Butler Gallery is delighted to present a screening of A Reflection on Light (2015), Grace Weir at our Digital Gallery.

A Reflection on Light (Grace Weir, 2015), tells a story of Let There Be Light (1938), a painting by Mainie Jellett in the collection of the School of Physics at Trinity College where two noted scientists from Jellett’s family taught. The film takes the form of a single shot spanning three locations where the painting was hung; Jellett’s own studio in a Dublin city square; galleries at IMMA as an exhibition of Cubist work is being de-installed; and rooms at the School of Physics.

The film’s series of long shots, seamless jumps and narrative references to cubist criticism and scientific theory subvert ideas of time and space – drawing on recurring filmic themes in Weir’s work. This echoes the theories of refracted light and relativity developed by Jellett’s grandfather and uncle respectively, and connects these to the studies of light, shape and movement in Mainie Jellett’s paintings.

“Perhaps what the film demonstrates is just how light, time and space are transformed as they pass through another medium: the lens of the camera. Grace Weir, has linked the ‘I’ of the maker to the eye of the camera as she rotates a work through time and space. Her film elaborates something…which is the perpetual motion of human consciousness: an ever-evolving perception and interpretation of the world around us.” Francis McKee

Grace Weir has a research-based practice based on encounters with artists, scientists, philosophers, and practitioners from other disciplines or with specifics such as artworks, objects, archives and locations. Through her work, she is interested in probing the nature of a fixed identity, the relationship between reality and representation, memory and record, history and the present, underpinned by the theories and entities under scrutiny, whether scientific, philosophical or cultural.

Weir’s work engages with processes of definition, to unfold trajectories of thought where matters of meaning and temporality frequently collide. Creating a dialogue between the nature of ideas and the ways in which thinking is materialised, the works frequently refer to the act of making and the mediums in which they are made, including where time itself forms the work. The resulting work ranges from cinematic works and installations to paintings, photographic work, lecture-performances and web projects.

Grace Weir represented Ireland at the 49th International Venice Biennale and has exhibited widely nationally and internationally. She was an Artist-in-Residence in Trinity College Dublin (2012-2015) and had a major solo exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (2015-2016). In 2019 she was commissioned by The Institute of Physics (UK and Ireland) to create an installation ‘Time Tries All Things’ for the inaugural show in the Gallery at the Institute of Physics in London. Her work is currently on show in To the Edge of Time, at University Library Galleries, KU Leuven, Belgium until January 2022.

This screening has a limited capacity and there may be a wait time required to enter the Digital Gallery.