AT VISUAL, CARLOW

My Medusa in Pieces opened Saturday 30th September 3-6pm / at VISUAL, Carlow, with a host of new exhibitions: Her Hare by Caroline Achaintre and The Excavation by Maeve Brennan.
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In Shiel’s Medusa in Pieces, landscape appears to possess multi-dimensional capacity, including transposition, restoration, disembodiment, and prediction.

This body of work has been developed through a series of generative events in the areas of archeo-gaming, performance, and fiction, curated by Kate Strain, at Kunstverein Aughrim, in collaboration with Benjamin Hanussek, gaming researcher; Anne Bogart, theatre director; and Elvia Wilk, author of Death By Landscape.

The legacy of these events is retained in the exhibition’s materiality. Composed of interchangeable wooden slats, the paintings possess mutable properties of other things – a magician’s rig; a music box; a terrain; a portal, a roulette wheel - and by a number of natural elements including lunar tides; seeds; and a pulse, all of which defy their 2-dimensional origins.

In adapting the myth of Medusa, a story of misrepresentation and disputed agency, the exhibition’s central looping narrative explores its own evolution from disembodiment to full constitution.

This exhibition is beautifully curated by Benjamin Stafford. Many thank-yous for unquantifiable support from Kunstverein Aughrim and Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, as well as many amazing participants, and the Arts Council of Ireland’s Project Award.