March 17, 2010
CONOR MCGRADY
On Foreign Soil
Exhibitions Dates: March 19 – April 24, 2010
Opening reception, Friday, March 19, 7-10pm
Artist talk, Saturday, March 20 @ 1pm
SALTWORKS is pleased to present On Foreign Soil, new works on paper
by New York-based Irish artist, Conor McGrady. McGrady’s recent body
of work continues his long-term examination of the role of authority in
contemporary society. His large-scale drawings and smaller works on
paper investigate how power manifests itself in symbols, iconography,
architecture and the social construction of individual and collective
identity within the framework of nationalist narratives. The work draws
upon situations of social instability, military conquest and the latent
utopianism inherent in the myths and rituals that embody concepts of
national territory. Epic panoramic landscapes are the locus of romantic
ideal, sites of acquisition and incorporation, and repositories of the
sublime. Monumental in scale, they are populated by ambiguous figures
that contribute an underlying feeling of disquiet to scenes of
mountainous wilderness and bucolic harmony. In smaller works
neo-classical architecture embodies an imagined order, stability and
permanence. As with McGrady’s previous work, these pieces pose
questions on the various manifestations of social order and on the
control of space, personal and national boundaries.
Conor McGrady was born in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland, in 1970. He
studied at the University of Northumbria, Newcastle, UK, before
receiving his MFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in
1998. Most recently his work has been exhibited in the one-person
exhibition, ‘Towards an Eternal Dawn,’ at Gallery Karas, HDLU, Zagreb,
Croatia, and in the group exhibition ‘Archiving Histories: Contemporary
Art Practice in Northern Ireland since the Belfast Agreement’, which is
traveling to the Holden Gallery, Manchester, Millennium Court Art
Centre, N. Ireland and Wolverhampton Art Museum in 2009/10. In 2002
he was selected to participate in the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney
Museum of American Art, New York. He is editor of Curated Spaces, a
regular feature in the journal Radical History Review. He currently
lives and works in New York.
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