a score for a film installation [13’]
made in collaboration with visual artist Niamh McCann, for Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane

instrumentation

multitracked recordings: vc / pno / tenor voice

details

commissioned by Niamh McCann with funds provided by the Arts Council of Ireland, for the solo exhibition Furtive Tears (curated by Michael Dempsey, Head of Exhibitions; Logan Sisley, Exhibitions Curator and Liliane Puthod, Assistant Curator) — first exhibited at Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, from October 4, 2018, to January 6, 2019

links

niamh mccann | essay: furtive tears

note

In its interrogation of coding and uncoding, Furtive Tears uses a wide array of materials and objects that reference the Modernist utopian principle of the Gesamtkunstwerk, where the fluid relationship between art, architecture, design, and music is explored. McCann is particularly influenced by the expressionistic work of German architect and scenographer Hans Poelzig, whose philosophies were a forerunner to the Bauhaus Movement in 1920s Berlin.

The video work, Furtive Tears, Salomé's Lament, focuses on an Edward Carson lookalike named Boris who is set in two locations: first the marble rotunda of Belfast City Hall and then the Ridge View of Black Mountain overlooking Belfast city. In City Hall, the bastion of governance and civic authority, Boris surveys his dominion. In spite of the sombre navy double-breasted suit he wears, his autocratic aura is comically undermined by his red suede high heels. In the second location Boris, as a comic in a panda suit, surveys the magnificent landscape overlooking Belfast city which contrasts sharply with the grim housing estates below, failures by the civic authorities of City Hall.

exhibition note by Barbara Dignam

video