THE FORGOTTEN WORKS

Ruth E. Lyons
Curated by Tessa Giblin
ADMISSION FREE
Black, bright and amorphous, Ruth E. Lyons’ major new public commission, The Forgotten Works, appears to pull and push the exterior facade of Project Arts Centre. A shape-shifter by day and an imploding mass by night, Lyons’ large-scale timber construction creeps across the building, moving in a disarray of bitumen-coated struts from the balcony towards the pedestrian street below. The Forgotten Works is an extension of themes embodied in a previous work by Lyons, titled Amphibious Sound, and exhibited in the gallery space of Project Arts Centre as part of Conjuring for Beginners, this year’s major Visual Arts summer show. Amphibious Sound is an expansive mass of black Neoprene sewn together to form a large blanket, which swarmed and rippled across the gallery floor, like a foil or skin defining the division between two realms. Similarly, The Forgotten Works acts as both an in-between space and a threat, its timber clusters seeming to engulf itself, and the building. Taking its title from a location in the novella In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan (1968), Lyons’ thinking behind both of these works lies in a fascination for that which exists at the base of all social formations; ideas of dark matter, carbon, mining sites, potentialities for light, imploding energies and creative dissolutions. The Forgotten Works is a work in conflict: a generative and destructive force, an entanglement of darkness and light, and a conjuring of form and formlessness. As an in-between space, it is both a beginning and an end, and a non-space from which matter seems to rise.
The public installation is a work in three phases. It is part-sculpture, part-performance, with the construction process integral to the work itself. On completion, The Forgotten Works exists in constant flux, shifting as darkness falls, its black density both encasing and emitting a stark pulsating light from its nebulous depths. These changes in form seek to harness the imagination of an incidental audience, set amidst the public space of the city.
This installation marks an ambitious departure for Ruth E. Lyons in terms of scale and location. Through the work the artist sets out to further develop a practice that engages with the public beyond the confines of the gallery. Furthermore, with a practice that has been previously rooted in the rural, Lyons’ brings a new, complex affecting of the urban through a dynamic public process of installation and its dramatic outcomes.
Biography
Ruth E. Lyons (b. 1983, Dublin, Ireland) holds a BA in Fine Art from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. Lyons works primarily in sculpture. Her large scale works are concerned with landscape and how our experience of material reality is affected or coloured by a simultaneous absorption of the world in the form of information. Through an ambiguous use of familiar forms she disrupts the relationship between physical reality and information and gives form and space to a ‘matter reality’, making reference to the constant and infinite potential of matter and world.Selected projects include NCAD Gallery, Good Hatchery Show, Dublin, 2012; Sky is the limit, Public Art Commission, St. Eoin National School, Co Meath, 2011; Islanded in a Sea of Stars, The Lab, Foley St, Dublin, 2011; RepoMan (group show), Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, 2011 and Everyman is an island, Inish Turk Beg, Co. Mayo, 2010. In 2011, Lyons was made a Temple Bar Gallery and Studios Associate Member. She has also been awarded the Fire Station Sculpture Bursary (2011) and the Arts Council of Ireland Visual Artist Bursary (2011). She is a founding member and co-director of The Good Hatchery (an artist led initiative in Daingean, Co. Offaly).
Residencies and Awards
2012
The Arts Council of Ireland Project Award
Temple Bar Gallery and Studios Collaborative Residency
2011
Temple Bar Gallery and Studios Project Studio Award
Fire Station Sculpture Bursary Award
The Arts Council of Ireland Visual Artist Bursary Award
2010
The Customs House Studios, Residency, Westport, Co. Mayo
Inish Turk Beg Island, Residency, selected by The Royal Hibernian Academy and Monster Truck
Offaly County Council Artists Bursary Award 2010/09/08
2009
‘Art@Work’, Residency Programme, Co. Roscommon
‘The Enchanted Garden Residency’, Co. Wicklow
Belmont Mill Studios Artist Bursary Award
2008
‘_UNIT’ Residency Programme, Co. Laois
2006 
Erasmus programme Vilnius Academy of Fine Art, Lithuania
Selected Solo Exhibitions, The Good Hatchery Exhibitions and Public Works

2012
Sauna 2012, The Good Hatchery, National College of Art and Design Gallery, Dublin
Sky is the limit, Public Art Commission, St. Eoin National School, Co. Meath.

