Niamh McCann ‘Insertions’

Lenticular Moon Men, with frame (2012)
Mounted archival print, ultramarine pigment paint with medium, 104 x 85cm

Niamh McCann
Insertions
Green on Red Gallery
30 Aug – 06 Oct 2012

Green On Red Gallery is delighted to present the work of Niamh McCann for her second solo show in the gallery. Insertions consists of a rich panoply of sculpted, painted and collaged elements appearing to belong to the 1960’s, a decade of extraordinary optimism and change, best captured perhaps in that American “ great step for mankind “ landing on the moon. It was the stuff of immediate legend. With grace and humour, McCann sets about rewriting, re-examining this legend. Whereas previously McCann worked the gap between nature and culture, in Insertions she fuses and intermixes iconic political and historic moments, exposing through their faded material condition and hackneyed overuse a frailty and a melancholy and a feeling of over-investment.

Nothing is in its original state here. Reproductions are carefully reproduced. The degraded, worn holographic image or jigsaw is injected with new possibility through the artist’s trademark collage of elements and in the overall narrative scenery achieved. While a feeling of deflation may result from a hard look at history – captured wittily in the Yves Klein blue, spent balloons in bronze– Occupy is a grand, geodesic sculptural interpretation of a tiny foreground detail of the famous photograph of Armstrong and Aldrin stating their American claim on the moon. Occupy is a fresh, exuberant and open-ended departure from the original.

The artist says: It is an idiosyncratic look at the constructed world around us. The viewer is forced to consider one’s own set of cultural co-ordinates, while also questioning the cultural conditions that have contributed to the defining of those co-ordinates.

On the 21 Sep for Culture Night Insertions will remain open for viewing in the gallery until 11pm and there will be a reading of Jonathan Swift’s Gullliver’s Travels at 7pm.

Following Insertions will be an exhibition of new work by John Graham, opening on Thursday 11 Oct, from 6 – 8pm.

For further information please contact Jerome, Mary or Jonathan at T: +353 16713414 or E: info@greenonredgallery.com