[box]Kim McBride[/box]
The name of SWG3’s latest exhibition is taken from the title of a sci-fi story. The story is ‘written as though events were taking place on the rim of a wheel with everything coming together at the centre.’ This is an apt description for the exhibition, a collaborative effort by Conor Kelly, Jim Colquhoun and Mark Briggs.
The events of the story spiral inwards, where they meet and the connection between the threads becomes visible. The structure of this story is perfectly emulated in the collective vision of these artists. The different modes of expression spiral together, creating meaning at their meeting point. As such, these individual works can only make sense as a whole, brought together for consideration as one entity.
Conor Kelly paints abstract interpretations of a subjective reality that serve to reveal a truth that is ignored by a falsified history. His art portrays an alternative history for future generations, giving those who seek it another narrative to follow. He says ‘owning up to a corruption through image after image of half-truths, my work attempts to recount histories in the hope of unravelling and reassembling certain dominant representational systems.’
A prevalent theme in ‘The Beast…’ is the consideration of the difference between truths and their ‘reality’ counterparts. Jim Colquhoun’s drawings, installations and performances ‘negotiate the boundaries between art and life, waking and dreaming, fiction and fact.’ Like Kelly, he seeks to deconstruct these invented boundaries, leaving us with a mass of information without category, that which neither claims truth nor falsity. The boundaries, subsequently, are not solid lines separating two definite categories. Instead, they are portrayed as vague notions that are exempt from definition and denied clarity.
The artists seem to be screaming at us to wake up and actively engage with the absurdness of what we presuppose to be the truth of our existence. The sly wit underlying the pieces on display works to relate these ideas to the audience whilst engaging them in the artistic discussion which the exhibition enters them into. The result is to bring forth a voice to that which has been denied one. And that voice is shouting.
The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World runs from 4th to 25th February at +44 141 gallery at SWG3.