2011
Islanded in a Sea of Stars, Solo show, The Lab, Foley St, Dublin 1
Lodestar, The Good Hatchery, Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray, Co.Wicklow
2010
Everyman is an island, Inish Turk Beg, Co. Mayo
Glasimile, The Good Hatchery, SOMA contemporary, Waterford
2009
Savoir Faire 212, The Good Hatchery, Place Gallery, Co. Wexford
Amphibious Sound, Lough Key Forest Park, Co. Roscommon
Iridescence A, The Good Hatchery, Monster Truck, Dublin
Spatial Relations, Portlaoise, Co. Laois
2008
GodBall, Grennan Mill, Kilkenny Arts Festival, Co. Kilkenny
Selected Group Exhibitions
2012
‘Conjuring for Beginners’, Group Show, curated by Tessa Giblin, Project Arts Centre, Dublin.
‘Ached Grew Print Jot’, collaborative event, curated by Lee Welch, The Drawing Room, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin.
2011
‘After All’, Group show, Tulca Arts Festival, Galway
‘RHA Annual Show 2011’, invited artist, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin
‘Repo Man’, Group show, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin
‘Life Vividly Lived Part 2’, Monster Truck Gallery, Temple Bar, Dublin
‘Blue’, SOMA Contemporary, Waterford City
2010
‘Commonage’, Callan, Co. Kilkenny
‘New Living Art’, Irish Museum Of Contemporary Art, Dublin
‘An Cosan Glas Lionnir’, Magheraorty, Co. Donegal
2009
‘The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths’, Rapture Heap, Dublin
‘The Enchanted Garden Festival’, Kilruddery House, Co. Wicklow
‘This must be the place’, Irish Museum Of Contemporary Art, Dublin
‘A Silent Year’, The Lab, Dublin
2008
‘Life at the Joy’, The Joy Gallery, Dublin
‘No Place’, Memphis, USA
‘Never Ending Telescope’, The Back Loft Gallery, Dublin
‘Weather Permitting', Mantua Art Project, Roscommon
2007
‘NCAD Graduate exhibition’, NCAD, Dublin
Curatorial Work and Presentations
2012
‘The Poetry of Pitch’, VAI seminar, Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray, Co. Wicklow
‘The Place of Art’, guest speaker, Rua Red, Tallaght, Dublin
Guest Lecturer at National College of Art & Design, Dublin
2011
Aerial Blue, Curated Summer School, Clew Bay, Mayo
Palanquin Stills, Residency programme, Good Hatchery
2010
Turquoise Tarmacadam, Group Residency, Good Hatchery
Celestial Salt, Book Launch, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin
Mercedes Fire, International Touring Summer School
‘Creating Alternative Spaces’, Good Hatchery presentation, Ormeau Baths, Belfast
Faber Studios, Good Hatchery, Artists Presentations, Limerick
2009
Celestial Salt, Outdoor Exhibition, Good Hatchery
‘What Next?, Good Hatchery, Presentation, Draiocht Arts Centre, Co. Dublin
Ritual Flux 51, Visual Arts Trail, curated by Good Hatchery & Eilis Lavelle, Birr, Co. Offaly
From Daingean with Love, Residential Projects, Good Hatchery
2008
‘Time of Little Sun’, group exhibition, curated by Good Hatchery, Cavan Co. Museum
Sapphire Highway, Residency, Good Hatchery
Sapphire Highway, Publication Launch, The Lab, Dublin