Bit of a run-around yesterday. Maria McKinney's show at the Lab, Foley Street, Dublin - catch it if you can, it ends tomorrow, and she's done some very interesting stuff with tables and jigsaws, shopping baskets and hair - then off to Drogheda. A mix-up in Swords meant we missed Amanda Coogan's reading at the Highlanes Gallery, but did get a shot at the show itself. Marienbad Palace, curated by Jacqui McIntosh, engages the whole of the space, a converted church.

That fascinates me. The architects of the remodelling of the interior had clearly chosen a balance between concealing and revealing, allowing some of the original features to show, hiding others to make the gallery work. There's a harmony to what they've created, forms intersecting to balance new and old.

Not so, though, two pieces in particular in Marienbad Palace. Laura Buckley's contribution consists largely of a video projection onto a rotating mirror-faced cube. Rectangular, rhomboid, trapezoid, broken shapes get thrown all around, splintering the regularity of the darkened space.

In the main open area, Ian Monroe's piece is a series of intersecting lines and planes in three dimensions, a sort of toying with its own forms while cutting a slight diagonal with the gallery space itself.

It's this diagonal that has stuck with me, along with the more unpredictable angles of Buckley's work. I'm wondering - and I'm sure others have pondered in a similar fashion - if a diagonal (of variable length, depending) is a symptom or metaphor for art. It's this intervention that breaks the regularity, cuts both the physical and psychology space, to spark meaning out of geometry.

More on the Highlanes show here: http://www.highlanes.ie/Activity.aspx?ActivityID=95; Maria McKinney here: http://www.dublincity.ie/RecreationandCulture/ArtsOffice/TheLAB/Pages/Gallery.aspx

Comment 1 on 2010-08-27 16:22:23 by Sean
Amanda 'Googan' could this be a new stage name?

Comment 2 on 2010-08-30 17:02:02 by Peter
Oops! Fixed. Peter