Cult of Engagement

Project Arts Centre, 39 East Essex St, Dublin Mon-Sat 11am-8pm (closed Dec 23- Jan 1) Until Jan 30 01-8819613

Project Arts Centre, 39 East Essex St, Dublin Mon-Sat 11am-8pm (closed Dec 23- Jan 1) Until Jan 30 01-8819613

In 1960 the French artist Yves Klein jumped, arms outstretched, from a height onto a street in Paris, an action recorded in an image called Leap into the Void. The sheet that broke his fall was edited out of the photomontage, but his evocation of the void was effective and close to the heart of everything he did.

Some years back Clodagh Emoe recreated Klein's action at the same location, and for her as well the void, a vast, unknown otherness, has been essential to her approach to art. Emoe is interested in exploration and the limits of the imagination. Her newly commissioned installation at the Project is distinctly theatrical, recalling Gerard Byrne's In Repertory, which was also staged there.

In that and Emoe's Cult of Engagement, which brings us back to Greek drama, the architecture and props of theatre are offered as frameworks in which visitors play all available ritualistic roles: audience, chorus, protagonists. The petrified flags that embellish the stage in Cultsymbolise the magical span of theatrical time.

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Aidan Dunne

Aidan Dunne

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