Prodigy | A new video installation by Lily Cahill & Rob Murphy
Opening reception | Wednesday 28th May | 6pm to 8pm
Repeating daily | Thursday 29th May – Sunday 1st June | 12pm to 6pm
Accompaniment |
In 1827 the French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz purportedly watched Irish actress Harriet Smithson on two occasions at the Odéon Theatre in Paris, playing Hamlet’s Ophelia and Romeo’s Juliet, women created by English playwright William Shakespeare. These events incited Hector’s development of two intense infatuations. One with the actress, resulting in a doomed marriage. The other being the writer, proving the more lasting romance, developing into a lifelong love. Though the performances were in English, of which Hector knew practically none, this could not stop him grasping “the grandeur and sublimity of Shakespeare’s language along with the richness of the plays’ dramatic design.”
Hector would come to recognise ‘Romeo and Juliet’ as “the supreme drama of my life.” 1
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlioz#Literature
Biography |
As practitioners we engage ourselves in visceral experiences in an attempt to comprehend histories negotiating spiritual unknowns, the comedically horrific and speculation of the real world, which can be found in literature and art historical painting. Our sculptures and short video cuts have documented our entrance into provincial ghost trains, mechanical arcs, natural history museums and public toilets. These pathetic efforts to conceive of a sincere world are symptomatic of the failure within our practice to overcome or escape the perimeters of itself through narrative, form or execution. We address this not as a failure of the work, but a valuable and viable position of it. We feel like we win when we lose (‘Waterloo’, ABBA, 1973).
Lily Cahill and Rob Murphy have been working collaboratively on sculpture and video since 2012. They are graduates of the MA – Art in the Contemporary World [2011/2012] at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. They have BA (Hons) degrees in Visual Arts Practice (2011) from the Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dun Laoghaire, Dublin. Recent exhibitions include ‘The Crusades’ at The Drawing Project, Dublin (solo, 2013), ‘Scum’ at The Joinery, Dublin (solo, 2013), Claremorris Open, Mayo (2013), curated by Andrew Wilson of TATE Britain and ‘Your Cruelty’ at Flat_Pack, Dublin (2012).
Broadstone Invited Artists Residency |
As part of Lily Cahill and Rob Murphy’s residency at Broadstone Studios the artists invited Ruth Clinton and Niamh Moriarty, followed by Hannah Fitz, to engage with the Victorian era building. This three-part series of exhibitions finishes with the presentation of a new video installation made throughout their residency at Broadstone by Cahill and Murphy.
http://www.acw.ie/tag/lily-cahill/
