MeduSa
In Pieces
Medusa In Pieces consists of three free-standing articulated works. The creaturely shaped landscapes are painted on both sides, with hinged lapel panels, dynamic polyptych features and performative properties.
In adapting the myth of Medusa, a story of misrepresentation and disputed agency - the central narrative of Medusa in Pieces explores collaborative resistance, rejuvenation, and a quest for autonomy.
Being only a head of snakes, Medusa's power is necessarily collaborative - wild, vital, and full of surprises. With an opening performance and routine technical gallery drills, the headless Medusa has many pieces. Wearing enchanted sleeves and gloves, she searches for her middle.
A sequence of performative technical actions occur with drill like precision, evolving the works for the audience on-site, and choreographing the multi dimensional capacities of the works from a state of undress, to full costume.
The works’ facades open, slide, conceal, and reveal, depicting exuberant foliage in pinks, oranges, blues, yellows, and greens; feathers in blue and white; shells in polka dots of green and blue; copper coils of hair; reptilian scales in gold; teeth in pearly white; and claws in silver grey.
These colours and motifs are replicated in costume glove sets and full length magnetic sleeves, using silk, nylon, and other found materials.
In action, these works change shape, facade, and composition using magnets, panels, hinges, and weights; are crudely inhabitable, in-flux, and navigable; and exist as a circuit of engagement.
The works’ at their apex, announce the rationality of a body with front and back presence, and two arms, which the occasional open middle or gap between the central panels betray.
Fully equipped with enchanted gloves, Medusa’s actions towards full constitution are prompted by four redemptive magical tenets- Disembodiment; Transposition; Restoration; and Prediction.
Works from Medusa in Pieces, originally commissioned by VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow, (2024) have been exhibited at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2025).
Supported by the Arts Council of Ireland Project Award, and Kunstverein Aughrim.
Performance and collaboration contributing to this presentation were trialed through a collaborative production partnership with Kunstverein Aughrim; The Pulse Events series; and Supernatural Bureau.
BUReAU
supernatural
Supernatural Bureau features an articulated site-specific landscape painting, set inside a hanging tray on a hinged room divider. The doors, guided by submerged floor rails, open in semi-circles over a granite rock.
Opening the Bureau activates a multi-dimensional, vertical terrain. In a swift mobius-action, the bureau twice splits in two, offering alternative routes through, while still outside of the double sided work.
A chain of white ceramic rectangles are pinned to the bureau’s deep red surface in a double helix of outstretched legs, and arms that meet in the middle. Collected during an ambulatory performance through a nearby stream, the rectangles represent both the bones of the river and a map of the pageant’s pastoral route. At rest, an arrangement of river mud incense burns on top of the granite rock.
Performance works contributing to this presentation were created through a series of live generative Pulse Events at Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, and Kunstverein Aughrim that explored collaborative resources; An Sabhain - the Irish celebration of rejuvenation; gaming; staging; and bio-hacking as an act of protest, along a local forest and river walk.
Kunstverein Aughrim’s collaboration with Sonia Shiel is supported by the Arts Council to provide production and curatorial support for major projects, in this instance a solo exhibition at Visual Centre for Contemporary Art - as well as the promotion of its artists through its Editions sereis from the venue’s House of Kunst, and online.
