Testing Ground: Sally O'Dowd

Artist Sally O'Dowd is taking over CCA's Project Space for the month of June as a Testing Ground for new work. Testing Ground is a new initiative that is part of CCA x Jerwood = Supports programme; an artist participating in each Crit Group is invited to take their work-in-progress forward with a month in CCA's Project Space. Testing Ground aims to encourage experimentation and taking risks through realising work in its early stages with access to an audience.

Sally O'Dowd is using the space to test different arragements of drawings and objects that would not otherwise be shown together. These include Drawings of Cavan from Afar (large landscape drawings) positioning next to James King Sings (work created while delivering Open Communal Drawing Sessions for PS2).

Sally will also use the space to make new drawings, taking off from her recent work where she imagined herself journeying through rural Cavan on bike. These larger landscape drawings explore rural Ireland through the artist's personal connections to Cavan and the Black Pigs Dyke, a series of monumental discontinuous earthworks in south west Ulster and north east Connacht.

Testing Ground is visible through the windows on Artillery Street and Sally will be at CCA on 1 July 2023 from 7–9pm to chat informally about her work. All welcome.

ABOUT Sally O'Dowd

Sally O’Dowd is a visual artist and curator with a socially engaged practice. As a politically aware artist, her research is concerned with identity and in particular intimate female ritual and investigating the role – self selected and enforced – of women in contemporary Irish society. Her artwork also focuses on authenticity in documentation by way of performance, film and drawing. She creates often absurd, socially awkward performances, in which costumes and props amount to an abject beauty. She frequently works collaboratively in both her artistic and curatorial practices.
sallyodowdstudio.com | @sallyspectre

ABOUT CCA x Jerwood = Supports

CCA x Jerwood = Supports is a two-year development programme aimed at supporting emerging artistic practice. A combination of short training courses, mentoring, crits, surgeries, feedback and more will take place throughout 2023–24 made possible with funding from Jerwood Developing Artist Fund.

Supported by the National Lottery through the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Derry City & Strabane District Council.

Image: photo by Simon Mills