Between the Lines
Between the Lines, a collaborative project from artist Marie Hanlon and composer Rhona Clarke links the visual arts and music. The exhibition features both individual and collective pieces that were inspired and developed in response to the unique environment and landscape of the Burren, Co. Clare.
Visual media and music are juxtaposed and balanced, each inspired by the same location. Although not all pieces are collaborative, there is a strong dialogue between sound and image throughout. The synergy between the merged sound and visual disciplines opens a discourse on the work, experienced both in synchrony and in an autonomous context.
A video work, Relic, is the result of close collaboration by both artists. The piece draws its visual material directly from the topography of the Burren. Initially sequences appear unconnected, but as the film progresses a pattern of cycles emerge: the cycle of the tides, the cycle of the seasons and ultimately the cycle of life and death. From this stark terrain, a narrative is constructed, mainly through the use of detail and close up. Images of rocks, pools and vegetation give way to rusting debris, alluding to both the passing of time and the human presence in the landscape.
Rhona Clarke shows three sound works. Presented as individual pieces to be experienced independently, intimately and in no particular sequence. As in the video, the raw material for these pieces was generated mainly by percussion instruments and then manipulated electronically. Clock-like wooden sounds and continuous motion are played out in simple lines. The works address time and space and in this sense provoke associations with the natural environment whilst also reflecting the linear nature of the drawings. The sounds have a textural affinity with the parched Burren limestone, but electronic sounds have replaced the ambient noises of nature.
Marie Hanlon’s drawings take their lines from the unexpected as well as the obvious places: wire, wood, water and fissured stones shaped over millennia. Visual referencing of hidden detail results in abstract as well as representational pieces. The palette is monochromatic and the style is at once both formal and free. This is an interpretation of place that will challenge the viewer’s perception. Hanlon also appropriates some found elements in this exhibition, honest quotations from the source, which manage to be both commonplace and exotic.