Mechanism

For more than two decades Kearney has created large-scale conceptual installations that examine the themes of personal history and identity and how architecture and the built environment are used and experienced by different audiences at different times. Most recently he has investigated how interventions in architectural space transform the experience of being in those spaces, how people think about them, how they become remembered and how a built environment can animate real and imaginary memories, desires and dreams.


Devised as a group of installations that redefine our experience of The Dock gallery, Mechanism was a solo exhibition by installation artist Andrew Kearney presenting a body of work that continued his exploration of the layered history of buildings. It presented works created especially for The Dock alongside an environment responsive light and sound installation, first exhibited at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, in a theatrical ensemble that responded, recorded, and reacted to everyday life in Carrick.

While the artist defined the parameters, assembled the technology, and set the scene, he eventually relinquished control so that each spectator generated, through his or her personal routine, a counterpoint to the prevailing record and history of the setting. In the case of Mechanism
this was achieved by a group of interrelated large-scale installations that used industrial materials to integrate the architecture of the early nineteenth century courthouse with that of the contemporary art centre; meanwhile a range of electronic devices linked the life of the town with that of the interior space of the gallery.


As you entered The Dock, a silver parachute-like orb, abandoned by its user, filled the void above the grand staircase. In an adjacent room an exposed assemblage hung aloft in its functional, vulnerable state, uncompromisingly merging and recomposing the everyday sounds captured outside the building into a light and sound sequence mediating the on-going dialogue between the building’s internal and external organs. Simultaneously, in another room a penetrable wall quietly rotated, inviting the viewer – a time traveller – to occupy its centre as it continued in its constant cyclical motion. Boundaries between the public and the private were blurred, the realm of the transitional zone extended.


Individually and in combination these interventions offered the audience a space within which they could weave new narratives. Engaging the viewer, facilitating reflection on lives-lived and remembered, the work rendered the everyday exceptional.