QUAD is delighted that the artist Orla Toland will be undertaking a residency with us from 12 – 18 June 2023. We are happy to continue our program, QUAD Staff Artist in Residence Scheme, that across the super team here at QUAD we have a lot of amazing creative individuals who work in a range of roles across the organisation. Orla’s Instagram takeover on @QUAD_Gallery will be between 12 – 16 June 2023.

QUAD is excited to work with them on a week residency where Orla Toland is very much present through one-to-one interactions with the QUAD team, taking over and utilising the @QUAD_Gallery Instagram page as a virtual exhibition space.

Orla Torland Artist Statement

I’m an artist, printmaker and illustrator based in Derby, having graduated from Chelsea College of Arts, UAL, with a BA in Fine Art. My work covers themes such as iconography, the mundane and everyday from a queer and female perspective.

As a person who is interested in semiotics, my practice surrounds iconography and the use of symbols; with this, I primarily work with printmaking, drawing, and I like this to form installations and pieces of writing.

Having been raised Catholic and in a Catholic community, and now identifying as queer, my work often sites images used in the Catholic faith such as the Virgin Mary, or the Sacred Heart, as as way of grappling with my gay identity and background, from a now agnostic point of view.

I’m also interested in looking into nature and the everyday, as an alternate belief system, and how the mundane is a miracle in of itself. The domestic sphere and people operating in the everyday is something that fascinates me, and how we’ve built these structures for all of this to take place.

Again, this links me back  to my interest in semiotics, and what certain images mean, and how this meaning alters, as an  image is heavily replicated and reproduced over time. How this replication, creates a new image, that is already loaded with cultural context, despite being the amalgamation of colour essentially.

I’d like to think that my art is an investigation, rather than a critique of any belief system, it’s reflective of my experience and what I’ve concluded so far.