Duo show with Diana Copperwhite at 126 Gallery as part of Galway International Arts Festival 2019. Curated by Simon Fennessy Corcoran.
Fascination for the Outside is an immersive and physically interactive installation. Vibrant colours and reflective and transparent materials distort the space and the bodies and images within it. By manipulating sensory perception, the installation encourages the viewer to examine the strange within the familiar, and to focus on bodily experience outside of a preconceived self image. There are many divisions within the space, which both restrict and respond to the body, but are all either physically or visually penetrable, questioning the ways we mark boundaries. The piece was produced in the hopes of creating an intuitive space which promotes self awareness and rebellious acceptance, with room for complexities and contradictions.
The video element of this installation is made up of downloaded, royalty free clips. Each clip contains commercial, idealised and oversimplified depictions of gender typical and able-bodied bodies, with no personal complexity. Each clip is introduced by the reductive title given to it online and may be viewed as humours or absurd. In order to watch the video in its original state, the viewer must lie passively on a hard wooden pallet, which has been painted gold.
CIARA BARKER 