LEE WELCH

Never Odd or Even and other pieces.

Friday 12 September 25th October 2008 6–8pm
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Dublin City Council Arts Office
The LAB
Foley Street
Dublin 1
+353 1 222 7850
10am–6pm Monday–Saturday
Exhibition continues until 25 October

Never Odd or Even and other pieces.

Never Odd or Even and other pieces is an insight into Lee Welch’s multi-disciplinary practice exploring architectural intervention, questions of authorship, censorship, appropriation, belief systems, and semiology. Built on cultural iconography he provides a glimpse of alternative ways of approaching and thinking about art. His conceptual framework engages with archival material through texts and appropriated images that have become part of a lexicon of cultural reference.

The collaboration with Ken Meehan and Jeanette Doyle has led to an architectural intervention within the exhibition space. Transforming it, to capture spatial metaphors, transporting the viewer to an alternate space where they view the work. The stark white structures provide a space where a singular piece can exist in isolation. This intervention of sculptural architecture is indicative of minimalists concern with real space and ridding themselves of the problem of illusion and literal space. Welch’s spatial experimentation leads to questions of how spaces are used and how they provide a framework for viewing art. How does the white cube as a space benefit the artwork?

In his video piece Divination he explores the ritual of water witching or divining as it is commonly known. This age old ritual is steeped in a system of belief where this inanimate object the ‘dowsing rod’ becomes a primary agent in this interaction, or conversation between the diviner and nature. The diviner explains the process of transformation where the diviner and the rod, the life force become one. He describes it as a meditative process where one gives oneself up to a belief.  It is the beauty of the unexplained, the illusion.  Freud in his book ‘The Future of an Illusion’ equates belief and illusion with desire.  ‘We refer to belief as an illusion when wish fulfilment plays a prominent part in its motivation, and in the process we disregard its relationship to reality, just as the illusion itself dispenses with accreditations’. The Rod a sculpture comprising of a divining rod cast in bronze immortalizes the object of divination.  

Welch explores ideas of the sublime in his video piece Lady Chatterly.  He takes as his starting point a film adaptation of D.H Lawrence’s 1928 novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover. This piece is a montage of scenes of Lady Chatterly in nature; the experience of the sublime in this film work involves a self-forgetfulness where Lady Chatterly’s personal fear is replaced by a sense of well-being and security when confronted with the superiority of nature.

‘Between the essence and the descent, falls the shadow’ is a sculptural piece that can be viewed from alternative perspectives in the gallery. Its structure and form are a reflection of ‘A suspicious affinity’ the image of Adams Carter who is documented trying to re-create the photograph Dr Cook used as proof of his achievement of reaching the summit of Mount Mckinley in 1906.  Cook’s claim had being questioned by fellow explorers.  Cook’s story has become part of a historical mythology surrounding this period of heroic exploration. Barthes ‘Mythologies’ states that ‘myth hides nothing and flaunts nothing: it distorts; myth is neither a lie nor a confession; it is an inflexion.’  It is open to interpretation it embodies the parameters of potentiality.

The image of Hitchcock titled ‘The suspense of disbelief’ pictures him sitting next to an Indian rope. Hitchcock embodies notions of visual trickery, mythology and his overt use of signs and symbols throughout his films that may or may not have meaning continues this exploration of cultural iconology that is prevalent throughout the exhibition.

Lee Welch’s exhibition leaves the viewer searching for the elusive truth, there are points of crystallization throughout the exhibition but at points you are left questioning. The works can be appreciated on straightforward level, but for the viewer who is willing to delve deeper the pieces take on much more cultural significance. In a society where images have become the means of communication, Welch successfully takes these images and transforms them into subtle explorations that are open for interpretation.