Niamh McCann’s practice looks to the visual cultural landscape to invite a reconsideration of our relationship to the world around us, questioning how this world constitutes us as subjects, and how we, in turn, give this world form.  As an artist, her exploration of these themes takes the form of concise multi-media work, presented within larger installations and site-responsive pieces.

McCann has been collaborating uniquely and extensively with Limerick architects Jack Byrne and Séamus Baireadinon the development of a new large scale structure/object.  This aspiring structure/object entitled Copernicus for Now is made of industrially produced cardboard tubes and plywood.  Copernicus for Now

Emerged from a previous piece by the artist entitled Occupy that referenced a section of background landscape in the infamous photograph of Armstrong on the moon, and created that horizon line as a series of interlocking pentagons.  Here McCann references the aspirational moment that allowed this event to take place, its cultural (near fictional) potency as image, and the ideas contained within B Fuller’s ‘Spaceship Earth’ (hence the use to pentagon as reference to the geodesic).  Copernicus for Now is both object and event, a crater-like landscape for visitors to occupy and events to take place.

The interchange and flow of fact and fiction, and the overlapping layers of history and fable within the work of German architect Hans Poelzig is of particular interest to McCann.  Poelzig is perhaps best known for his design and build of the Poelzig Building (IG Farben building), Frankfurt Germany, a site of dramatic historic 20^th century importance.  Poelzig was also a painter and scenographer. Edgar Ulmer, film director cited Poelzig as a mentor and claimed that they worked together on The Golem: How He Came Into the World(1920). Ulmer subsequently honoured Hans Poelzig as nom de guerre of main villain Hjalmar Poelzig in Ulmer’s 1934 film ‘The Black Cat’. 

The changing subtitles of Just left of Copernicus in each gallery, reflect a changing site specific manifestation within each reiteration that will also comprise of archive material, wall drawings, process based work and smaller concise sculptural pieces.

 This ambitious tour has been made possible through funding from the Arts Council Dissemination and Touring award

For Artist information:www.niamhmcann.com • for tour information and images Belinda Quirke, Solstice, belinda.quirke@solsticeartscentre.ie, t +353 46 9092300 mob.086 6379195