Opening by Vivienne Dick on Thursday 23 October at 7:30pm

This exhibition deals with the complexities of seeing and our understanding of what it is we see.Through a diverse range of work encompassing installation, video, drawing and sound, Marie Hanlon presents pieces which engage the viewer in questions of perception: what is real, what is fiction, can we ‘know’ based on what we ‘see’ and do our assumptions hide the truth. Each artwork requires the viewer to dwell on the act of seeing or to renegotiate existing perceptions.

Everyday objects, studio props, bits of plastic and wire, are utilized here. In a new context they become elegant. The work rests on the tension between opposites: high and low, humour and seriousness, the commonplace versus the poetic.

The influence of the Belgian surrealist artist, Rene Magritte, is especially evident. The opening words of a quote from Magritte ” Everything we see” provides the overall title for the exhibition as well as an individual work within it.

Increasingly Marie Hanlon’s work mixes visual elements with sound, specific pieces of music have provided the starting point for some works. What matters is the complicity between the art forms, the ability of one to intensify the other and to open possibilities of saying something new by means of the subtlest pairings.