I managed to make it to two of the events in the remarkable collaborative exhibition of the work of Irish artist James Coleman on Friday evening. IMMA, Project and the RHA are presenting a substantial selection of his work, some of which has never been seen in Ireland to date.
I wasn’t able to make it to IMMA (hopefully I’ll make it out later in the week) but was struck by two of the pieces shown in the RHA and Project.
The large upstairs space in the RHA houses Charon (MIT Project), 1989 - the enormous size of the room and projection screen adding to impact of the piece. The monotonous tone of the audio narrative is a fitting foil for still images that reminded me of those staged images from the 1980’s cookbooks I used adore. Project Arts Centre houses two works, one of which – Box (ahhareturnabout), 1977 , a black and white film projected in a continuous cycle – had such a profoud affect on me I had to leave the room after only 30 seconds. The flash projection is accompanied by a quiet scratchy voiceover and a loud, almost physical, electronic pulse. It was the combined sound of the voiceover and pulse that disturbed me to the point where I was disorientated for about an hour after seeing the piece. It’s definitely worth checking out before it leaves Project.
The exhibition is running until the 25 April - check out the spaces for opening times
