Keeping the faith
Combining found objects, magazine photographs and her own art images, Eva Rothschild's spiritually significant work makes fascinating viewing writes Billy Leahy
Eva Rothschild creates conceptual art, employing and referencing objects and forms already resonant with concepts. Taking symbols usually associated with traditional rituals, cultural mysticism or new age spiritual practises, the Dublin-born artist re-evaluates how they are interpreted and perceived once freed from their customary environment.
The nine sculpture works and seven 2-D woven-paper images (of which more later) that form her current exhibition at the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Trinity College sees Rothschild continue to address this recurring concern in her oeuvre.
The London-based artist produces sculpture using hard-edged geometric forms which adopt the formal concerns of the 1960s and 1970s Conceptual Minimalist movement, but imports motifs from belief systems to create what has been termed a 'magic minimalism'. The towering steel and leather construct 'High Times' invokes the potent symbol of the totem poll, for instance, while the over-lapping and disciplined angles of 'Stairway' construct a star symbol at their lowest point. Elsewhere, other laden forms appear, with spheres, pyramids and fragile ellipses cropping up again and again, with their harder angular lines softened slightly by the use of organic materials.
Rothschild uses spiritually significant objects and images that carry powerful associations because they have no further function than to support a certain belief system, without necessarily fulfilling a defined need. These almost anachronistic objects stand apart in contemporary society, where most objects exist and are defined by their function or purpose. Extending from this idea, Rothschild has previously explained her fascination in "the ways of looking that go with concepts of faith, and in how things are invested with a power above and beyond their materiality – the transference of spirituality onto objects."
By using sculpture, she hopes to add something extra to what is physically there and to fuel discourse on the idealism of belief and also on why certain things have more than just material presence. The fundamental question in her works often asks whether it is possible to view these familiar shapes as absolute form, opening new interpretive possibilities in the process, or whether they will always carry some element of spirituality or be suggestive of systems of belief.
This notion of how Rothschild's art objects are perceived and interpreted continues strongly into the seven woven-paper works in the exhibition. Produced by a combination of handy-craft and industrial and computer process, the day-glo colours initially appear to be abstract, pixelated images. Closer inspection reveals, however, that these works are in fact a combination of two images, which have been laboriously laced and interwoven together.
The combining of two images into one reflects the hybrid process where traditional craftwork meets mass-media technique. This is seen again in how Rothschild selects her images (some are magazine pictures or photographs, while others are her own op art patterns) with the artist setting out in a deliberate manner to discover 'found images', which in normal circumstances are held up as 'pure chance' elements in artistic practise.
The use of the day-glo or luminous colours is also significant with Rothschild explaining that they bring a quality of freshness, commenting that "you definitely wouldn't find them in a Renaissance painting". The garish colour scheme also harks back to 1960's kitsch poster art as well as new-age romanticism – two obvious influences on the works. Their harsh nature, however, makes them highly arresting and attention-grabbing, which combined with their usually romantic subject matter produces an unusual mixture.
As Rothschild explores interpretation of the object and the image, constantly asking us whether they possess that 'power above and beyond their materiality', it is difficult not to ask the same question of Rothschild's own work and perhaps the more general role of the art object in our society. But this is probably just another small but intriguing over-lap in Rothschild's fascinating work.
?More Eva Rothschild at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College Dublin until 16 June