MOTELS AND MINERAL SURFACES

NAG Gallery, Dublin (Solo show)

March 2011

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Motels and Mineral Surfaces

 

“You’re standing on a platform made of glass. The rim of the Grand Canyon is 70 feet behind you. The other side of it is 3 miles in front of you. Then you dare to look down and see ………… nothing – nothing but 2,000 feet of air between you and the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Until recently, a sensation like this could only be experienced in dreams. But now, on the Hualapai Indian Reservation that is just East of Las Vegas, dreams and reality will meld into one with the Grand Canyon Skywalk.”

 

In her first solo exhibition with NAG Gallery artist Aoibheann Greenan imagines the experience of visiting the Grand Canyon Skywalk using the above tour-package information as her guide. Discrepancies between the real place and the artist’s fantastical depictions implicate her as author, humorously reflecting the way online information can distort or limit our understanding of the world. Greenan’s meticulous imagining of the Hualapai tribe’s crafted merchandise evoke a fictional other; hackneyed constructs borne of pop-cultural representations. Greenan’s  work dramatises the plight of the contemporary tourist whose quest for authentic experience has become predetermined by capitalist logic.