Through a Pane: H91X6XN–BT180AJ 3, 7, 8, 9, 12, 14, 19, 20: 'Not Alone' Golden Thread Gallery: A Touring Exhibition For Our Strange New World: August 2020 To June 2021

‘Through A Pane’ was created during the lockdown period of COVID 19 and commenced upon the date of invited commission by the Golden Thread Gallery.

Inspired by a fragment of an old song, Golden Thread Gallery director Peter Richards had an idea for an entirely new kind of exhibition, one that could overcome the distances forced between artists and curators worldwide by the Covid-19 pandemic. Not Alone is an exhibition in a bottle, containing eight new works from some of the leading artists on this island: Graham Gingles, Joy Gerrard, Sharon Kelly, John Rainey, Chloe Austin, Ailbhe Greaney, Megan Doherty and Clare Gallagher. Each has created a piece of art tiny or portable enough to fit inside a glass bottle, yet powerful enough to convey vast philosophies, stories and ideas, and endless possibilities of interpretation.

Packed up, the exhibition will now be sent out into our strange new world to international curators who will each mount the exhibition/s in their own homes. Installing and arranging the works in their space as they see fit, they will each create a new configuration, new context and new connections for the exhibition.

They will then pack Not Alone back into its bottle, and send it on to the next destination. At this moment in time it is on its way to Bologna, Italy, where the first curator, Chiara Matteucci, is waiting.

And after that, it will go to Rome, and then Amsterdam, and then… to destinations as yet unknown. It may never return, but we will follow its journey around Europe and share each iteration of the exhibition online.

‘Through A Pane’ expands the narrative of previously commissioned work 'The Light Beautiful'. The work is a collaboration between myself in Belfast and my family residing in Galway. My Mother, Father and Sister sent digital images of themselves and their garden taken through the kitchen window, framed by 25 of the wooden panels which make up the 54 frames of the larger window. These images were then printed onto transparent film and placed on my own window in Belfast. Over time my own garden and young son were photographed through the images of the window of my home in Galway. Within the title the series co-ordinates correspond to the Eircode and Postcode of the two locations. The single images are named after their corresponding window-pane, numbers 3, 7, 8, 9, 12, 14, 19, 20. Pane 12 includes the postage stamps and contains the trace of the journey from Belfast to Galway and Galway to Belfast The work is a collaboration between people separated by time, place and the pandemic. The connections made via photography explore the relationships that exist between the virtual digital avenues at hand, as well as the still essential physical, printed matter. This work brings members of my family together in an image, who are otherwise physically separated. It makes of our two gardens, one place. It acts upon the potential of the view, of both the material and virtual capacities of photography, to remove us from the harsh reality of isolation, confinement. It does this by re-imagining this existence via photographic collaboration and exchange, resulting in the re-unification of family at a time of separation and crisis.