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19/10/2006

Abigail O'Brien

Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Dusseldorf

Confirmation. Martha's Cloth

Abigail O'Brien (*1957) studied painting from 1992 to 1998. She lives and works in
Dublin. Having shown Kitchen Pieces - Confession and Communion (1998) and Extreme
Unction - From the Ophelia Room (2003), Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer now follows with
Confirmation - Martha's Cloth, our third showing of an individual group of works
from the larger six-part cycle, The Seven Sacraments (1995-2004). This was first
exhibited in its entirety in Germany (Haus der Kunst, Munich, and the Kunsthalle at
Lingen) in 2004 and Ireland (R. H. A. Gallagher Gallery, Dublin) in 2005.

The overall installation consists of eleven photographic works on Cibachrome mounted
on aluminium under acrylic glass, each measuring 120 x 96 cm / 48" x 38"; the
embroidered object, Comforter (a hand-sewn 200 x 130 cm / 80" x 52" linen blanket,
embroidered with a text in cross-stitching) and the sound piece, Creed. The colony
of photographic pieces is made up of an eight-part group of pictures taken in cool
blue tones at a linen factory, and a triptych that paraphrases the structure of
altarpieces, variations in contrasting, saturated colours, on the biblical
Mary-and-Martha theme. On the side panels of the triptych, The Sewing Lesson I and
II, two women in mute consensus are preoccupied with a piece of embroidery. The
background there, a section of shelving with literary tomes, cookery books,
theoretical and picture books on art in a highly allusive arrangement, becomes in
the static, vacuum-like central panel entitled Still-Life with Needle and Thread the
main protagonist. The embroidery tools deposited on the shelf evoke the contrast
between the simplicity and privacy of a traditionally feminine cultural technique
and medium on the one hand and the official cultural code of 'High Art' on the
other. The alloying of the women with the seclusion of such interiors also keys into
a reference to seventeenth-century Dutch genre painting. The whole is underscored
with the biblical subtext on the meeting of Christ, Mary and Martha, another
recurrent iconographical subject. O'Brien has reversed or at least, blurred the
roles traditionally assigned to these women. While Martha, engaged in a practical
activity, usually stands, and Mary sits, the reverse applies in O'Brien's version.
The male figure, the focus and the judgmental figure are absent, the asymmetrical
hierarchy of the two women thus ceding to a symmetrical coexistence. A contrast in
both atmosphere and inner meaning is generated between the eight Cibachromes with
their much enlarged details from the linen factory, in which industrial textile
production is juxtaposed to individual handicraft. The ensemble of tautly stretched,
fine lines in a lucid composition, in invoking an imaginary staccato rhythm of
mechanical components, creates a virtual space of acoustics. But just as the titles
of the pieces name various embroidery and sewing stitches, none of which are to be
seen here, the process of weaving becomes tangible - but not its end product, the
length of Martha's Cloth. Nor does the sacrament of Confirmation make an appearance
as such. Instead, the artist works with a shifting choreography in which the steps
undermine the major theme, touch it tangentially or run athwart it in deconstructive
mien. Finally, Comforter (as in the Holy Spirit) unites the subject matter of the
two divergent photograph panels in a synthesis. The lettering of pale blue
cross-stitching aligns details out of different women's lives like a subjective
e'criture automatique and enumerates the variants of the feminine role (mother,
sister, daughter, girlfriend, etc.). In charged contrast, Creed can be heard: a
woman's voice intoning a monotonous repertory of dictums, the collective psalms of
workaday life, with their questionable claim to wisdom, permeated with the patterns
of prayer ('I believe...').

In O'Brien's perspective human life with its interwoven profane and sacred rituals
is lent a visual allegory through a piece of cloth and its pattern of warp and woof.
We pick up the 'thread' from the moment we take leave of youth. Thus the sacrament
of confirmation enters the work indirectly. As a moment of reinforcing faith and
baptism, it is at once a kind of initiation to the personal assumption of
responsibility that marks adult life. In particular, O'Brien's contemplation is of
the conceptions of life in a female identity, as voiced in the title of Martha's
Cloth. In the reciprocal references and complementing in operation between the
individual elements of this installation, she succeeds in complex fashion in
critically questioning the function and meaning of the Christian sacraments.
Simultaneously she primes our sensitivity for all the concurrently existing,
seemingly negligible rituals of everyday life.

Private View: Friday, October 20 from 6 pm to 9 pm

Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer
Dusseldorfer Strabe 6 - Dusseldorf
Tuesday - Friday 1 pm - 7 pm, Saturday 12 noon - 4 pm; and by appointment

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