Suzanne Mooney: Shatter, Scatter 4.10.-3.11.2024
Opening on Thrusday 3rd October 5pm-7pm!
Guided tour on Sunday, 13th October 1pm.
“An intact window is interesting mainly for its transparency. But when the window breaks, what intrigues us is the brittleness that was there all along” [1]
The exhibition explores the material of glass in relation to the photographic, hinging on the core idea of fragmentation as a literal state, and conceptual framework from which the works depart. In photography, glass functions as an element for magnification and focusing light; to hold images within a layer of emulsion; to navigate our devices through touch, and to act as a protective shield. Embued with many contradictory qualities, glass is an everyday substance that surrounds us yet often goes unnoticed.
Fragmentation is explicit in the video projection, On Glass, sits an Image in which jagged pieces from a single black and white photograph appear sequentially. Each provides a glimpse of a mountainous landscape, overcast skies, exposed rock, and distant woodlands, composed within an irregular form. The original picture, taken in 1903 by the photographer Henry A. Stanley, depicts a summit view from Mount Monadnock, in New Hampshire. Captured on a glass plate negative, this photographic object has been in the world for over a century before Mooney deliberately smashed it. Out of this act of destruction, the work considers how images can be regarded as objects existing within a continuous process of production, exchange, and consumption.
Glass is an amorphous substance, neither liquid nor solid, it lies somewhere between. In the upstairs gallery, the works continue to expand on its multi-faceted nature with an installation of blown glass forms, photographic prints, text, and objects. Exploring the shifting nature of glass, many forms converge in the space, extending from the inevitability, that all glass will someday break. While some have already shattered, others are still complete, setting up the possibility this might be their time. “What happens when you drop a crystal, should it shatter, and should you glance at the bits of glass that, though they are nothing but glass, captivate your attention… Within the shimmering splinters of glass, glass becomes something new.”[2] Shatter, Scatter is situated within a wider body of artistic research, looking at glass as an omnipresent material within image-making.
Suzanne Mooney (b. Ireland) is a visual artist based in Helsinki, working with photography and its materiality. Since graduating from the Royal College of Art, London her work has been shown internationally in exhibitions at ADN platform, Barcelona; A.I.R Gallery, New York; The Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki; Photo Ireland, Dublin; Vitrine Gallery, Basel; Weserburg Museum, Bremen; Contemporary Art Society, London, and Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork. Her works are in the OPW, Irish State, and Kiasma collections. Suzanne is a lecturer at the Academy of Fine Art, Helsinki, and a PhD candidate at Aalto University.The exhibition is kindly supported by the Kone Foundation and the Arts Promotion Center, Finland. Thanks also goes to Slate and Zach at the Glass Workshop at Aalto.
[1] Teju Cole, ’Shattered Glass’ teoksessa ’Black Paper: Writing in a Dark Time’ (2021)
[2] Bill Brown, ’The Secret Life of Things’ teoksessa ’Other Things’ (2015)
Turun Taidehalli