Review C109 Belfast: Revealing Objects at the Naughton Gallery at Queen's
Revealing Objects is an exhibition of fifty-two artworks which propose to revisit and develop the historic links between artists and archaeologists in light of contemporary practice. Archaeological and palaeoecological approaches decipher, record and reconstruct ancient societies and investigate the relationships among people, animals, plants and their environments through sophisticated technology applied to found or excavated objects and/or texts. The question which this exhibition proposes is: can artworks made in the present not only contribute to our understanding of ancient societies but open up new spaces or ways for us to connect with the past? Although the artworks on display do investigate the long-standing relationship between artists and archaeologists, they also glean new spaces and ways of connection through a multitude of approaches, of which three are prominent.
Terence Gravett's screenprint and block work, is a complex collage of rendered images and coloured shapes taken mostly from the ancient Roman world, with explicit references to archaeological sites, artefacts and museum displays. 1 Similarly the work of Gerry Gleason, Catherine Hehir and Natalia Black also reference ancient societies such as the Romans, and sites from Morocco and China. These works are among a few of the pieces which return to and/or interrogate traditional approaches - since the Renaissance - of illustrating and imagining ancient societies for the museum context. This work opens challenging spaces about the stability of the objectivity and authority implied in museum displays as a fixed embodiment of the past.
Flying boulder by Philip Flanagan emerges from a series of works which investigates huge stones in the Irish landscape that have been sculpted by both humans and nature. Akin to Flanagan's work, pieces by Freda Meaney and Susan McKeever are aesthetic responses to explored landscapes and places. These responses reopen discussions of aesthetic considerations and effects in both contemporary and ancient societies and their bearings on social relationships and values.
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| Hazel Neill: Fragment, 2003, digital image, 25 x 16 cm; courtesy Naughton Gallery |
Hazel Neill's digital print, Fragment , scrutinizes how our reading of material objects gives them significance and this work illustrates her preoccupation with the viewer's intellectual and emotive response to fragments and broken elements. 2 The work of Michele Horrigan, Katie Blue, Peter Neill, Jane Mortimer, Zara Hunt and Gerard Devlin finds resonance here also. Through the excavation of subtle residues, these works examine the spectator's processes of both looking at and attaching meaning to objects in museum displays or those outside this canon, exposing contemporary complexities in social relations and value systems.
Overall the artworks - some more successfully than others - interrogate the processes of interpretation which both art and archaeology apply. They suggest a beneficial space for both to excavate the past and to reconsider its representation in the future.
Cherie Driver is a researcher living in Belfast.
The art competition and exibition Revealing Objects was organised by the School of Archaeology and Palaeoecology at the Naughton Gallery in Queens University Belfast. Philip Flanagan took first prize, and £1000, Second prize was awarded to Hazel Neill and third prize to Terence Gravett.
Revealing Objects , Naughton Gallery at Queens, Belfast, May / June, 2004. This year, the Revealing Object exhibition will tour to Ballymena Museum from 11 December 2004 to 31 January 2005.
