Review C109
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| Mary Modeen: Convex ; courtesy Ards Arts Centre |
...Ahriman's influence is towards the world of matter, to encourage intellectual thinking without the relationship to human being, towards rigidity, production of formulae, technology.
Walking into Ards Arts Gallery, one is immediately met with paraphernalia once considered to be essential elements of folk life. Mary Modeen's exhibition, Patterns of all our Days , is intended as a tribute to the communal traditional activities of an older generation. The smithy, fisherman and matriarchal quilting circle played roles in a pattern that provided a place for everyone in a society where everyone knew their place.
Modeen plays on these perceived roles, quietly subverting them by incorporating lace into fishing netting in Escape and replacing utilitarian brass on a leather harness with decorative glass in Necklace . Once useful objects have been reduced to curios from an existence no longer commercially viable.
Angela Darby is an artist and curator of Fullyformed Projects.
Mary Modeen: Patterns of all our Days , Ards Arts Centre, Newtownards, April 2004
