The Golden Bough: Niamh McCann: Tiltshift - Hugh Lane Gallery

The collective memory and its bearing on the construction of visual historical narratives are at the fore of the Niamh Mc Cann’s project Tiltshift. If collective consciousness relies on the traces of memory, the designation of an image as significant becomes a political act, leading to the preservation of knowledge and the shaping of our cultural memory. It also creates a unitary fiction of what is valued and preserved.

McCann’s splicing of iconic imagery from the cold war period for Tiltshift, calls into question how we construct our current understanding of both the social and the political. The historical tipping points of the Manhattan project – the design and development of the atomic bomb, man landing on the moon and the Nixon and Khrushev meeting, are familiar moments captured and stored in our collective psyche. Different messages, different time periods, different forms of communication are merged with the idea of disrupting hierarchies and opening new space for reflection.

The presented exhibition space fragments motifs of the urban and the natural elements to create a hybrid cultural landscape where both the natural and the urbane co-exist.

Curated by Michael Dempsey

Profile

Niamh McCann’s work is a considered, individual voice in contemporary Irish art; effortlessly correlating strands of three-dimensional work, painting/drawing and installation. This in itself is unpredictable and frequently humorous, as evidenced in the playful use of appropriated political figuration in her body of work, Furtive Tears. Layering and re-coding the given image, figure or cultural trope, a quasi-deified equilibrium is achieved when juxtaposed with globalised cultural imagery.

McCann is recipient of the Norman Houston Commission Award, Washington DC and RHA Stephen McKenna Studio Fellowship. Commissions include Bile Buadha a large scale outdoors sculptural work at Termini Complex, Sandyford and PAVILION/MOTHER’S LAMENT an outdoors sculptural work at National Museum of Ireland, Museum of Country Life. In partnership with Logan Sisley and National Museum of Ireland, McCann co-curated the exhibition Tableaux Vivants at Dublin City Gallery the Hugh Lane looking at collection artworks as totemic messengers. The exhibition was centered around a series of McCann’s work acquired by the Hugh Lane.

Artist residencies include Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris, Fire Station Studio Production Residency, Dublin, Penthouse Artist Residency, Brussels, Cemeti Arthouse, Indonesia and HIAP residency in Helsinki, Finland.

Solo exhibitions include Hairline Crack [a dialogue] at the Rudolf-Scharpf-Galerie des Wilhelm Hack Museum, Germany, Furtive Tears at Dublin City Gallery the Hugh Lane, La Perruque (Protest Song) at MAC Belfast and Just Left of Copernicus in Visual Carlow. Group exhibitions include: Future Perfect, Rubicon-Projects Brussels and Changing States, BOZAR, Belgium.
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Niamh McCann handout