6. BEWILDERED IN THE WILDERNESS
Jonathan Ford & Pól McLernon
Thursday 4th June 2020 6pm
Live on Instagram @GALLERY46WHITECHAPEL
YouTube – Gallery46
Curated by Sean McLusky, Bjørn Hatleskog, Johny Brown, Kevin Quigley & Martin J Tickner
LIMINALITY [START DREAMING] A series of live transmissions
The artist is performing individually – live and recording on their own at GALLERY46 and with pre recorded video and soundtracks.
The artist has been given access to set up and broadcast on their own.
Dates
Live: Thursday 4th June 6pm
Channel: Instagram @gallery46whitechapel
Channel: Youtube GALLERY46
Artists
PÓL McLERNON
Pól McLernon is a Cill Rialaig-based Northern Irish born artist and musician. Key areas of interest include the correlations of frequency and form explored through conceptual framing in ideas of wildness and resonance. His work is most often focused on particular physical sites, or around particular social and psychotechnical issues. A strong participatory and theatrical aspect to his work exists as an important counterpoint to his practice.
Pól has exhibited and collaborated with other artists and choreographers, designed sets for theatre, produced a variety of sound installations and performances.
He has exhibited and performed nationally and internationally in Ireland and Germany.
Commissions include Clandestine Airs with Resonance FM and VOID.
Pól holds an MA in Research Architecture from Goldsmiths
www.mclernonae.com
JONATHAN FORD
Jonathan Ford is a sculptor, writer, performance artist, and failed rocket scientist, he has been creating large scale sculpture for over 25 yrs now. Most notably he has built a giant aluminium whale, which is also a mobile theatre; a mechanical self burying machine… and also a one man submarine.
He won the Jerwood West Midlands Sculpture Prize for Meth-V Stargazer, and has had successful residencies at the Pump House Gallery, Battersea and at the Florence Trust, a Victorian church in Highbury.
He also performs live as a long dead rocket scientist who has the remarkable ability of talking to dead birds. These performance/seances, as his rocket scientist alter ego, have taken place at festivals and galleries throughout the UK.
Since moving to Papa Westray in 2015 his work has taken on a more island/stone centric focus, his writing now takes in seabirds (extinct and living) and the folklore and history of remote islands in the North.
www.jonathanford.org
Information
No.6 BEWILDERED IN THE WILDERNESS
Thursday 4th June 2020
A showcase of two artists who live and create work in two externally remote parts in the world.
JONATHAN FORD on the Island of Orkney’s PAPA WESTRAY
& artist in residence
PÓL McLERNON at the Cill Rialaig Arts Centre at the southern tip of County Kerry near Ballinskelligs´
Both artists are engrossed in projects connecting to nature and its majesty
Both artists are locked into mediative mode of Liminality where the surrounding is a contrast dream-like landscape where time is magnified.
JONATHAN FORD
‘The Oracular Woodpecker of Mars’, 2020
2 x 10min films with spoken word and island ambient sound soundtrack
Part One: The Oracle Talks
The woodpecker looks vertically to the distant stars, where once he sought rain, now he seeks our future. The woodpecker relates what is to come for me, the island, our planet. In a lonely place, surrounded by water.
10 min film of view from under the flagstone looking to the sky, through the hole the Woodpecker has made in the stone. I have translated the latest communication for you, to save you the trouble of deciphering the Woodpecker language. I recount his view of the future,
Part Two: The Amenuensis Sleeps
As ever two toes forward and two toes back, the woodpecker recounts his version of the past. The journey to this island station, the subsequent arrival at the stone we now live under. His task at wing, his hopes and fears.
10 min film of the Woodpecker at rest, augery abandoned for now. On the other hand and not my shoulder for once. With spoken words of a silent bird, memories of an eye blue cloak, a lidless lake, and a hand to land.
……………………………………………
‘The Oracular Woodpecker of Mars
I transmitted this message 13 mins 48 seconds ago.
Message begins…
I am alone on Mars with only a Woodpecker for company.
The Woodpecker is oracular, he knows my future, and the future of the red planet I now call home. His future is kept safely under his wing, and he’s not telling me mine.
I need time to talk to the Woodpecker, to learn to see what he sees, and warn you of what is to come. I need someone to talk to back on Earth, who will listen to what the woodpecker tells me, I am the amenuensis for this bird.
Transmissions need to be written, the woodpecker language interpreted, it’s all time that I don’t have, my endless toil searching for water on this arid
Island station, consumes all my waking hours.
Be prepared to receive communications, or the Woodpecker and me will just talk to each other, and no one will hear our tale. Our future is in your hands, your future is in our transmissons.
Message ends…
PÓL McLERNON
“Borderline Entropy”, 2020
Video Art
A random encounter at the nadir of the moon, an empirical study of myth as a mirror of nature, as an extension of nature in the trace of drives in the human psyche.Natures direct and unmediated virtual representations based on that special faculty of the mind linking human imagination and basic animal instincts.
This spectre presented kills its male then gorges on lettuce like hatched fear.
Discharging its own fabulation in venereal vicissitudes.
A psychopathological ritual calling.
Original film captures and editing – Pól McLernon
Cello and Musical Arrangement – Pól McLernon
Tin whistle & vocals – Pól McLernon
Original ediphone recordings of Sean O’Connell
LIMINALITY with GALLERY46 present a series of new works dealing with the themes of incubation, self isolation, modes of liminality, meditation, restrictions and freedoms.
In a mode of LIMINALITY we are compelled to ask questions, to mediate on how we will transverse and embrace the mystery and power of transition.
Of what has been and what will become…
Let us enter this Liminal space, collectively.
Where we are free to roam in transcendent modes.
Free to activate the imaginal.
Free to [START DREAMING] again
Limited editioned exhibition posters by the individual artists involved in the series will be available to buy. Details to follow.
