CIRCA 113 review

Belfast: Cecily Brennan at Ormeau Baths Gallery

Cecily Brennan: Collar, DVD still; courtesy the artist

Balancing is the first major solo show in Northern Ireland by the artist Cecily Brennan. While Brennan has exhibited widely in Ireland and internationally, the Ormeau Baths Gallery has curated a unique opportunity to view these recent works collectively.

On entering the first gallery the viewer is immediately drawn to a small-scale video work to the rear of the gallery. Collar shows a female figure violently squeezing, choking and clawing at a collar around her neck. The work is reminiscent of early performance works by Marina Abramovic, which attempted to push the limits of mental and physical states using the body. Where Brennan differs is in her non-use of self-image and her production of the work as physical theatre. Blood splatters the visual area in a darkly comic set-up that appears to operate as a visual interpretation of a psychological state.

Two small egg-tempera paintings are adjacent, Self harm (male) and Young girl with eczema (further paintings proliferate in the gallery, with similar subject matter). The paint is applied in thin layers. This delicate approach to the surface hints at a deeper internal inquiry into the pain that informs such images.

Opposite, Hinge-ons for bad days is a sculpture made from stainless steel. Suggestive of surgical procedures, the work forms casings for the lower legs. This medium is further used in the sculptural works upstairs, From the moment you were born and Bandaged. These pieces offer a more material connection to the viewer in their life-size presentation and protective armouring.

Top to bottom above: Cecily Brennan: Melancholia, DVD stills; courtesy the artist

The first work encountered in the following space is a sound recording, Heat (3 interviews). The viewer becomes listener to a series of descriptions of processes related to eczema. While the women speak these physical narratives, what emerges is the emotional scarring caused by this skin disease, "I don't have tears anymore. I get stings but no tears come out." Another woman comments, "It made me think of the silences of other people." This statement appears to be at the centre of Brennan's themes, a space of inquiry into the suffering and voicelessness of others.

When leaving this space, two small ink-on-paper works, Squeeze and Melancholia, offer contemplations on themes that have much historical resonance. Melancholia, in its composition, is reminiscent of the Los caprichos ink washes by Goya circa 1800. In those works, Goya framed his figures in cloaks of dark washes, only offering light in the distant top corner of the frame. In Brennan's pieces the dark washes appear to emanate from the isolated body in its psychological, subjective landscape, and again like Goya, the light source is an area beyond the body. The approach to subjectivity is similar in both artists, in that the 'social responsibility' of the work of art is in contemplating the pain of an other.

Melancholia is also an initiation to the next of Brennan's video works, which carries the same title. In it, the viewer enters a darkened room and takes a moment to re-adjust to the surroundings; the only light source is the floor-to-ceiling projection itself. A woman lies naked and in a frontal position in a rectangular wooden box, suggesting confinement and limitation. A white sheet surrounds the still figure, while a black liquid (like in the ink drawing) slowly colours the sheet. This is a piece of ten to eleven minutes, and the viewer is left to emotionally engage with the reduction of light as the figure becomes further enveloped in blackness. As with all Brennan's video works, the camera is fixed, and subjectivity expresses itself in performative actions. The viewer must directly confront the imagery being shown while negotiating his or her own unstable position in relation to the given work.

Top and above: Cecily Brennan: Balancing, DVD stills; courtesy the artist

Next is a video piece bearing the title of the show, Balancing. Two small monitors stand at each side of a large-scale video projection; their positioning entails a physical configuration which is in dynamic dialogue with the images shown in the installation as a whole. While the small monitors have a three-dimensional, quasi-sculptural presence, they both are flat-screened, returning to Brennan's relationship to surface. The larger work shows a woman balancing on a large white ball, this time in a white space with natural light. As she becomes unbalanced her hand and shadow connect as she uses the wall to steady her body. Close-ups of these actions are shown on the smaller monitors but they operate on different time-codes.

Upstairs three video works, Collapsing can, Bandaging and Rubber band, contrast with the large meditative works below. In the first of these pieces we see a red can buckle under the strain of an invisible heat source; in the second, a woman wraps her arm in bandage; the third piece shows a woman slapping a rubber band continuously against her arm. Although these works are small in physical and temporal scale, collectively they examine stages of the unstable processes of cause and intent.

Cecily Brennan: Rubber band, DVD still; courtesy the artist

Hero's engine - a generic term for a device which propels itself by shooting steam from one or more orifices - is the title for Brennan's large-scale video projected onto a suspended screen in the centre of the room. Although literal by title in describing the action in the piece, the work also demonstrates Isaac Newton's third law of motion. In this law he proposes that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Thus we are brought back to the title of the show, Balancing, and the complex equilibrium between physical and emotional states.