Centre for Creative Practices presents "Stories of Origin", an exhibition of photography by Annemarie Murland PhD.

The second last production in their New Voices of Ireland Series. A series of documentary photographs of the Calton area of Glasgow, a destination for Irish migrants to Scotland at the turn of the 20th century, and analogue, black and white portraits and digital, colour portraits of the artist’s daughter. Taken over a twelve year period to challenge religious and social identity politics, common to women of the Irish diaspora. Embedded with mythology and semiology the hybrid portraits, laced with a Marian metaphor, recontextualise the relationship between form and space. In doing so, the stories of the past become the stories of the present. As homage to the generations of Irish women whose identities were formed in this place, the portraits re-inscribe the meaning of connection by rupturing traditional gender stereotypes.

"Primarily, I explore time, memory and a personal experience of migration through the history and tradition of Western art, painting and drawing. My work translates felt experience as sensory objects through a series of woven grids that deliver a real physical presence. Influenced by my cultural heritage I recreate the form and sensation of tartan landscapes through a personal painting and drawing methodology that is described as weaving wet and dry materials. My works transcribe as monologues that celebrate the history and tradition of painting, past and present, and reflect the role of women’s work through the materiality of the medium.

My most recent works rely on mnemonics, where intuition, chance and the language of abstraction support ideas as visual concepts through traditional painting/drawing methodologies and materials. Both subject and object shape the process of finding form. These abstract colour field paintings and tactile woven grid like drawings reference both the study and origins and conceptual premise of abstraction, which is palpably located through colour and form, spatial relationships, the subtly of texture and line and how as a composition they engage the phenomena of felt experience." - Annemarie Murland