Tracy what, how, why

1. The viewer enters a completely blackened room, as their eyes adjust they see the outline of four oval-shapes, each the approximate size of a human torso. Two parallel rows of two, facing each other. The linear shapes are made of light. As the viewer moves around the room the ovals come in and out of visibility. An awareness of how big or small this room is never becomes apparent, only how near or far the viewer is from the ovals that they can see. This work was viewable only for one winter evening.

There were four windows in the space, two parallel rows of two, facing each other. A sheet of was placed vertically at varying distances in front of each window. At about my head-height and in the centre of each width, I used a jigsaw, with the blade at a considerable angle, to saw an oval shape, leaving it connected at a few points. The angled cut allowed for a minimum. §A tube-like structure was made at the back of each to connect the wood to the wall and to create a lightfast tunnel that directed the streetlight only towards the line cuts, with no other bleed into the room.

I soaked the four plywood for a few days, weighting the centre so that each warped to a slight curve. I wonkily trimmed all of the edges of the wood so the sheets were no longer perfectly rectangular. Both of these things ended up not to be noticeable, and turned out to be only for my enjoyment.

Why The ovals acted as portals, to stare at and be transported to elsewhere, activated by the act of looking. They referenced tantric Shiva Linga painting: thickly painted dense black ovals, with a slip of colour leaking at its edge used as a tool to meditate by concentrating your stare at the oval.

2. what and how A work made specifically for a monument room adjoining a church in Kilkenny Town. There were three components to the installation:

A video of the moon filmed through an astronomical telescope, this was projected onto a broken piece of monument stone.

A set of 11 rocks taken from a forest on the other side of Ireland, with a slice cut from each. In the room, laid on the floor, immovable, were carved pieces of monuments stones from graves outside the building. I cut the stones so that they could talk to the other stones.

A video of a bridge sunken by a high tide caused by a super moon, projected onto a piece of torn tracing paper made to stand upright using metal armature wire.

Thinking about the relationship between very heavy bodies in the universe and the forces that connected them. This work was made in reaction to the heavy immovable stones in the space.

3. A flat screen monitor is laid flat on the floor. It plays a video showing extreme close-up pans of paint flaking off walls and doors. Real paint flakes were laid on top of the screen.

It was filmed in an old house, during a residency and was shown in a group exhibition in the same space.

The texture of the filmed surface combine with the television set and flakes to make a sculptural object. There is an interaction between the flakes on the surface and the filmed surfaces – they become travelers in the space of the video. There is a deliberate ‘wrongness’ in how the footage is shot: shakiness, focusing in and out, etc – pointing to the materiality of the video.