9 September to 26 October 2017

The Source Arts Centre, Cathedral Street,Thurles, County Tipperary

In this exhibition Marie Hanlon presents small sculptures, wall works and a moving image piece. Lines Tell Lies initially attempts to persuade the viewer to accept realities which do not exist. Line is employed as a transforming and provocative element in works which are concerned with the act of seeing and ideas of perception.

The impetus for the exhibition came from a previous work called Cornerspace in which 39 still images of corners and items placed in corners are linked in an unfolding video montage. The slow-moving sequence mixes fictitious constructs made of studio props, with real places. The idea here was not not to fully disguise the fiction but rather to set in motion a dreamlike sequence of suggestion and association. Rhona Clarke’s electronic sounds for Cornerspace are devised to evoke texture, spatial illusion and mystery. Aural echoing and reverberation mirror the unfolding imagery as it seeks to transcend its limitations. What is suggested is sometimes more real than what is actually there.

The ideas, materials and props from Cornerspace became the starting point for the other pieces in the exhibition. Using glass, perspex, pencils, nails, staples etc. the works are concerned with skewing reality, distorting scale, proposing associations and so on. The viewer is asked to believe that air has solid form and that illusion has real substance. Reality blurs into fiction through means which are playful and intriguing; lines deceive the eye and all is not what it seems. An interval of time exists between the first moment of looking and the true realization of what is actually there. This short span allows a shift from looking to seeing, from seeing to perceiving.