Unbound – Crawford College

UNBOUND is a contemporary art project that aims to explore the diverse and influential relationships between literature, poetry and the spoken word on the production of visual arts. The project aims in particular to highlight and reference the influence of literature on and around contemporary forms of expanded print making and modern book arts.

The UNBOUND project was initiated and led by MTU Crawford College of Art & Design Lecturers Catherine Hehir and James L. Hayes in collaboration with renowned UK-based poet and artist Sean Borodale.

The project will highlight a series artworks and installations on the Top Floor of An Diseart and feature presentation and panel discussion about the UNBOUND project.

Sean Borodale is celebrated British artist and poet. He was selected as a Next Generation Poet in the UK in 2014. His radio work for BBC has won a Radio Academy Gold Award for Best Feature or Documentary. His first collection of poems Bee Journal was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and Costa Books Award. Sean lectures in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway University in London, UK. 

Catherine Hehir is a visual artist whose practice-based research is an enquiry, exploring prints manipulated through artistic processes and how it is integrated and expanded into other fields of contemporary art. Several forms of collaborative endeavours have been the focus of this research, such as a series of large scale durational and ephemeral projects under Hehir & Noonan collaborations, as well as co-initiator of an international collective project titled State of Print – that questions the structures and mechanisms of state in relation to expanded print with current art structures the Keynote at IMPACT Conference 2022 at UWE Bristol. Residencies include Amsterdam Grafisch Atelier, The Purple Bamboo Studios, Hangzhou China, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Monaghan, and the LARQ Centre of Research in Western Tasmania. She is a senior lecturer in Fine Art at MTU Crawford College of Art & Design.

James L Hayes is a visual artist who creates sculptures, installations, cast iron performances and film works as well as making large scale sculptural commissions. He is the founder and director of The IRON-R Project (2012-2022). Hayes exhibits his works nationally and internationally, recently at The Glucksman Gallery, Cork , The Regis Center for Arts at the University of Minnesota, The Franconia Sculpture Park, Minnesota, USA, The MART Gallery, Dublin, and the McNally School of Fine Arts at La Salle College of Arts in Singapore.

He has been a resident artist at IMMA, Dublin, the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Serde Residency in Latvia and has received numerous awards from the Arts Council of Ireland, Culture Ireland, Cork City Council & Cork County Council. He lectures in Sculpture at MTU Crawford College of Art & Design.