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Other Possibilities
Other Possibilities was an exhibition/ installation that was shown at Galway Arts Centre and also at the Courthouse Gallery, Ennistymon, as part of a joint exhibition with Maria Kerin, entitled, The Space Between.
This was the final project for my MA in Visual Arts Practice. Three short moving image films were presented as part of the exhibition; Sieve Poem, Unravell/ Rewind and In the Silence and the Silent Places. Other Possibilities is also the title of a small publication that was shown as part of the exhibition, made in participation with residents affected by dementia at St. Brendan's Nursing home Loughrea and their family members.
Over the course of a couple of years I spent time on Coohreen ward running a series of arts based activities involving puppetry and storytelling. These sessions were experimental and playful, I had to make things up as I went along and not be afraid to try out new ideas. It was a wonderful playground and together with participants we entered a rich world where anything was possible. Alongside these sessions at St. Brendan's my own work in the studio took me on a somewhat eccentric journey of collecting random discarded objects that no longer had a use or function. I made drawings of these odds and ends and they took on a meaning new value to me.I brought them to a group of stortellers to see if they too could invest these cast offs with new purpose. To my amazement, the tiniest most insignificant things sparked the invention of people, places and events that were beyond my own limited imagination and kept the group focused for the best part of an hour. These objects became portals to other worlds outside the walls of Cohreen ward and took me there too. The stories and objects that relate to them in the publication are different from my found objects, these were especially chosen by family members as things that hold a shared meaning or memory of times spent together. |
