Confined / Unconfined
Hugh Kerr
Opening event:
11 January, 2024 – 5pm
Times and dates:
9 – 16 January, 2024
9.30am – 5pm
Mapping the paradoxes
‘Confined / Unconfined’ presents a body of work from a paradoxical period of my life. As a family we moved, for a year, to the other side of the world, to live in a city to which I was both alien and familiar, where I was both liberated and confined, mobile and sedentary. It was a year of progress and of standing still.
My art practice was both constrained and released to run in new directions.
Restricted mainly to drawing, life in Dublin’s outer suburbs allowed the evolution of a number of ideas that I had been waiting to develop for several years. These ideas form the core of the exhibition.
Thematically they cover themes to which I return frequently: humanity’s relationship to the environment, the alienation of the virtual world, and modern working life. However a common element to these works is a sense of claustrophobia with the systems, processes and networks of human civilisation.
The two exceptions are ‘Species’ and ‘Unconfined Spaces’ which view the world from an uncharacteristically liberated perspective.