For the most part, the sculptural works in Eilis O'Connell's exhibition at Green on Red are ambiguous objects. The smaller, domestic-sized, wall-mounted pieces are beautiful forms that seem half-familiar, recalling a variety of natural shapes, like shells or fossils, bodily organs or plants.
Reviewed:
Eilis O'Connell, New work, Green on Red Gallery until November 16th (01-6713414)
Mend, 5th@Storehouse until November 10th (01-4084800)
But it looks as if none of them are an explicit representation of any of these things, with perhaps one exception. That is an extraordinary work - Old Molecules - which consists of a series of globular forms, the outer surface of which is mde of moss.
This cluster resembles photomicrographs of not so much molecules as tiny organisms. It is exceptional for O'Connell not only in this regard, but also because she leaves the surface alone.
The naturally tangled, elaborate textures of the moss are the surface of the piece. Elsewhere, in works that are modelled in plaster with an eye to casting in bronze, she fine-tunes, polishes and generally engages obsessively with the surface, for example repeatedly applying and sanding away coats of gold paint.
The process gives her sculptures an incredible quality of finish. It also engenders the feeling that she is almost trying to erase the forms, smoothing and refining and polishing them to a kind of invisibility. Head, for example, is a slightly irregular but completely smooth curvaceous form. If there were ever features there, and evidence of individuality, they have been buffed and sanded and worn out of existence.
Yet what remains in the case of this and other pieces is not nothing. The forms are beautiful, and they have a hard-won, weathered, impassive elegance.
They may not represent anything explicitly, but they are at home in the world, they comfortably relate to a familiar language of form, even if they slip in and out of whatever morphological category we momentarily associate them with. Often our attention is subtly directed towards points, blank areas, sharp edges or openings, all elements that give the works an enlivening charge.
Although her track record proves that she is more than able for large-scale sculpture, I was less sure about the two largest works, two black-painted, hooded, anthropomorphic, standing forms that have the look of charred wood about them. They are slightly sinister, which is fine, but also, untypically for O'Connell, slightly awkward. A series of works on paper uses the imprints of natural materials, and natural materials themselves, including chlorophyll, as a dye. With their combination of grid-like blocks and their evocation of natural processes they recall the drawings of Joseph Beuys, but a little uneasily. The best, including number 18 in the exhibition, which is excellent, hint at where they might lead. Mend at 5th@Storehouse is an inventive group show curated by increasingly busy artist-curator Mark Garry.
Beyond the fact that all five participating artists have exhibited in Tripswitch, the miniature gallery just by the entrance to 5th, there is no obvious link between them. The closest we get to such a link is Garry's reference to the way each of them evidences an interest in a specialised technology, or skill, or an area of science or industry. Rather than offering an ironic commentary on these areas, Garry suggests, the artists absorb and adopt these subjects and processes as a means of devising new ways of working.
As it happens, this is more or less borne out by some, if not all of the work on view. Another link might be the obsessive quality that comes through - particularly in the pieces by Christophe Neuman and Robert Carr, both of whom display the ability to devise and carry through elaborate conceptual schemes based on modular design and production principles. Unusually in the field of contemporary art, they both generate forms that are really exceptional objects in themselves, and leave you asking just how they did them.
The answer is probably with considerable ingenuity and incredible application. Strictly speaking, all Carr does is to make two spheres, but in such a way that he leaves you amazed both at his own resourcefulness and at the geometry of solid forms.
Neumann refers inventively to the process of mass production, packaging, advertising and consumption. His customised collection of toy and ornamental figurines is particularly striking and slightly strange - in a good way.
Slavek Kwi, who plays a major part in the currently touring Soundshapes project involving object-makers and composers, is a fascinating artist whose installation here, Estuary, is a kind of landscape art, but not as we know it. Sounds from various natural locations are ingeniously employed to create delicate, evocative dynamic effects in the gallery. A gentle, quietly inviting piece, it is in a sense a sound world made visible.
Louisa Sloan also introduces aspects of the natural world into the gallery, wittily with her Julius and Caesar, which cleverly exploits the two circular booths that are a permanent feature of the gallery, less successfully, perhaps, with her series of photographs of sunlight through foliage.
Like Carr and Neumann, Karl Burke's sculptural pieces employ modular geometry, though in a more literal, conventionally sculptural way. Still, the work is good and fits nicely in context.
