The Flight of the Dodo
18 July – 23 August
39 East Essex Street
Temple Bar, Dublin 2, Ireland
What we share is curiosity, of the world that exists and that which is to come.
Tim Braden (UK), Ryan Gander (UK), Martino Gamper (IT), Sven Johne (DE), Irene Kopelman (AR), Eoin McHugh (IE), Francis Upritchard (NZ), Douglas White (UK)
The Flight of the Dodo is an eclectic exhibition made up of various artworks and elements that celebrate adventure, delve into factual myths, plunging in and out of notions of the hybrid, evolution, imaginative escapism, the will to survive and ultimate extinction.
The exhibition includes artists who have an eye on the flipside of life, the next steps in evolution and an interest in the endgame. While we read endlessly of global warming and the future migration which will be necessary to survive, there is much debate and angst about the timeframe for this outcome. Some artists focus on the landscape after the fall while others envisage salvation through science and technology. Some artworks let you escape from rational understanding, while others ground you in disaster archaeology of the 20th Century.
Curated by Jonathan Carroll and Tessa Giblin
In Sven Johne‘s infrared, wolf’s-eye photographs and texts we read about places developed by man that have returned to nature – abandoned, overgrown, ghost-like relics of past activity. This transformation, both materially and functionally, is seen also in Douglas White‘s Crow’s Stove, which is made from truck tyres found in Belize, Central America and other discarded manmade material. These tyres, found along a busy commercial highway, become the materials for White’s expansive and majestic palm-like tree, which planted in the centre of the gallery, encourages the ground beneath you to take a different form.
Eoin McHugh is furthering his research and interest in Darwinism and evolutionary theory, and making a new painting for The flight of the Dodo. McHugh’s paintings often evocate normality cast adrift into a sea of surrealism – he combines opposite forms or references in an innocuous manner, creating a ‘second-take’ effect in many of his previous works. Martino Gamper collects bits of broken and displaced seating stools and combines various parts together to form new stools. These completely unique pieces of furniture and hybrid functional objects are reclaimed as artworks and placed around the gallery. Placed around with Gamper’s stools, are copies of Ryan Gander‘s 2004 story-book, The Boy Who Always Looked Up. The hardback book, with illustrations by Sara De Bondt, watches the relationship between a little boy and an architect grow. This story, with abstracted escapism at its base, champions the individual’s possibility to overcome despair with the tools of belief and imagination.
Francis Upritchard‘s Sloth 2005 is an awkward, long-limbed, wobbly figure who rests on her back with limbs stretching into the air. She is not quite the ordinary sloth, with multiple nipples and strangely alienated mask for a face, her furry limbs are adorned with aged, white dress-gloves. Subtly emerging out of white walls is Irene Kopelman‘s Monster, a relief form which is based on the collected drawings and observations taken by adventurers and researchers after their encounters with very foreign and shocking cultures. Her two-headed and grotesquely formed Monster seeps out of the past and out of the walls.
Tim Braden‘s installation, I spend my evenings sitting by the fireside hunting tigers, 2008 is both adventurous and cautionary. The classroom setting recalls very physical explanations of physics, geography and history, and the installation includes a sail adhered to the desk, which when filled with wind from a fan on the ground, catches the breeze and provides a cunning tool with which to learn to sail. Episodes from CBS Radio Adventure Theatre are heard from inside the desks, which also hold paintings, books and other objects. Just outside the gallery, Braden’s ,i>Planetarium, 2008, is also installed – a gangly model to assist with understanding orbits.
The Dodo and the Dead Zoo
A discussion topic and lecture by Mr Nigel T. Monaghan, Keeper of the Natural History Museum of Ireland. Wednesday 30th July at 4 pm
The Flight of the Dodo has been supported by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura and the Goethe-Institut Dublin, and the following lenders and galleries – The Frank Cohen Collection, Wolverhampton, Sebastian Louis, Berlin, Kate MacGarry, London and Galerie Juliette Jongma, Amsterdam.
Please contact publicist Aisling McGrane for further information: aisling@project.ie
Project Arts Centre, 39 East Essex Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2, Ireland
Gallery open Monday – Saturday, 11am – 8pm gallery@project.ie
