Owen Quinlan is a Galway based artist, and a graduate of The Centre for Creative Arts & Media GMIT Galway, Cardiff School of Art & Design, and the Crafts Council of Ireland’s Ceramic Design & Skills Course. He has exhibited widely at home and abroad and continues to develop his practice from his home town of Galway.
His says of his work,
“I’m drawn to border areas. Places on the edges of towns where the built and natural world meet. Where the mouth of a river meets the sea, or a town land borders the coast. These areas become deposits for materials, and the duality of these places is often reflected in the objects found there.
Objects that express dual characteristics, both natural and industrial, appeal to me. Most of all, those that inhabit that fine threshold between one state and the next. When combined with the cycle of tides, the breakdown of processed materials can be viewed alongside the natural. This makes visible the huge timescales necessary for many industrial materials to decompose.
Close to my home, the Claddagh shoreline is a rich resource for my research.
The countless pieces of brick, delft, glass, plastic and metal which over the years have washed up along its shore, have now equally come to constitute this landscape alongside its naturally occurring sands. Places like this resonate with human activity of past and present. They illustrate how without careful use of materials, the impact which we have on our landscape is often profound, and sometimes permanent.
How we influence our landscape, and how in turn our lives are recorded on the materials with which we come into contact are central themes to my work.
This is something I try to capture in the objects that I make.”