What does it all mean? is a question put under fervid scrutiny in Paul O'Neill's mysterious installation After An Incident. Michael Wilson's catalogue essay conjures up enough fog around the whole notion of interpretation to keep all but the most ardent closure junkies at bay, but O'Neill's smooth and glossy orchestration of sound, lighting, photo-images and text still seems to crave an audience.
The majority of the photoimages are depopulated night scenes, with a sharp mix of green spaces and signifiers of automotive civilisation that suggests the suburbs, while other clues fix the location as France. The images form some sort of social group, but their relationship is vexed, as though the link between them is as close to accidental as movements of the same narrative can be.
By formally withdrawing from the work, O'Neill seems to address the ways an audience approaches an idea, the system of interpretations which visitors will build, and the way these approaches have been structured by media images.
The strategy is very familiar indeed - the title, After An Incident, might easily come attached to a photograph by Willie Doherty. But there is a suggestion here that O'Neill has broader interests than an investigation of the business of making sense, a quiet hint that the artist is more concerned with the compulsions that lead to interpretation than in the architecture of meaning.
Until October 4th
