“Touch is an intimate connection and way of knowing the world we inhabit. As human beings we always strive to reach out and touch further, building structures that bring us closer to what is beyond. Like bridges and towers, tombs and temples, telescopes and stratospheric balloons, we create forms that draw on what we know and rely on what we feel, and as a result extend both. Stratospheric balloons are ethereal, otherworldly, and yet they bring the reality of this world closer to us. In this way we are always structuring our understanding of space and time, attempting to find some balance between our experiences and the realities of our world. Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of the horizon, and its meanings for us. It is experienced but never realised. Observed as a limit but intangible and unreachable. Experience is filled with the soft contradictions of the horizon.
In producing and experimenting I use my practice as a means of negotiating a place for my own experience within realms of intertwining and contradictory information. Teasing out and testing hypotheses through constant play with materials, forms and working methods. The work emerges out of this constant and prolific inquiry. Elements are combined, pieces are fitted together, individual experiments are threaded into a cohesive whole that the viewer is invited to explore. The spaces created attempt to provide intimate meditative environments that let go of the restlessness that comes from residing within the boarder of knowledge and sensation, and in justifying these two elements, allow the viewer time for stillness, contemplation and tranquility.” - Cara Farnan
Window, 2017
Untitled, 2017
What is the horizon? (tapestry of an unknown), 2017
Wall and Whisper (installation detail), 2016
Temporal Orbit Series
“Temporal Orbit was a series of experimental works created during a residency in the RHA school. They arose out of investigations into our spiritual relationship with the rhythms of landscape and time, suggestions of the idea of time as landscape and a consideration of the cyclic patterns of time and space in relation to the direct cyclic materiality of the landscape.
Thinking through the significance of natural cycles in marking time for ancient peoples led to the creation of an alternative and invented ‘cycle’ by which the day could be measured. Rocks resting in the seas along the coastline rise up each morning from their watery beds to float through skies and clouds, then, completing an orbit, come to rest in the seas once more.” Cara Farnan
Temporal Orbit (pendulum), 2017
Temporal Orbit (vases), 2017
Cara Farnan (b. 1994) is Visual Artist based in Dublin, Ireland. She graduated with First Class Honours in Fine Print from The National College of Art and Design, Dublin in 2016 and was subsequently invited to take part in the Peer Residency Programme in The RHA School.
Her work attempts to find stillness and balance within the contradictions of knowledge and sensation, taking a variety of forms including sculptural and site specific installation, sound, text, video, drawing and printmaking.
Recent Exhibitions include the solo work Intimate|Immense, The Yellow Box, NCAD, 2016 and group shows; Today's Firefighter in association with Dublin Fire Brigade 2016; The NCAD Graduate Showcase, 2016 ; Impressions Biennial in association with Galway Arts Festival 2015; and Optic Preen, 2015. Later this year her work will be featured in both Haihatus International 6, Joutsa, Finland and Mason Hayes & Curran’s annual showcase of emerging and established practitioners; Contemporary Art at Christmas.
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