by Rose Rushe
ALL chambers at Limerick City Gallery of Art (LCGA) hold tall, stoic, magisterial occupants that sway and slide on a post. Sculptor Michael Warren was commissioned by LCGA director Helen Carey two years ago to create a site specific installation to do our municipal gallery proud for City of Culture status. These rooms now hold this framed, suspended series of stele (heavy planks) seeking our disturbance.
Minister for Arts Jimmy Deenihan arrived for the auspicious opening on Thursday 23, Michael Warren having dedicated his past two years to making every work at Pery Square for this show. There is one exception to this that takes its place harmoniously.
He’s a huge noise in the art world for a man with a gentle presence: Aosdána, RHA, RIAI; commissioned by the Olympics for the South Korea games; public installations internationally.
Warren’s mind is steeped in art, world and religious history, influencing subtexts to the still yet moving works that hint at a Calvary for everyman. Or is that the outline of a tram? Departure and arrival? Railway sleepers? The eye and hand of the beholder are sought in those show he calls ‘THOSE WHO GO/ THOSE WHO STAY’.
Walking through the rectangular and Star of David shaped iron frames, their heavy symmetric stele hang from hooks that move them left and right.
We are invited to touch and interact, giving each piece an individual resonance when we push, glide, sway, hold, stroke. Observe from every dimension these weighty solemn pieces in Cedar of Lebanon, redwood, elm, sycamore, each plank read downwards from its surround.
“You get that floating presence, almost like an apparition,” Warren suggests. “The state of being is about a whole suite of paradoxes, allowing shape to perform within the whole proscenium arch”.
In the sculptures’ flux, a parallel is evoked with the temporal, spiritual and a continuum of change.
These are set pieces. ‘Barbed Trefoil’ suggests the crucifixion, three verticals comprising a symbolic trinity, grouped two and one. Gaze upward to the missing rusted post that brings to mind the hangman, worn indentions in the wood making it unique and human.
“These are objects to be touched and moved… the frame like an aura, making them hallowed, elevated, suspended, floating. Yet no matter how the configurations are made, they seem to balance always. The weight and levity paradox is the one the most comes to mind”.
Wander through to experience what pieces such as ‘Tempo Rubato’ and ‘Pagina Pastorum’ suggest in the spaces for which they are made.
The gallery’s Helen Carey makes this observation, “I feel as though the show is really apposite at the moment for a country in a state of flux – coming, going, being”.
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