THERE is more missing from Lili Dujourie's slender show of selected work at the Douglas Hyde than a few extra sculptures to fill up the gallery space. The notion that there is something lost, or perhaps simply present in an unrecognisable form, seems to be key to this solemn, mysterious show.
The majority of works feature representations of drapery cool, white, plaster items that seem always to have been left behind. These draperies, that flow over the gallery like Dali's watches, occasionally appear functional, even if in uncertain ways. The plaster cloth which dresses a crisp lectern in Stil Leven might easily have had a liturgical role the pristine plaster folds that spill over the marble shelf of Nature Morte suggests a discarded cover or veil.
Folds and their depiction in stone have long, been, one of the most striking manners for an artist, a stone carver or a sculptor, to demonstrate a highly evolved technique. Anyone, the truism runs, who is able to make stone appear as soft and compliant as velvet or cotton has grasped the golden prize of art. Dajounie's belated contribution to this tradition is to underline the paradox that these moments of euphoric precision might also, paradoxically, represent a headlong flight from figuration.
While most attention may have been focused on verisimilitude of the drapery as a sign of advanced technique, it also came to be used as an expressive aid to the content of the work. Artists from Bellini to Antoni have bolstered the psychic drama of their work with enigmatic drapery.
Dujourie's idea seems solid enough. She taps into the funereal echoes with which history and art seem to have glossed white drapery, but secularises the sense of loss of departure and impermanence that they suggest. She achieves this translation with reasonable accuracy but her ambition seems to remain a restricted one.
