements are acted out in the form of painterly gestures, across often familiar re-contextualised materials. Spontaneous, unpredictable and at times violent, reminiscent of surfing, they are juxtaposed against methodically produced sharp edge chevrons and stripes, normally associated with barriers, fences, flags or obstacles, for Mc Crea they are embodied memories from childhood car journeys navigating border crossings and checkpoints.
Works created from these inter-connected realms, are produced first and foremost as paintings but when placed within the space, take on new forms and function as both object and painting, some are wall-fixed and others floor-resting or standing or self-contained, the interactions between traditional painting surfaces and ordinary hardware materials used addressing painting as an act of construction, as well as art object. The creation of obstacles and unexpected use of materials, are an attempt to surprise, elicit memories, invite interaction and ultimately immersion within the painting realm by challenging viewer relationships with the sculptural forms arranged within space. These forms suggestive of the checkpoints, barriers, the painting studio, the fascination of painting itself, and embodied connections and relationships with seemingly utilitarian materials.
