EXHIBITIONS
“Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain” at Lismore Castle Arts
“Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain” is an exhibition of works by artists who address relationships to the natural world, presenting the natural world as an ecological system that is co-extensive with a broad range of materials and concepts. The exhibition includes artworks, as well as plant life, wishful thinking, polystyrenes, a water-cooling system, and a host of other agents.
There are artworks that reference psychoactive plants (Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh, Melanie Bonajo), automated forestry production (Edward Clydesdale Thomson), environments of spiritual nourishment (Veit Laurent Kurz) and morphologies of animal, vegetable, mineral form (Gemma Anderson). These artistic approaches do more than take the natural world as an addressably static and mute reference. Instead, the natural world is understood as an active and continually reframeable space.
Alongside works by contemporary artists are a selection of prints by photographer Karl Blossfeldt, produced in the early 20th century. These photographs are close-ups of plant life that simultaneously emphasise the mechanistic structures that exist in nature and the camera’s revolutionary powers of magnification.
The development of the exhibition has been informed by recent writings (Timothy Morten, Bruno Latour) that propose new understandings of ecology and ecological objects and their extension beyond human perception. The title borrows from an album by Pavement.
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain is curated by Matt Packer (Director, CCA Derry~Londonderry).
.
until 12 April 2015
Edward Clydesdale Thomson, Nina, 2015
Melanie Bonajo, Matrix Botanica – Biosphere above Nations, 2013
Veit Laurent Kurz, Herba-4 Sculpture #10, 2014
Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh, Giants Ring, 2015
Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh, Spangles, Gullies, Trenches, 2015
Karl Blossfeldt, Urformen der Kunst (Art forms in nature), 1928
Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh, Spangles, Gullies, Trenches, 2015
.
“Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain” installation views at Lismore Castle Arts, 2015
