Opening Reception Thursday 19 February, 6 – 8pm

Eleanor Duffin } Lorraine Neeson } Paul Nugent } Niamh O’Malley } Nicky Teegan • curated by Davey Moor

Upon entering the endangered & extinct species room on a recent visit to the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, almost all of the lights went out. Walking through the long room in this crepuscular mode was oddly fitting—eyes swimming through darkness and history in the glooming dim. As banal as it seems to highlight, elevated brightness is intrinsic to most displays of fine art—including video works closeted in dark rooms. We don’t tend to wander round galleries squinting, unless it’s from over-illumination, but tempered brightness and tones can offer more than they hide. Stepping into darkness, with both terror and exhilaration, is an essential and universal passage.

This exhibition, which started an an idea to broadly explore the history and mythology of the black mirror*, as both theme and object, has crystallised into a collection of visual incantations by five artists. These will be textually accompanied by excerpts from a variety of fiction and non-fiction sources in the form of a booklet.

*which in a most (un)common forms holds otherworldly connotations and links to unconscious planes {black magic, hypnotism, divination, scrying and catoptromancy} and was a tool (dubbed a Claude Glass) used by painters across Europe during the eighteenth century as an image reflector, to compose scenes to work from—its black surface tonally compressing overly bright landscapes.

The exhibition will travel to Dunamaise Arts Centre, Portlaoise, 26 March – 2 May 2015.