Critique | ‘Thresholds to the Unseen’

Solstice Arts Centre 

7 September – 1 November 2024 

Travelling to Navan to visit Solstice Arts Centre, I am struck by the appropriate nature of the journey I am taking – venturing from the city to the countryside, crossing a divide of sorts. ‘Thresholds to the Unseen’ is a group exhibition featuring sculptural assemblage and installation works by Fiona Kerbey, Christopher McMullan, Joanne Reid, Katherine Sankey, and Emily Waszak, that contain reflections of the immediate landscape. 

Upon entering the first of three interconnecting exhibition spaces, we are presented with Christopher McMullan’s Perfumer’s Organ (2023) – a walkway that stretches the length of the room. This is the only interactive piece of the exhibition and comprises a series of bellows under a wooden parapet that the visitor is encouraged to walk across. Each square releases scents particular to different parts of Ireland – ranging from wine gums from a newsagent to slurry from County Meath. This sensory walkway immediately engages the visitor, its library of aromas providing an entry point into the resonant themes of McMullan’s practice and the wider exhibition – in this instance, those of distillation, materiality, and sensory familiarity.

These themes continue in Gallery 2, with McMullan’s Muc Chaor (Pig Berry) (2023), which examines rewilding and cultivation via mounds of biochar (made from expired beehive frames) and aromatised compounds (including algae and rose) encased under glass bell-jars, which speculate on what Ireland may have smelled like prior to peat bogs. Katherine Sankey’s Hydrozomia (eden) (2024) combines raw, organic materials (namely tree branches and roots), connected via piping and electrical elements in a hybrid sculpture which explores natural environments and human intervention. Use is also made of the space beyond the windows, with Joanne Reid’s So Entangled (grey section) on display in the gallery courtyard, bringing the exhibition out into the elements and continuing the theme of thresholds.

Gallery 3 feels like a suitable climax in bringing together the different elements of the show. There are video and audio – elements absent from the other rooms – with Katherine Sankey’s dual pieces, Craters and Hand Mine. Emily Waszak’s We Speak Through Worlds is a large textile work made from waste fabric, hung from a wooden frame. This arrangement includes a bowl made from Irish clay and a reflective brass plate, while the accompanying soundscape, titled Grief Weaving Sound Piece, creates a reverential, almost spiritual atmosphere of contemplation.

As someone originally from the Irish countryside, I found it fascinating to engage with objects that create feelings of familiarity; many of the scents released in the first room brought an element of comfort too. I also enjoyed seeing the functionality of these familiar objects being transformed and elevated, as observed in Joanne Reid’s Ladder (for idle hours), in which a ladder’s vertical linearity is interrupted by meandering arrows. Fiona Kerbey’s Spoon is a salvaged shovel covered with antique lace, echoing the surface pattern of water erosion, and harking back to Lough Corrib, from where the shovel was retrieved. 

As discussed, the works displayed in ‘Thresholds to the Unseen’ are connected through an emphasis on materials, and through thematic inquiries linked to the environment, rural life, loss, ritual, memory, and a sense of place. The juxtaposition of found and salvaged objects with natural materials (such as clay, seaweed, or branches) and manmade or industrial materials (like copper piping, glass, or steel) felt jarring but also indicative of themes of rurality and the agricultural environment, where nature is controlled by machinery, in order to yield produce. At first glance, the artists seem to deal with quite different subject matter and in varying ways; however, through careful curation, their commonalities are highlighted to bring the visitor on a sensory journey, both personal and universal. 

Laura Harvey-Graham is an editor, writer, current Co-Director of Basic Space, and Marketing and Communications Manager for Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI). 

@lorzhg