“My desire to change the way we see the world in order to remake it is central,” Maud Cotter tells Brian McAvera.
Brian McAvera: Art in general, and Irish art in particular, has changed enormously since you first started in the 1970s. How do you view the changes, are any of them important for you, and do you consider your Irish identity to be crucial in relation to your work?
Maud Cotter: Well, I would say that the most profound change is the sheer energy and expansion of interest in the arts, and the emergence of generations of really inventive and interesting artists. The extension of practice to much more interdisciplinary and media-based work is obvious; and of absolutely enormous significance to contemporary practice is the development of the Internet as a medium of information and communication. It fundamentally changed the nature of practice. I’m very positive about all of these changes and just wish that our population base had more resources to support the levels of potential that clearly exist.
Ahead of Dragana Jurisic’s solo show at the RHA in September we republish Stephanie McBride’s examination of the photographer’s 2011 show at the Droichead Arts Centre, studies of urban survival taken during the Celtic Tiger years, revealing Ireland’s struggling society.
Paul Larmour visits the new theatre, which he describes as a boon for the dramatic arts and the most exciting building in Belfast