AS ABOVE, SO BELOW
Lucy Andrews and Carl Giffney
Curated by Padraic E.Moore
March 17th - April 7th, 2012
Preview: Friday March 16th, 7pm
Dearest One,
I hope this finds you in good spirits. As you may be aware, I’m organising an exhibition of Lucy Andrews and Carl Giffney at 126 Gallery in Galway. You’ll undoubtedly already be familiar with the ubiquitous hermetic maxim I’ve taken for the title. I’ve always liked the idea that there is to everything a corresponding analogy. In the context of this exhibition, the title relates to the idea that for every occurrence on our material visible plane there is an invisible, unseen equivalent. For while this is ostensibly a site specific installation comprising of domestic detritus, household products and broken appliances manipulated and placed about the gallery in a ludic manner, it is on another level a field of unseen forces activating a determined space. In this way, AS ABOVE, SO BELOW explores the rhythms between things and emphasises the obvious fact that the positioning of a work of art is an important element of the work, and how, on final analysis, an exhibition possesses an unseen form in itself a ‘new spatiality’.
I’m excited by what Lucy’s been doing in the studio. She’s congregating flotsam and jetsam with an array of gels and unidentifiable liquids into sprawling landscapes upon the floor. She has this tendency toward subjecting low-tech appliances to instinctive and intriguing processes of experimentation. This is what I find most captivating, these actions of taking base materials and separating them from their original use in order to suggest the presence of some hidden potential or maybe the possibility that some force can be released from within them. This manipulation is alchemical. The exhibition at 126 includes a number of objects evocative of ritualistic vessels, in which viscous materials, are activated by energy sources or allowed to form reactions with each other. The resulting experience is olfactory as well as visual, and I suppose one might interpret these works as the manifestation of some primal demiurgic instinct to effect change in ones immediate material surroundings.
The reference to cultic gatherings and props of worship are equally present in Carl’s new installation, which is comprised of a scenography constructed around an object resembling the ark of the covenant. It’s almost like a diorama in that it appears like a reconstruction of an actual event at the centre of which is a sacred relic. Materially his work speaks of subtle energies and instinctive impulses while the narrative implied is one of mass exodus. The elements positioned in the gallery space are presented in a way that ensures they reveal their symbolic potential. It is my hope that this exhibition becomes something that can be ‘taken away’ by the spectator, in a sort of telepathic transmission. Through the intermediate passage from concrete form the works pass from being an idea in the artist’s mind to an idea in the mind of the viewer.
I really do hope that you have the opportunity to visit this show.
Yours fraternally in anticipation,
Pádraic E. Moore