Applying the Golden Bough theme as underlining support structure for showcasing significant art practices, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane has invited distinguished contemporary artists to exhibit in Gallery Eight of Charlemont House. The Golden Bough suite continues with work by artist Grace Weir.
Weir’s exhibition is an installation centred on her film, In my own time. The film consists of a series of interlinking episodes that explore philosophical, scientific and cross-cultural attitudes to perceptions of time. Einstein’s theories regarding the relativity of time, contentious scientific questions about whether the world’s civil timekeeping may slowly diverge from the rotation of the earth, and an investigation into the potential for time travel are among the topics investigated. These sit alongside episodes revealing how, in ancient societies, before weights and measures were standardised, time and space were regarded in terms of direct experience. Weir draws on Vedic texts which use “as long as it takes to milk a cow” to measure time and “ the range of a stone thrown by a man of medium stature” to measure distance.
Strongly influenced by 19th-century scientific demonstrations, the artist explores these ideas through her own actions and activities. However Weir’s work is as much involved with the qualities and structures of film-making as it is with science. The film explores the connection between the concept of one’s self as a being in time and the sense of one’s life as a narrative. Weir seeks to align a lived experience of the world with scientific understanding, and she is interested in an approach to film-making that acknowledges the necessary subjectivity of all experience. Events in the film are portrayed in a rational, almost documentary style; but oscillate between fact and fiction and between documentary and cinematic illusion.
Forming the rest of the installation are two works, one an animation called Clock shows a dandelion seed head rotating on its stem. The other, Script 1, is the first in a new series of short films, showing the artist creating pinholes in a piece of paper to spell out words, relevant to the filmed activity or making reference to filmic terms, which appear when held up to a beam of light.
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Profile
Grace Weir studied at the National College of Art and Design from 1980-84 and also at Trinity College Dublin, where she won an award for her Masters graduation project in 1997. She co-represented Ireland at the 49th International Venice Biennale in 2001. She has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally, most recently seen in 2005 at (Biennale! Artist film and video_ at Temporarycontemporary in London, (Red White Blue_ at the Spencer Brownstone Gallery in New York, (Himmelsbilder_ in the Dommuseum zu Salzburg in Austria, ‘Tir na nOg’ at the Irish Museum of Modern Art Dublin, (Missing Time_ at the Agnès b. Cinema in Hong Kong, ‘Flights of Reality’ at Kettles Yard Cambridge, ‘Are we there yet?_ at Glassbox in Paris. Solo exhibitions include (a fine line_ at Cornerhouse in Manchester in 2003 and touring to London and Penzance, Meanwhile Elsewhere at the Percy Miller Gallery in London, (around now_ at the John Curtin Gallery in Perth, Australia and at the RHA Gallery in Dublin in 2000. She has received several public art commissions including one from Donegal Council Council, the OPW, Temple Bar Properties and from NIFCA, the Nordic Institute of Contemporary Art in Helsinki Finland. She has been awarded several Arts Council of Ireland Awards including a Projects Award in 2005.
Still from In my own time by Grace Weir, courtesy of the artist.
Still from In my own time by Grace Weir, courtesy of the artist.
Still from In my own time by Grace Weir, courtesy of the artist.
Still from In my own time by Grace Weir, courtesy of the artist.
Still from In my own time by Grace Weir, courtesy of the artist.
Still from In my own time by Grace Weir, courtesy of the artist.
Still from In my own time by Grace Weir, courtesy of the artist.
