Summer 2005 - Clonmel: Ann Mulrooney and Ciara Healy at South Tipperary Arts Centre
CIRCA 112 review  | | Ann Mulrooney and Ciara Healy: Re plica (detail), 2005, installation shot; courtesy the artists | "More often than not it is the displaced person who attempts to make tangible what is missing and absent." Replica explores displacement and perceptions of it; the show brings together an amalgam of views on the topic. Through a collaborative process, Ann Mulrooney and Ciara Healy have linked thinking by the magpie means of collecting quotes (like the above), books of reference, and domestic-iconic items which relate to what is at the core of cultural identity. Over a period of one year the two exchanged letters; these became visual exchanges using drawings / photomontages in an attempt to capture their own personal interests. Their conceptual concerns are similar: Healy's interest in institutional collections as an imperial mindset, and Mulrooney's interest in the psychology of identity through ornament. The collaboration was born out of chance; neither one had known of the other. After a few words in NCAD's library, the two endeavored to merge, conceptually speaking. With no preconceived plan, they started a dialogue between London and Dublin via snail mail, resulting in Replica at the South Tipperary Arts Center. At the Arts Centre, there is a crude, plywood, open-top box / room butted between two pillars, creating a space within the gallery. One enters through a cut-out doorway into a rectangular stage-set symmetrically balanced with domestic items - a cathedral-like throw back to your great-grandaunt's parlor. A Bible-like album of correspondence takes center stage on an MDF / wood-effect, pedestal occasional table. Curiosity could provide the impulse to open it, but although its contents played a central role throughout the collaboration, it is now secondary õnd merely verifies the process. Behind this there is a shabby, green-velvet, two-seater Chesterfield sofa - harking back to old imperialism. The sagging sofa represents a sentimental beauty that is lost through usage; it replicates this loss. There are wall-hung trophies in heavy black frames, one by Healy of miniature cut-out butterflies, skewered by pins, navigating their way on a pencil-drawn map of the world. Cut from wrappings of food bought at Healy's local Polish deli, these flightless creatures symbolize paths of human migration. There are two identical glass cabinets with internal lights backed up against opposite walls. Each cabinet displays an array of found objects (sourced locally): ornaments, books of reference relating symbol8cally to the contents within the room - books such as Butterflies , The Culture of Collecting and Postcolonalism Ÿillustrate the process of thinking resulting in this installation. There is silverware tampered with (by Healy) through the engraving of random quotations Ð for example, "Since it was not home, Strangeness made sense." Random quotes, it may appear, but thought-provoking, albeit, in this www age, because of their domesticity only for a short while. Placemats and porcelain chihuaha dogs, encased by Mulrooney, are trophies / symbols of colonialism, but there is no boar's head adorning the walls in true reading-room fashion. The act of collecting books and dead animals for display was altogether a male pursuit, a display of wealth, travels and education. The exhibition's reading is not female nor aggressively male; it elicits subtle gender participation.  | | Ann Mulrooney and Ciara Healy: Replica (detail), 2005, installation shot; courtesy the artists | The walls are faux-paneled to dado height with wood-stained MDF, above which the they are papered with flock in a raised-velvet, bamboo design; again there is the reference to travel, particularly in a colonial context; wallpaper that is both aspirational and a trophy of grandeur. One could enter, look and leave. Better to stop, sit and take a reprieve from life. Then you can glean a memory, be it of your granny's 'good room' or of your family history, and delve into many levels of contemplation, be they political, social and or economic; it's all open to interpretation. Pauline O'Connell is an artist living in Kilkenny
|
|
