Irish Times writers review Marie Foley at the Fenton Gallery in Cork and the Dublin Bach Singers/OSC and Blanaid Murphy at St Ann's Church in Dublin.
Marie Foley
Fenton Gallery, Cork
One of the most distinctive qualities of Marie Foley's sculptures is the way in which they fuse functional and aesthetic attributes within a single form.
In fact, if one were to seek an artist who resides precisely within the middle ground between these two spheres of practice, then surely that search would end here, at this exhibition.
Foley's sculptural practice grows from a sense of history and place, using found objects that at one stage may have been rather mundane, but in her hands, take on depth and meaning. Items such as pincers, a grater, valves and thermometers exist not as Duchampian objets d'art, but instead, are reconstituted, juxtaposed or integrated with other sculptural materials.
The attention to detail and the exquisite finish of the works allow the use of wood, porcelain, glass and metal to take on a near religious intensity.
The hand-held dimensions of the sculptures invite a tactile connection for the viewer, which is also borne out by their implied mechanical and functional qualities. It is easy then to imagine these forms as being employed to measure, demarcate, contain or express the physical elements. But further again, they seem to mark the development and history of human endeavour.
As a consequence there is a compulsion to assign a civilisation to these objects, imagining their use as central to the daily lives of its people. But which civilisation and when were they active? This fictitious civilisation, lost to history, may have resurrected discoveries from an earlier age, drawing upon and inheriting its knowledge bases, but limited by lost resources.
The provocation of such interpretations speaks volumes about the potential within Foley's artwork to inspire your imagination.
Runs until April 25th
Review by Mark Ewart
Dublin Bach Singers/
OSC/Blainaid Murphy
St Ann's Church, Dublin
St John's Passion - J.S. Bach
Bach's St John's Passion is partly narrative, partly drama, partly a meditation and all music.
It could almost be a religious opera but it could also be a devotional service of the Lutheran Church. The many chorales or hymns that are included might well be sung by a sufficiently gifted congregation, but of course the solo parts and the more complex choral contributions demand the highest standards of performance.
The Dublin Bach Singers sang with a welcome vigour and strength of tone, both in their elegiac comments on the action and in their venomous interjections in the trial scene. The narrative, taken from Luther's translation of the gospels, was sung with dignity and a subtle heightening of the dramatic emphasis where appropriate, by John Elwes, and the small but important part of Christ was sung with equal effectiveness by Nigel Williams, who also sung the bass arias. Simon O'Leary was Pilatus and the other soloists, Lynda Lee, Alison Browner and Robin Tritschler sang their arias in their own individual style and emotive ways but always as part of the whole.
The six sections of the work were carefully organised so that the religious and dramatic tensions built up slowly culminating in the aria for alto, viola de gamba and continuo Es ist vollbracht.
Blainaid Murphy guided the singers and the orchestra of St Cecilia to this most telling climax and kept the emotional temperature high right to the very end.
Review by Douglas Sealy
