The art of the poetic
Billy Leahy has a religious experience at Alice Maher's latest show at her home of many years, the Green on Red Galllery
Alice Maher is well acquainted with the Green on Red space in Dublin. Her current exhibition stands almost as a mini-retrospective of her ten-year involvement with the gallery, retracing and touching on her previous shows there. The "almost" in the previous sentence stems from the fact all 11 pieces in the show have been realised in just over the last six months, but through these works, Maher now re-examines her own exhibition history in the gallery and the dynamics of the space itself.
As one of the most aesthetically pleasing galleries in Dublin – and perhaps most unique – the Green on Red is certainly an interesting space to explore. The exhibition area comes complete with a host of natural features such as a row of tall windows facing onto Lombard Street, semi-hidden nooks and a high loft-like ceiling complete with wooden beams.
All of these characteristics are exploited by Maher, who by way of introduction has placed a ladder with protruding beech branches in the lobby of the gallery, while on entering the main space a small statue, entitled 'The Diver', peers down from a hard-to-notice windowsill.
The title chosen by Maher for the exhibition, Rood, is a reference to a term with medieval origins for the True Cross or any large crucifix and this idea is explored through the exhibition's central piece of the same title. Beech tree limbs and branches hang motionless from the central wooden beam in the gallery, like determinedly upside down trees, dividing the space into two halves and alluding to a rood-screen on which the cross was placed within a church.
The rood in medieval churches was designed to be visible from the entire building, but despite its huge scale and ornate nature, it was often overshadowed and eclipsed by the screen below it, which was regularly decorated with carved motifs of flora and fauna.
The rood-screen was placed between the chancel and nave – that is, between clergy and congregation – creating a barrier to the altar that, although probably more to do with practical than symbolic reasons, increased the mystery surrounding the holy place where transubstantiation occurs. Maher blurs the definition of the rood and the rood-screen by creating a similar division to that of the screen but at the same time undermines this by placing the work centrally and referring to it as the rood itself.
Perhaps by doing this, Maher is hoping to break down the formal nature of the gallery setting, where the viewer is not confronted by the artists' work but is asked to overcome that barrier, entering into a visual and intellectual dialogue with the art. The rood idea also plays on the Green on Red space, which has several screened and semi-hidden areas including the staircase leading up to the "on-high" administrative office – something that the ladder in the entrance perhaps first hints at.
The subdued air of a church is increased by Maher's decision to paint the gallery walls a light-olive green – something that is immediately felt on entering the main space, if not instantantly noticed visually. The fenestration in the gallery is also utilised by the artist, who has mounted semi-transparent digital prints of snail tracks on the windows, a look reminiscent of stained glass.
The transformation of something as small as a snail's trail into a large scale vinyl print continues the exploration of the miniature, which Maher begins with the five intaglio prints and continues with the four beautifully fragile snail-shell globes, collectively titled 'The Four Directions'. This element of the natural world also gives the exhibition an outdoor feel, almost like being in a small, well-appointed French jardin and the intriguing cast bronze heads 'Double Venus' completes the "indoor garden" atmosphere, turning the gallery not just upside down but apparently outside-in.