This was the first project that we have made with reasonable support. It was awarded a project award by the Irish Arts Council and although that fell quite a way short of the necessary budget (bearing in mind it was a project involving six international artists _ UMR (Austria), AJFM (GB), James Tyson (GB), Inza Lim (S.Korea), Adrian Ciglenean (Ro), Duncan Keegan (Ire) _ and covering 6 cities in 2 countries), we were able to successfully realize what was a very complex, ambitious and wide ranging project by doing a large amount of the work ourselves unpaid.
It was a “snapshot of a moment” in our ongoing research into the spaces between exhibition and performance. Wherever possible, the work was presented in both contexts (gallery and theatre) with the performance element arranged to overlap and wherever feasible “bridge” the two.
Solstice Arts Centre in Navan was, in many ways, an ideal space in that it had both an impressive gallery and a well equipped theatre in the same (purpose built) building.
The proximity of the theatre equipment and a very open and helpful technician by the name of Adam Leigh, enabled the realization of the installation of a light painting in the gallery alongside the oil paintings. It was made using 6 profiles, 3 for colours and 3 for texture projected onto a screen assembled with 48 blank canvasses. It was possible to program it in such a way that it could cross from state one to state two in 8 hours, the working day of the space, before starting again in a loop. Consequently it was possible to achieve the main goal of these works which is to make the changes so slow that the casual visitor would not notice but would take away a feeling that they could not pin down. The energy generated by this is very interesting and it often took more than two or even three visits to the space to realize that it was neither simply a painting nor a simple projection, but occupied an interesting philosophical space somewhere between.
The introduction of time into the mix added an interesting philosophical dimension to the idea of “painting” by effectively turning it from a two dimensional to a three dimensional object.