July 6th - August 28th 2007
The Colour of Surprise - Jeanette Hillig, Michele Horrigan, Melanie O’Rourke
In the Colour of Surprise three artists challenge us to take a closer look at our surroundings. Their depictions of disregarded objects; an industrial factory, discarded toys, and an unlikely unification of primary coloured plastic objects draws attention to the waste spewing from our society.
Brutal changes brought about by growth, pollution and the staining of the gallery space fling us into a vortex of flux. There are harsh polarities between Melanie O’Rourke’s paintings of childhood toys and their situation, dumped on the side of the road, the moments in Michele Horrigan’s DVD Nature Obscured by Factory of the curlew pulling wriggling prizes from the mud flats and the vast, harsh factory chimneys feeding smoke into the sky and the havoc wrecked by Jeanette Hillig with paint and plaster on the contained white space of the gallery.
Jeanette Hillig uses shiny, plastic food containers, glass and mirrors, bright junk and household cartons to build unexpected objects from juxtapositions. Her artworks are formed through claiming found objects by staining, plastering, dripping and dribbling. Jeanette’s wall painting grows parasitically from the surface of the gallery.
Melanie O’Rourke creates a slick, reflective, shiny paint surface from which emerges hoards of people’s belongings, plastic flowers, teddy bears, prams, scooters, gates and a radiator. The comic book quality of the images is challenged by the melancholy air of the spilt belongings and the deliberate disruption of the painted surface with raised silicone lines and empty spaces.
Michele Horrigan manipulates environments to present a theatrical quality in her video works. Cotorra records vivid, green parrots from Argentina stickily gorging and squabbling over figs with pink exposed centres. Their exoticism is contradicted by their thief like behaviour, breaking into the figs and knocking each other off branches. Nature Obscured by Factory delicately transposes river birds swimming in ‘v’s on the estuary with the red and white striped chimneys of the factory that provides the nature reserve. Visual patterns are reiterated by flying birds and smoke, and blinking lights.
Biographical Notes
Jeanette Hillig was born Denmark in 1977. She lives and works in Copenhagen. She studied at Stadelschule, Frankfurt and at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen. Recent exhibitions include Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition, Copenhagen and No Resistance, Copenhagen.
Michele Horrigan was born in Askeaton, Co. Limerick in 1978. She lives and works in Frankfurt am Main, Germany and Limerick, Ireland. She studied at Stadelschule, Frankfurt and the University of Ulster. Solo exhibitions include Ritter & Staiff, Frankfurt (2006), and at SIM, Reykjavik (2006).
Melanie O’Rourke was born in Co. Leitrim in 1978. She lives and works in London. She studied at Chelsea College of Art and Design and Limerick School of Art and Design. Solo exhibitions include The Dock Arts Centre, Leitrim, 2007 and Up the Walls, Kilkenny Arts Festival and Limerick Printmakers Gallery 2005.
This exhibition is guest curated by Pippa Little, Curator Audience & Access, Limerick City Gallery of Art. Pippa Little was born in Limerick in 1980. She studied at the University of Essex and the University of Northumbria. She is researching a PhD at Limerick Institute of Technology, Limerick School of Art and Design.
For information on the exhibition please contact plittle@limerickcity.ie
