Visual Arts Programme
The Concourse Installation 2005
Fiona Mulholland
10 November – 24 November 2005
For every action...
“To be modern is to live a life of paradox and contradiction... It is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, transformation of ourselves and the world but at the same time, threatens everything we know, everything we are.”
Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, 1982.
Ireland has recently become awealthy country, with unemployment at a record low rate, increasing numbers of people buying second homes and more educated at third level than ever before. And yet there is a palpable sense of disillusionment and dissatisfaction with our new and materialistic culture.
The huge economic, social and cultural imbalances that have emerged are not mirrored in surveys that surprisingly position Ireland as one of the best places to live in the world. Fiona Mulholland’s installation functions as a snapshot of contemporary anxieties, exploring the ‘emotional geography’ of our dysfunctional society.
A scaled-up executive toy, Newton’s Cradle is accompanied by a sound work comprising of interviews and comments from a cross section of people. These individuals articulate the restlessness and alienation felt in their daily lives and in common place situations.
Fiona Mulholland was born in 1969. She studied at NCAD, Dublin and the Royal College of Art, London. She has exhibited in Phildadelphia, London, Luxembourg, Hamburg and at EV+A ’99 in Limerick. Mulholland has also exhibited as part of the Cultural Programme during Ireland’s presidency of the European Union. In 2002, she was commissioned to create a public sculpture for Dún Laoghaire Harbour and in 2005 South Dublin County Council commissioned her to create a permanent art piece sited in Tallaght.
