Images and Surreality – The College Instances

AS IF is a brand new interdisciplinary, collaborative exhibition at the moment working from February sixth to April fifth. The exhibition takes its stage within the freshly completed International Centre for the Image in Dublin’s Docklands. The centre, accomplished in July by PhotoIreland, encourages the consumption of each visible and written art work via its in depth public library and gallery area. 

AS IF, the brand new exhibition from the collaborative crew of photographer Eamonn Doyle, composer David Donohoe, and visible designer Niall Sweeney, covers a mess of media and senses in its show. The trio’s earlier creations have been movies —“Made in Dublin” and “EX” — and whereas this exhibition was initially supposed to be a single transferring picture work throughout 9 screens, it has expanded far past. The exhibition is constructed from nearly solely nonetheless pictures, however the area itself buzzes with motion and noise. The spectrum of creative medium is huge, various from pictures and montages to music and textual content, illustrating the liberty and creativity of this collaborative group. The exhibition’s title, AS IF, echoes the fluidity of this collective. Explained by Donohoe in an interview with RTÉ, AS refers back to the “setting up” of the “conditions”, and IF to the “allowing occurrences”. This strategy offers the exhibition a sense of stream and immersion, although at instances additionally introduces inconsistencies. Speaking with Eamonn Doyle concerning the exhibition, “there is a lot to say about it, and at the same time nothing at all”. 

AS IF presents an expertise over an exhibition, a contained questioning of humanity elucidated by Niall Sweeney because the illustration of the “cyclical acts of self creation and destruction”. The viewer turns into a wandering flaneur in an remoted cityscape. It is an area devoted to the “uncanniness of being”, drawing on the psyche, the self, and the intersection of faith and actuality. Or, as represented on the slightly gothic informative handout, a mix of characters in “monks’ robes and street wear hoodies”. 

The chosen palette of AS IF is distinct. The gallery is full of darkish, moody neutrals with dashes, dots and translucent impressions of pink.

While a couple of items characteristic extra vibrant, fleshlike pictures, the thoughts forgets them in favour of the overwhelming gloom and darkness of the area. The pictures by Eamonn Doyle are darkish, inky impressions of strikingly actual folks, which work in tandem with summary traces and areas.

In one poignant piece, a darkish, hooded determine attracts infinite circles and is chased by its personal shadows via the myriad of small transferring areas. This work shows an fascinating innovation of the exhibition’s collective: the reanimation of nonetheless pictures into motion. The pictures illustrate surreal, vaguely recognisable areas with repetitive parts, such because the tall arches and harsh traces that mirror the lead panelling of outdated stained glass home windows. This non secular reference can be current within the creation of one of many bigger shows of this exhibition, a set of portraits the place the options have been dismembered and disassembled. In an interview with RTÉ, David Donohoe articulates that this deconstruction was achieved via a way of layering panels of glass obtained from outdated church buildings, amongst different sources. The eerie mutilated familiarity of those pictures is echoed within the soundscape that encompasses the exhibition. Incorporating a wide range of parts, from snippets of high quality strings to the caws of birds, the exhibition manages to keep up a steady ominous temper for the listener. In one of many rotating tracks of the exhibition, composer David Donohoe utilised a layering of excessive feminine voices and a low rotating bass. These eerie audios set off a bodily survival response for his or her listeners. Yet, on the similar time, the audio’s similarity to high-pitched sirens, and different noises paying homage to the hectic humdrum of our cityscapes, creates peculiar moments of belonging and recognition inside its observers. 

Overall, AS IF is a novel show of the facility of deconstruction and reconstruction in each medium. As the artists themselves are nonetheless making sense of the exhibition, attendees every step away with completely different interpretations, emotions and meanings — maybe procuring extra questions than solutions.