UV Arts Centre to showcase 'Mundus Nunc' art exhibition

Mundus Nunc, a new contemporary art group exhibition that explores the complex relationship between nature, technology and the evolving human experience, opens this Friday night (November 7) at Derry's UV Arts Centre.

Curated around the theme “the world at present,” Mundus Nunc is a multidisciplinary exhibition that examines the porous boundaries between physical experience and virtual existence. As a group, the artists reflect on how rapid digital transformation intersects with the organic world.

Mundus Mind invites viewers to reflect on our contemporary identity, whether it be filtered through ideology or craft, is negotiated in an age of simulation.

The exhibition unfolds as a dialogue between mediums and temporalities: paint meets pixels, woven fibers create a selfie, moving images flicker as digital relics of the physical. The exhibition space hums with both familiarity and unease as the coexistence of traditional craft and digital experimentation forms the exhibition’s central tension: the persistence of human touch in a world increasingly mediated by machines.

Featuring new paintings by Vanessa Etherton of Vetherton Arts, alongside tapestry and film by textile artist Cris Altamirano and audio video manipulation by visual artist Johanna Nulty

Each artist, in their own way, reaches toward reconciliation, and invites the viewer to do the same.

Johanna Nulty is a Cavan based visual artist. Nulty’s work is predominantly object based, exploring sound from mass produced materials and found objects. Her practice explores the possibilities of the subconscious movement of everyday material and often results in an amalgamation of audio videos, sound pieces, sound drawings and photography.

Cristián Altamirano Ramos is a Chilean textile artist currently based in Sligo. During their studies in Chile, Cristián had a fortunate encounter with textiles. Through material exploration and experimentation, they discovered a form of expression that resonated deeply with their personal history.

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This led to a growing interest in dyeing, weaving, and the development of an artistic language. Over time, Cristián’s work began to explore themes such as identity, the poetics of nostalgia, and memory.

Vanessa Etherton is a Cavan based American painter and the featured artist of Mundus Nunc. From being born and raised in Southern Idaho to now calling Ireland home, her art has been inspired by a reverence for the natural world.

Her practice explores the boundaries between memory, the tangible and posterity. She reimagines classical motifs with contemporary techniques and invites viewers to reflect on the familiar with a reawakened yearning for connection.

Cavan based American painter Vanessa Etherton.

“Mundus Nunc is my exploration of the present,” says Etherton. “The internet plays a huge role in my life, as with many others, and working on this exhibition allowed me to pause and reflect on how I live and create in this world that sometimes feels equally digital and organic.”

Etherton’s paintings are works of contemporary figurative realism fused with abstract expressionism and symbolic surrealism; exploring post-internet themes of beauty, identity, and artificiality. Within the showcase, Vanessa extends her ongoing dialogue with nature into the psychological terrains of contemporary identity.

The human figures she portrays, poised between serenity and turmoil, become archetypes for an age defined by antimony. Beauty, power, and authenticity appear as mutable reflections, refracted through the mirrors of the digital gaze. Her works confront agency in an age of internet influence and critique the spectacle of identity. In Mundus Nunc, Etherton invites viewers to pause within that space of tension and to recognize that even amid the artifice of the present, the human longing for connection and meaning endures.

Funded by The Inner City Trust through UV Arts, the exhibition will run from November 7 – November 23 at UV Arts Centre, 16 Bishop Street, Derry. Admission is free, and all are welcome to attend the opening night reception at 6.00pm this Friday, November 7.