NEIL CARROLL, JONATHAN MAYHEW, JO MCGONIGLE, KEEF WINTER, CARLA WRIGHT

PREVIEW THURSDAY 25 APRIL 2013, 6-8 PM

26 APRIL – 27 MAY 2013

OPEN FRIDAYS & SATURDAYS 12 – 5 PM

Within FLOOD stands a gallery within a gallery – re-purposing a video room from the last exhibition, rotated and positioned with its back to the entrance, denying the visitor an immediate impression of the exhibition. The room houses 3 artists works, all wall based, while 2 artists sculptures occupy the floor outside the structure. The exhibition seeks to break an easy relationship with the act of viewing and navigating a space, and to question what happens to a work’s autonomy in a thematic gathering of works.

Keef Winter’s Constructing the Debris entices the visitor into the exhibition space, broken concrete structures with wire protruding from their surfaces, and suggesting Brancusi’s Endless Column in their moulded concrete shapes. Keef Winter explores the aesthetic potential of construction materials through works inspired by the extreme cases of order and chaos in city spaces, assembled in the style of the amateur handyman.

Neil Carroll’s Between Leaving and a Possible Return stands between the internal gallery structure and the viewer, a complexity of construction which is both formal and rough, and referencing architectural construction, function and meaning as well as the nature of the art object. His work searches for schematics, posing the logical conjecture that if architectural boundaries are representative of human potential and limitations and are based on pre-defined and systematic solutions to existing problems, then, by stripping back and pulling apart, a framework or diagram can be exposed.

Jo McGonigle’s Duet – [Abstract Composition] rests on a shelf within the structure, a delicate and fragile abstract compostion. Magenta ink on a paper bag, Duet references, as in much of McGonigle’s work, the canon of art history but continually questions our relationship with that weight of history by utilizing the everyday in its making. The vocabulary of abstraction is entwined with reference to experience. By navigating a route through abstraction as a readymade construction and its potential reproducibility her aim is to unify the diverse language of the “abstract” as a way to consider perception in everyday life.

Jonathan Mayhew’s digital collages, LLLAYERSSS, take predominantly family photographs found on the internet and superimpose the metal band Slayer’s logo over them repeatedly until neither are distinguishable. Mayhew uses the wealth of images freely available on internet sites to continually question our sense of privacy and democracy via its juxtaposition against a ‘darker’ set of cultural references as symbolized here by Slayer. Mayhew has also produced a publication for the exhibition: ‘For’ is a small 8-page zine, made up from little slippages and frustrations that are expressed within its few pages. There are two text pieces, one a variation on a wall piece that is yet unrealised and the other which exists between the pages of the zine, a poem of sorts. D.C. is a poem based on a miss transcribing of another poem that is read on a Youtube video. The images and the pages of the zine are made from lost objects – sections of old newspapers and corners of photocopied books are reconstituted to hold new information other than their own.

Carla Wright’s Concerns of the living interacting with the dead stuff of buildings (I and II), use small sections of found security glass and ceramic, delicately hung on sections of frames. Wright’s work examines plans and realities of social housing and communal architecture, predominately 20th century modernist and socialist buildings of our new towns and cities. Modern and future ruins appear as historical artefacts in the work – altered construction materials are shown alongside handmade crafted objects or graphite drawings – acting as archival material for these architectural follies and failures.

FLOOD is a not for profit exhibition space curated by Paul McAree. Previous projects include Turn to Red, an exhibition featuring Maryam Jafri, Stephen Gunning, Jim Ricks, Sean Lynch and Suzanne Treister; Backwards into Paradise featuring Seamus Harahan, Lorraine Neeson, Tom Smith, Nadim Vardag and Michael John Whelan; a commissioned publication by Kevin Atherton, and projects with Theresa Nanigian, Terry Atkinson and Flávia Müller Medeiros.

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FLOOD, Unit 3, JAMES JOYCE STREET, DUBLIN 1, IRELAND

WWW.FLOODDUBLIN.COM INFO@FLOODDUBLIN.COM Contact Paul McAree +353 (0) 86 793 1617

FLOOD is kindly supported by Dublin City Council, Arts Office and Lismore Castle Arts