The Golden Bough: Brian Duggan: Step inside now step inside

Applying The Golden Bough theme as underlining support structure for showcasing new innovative art practices, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane has invited distinguished contemporary artists to exhibit in Charlemont House. The Golden Bough suite continues with new work by artist Brian Duggan. In this major new body of work, Duggan responds to the particular architecture of Gallery Eight and its unique context. The installation inserts a bisected carnival motordrome into the gallery and its presence both completes the internal loop and interrupts the classical space.

An unstable equilibrium has often grounded Duggan’s work in the real world. Here risk, and the belief that unfamiliar tactics can circumnavigate it, is a model for understanding the positions we find ourselves in. With Step inside now step inside, the artist experiments with sound, sculpture, and light in the gallery, juxtaposing risky adventure with belief and the uncertain expectation of that which is unlikely can be made possible.

The installation signals a new departure for Duggan’s practice, where the relationships between the spectacle and the real, now become entangled. The recurring concerns of pressure and stress, the questioning of the role and function of the artist, the unbalanced revision of our current position in the world, are all interlinked questions within the work. At the centre of the installation the endless repetitive loop is both a wry reflection on where we are and where we are going, but also a celebration of the extraordinary feat of defying gravity and death.

Profile

Born in 1971, Dublin based artist Brian Duggan investigates the physical limitations of the immediate environment on the individual. Ideas of control and where we stand, how we are tied and what binds us, are continuous references within his artistic practice. He examines the prevailing conditions of when things go wrong, and sites of stress and breakage. Citing well known historical events as well as the overlooked small dramas of everyday, he brings physical challenges into the gallery to ask questions, to exert pressure and to push boundaries. Duggan has exhibited in Ireland and Europe since 2000.