Mermaid Arts Centre
11 May – 22 June 2024
Showing jointly in ‘Horses’ at Mermaid Arts Centre, Hannah Ní Mhaonaigh and Émile Crowther have influenced each other’s practices since first collaborating in 2014. Rather than interweave their work, curator Anne Mullee divides the gallery between them, facilitating open conversations that flow back and forth, shuttle-like, while also engaging the visitor.
The first image encountered is Émile Crowther’s Beautiful Colm (2024), an analogue C-type colour print of a dead pigeon on a carpet of grass and daisies. Lying with its underside facing upwards, its downy feathers have loosened in painterly fashion and drifted out among the surrounding flora. Their fuzziness contrasts with the wildflowers’ crisp contours, heralding the fading of form that comes with the dying process.
Next up are three monochrome silver gelatin prints on a blue-painted wall. While the subject of Deflated i (2024) is elusive, its general shape, distribution of tones, and hint of a hooked claw suggest it as another image of the deceased pigeon – this time over-exposed and seen against a speckled white background that, again, evokes entropy. These features are shared by Deflated ii (2024), a partial image of a football with familiar hexagonal patterning.
Located between the two, Thomas Street (2024) reverses tonal values with its black ground and lighter subject. Also disintegrating into its surroundings, this vaguely horseshoe-shaped form recurs in Bent in Two (2024), a wall-mounted sculpture by Ní Mhaonaigh. Made from Jesmonite, painted ultramarine, and studded with chunks of glass and stone, it is a both symbol of luck and the source of Crowther’s image.1
Ní Mhaonaigh’s trio of oils on linen are more similar than different within her body of work. Fiadh (2024) is a 150 x 150 cm composition with painted elements that include a vertical panel stacked with mini ‘paintings’ (one featuring an iconic heart symbol), a large square area incorporating a border, an orange diagonal that breaks up the horizontal-verticals, and a sliver of exposed support. Although the main section reads as a corner of lawn (recalling Crowther’s Beautiful Colm), overall, its subject remains mysterious. Shifts between impasto and a generally flat surface (achieved by applying and removing paint), stark and nuanced colour juxtapositions, and systematic and expressive brushwork, imbue it with liveliness.
The stars align (2024) is identical in scale and also formed from compositional elements. A vertical panel painted black with impasto yellow ‘stars’ and an inky-blue ‘firmament’ with oddly shaped ‘planets’ lend a cosmic feel that is consistent with the title. Again, the largest single area is a square that could be read as lawn, or as reflections on water (the word ‘water’ and a duck-like form may even be discernible in the mix). More musings are prompted by the similarly ambiguous Flowers by a window (2024), a 110 x 110cm painting featuring a dark square with a colourful border. What might be interpreted as the nominal ‘flowers’ could be displayed in front of a window, or perhaps seen through it?
Ní Mhaonaigh’s final exhibit is a wall-mounted vinyl sticker of a rearing horse, bearing a QR code that links to an excerpt of Damhán alla i mo lámh (2024) – a video co-produced by both artists – featuring a white horse rolling on grass. Playing on a loop nearby is Crowther’s Smithereens 2012-2024 (2024), a ten-minute video which transitions from colour footage of the Brighton Pier funfair – sourced from ten-year-old, expired Super 8 film – to intriguing black-and-white sequences. The grainy visuals are accompanied by audio that alternates between silence, pop music, and mechanical clicks, as well as onscreen captions that communicate indecision while playfully interrogating the veracity of what is being seen.
That little is certain about Ní Mhaonaigh and Crowther’s imagery allows the imagination scope to form interpretations. The viewing experience, which begins with a literal memento mori, a reminder that nothing stays the same, unfolds as a suspended state in which questions and answers coalesce and dissipate. Seeming only in places to be about the eponymous horse – a much-revered animal, referenced even in prehistoric art – the pieces work together to instead evoke the spirit of its complex symbolic narrative, and mythological affects.
Susan Campbell is a visual arts writer, art historian and artist.
susancampbellartwork.com
1 See: Horses, a zine produced to coincide with the exhibition.
