Medusa in Pieces
At VISUAL, Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow, September 30th- January 14th
In Sonia Shiel’s exhibition, 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 Pulse Events in the areas of archeo-gaming, performance, and fiction, curated by Kate Strain, at Kunstverein Aughrim in collaboration with Benjamin Hanuessek, 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 and are inhabited from time to time, on occasions of technical and dressing performances, by a number of natural elements, including lunar tides; seeds; and a pulse, all of which defy their 2-dimensional origins.
The Three Acts of Medusa in Pieces
Through a series of technical performances, Medusa in Pieces will change shape four times and each time elucidate on its four themes - transposition, restoration, disembodiment, and prediction. By adapting the myth of Medusa, a story of misrepresentation and disputed agency, the technical performances exploit the exhibition’s own evolution from disembodiment to full constitution through a series of image-making tasks. Each of the three hinged, vertical landscapes can mutate, and divide; defy depth, time, space, and matter; and can be experienced in a variety of display sequences, front and back.
In this infinite circuit of gentle surprises, the landscapes become props for a three act performance. They are halved and speared; become sprawling terrains, amphibious and ventriloquial creatures; vanish the living, conjure the lost, and resurrect the dead - all the while, blooming. On their surfaces, these landscapes began flowered, forming creaturely shapes and patterns that were highlighted in the opening performance Dress For Angles, and gradually undone over the first month of the exhibition.
In the coming weeks the work will be dressed again for new angles. In the final performance, the works become feathered, furred, shelled and pawed, and in doing so appear to command other-worldly properties. One, finally engulfed by fire and impenetrable boarders, springs teeth. Another, shell-like and recoiling, with closed fists of metallic claws, opens into the shape of bear-hugging submission. And another, armed with botanical markings, has hairy legs revolving around a blood-filled body of sleeping talons. They are all headless, and somewhere inside them is Medusa.
Act 1. Block Punch
2023
Oil on canvas, on wooden slats, with armature of hinges, holes, cleats, studs, and feet. Dimensions variable
Act 2. Break Fall
2023
Oil on canvas, on wooden slats, with armature of hinges, holes, cleats, studs, and feet. Dimensions variable
Act 3. Bite
2023
Oil on canvas, on wooden slats, with armature of hinges, holes, cleats, studs, and feet. Dimensions variable
1st Technical Performance Event
Technical Performance
On the opening night, Dress For Angles (a technical performance) occurred every 30 minutes.
Four performers meet in an unannounced cluster, and create a terrain of spring-boards, which double-task as mp3 sound-boxes, perforated with holes, inside of which, a series of props are poised. These include listening horns, dried and living flowers, and candles.
In 3.5 minutes the performers dress the three paintings with flowers; illuminate and extend the modular path as needed to progress; retrieve a crystal ball 'hidden' within one of the works to the sound of seeds rolling inside; and walk the ball to its position on the terrain, singing a metronomic chant together.
The performers locate the sound of a bird (field recorded in the Burren) from one of many holes in the three works. And, they excavate an 'echo' of their own chant, played back to them. On hearing it, the performers undo their actions - they pick the flowers, 'blow' out the lights/candles, walk the future (ball) back down the path, and pack up the terrain. The bird sound quietens, and the performers rejoin the crowd, leaving the landscape as it was.
The technical performances are opportunities to animate the works, to explore their physical properties and to add other dimensions - time, transposition, restoration, disembodiment and prediction. The opening technical performance recurs every 30 minutes of the opening event, and the tasks appear again throughout the exhibition’s series of events, and as a means to the exhibition’s unfolding presentations - both dressed and undressed.
The opening technical performance occurred with Aoibhinn O'Dea, Stephane Bena Hanly, Niall Cullen, and Isadora Epstein. With sound by Liam O’Callaghan.
Photos by Ros Kavanagh. Installation Shots at VISUAL, Centre for Contemporary Art.
See More
2nd Technical Performance
3 technical performances - which ‘shape-shift’ three landscape works along with a screening of a short film with Kunstverein Aughrim, by Jenny Brady and Barry Lynch, about Shiel’s Pulse Events with Gaming Researcher - Benjamin Hanussek, Theatre Director - Anne Bogart, and Author of Death By Landscape - Elvia Wilk, toward the development of Medusa in Pieces.
Also ON at VISUAL
Her Hare by Caroline Achaintre, and The excavation by Maeve Brennan