Artist's Statement
I keep stretching my craft in every direction. I want to draw, paint and print as well as to acknowledge the riches of fibre. I want to explore what it is to be alive, human, ageing, integrated with past and present. But it all has to be done in felt medium!
The more recent life drawings express mood and feelings connected with recent happenings in my own life. Many of the smaller pieces explore colour and the richness of feeling that can be experienced in the simplest format
“'I gCaidreamh', the first one-person exhibition by Dingle-based artist
Úna Ní Shé, is a revelation. Ní Shé is an enigmatic figure who has refused to play the art game by the rules. She is an instinctive painter who refuses to paint and an outsider committed to connecting with people through art. She is, above all, an artist determined to make art that works, albeit defiantly, on a critical level. 'I gCaidreamh' is the first opportunity most people will have had to assess this aspect of her work as it is the first time that her large fibre drawings have been assembled in a gallery context and exhibited as a body of work. It will, I believe, reveal a significant talent whose work defies the redundant delineation between art and craft and raises much more critical issues in relation to art, its creation and its function.”
Biography
Úna Ní Shé joined the National College of Art and Design in 1976 and studied woven textiles for three years. On graduating, she worked as an industrial and production weaver before working in various educational contexts with the Crawford Municipal College of Art, L'Arche Community and others. During this time she showed tapestries and felts in various group exhibitions. In 1990 Úna moveed to Dingle and set up a felt workshop which she continues to operate to this day.
Since then she has exhibited widely and facilitated workshops and other educational/developmental projects throughout Ireland. She has also received a number of public and private commissions.
|
