Details
| First Name | Sara |
| Last Name | Cunningham-Bell |
| Username | sara-cunningham-bell |
| Website | |
| Region | Northern Ireland |
| Disciplines | Painting, Sculpture |
| Themes | Abstract, Figurative, Site-specific, Political, Narratives |
Statement
| Statement | Sara Cunningham-Bell works out of a studio ‘Gorse Lane’ on the North Coast of Ireland. Central to her work is the endeavour to interrupt the dualisms that divide up the lived world, forming the realities we seek to inhabit. The most important of these being, spirit / matter. Such dualisms work only by a reactive, rather than a creative mode of thinking, for any value allocated, or found is only the result of its opposite. In other words, the accepted depends on the rejected, the venerated on the despised, and the sacred on the profane. Cunningham-Bell’s art negotiates this quandary, in an effort to present the truth of beauty – a truth that cannot be dependent on the ugly. The poet David Jones tells us that ‘there is no escape from the Incarnation. It’s like a shunting train’. So if indeed God can and has become Man our imaginations are shown to be poor, shoddy affairs, our monies have lost their worth, for we cannot understand the sense of such an event. Before such logic, the divine cannot simply be the opposite of the mundane. Moreover, where now do we go to find the merely mundane? Thus the logics we live by find no rest, for they can no longer simply divide and rule—there being no enabling leftover, or pure remnant—mere peel from which the bright, juicy orange is to be freed, the peel now discarded, and the soft Kernel venerated. Likewise, we cannot be citizens only because we are not foreigners, or family because of blood. ‘No wonder then that Theology regards the body as a unique good. Without body: without sacrament. Angels only: no sacrament. Beast only: no sacrament. Man: sacrament at every turn and at all levels of the ‘profane’ and ‘sacred’, in the trivial and in the profound, no escape from sacrament’. – D. Jones This, then, is the joyous burden of the artist, indeed of all who would be alive. Matter is the invitation to live—the very prayer of attention (to echo Malebranche), and responsibility. Art is now the craft of the impossible—there now being nothing ordinary. |
Biography
| Biography | Sara Cunningham-Bell works from her North Coast studio, ‘Gorse Lane Studio’; and temporarily at ‘Eorsa’ in the Highlands, her work has been commissioned internationally and privately. Sara studied at Edinburgh College of Art, Glasgow Strathclyde University and Queen’s University at Masters Level, receiving the Andrew Grant Award (ECA), for her initial undergrad work, later representing Ireland at the Grands et Jeunes D’Aujourd’Hui Salon 2000 in Paris, Luxembourg, Japan.
Sara in the last month has been showing with Caol Ruadh Sculpture Park, Argyll, Drenagh Walled Garden Estate, Limavady, Bangor Walled Garden and running the workshop for ‘Rwanda (Muhanga region) to Causeway (NI)’ link, with an awarded Practitioners Bursary, sponsored by C.C.G. Borough Council. From January to March 2025, she has been showing in: Dublin, Sligo, Edinburgh, Grantown-on-Spey, Limavady, and The Hague, Netherlands. Sara in March -April, worked in the Muhanga region, Rwanda working with different community, rural groups looking at ‘Self-Identity through Mark making’. Her body of sculpture work ‘Congruent’, was selected and exhibited at the F.E. McWilliam Gallery (2024), alongside Elizabeth Blackadder, Joan Eardley, Alison Watt and FE McWilliam. Sculpture work was also selected for the Himalayan Garden Sculpture Park, North Yorkshire (2024), and toured internationally in cities: Shanghai, Chengdu, Chongqing, Hong Kong (2023-24). The Public sculpture commission ‘Carry Each Other, Iompair a Chéile’ was completed end of 2023 for Belfast City Council (funded by the Special European Peace Body), consisting of: 6 site specific sculptures and a video. The main iconic sculpture is 7.8 metres, walkable under and around, is cast in treated aluminium, other works are made from corten and concrete, each are site specific and delivered managing a multidisciplinary team: engineer, electrician, architect, builder, Health and Safety officer. This work is quickly viewable on: https://www.cunninghambell.com/belfast.html In June 2023 her work has been selected for the WB Yeats Retrospective Show, Hamilton Gallery, Ireland, also the ‘Ancestral Homes’ Traveling Show opening in Beijing in November then touring four cities: Shanghai, Chengdu (VA Gallery), Chongqing (VA Gallery), Hong Kong, into 2024; with sculpture work selected for the Sculpture in Context show at The National Botanical Gardens, Dublin August to October 2023. She is showing work at the ancestral Drenagh Estate Gardens, Limavady 2023 -2024 and working towards a solo sculpture show June to September 2024. Sara recently completed the successful Dublin, park sculpture (steel, 7.5 metres tall), commissioned by DCC with Sculpture Dublin supported by The Hugh Lane Gallery and Visual Artists Ireland :http://www.cunninghambell.com/dublin.html#/ SIAP award from Arts Council NI (2020) supported a new body of work in locally harvested larch. This sculpture work was exhibited in the Royal Ulster Academy (RUA, 2021), Belfast, Portstewart and the ‘Sculpture in Context’ show, National Botanical Gardens, Dublin (2021); it inspired a new piece shown at the RUA. Other work has recently returned from touring across Ireland, (with Hamilton Gallery). Sculpture showing at The Mall Galleries, London (September-2022), is now the award for, ‘Women in Engineering’, London based; its concept looked at the big industrial machine camouflaging the essential worker within its working cog, inspired by interviews with the Factory Girls, Derry. The latter was a dynamic submission short listed for Derry City Council public sculpture (steel, 10m tall, mirror polished stainless and bronze, 2022). ‘Towards Tomorrow’, (9.5 metres tall), commissioned by the Ulster University was short listed for the Irish Sculpture Concrete Award (2020): https://www.cunninghambell.com/sculpture.html Some Public commissions include: Kingspan Stadium home of Ulster Rugby, DECAL, IRFU, The Mater Hospital Belfast, Dublin City Council public works, Ulster University, Centre of Theology and Philosophy for The Vatican City Rome, Victoria College Belfast, European Union Programme for Peace and Reconciliation in Dungiven, Bass Ireland, UK Hotel Chains, Publishing Houses- Eerdmans, SCM-Canterbury, Routledge. Work is also held in private and public collections such as Edinburgh University, Fraser-Smallwood, Bass Ireland, Causeway Coast and Glens Council, Hastings, Murphy (New York). Other recent work has been touring: Berlin, New York, Luxembourg, Dublin curated by Hamilton Gallery. The studio Practice is represented by The Hamilton Gallery, Sligo.
ONLINE LINKS: Website: cunninghambell.com Social Links https://www.facebook.com/Artist.CunninghamBell/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/sara-cunningham-bell-58a9235b/ Twitter: cunningambell1 https://www.instagram.com/artist.cunninghambell/ YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE_3sNBZCMw
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