Monday 16 February 2015

Machines to Crystallize Time


In amongst CJ Mahony and Georgie Grace's futuristic sounding installation at Smiths Row, Alicia Rodriguez finds the work is more about capturing the past than the sci-fi future.


A crystal carries the particular essence of a petrified movement, an exquisite object in the course of being formed. The apparent hardness of the stone and the softness of its changeability offer a complex set of properties that can form the basis of a speculative, theoretical study concerning time, space and inter-dimensional travel.

CJ Mahony and Georgie Grace, in a collaborative project drawn from a diverse range of sources and disassembled pieces of previous work, use ideas surrounding the process of crystallization in an attempt to become closer to some kind of real representation of ‘the past’. They exploit the immersive, time-based nature of film and installation to mimic the faceted refractions and subtle manipulations of crystalline forms.

Monday 9 February 2015

Témoins oculaires: Isabelle Cornaro



Isabelle Cornaro presents a series of film set-like tableaux at Spike Island, but the stages are filled with trinkets and tools rather than thespians.


At Isabelle Cornaro’s exhibition Témoins oculaires (translation: eyewitness) on display at Spike Island I find myself standing in front of a self-contained, miniature film set. Its base is raised above the gallery’s concrete floor and is painted and elegant deep blue to match the back wall of the stage, which, although it stands about 7ft tall, is dwarfed by the warehouse-like ceiling in the Spike Island gallery space (Scenes # 4, 2015).