On Friday, 6th December 2013, an exhibition by Working Artist Studios’ newest artist member, Toma McCullim: For All Our Relations, opened.
Toma McCullim has just completed a Masters of Art in Art Process from CCAD in Cork. She holds a first class hons degree in Anthropology of Art from the Sainsbury School of World Art at University of East Anglia. Most recently she has exhibited as an invited artist at the RHA, and in Beijing as part of Ireland’s Third wave. In her participatory practice she has worked with West Cork Arts Centre on a number of projects including those with young children, teenagers and older people. Her Masters work centered on artworks as anthropological praxis, focusing on representation of the social dynamics.
In For All Our Relations Toma presents work on canvas that combines vintage photographs with oil painting, hand stitching and 24ct gold leaf. The paintings become personal as the individuals in the photographs. The artist has never met these people but they become go-betweens relating the artist and the viewer. They exist in a place of collective narrative, a liminal space between the real and the imagined.