Jamie Cross was awarded joint winner of the RC Lewis Crosby Award at the RDS Visual Arts Awards 2019 for his exhibition ‘The Uninhabitable Space of Objects’.

The RDS Visual Art Awards are important awards for visual art graduates in Ireland. The exhibition showcases the best graduates from all over Ireland curated in one space.

Following a rigorous competitive process, select graduates’ work is exhibited with the opportunity to win a share of the €30,000 prize fund.

“The Department for Design + Visual Arts in IADT is delighted to hear that Jamie Cross is a joint recipient of the RC Lewis-Crosby at the RDS Visual Arts Awards, 2019. Jamie’s thoughtful piece, ‘TheUninhabitable Space of Objects’, perfectly reflects the kind of interdisciplinary practice that we foster on the IADT art programmes. We wish Jamie ongoing success as he undertakes his postgraduate studies here at IADT.” Dr. Tina Kinsella, Head of Department of Design + Visual Arts, IADT.

‘The installation represents my perception of spaces that are commonly unseen and unexplored. By turning the inner surface of an object/material outwards a new space has been activated and can be experienced by my audience’ explains Jamie Cross.

‘The Uninhabitable Space of Objects’ is an exploration of hidden space inside everyday items. The installation, comprising five works, uses technology to reveal the interior of a material or object andmake the inaccessible, accessible.

Packaging material (Polystyrene) uses macro photography to explore the internal space of polystyrene packaging. The images are looped on a monitor, which in turn is encased in the original polystyrene the subject of the photography. Endoscopic and 360 degree video footage is used in the works Wood and Xtratherm in order to explore the materials of wood and insulation foam board. The footage is then displayed through a monitor and an Android phone respectively.

Printscan 1 and Printscan 2 were created by inverting a household printer/copier/scanner to scan the inside of the printer in operation and printing the image it produced. The prints portray the internal workings of the printer/copier/scanner externally.

Acer Aspire 5732Z is an exploration of the interior of a deconstructed laptop. The deconstructed laptop is displayed in a Perspex box or Perspex stand and pop-up videos (of its component parts) run on its exposed screen. One of the pop-up videos is a live webcam feed of the surrounding exhibition space. In this way both the internal and external space of the laptop is captured.

The journey of electricity and information through cables is demonstrated through the various extension leads and wires framing the installation. 240v every other 15 mins attempts to capture this journey by depicting the split-second that electricity leaves a wire and enters a fluorescent lightbulb thereby exciting the atoms which in turn emit a green flash.

The 2019 RDS Visual Art Awards Exhibition will run from October 18 – 24 in the RDS Concert Hall, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4 and is free to attend.