setting out my wares: time to get some bumf ready for our exhibition catalogue. of course its not bumf but actually an important process that involves trying to distill what my work is about. seems easier to write in the first person for my statement but in the third person for my bio … turns out when i looked into the dos and don’ts of bio writing, it recommends writing bios in the third person. trying to keep to the 150 words is a challenge too but i regularly come across this as the cut off in applications so its good to try and stick to it. pretty much there with the bio (148) and statement (149). my selection of images have been changing all the time, especially as i work mainly in landscape format (no surprise) so will need 3 images for that layout but i am submitting 4 works in a series so will have to leave one out. i think i will make the last one my square image for the website. it is always hard to photograph video installations as they pick up weird lines of colour especially in multi-channels and have either strong contrasts or are all washed out. not to mention how the projectors distort the colours of the original videos. anyway, here they are …
images:
squaring the heavens, 2020, still image from two-channel video installation
undressing the horizon, 2020, still image from screen print and single-channel video installation.
contemplating a mountain, 2020, still image from two-channel video installation
measuring the easterlies, 2020, still image from three-channel video installation
some square image closeups for main page
bio:
Elaine Crowe is an artist, living and working in Dublin. About to complete her Masters in Fine Art with OCA (UK), Elaine has been studying Art since 2009 and has a Degree in Sculpture and Expanded Practice from NCAD (Dublin, 2016). Throughout her career, Elaine has worked in many areas of the Arts – Architecture, Set Design and Theatre Production. Puppet Making for Street Theatre. Elaine also works as a Special Education Teacher and teaches Art at Primary and Post-Primary level. As a lens-based artist, Elaine’s video, photography and print artworks explore her relationship to the landscape and she has exhibited widely. Recent exhibitions include Impressions Print Biennale (Galway, 2019), Strangelove Film Festival (London, 2019) and Noemata One Off Film Festival (Denmark, Spain, Norway, 2019). Elaine’s work featured in LandEscape Art Review (2019) and her work 180 km was acquired by The National Irish Visual Arts Library (Dublin, 2016).
statement: i continue to work on my statement, trying to sound clear but i don’t think it will ever be perfect as every time i reread it i tweek it and sometimes this means going back to what i first wrote. a part of me doesn’t want to spell my work out but just suggest it. no written statement will fully describe the experience of entering into a video installation in a dark space with the hum of the projectors and the light, colour and shadows of the images that projectors create. even the still images are mere hints. i am working on gifs which might work as a gateway/link to the work.
Drawn to the outdoors with my camera, my work explores my relationship to the landscape as image maker. Using lens-based processes – video, photography and print, I explore how the landscape is viewed and experienced according to the body and how this translates into landscape imagery. Considering the lens as part of an embodied practice – a point of contact between body and landscape, I question the gendered framing of the landscape and seek to reframe it by disrupting its inherent gender values. This reframing involves unsettling the single, fixed perspective within landscape’s rectilinear frame and blurring the binary gendering of lens-based image making processes by combining still and moving images, digital and analogue processes in multi-channel video and print installations. At the heart of this reframing lies a desire to challenge gender values of the past towards reflecting greater gender diversity and ways of seeing the landscape today.
there isn’t a day that goes by that i don’t change and reword my statement. its hard trying to capture the work in general when each work has its own mission.
elaine crowe 
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