Curated Exhibitions / Mermaid Arts Centre
Adam Gibney
Cybernetic Reorientations of Being
An array of softly sighing, whirring objects sit in a neat grid on the gallery floor. Drawing power from the weak winter sun through a set of solar panels placed on the roof of the gallery, the units form a kind of semi-sentient being responding to the surrounding environment. Through a practice that spans electronics, coding, digital fabrication
and sound to explore meanings of reality, Gibney devises an immersive installation activated through audience or environmental interaction.
Harold Offeh
Leisure Seekers
Leisure Seekers, a multi-media installation, emerged from Offeh’s many research visits to Bray over a period of 18months, where he explored the town’s history as holiday destination and site of leisure. Working with local stories, fables, communities, families and sea swimmers, a new film, community made objects and structures considered the many layers of this former fishing village.
Émile Crowther & Hannah Ní Mhaonaigh
HORSES
Horses, figures in mythology, storytelling, spirituality and a symbol of luck, have always been present in Irish culture. Reflecting on the parallels and layers of what makes a person, what an individual can strive for, destiny and the energy of the underdog, Crowther and Ní Mhaonaigh find respite and joy in happenstance and revel in these alignments in what could be seen as either coincidence or fate.
Isadora Epstein
Voyage!
Drawing on the mythology and history of the voyage of St Brendan from Ireland to North America, Voyage! is hosted by Jasconius, the infernal whale encountered by Saint Brendan and his curragh full of monks at the start of their transatlantic passage off of the west coast of Ireland.
Taking inspiration from the immrama, stories of Irish Sea journeys to the other world. With artist Stéphane Béna Hanly, Brian Rogers, Liadán Scott Keogh, musicians Méabh McKenna and Seamas Hyland, costumes by Amie Egan, backdrop painting by Kathy Tynan, choreography by Saoirse Sexton and design by Stine Sandström.
1iing heaney
World Without End
Emanating from the artist’s ongoing research into Wicklow’s protected native oak forest, Tomnafinnoge Woods, heaney takes objects from nature and re-presents them as virtual and reimagined artefacts.
She proposes a microcosmic exploration of technological integration in the natural world, reimagining the fruit and seeds of trees and plants as companions to vibrant 3D-printed sculptures rendered in brilliant hypernatural colour, interspersed with germinating acorns from Tomnafinnogue oaks.
Emma Roche with Small Night
Lined Out
21 JAN - 11 MAR 2023
With an idiosyncratic approach to painting encompassing weaving, knotting and knitting, Roche's unorthodox textural paintings are accompanied by a new large-scale commission of hand-screen printed works on paper by Small Night. Small Night is an art and text project by James Merrigan.
Being ‘lined-out’, according to the Urban Dictionary, refers to the kind of anxiety felt by an assembly line worker. The stress caused by simple tasks and the monotony of “the line” evokes dynamic states of anxiety and comfort, exacerbated by repetitiveness.
Roche’s preparatory drawings. made quickly and obsessively, are informed by the humdrum of repetitive daily tasks. In contrast, the processes employed by Roche in the knitted paintings are slow and arduous, where long lines of paint are prepared and dried to be used like wool or thread. The ‘should-be’ liquid material is forced to behave in an apparently impossible but measured way.