Assembly

shane finan at the jackie clarke collection

Interactive mixed media art installation: Video, print, text, animation, interactive media, Arduino, sensors, Raspberry Pi 2022

supported by mayo arts office and decade of centenaries 2022

Artist Shane Finan responds to the Jackie Clarke Collection

From May to November 2022, Shane Finan worked with the Jackie Clarke Collection as artist-in-residence. He studied the archive, the museum and the collection to understand why Jackie Clarke chose the objects he chose. Drawing from printed materials (newspapers, leaflets, autograph books) and the idea of technology as a device for how stories are spread, he has created a new art installation that takes over the Memory Room in the collection museum in late 2022.

Shane spent time meeting people in Ballina and the surrounding areas and creating his own collection of stories from the people that he met. The artwork, Assembly¹, is a blended 'future museum' of north Co. Mayo.

Assembly is a large mixed media artwork that uses printed material, video screens, projection, animation and sensor technologies. The printed words² from newspapers 100 years old, and from today's equivalents, are obscured and barely legible. In the spaces between these confused stories, dreamlike films and printed photographs tell snippets of other stories. Autograph books, influenced by those in the museum collection, contain a trace of the people who have told their stories to Shane, and they will be on site and can be added to by visitors. Technology is an important part of the message: Screens replace paper and printing press, and sensor-activated panels are activated by handwritten books. Throughout the space, animals and birds take part in telling the complex stories, reminding us that they are part of the narrative and also have homes which they build, maintain and return to. Each of these elements makes up part of a strange collection of objects and ideas that 'intra-active' and strung together as seemingly disparate parts that make up a world in the memory room.

In essence, the artwork is simply a reminder that no story is ever just black and white.

The artwork launched on November 19th 2022. The launch featured talks from Dr. El Putnam (artist-philosopher and Assistant Professor of Digital Media at NUI Maynooth), Cllr. Mark Duffy (Cathaoirleach Ballina MD), and Anne Marie Forbes (Jackie Clarke Collection), chaired by Ann Marie McGing (Arts Officer, Mayo County Council).

The title of the work is an homage to Kathleen Booth, the computer scientist and mathematician who died aged 100 in October 2022, and who was one of the main people responsible for creating the 'Assembly' computer programming language. This language is a crucial component in all contemporary computers, used to allow devices to communicate with one another.

The typeface and fonts used throughout are by Fonderiz: https://fonderiz.fr/ (Justine Gagnaire, Marie Deloffre and Cédric Rossignol-Brunet) 

Watch as 2022 Decade of Centenaries Artist in Residence Shane Finan discusses his work with the Jackie Clarke Collection. Shane was artist in residence from May to November 2022. Over the six months, he used the collection to develop a new art installation, Assembly.

Drawing from printed materials (newspapers, leaflets, autograph books) and the idea of technology as a device for how stories are spread, he has created a new art installation that has taken over the Memory Room in the collection museum in late 2022 until the end of 2023. In this interview, commissioned by the Jackie Clarke Collection to celebrate their 10-year anniversary, Shane describes the creative process and his engagement with the collection and the people of Ballina to create his own story.

The residency was supported by Mayo Arts Office and the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media under the Decade of Centenaries Programme. The video was created by Anula Productions.