As Above, So Below

Dear One,

 I hope this finds you in good spirits. As you might already know I’ve been working on this project with Lucy Andrews and Carl Giffney  at Gallery 126 in Galway. You’ll undoubtedly already be familiar with the ubiquitous hermetic maxim which I’ve taken for the title. I have always like the idea that there is to everything a corresponding analogy. In the context of this exhibition the application of the maxim relates to the idea that for every occurrence on the visible, material plane there is an analogous occurrence on the  invisible,unseen plane. For while this is ostensibly a site specific installation comprising of detritus, household materials and broken appliances manipulated and placed in a ludic manner it is -on another level- a field of forces in a determined space. In this way, AS ABOVE , SO BELOW explores rhythms that exist between things, underscoring the obvious element of how awareness of how the positioning of a work of art is an important element of the work, and how, on final analysis, an exhibition is a form in itself, a ‘new spatiality’. While reproducible in infinitely small scale an exhibition also exists on an incredibly huge and theoretically infinite cosmic level.

I’m very excited by what Lucy’s been doing in the studio. She’s been assembling together sprawling landscapes on the floor, ludic assemblages of found domestic objects and various gels and unidentifiable liquids.  There’s a tendency toward  subjecting low-tech appliances to instinctive –and to be honest sometimes intriguing- processes of experimentation. This is what captivates most-the action of taking all   these base materials and separating them  from their original uses in order to suggest the presence of some hidden potential or maybe even suggest the possibility that some force  can be released from within them: a manipulation which could be described as alchemical.   The objects are suggestive 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 connects to the primal instinct to effect  change in ones immediate physical and material surroundings.

There is obvious references to cult gatherings and objects of worship and this aspect is equally present in Carl’s new work which is a physical installation of an object much like an ark. Taking some construction and display methodologies from diorama, it is an enactment or recreation. Similarly  the narrative evoked by his work is one of various energies and impulses- materially it speaks of values in the trope of some mass exodus. The elements positioned in the gallery space are presented in a way that ensured they reveal their symbolic potential, they become mere images that can be ‘taken away’ by the spectator, and in a sort of telepathic transmission, through the intermediate passage to concrete form, they pass from being an idea in the artist’s mind to an idea in the mind of the viewer. These are my aims and intentions anyway and I believe that it’s all going to work. I really do hope that you have the opportunity to visit, Yours fraternally!

P.E.M.