One + One

Highlanes Gallery, Saint Laurence St, Drogheda Mon- Sat 10.30am-5pm Until Apr 28 041-9803311 highlanes.ie

Highlanes Gallery, Saint Laurence St, Drogheda Mon- Sat 10.30am-5pm Until Apr 28 041-9803311 highlanes.ie

Drogheda-born Brigid McLeer is based in London and teaches at Coventry School of Art Design. She certainly aims high in her work for this, her first solo show in her hometown (it will travel on to Wexford in July), referencing both James Joyce and iconoclastic French film-maker Jean Luc Godard.

The title One + One is taken from a 1968 Godard film that includes a sequence featuring The Rolling Stones recording Sympathy for the Devil. McLeer reworks it in a séan nós arrangement. Joyce’s Ulysses is also revisited in several ways. “Central to the whole idea of the work is the idea of naming,” she says.

McLeer’s methodology is to stage “durational performative responses to pre-existing texts, sites or images”, and her work is both an homage to and a continuation of the various sources she employs. It takes the form of video installation, one of which is based on a seven-hour performance enacted in 2010, and a set of drawings on Perspex.

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Aidan Dunne

Aidan Dunne

Aidan Dunne is visual arts critic and contributor to The Irish Times