LCGA: Michael McLoughlin - Bypass, Shared Designs - July 18th to 31st August 2003

Michael McLoughlin
Our Lady of Lourdes Community Development Project Young Women's Group
Bypass
Shared Designs
July 18th - August 31st 2003

Opening reception: Thursday July 17th at 7pm

Bypass Michael McLoughlin's exhibition based on his own locality of Dublin.

Shared Designs is a collaboration between Our Lady of Lourdes Community Development Project Young Women's Group, Limerick and Michael McLoughlin examining their community issues and the physical environment.

Bypass and Shared Designs are two exhibitions on the ground floor of Limerick City Gallery based on memories, layering and exploring changes. Shared Designs is an ongoing investigation of the geographical space of a local parish that explores the environment from a new perspective.

"I remember the road not being there, I remember it being constructed and I remember it opening. And these are my memories of the space". Michael McLoughlin's exhibition Bypass is a body of work exploring a stretch of road near where he grew up, the Palmerstown by-pass. He examines the changes of past, present and future and the histories that are created around the space, for the commuter and the local community. He has a long history of working with community groups, contemplating changes.

McLoughlin is, "interested in the stories of this space that may seem almost trivial to others" but by working together, "these stories are part of what frame(s) the space for me". McLoughlin makes audio panels, talking pictures. He focuses on memories, histories, dreams and aspirations. The change in the physical landscape alters the use of the area for the communities that operate around it. McLoughlin marks the mundane.

McLoughlin is collaborating with the community group to activate and visualize their concerns about their community from a new perspective, through a shared artwork that explores fictional, historical and desired changes. Shared Designs is a collaboration between Our Lady Of Lourdes Community Development Project Young Women's Group and Michael McLoughlin funded by a Rapid Basic Education Grant in co-operation with Limerick City Gallery, forging links between the gallery, a section of the community and their environment. Shared Designs will develop and change between June and the end of August. A closing party will be held to view the final project in the last week of the exhibition.

Two areas have become a focus for Our Lady of Lourdes Community Development Project Young Women's Group. Both have undergone physical change and both have undergone change of usage. The initial work on show suggests the spaces, like the old handball alley, as they were and as they are remembered. The purpose of the two projects is not nostalgia but the alterations and developments made possible by the creative and the physical processes of art and urban change.

Michael McLoughlin graduated from Limerick School of Art and Design with a BA in Public Sculpture in 1994. His recent work combines drawing, photography, audio and sculptural objects. He develops work in each of these media, which he in turn exhibits in a wide range of different contexts. He has made site-specific artworks in association with many community groups including Limerick Travelers Development Group (1997). He has also exhibited at Hibernia for a New Millennium Lola Gallery, San Francisco (2003), Fire Station Artists Studios, in association with CASPr Buckingham St. Dublin 1 (2002) and at Ideal Homes, a site-specific exhibition in association with residents of Kimmage Manor Way, Dublin 12, (2001).