THE high ceilinged gallery is almost without light. Three dark forms, of human dimension, cluster in a corner, stage right. On the facing wall a video loop is projected to form a screen size of over two metres by three. Behind the viewer's right shoulder loom two shiny, two metre high structures, medicine bottle blue bathed in a pool of light.
On screen, in a botanical garden of dipping paths and coppices a female figure is the focus, the target, of a voyeuristic camera. She has long dark hair, bare arms. On first appearances she might be barely in her teens. Her short and childish dress is an electric blue emblazoned with a red target motif, the camera pursues and confronts her as, in turn, nervously, she confronts the camera person and runs again down path and up wooded slopes where more disconcertingly, trees are hung with little replicas of the target frock. Again and again and again.
Gradually, as eyes adjust to the low light, the objects to the viewer's left are revealed as dark coloured, clumpy, heavily textured, wax free standing models of a dress of not dissimilar cut. By contrast, the objects behind are attenuated, lightweight, almost elegant, replicas. In fact these sculptures, Three Dresses and the contrasting Two Dresses, could stand alone as works by their creator Laura Gannon, an artist in residence at IMMA. They explore the areas of tension which exist between the image and perceptions of the female body and those of the fabrics which may be chosen to clothe it.
However, the inclusion of the deliberate am biguous voyeuristic video, featuring the artist herself disguised as someone on the cusp of pubescence, ups the stakes, adding a provocative and confrontational element previously only hinted at.