C103
Review
Janet Mullarney: The Bermuda Triangle
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Janet Mullarney: The Bermuda Triangle, installation
shot; courtesy the artist
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Like Dante, the visitor to Janet Mullarney's
exhibition at the Crawford Gallery becomes an unwelcome tourist
in the kingdom of the dead. Consider Limbo. A spine
of small hardwood chairs exactly corresponds to a rank of
white linen garments mounted high on the opposite wall. Where
each garment's starched wing touches the wall, three bleach-white
fingers pinch its hem.
In the time it takes the eye to traverse
the space between them, it becomes apparent that neither garment
nor chair is significant in itself. This space is disturbed
by the emptiness of a more profound presence. Imagine: there,
a moment ago, twelve expectant beings, with bright, expectant
eyes, sat patiently. Shedding the straitjackets of their existence,
these innocent wraiths untangled themselves from the restraints
of their condition. Unseen ushers took them by the hand into
pale infinity. Art, like the dead, exceeds death.
On the floor of the gallery, in an
atoll of salt, a little host has congregated. With this tableau,
Mullarney fuses the idea of a culture, unexpectedly solidified
by catastrophe, with the attempts of a civilization to preserve
itself in death. Again we are brought to the precincts of
necropolis. Figures recline on their sepulchres embracing
animals or objects. White on white, with features blunted
and dulled, they have succumbed to the shelter of time's dead
sediment; some grave-panels have slid aside, revealing a sliver
of nothingness inside. Nevertheless, they possess a conversational
mien. Death, for this culture, is a hospitable host.
Dr Kieran Cashell is a part-time
lecturer at the Limerick School of Art and Design, Limerick
Institute of Technology.
Janet Mullarney: The Bermuda Triangle,
Crawford Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Cork, November 2002
