C110 review

Sligo: Maud Cotter at Model: Niland

Maud Cotter: cat's pyjamas (detail), 2004;courtesy Model:Niland

Happenstance, certainty and interconnectedness are within the nucleus of Maud Cotter's exhibition, more than anything, at the Model Arts and Niland Gallery in Sligo. The exhibition comprises a selection of modular structural installations, vernacular objects relocated, and a game about the certainty of chance. the game, which explores the rules of universal order, is the first work one meets in the gallery foyer. It was commissioned by Cotter from scientist David Kovowicz. Sequences of presence and absence are created by moving peg-like units along a perfectly aligned grid.

Maud Cotter: more than anything (detail), 2004, birch veneer plywood;courtesy Model:Niland

There is nothing accidental about the seemingly haphazard layout of this show, but there are serendipitous moments where Cotter has embraced chance and circumstance. The specific work more than anything, when it is not marching boldly around the gallery, is creeping ahead of itself defiantly, in an effort to conquer more space than anything else in the gallery. There is nothing encoded in the 1.5mm machine-cut plywood squares, from which the structure has been built; no information, no implication, no narrative. This serves to focus attention on the form of the structure and its conversation with surrounding space.

Maud Cotter: the game; courtesy Model:Niland

In other circumstances is similar in structure to the installation mentioned above but shows its personality in another mood. Three calm constructions hang from ceiling to floor, like geometrically lacy curtains revealing small chinks of brightness. Its white square cards reflect the light that the brown ply absorbed in More than anything. Where More than anything is insidious, In other circumstances is serene.

In the room between these contrasting installations, the artist delights in the joys of a great bag of mixed goodies that is The cat's pyjamas. This work is a celebration of the life of wholly unspectacular objects, such as kitchenware and furniture from the fifties, and it is attentive to the spaces in which they exist. Cotter embraces their peculiarities and loss of credibility as fashionable objects. The wild cat's wizardry in this space renders the domestic vernacular spectacular. The installation is cleverly choreography, which is important for the objects that are themselves attentive to their existence in space and the chambers of air and negative volume they encompass.

Maud Cotter: cat's pyjamas, 2004; courtesy Model:Niland

Just as one of these works introduces the conditions of the next, the last piece in this show, Amalgam, with its stacked cardboard boxes, seems to introduce the first chapter for a sequel.

Through her exploration of materials, awareness of the peculiar in the ordinary, and interest in spatial relationships and universal order, Cotter has made objects and structures that would defy any viewer's apathy, forcing it to give way to engaged curiosity.

Regina Gleeson is a writer on art and technology.

Maud Cotter: More than Anything, Mode Arts and Niland Gallery, Sligo, September / October 2004

Article reproduced from CIRCA 110, Winter 2004, pp.88–89
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