A line describing nothings
Paul Murnaghan
May 09 - May 31 2008
Earlier this year, Paul Murnaghan offered members of the public ‘Free Past Life Regressions’ through online and printed advertising. These sessions, which took place at the LAB in April, were offered with the stipulation that participants sit with an artist post-regression and assist them in rendering drawings based on the places and people of their experience.
This exhibition continues Murnaghan’s line of enquiry into belief systems and the fragmentary points of intersection between the spiritual, scientific and psychological.
Murnaghan constructs devices which act as ctalysts towards rendezvous, ritual and installation. His practice is research based and explores collective phenomena that occur within particular mythologies and forms of belief. These same concerns are inherent in Murnaghan’s curatorial practice and when viewed as a whole his efforts are a continuing attempt to access a universal, subliminal dialogue. As in previous works, this project relied on other people and the generosity of exchange.
The pivitol installation, Regressive Drawing, 15m, uses visual narrative as methodology. For Murnaghan, the visual comes closest to conveying the logic of dreams. Other works attempt to engage in this dialogue through ontological comment resulting in a form of flawed candor drawing tangentially from the ether. The virtual becomes physical, the scientific, ritual, but what is not shown, is perhaps the essense of this work, that which is considered something just beyond our peripheral knowing.
The exhibition features a series of large pencil drawings in the First Floor gallery, informed by elements of the work downstairs.
Bio
Paul Murnaghan is a Dublin based artist, curator and intermittent composer. He has exhibited nationally and internationally and was the Artistic Director/Curator of 5th Gallery at Guinness Storehouse (2000-03). He is a graduate of MAVis and the recipient of several Arts Council Awards. Recent and forthcoming projects include Synesthesia Sat (Curator) as part of the Birr Arts Festival, August 2007; a sound composition as part of Intimacies, commissioned by Context Galleries in Derry, March 2008 and a new composition for Platform, Vaasa, Finland, summer 2008.
