Review: DEAD ZOO @ ARTBOX

Maria McKinney, Dead Zoo, (2015)

Dead Zoo a group show by Catherine Barragry , Teresa Gillespie, Maria McKinney which opened at Artbox on March 19th and runs until April 25th.The exhibition consists of mainly sculptural/installation work with some video work.

Artbox is a relatively new space in Dublin and is still finding it's feet, but always seems to have some engaging artwork. It’s a small space with a retail-like large front window. Always drawing a large crowd on it's opening nights, the space has an identical layout to the Oogagh Young Gallery just a few doors down.

Walking into the exhibition you are greeted by an otherworldly cocoon of thin mesh netting and expanding foam suspended from the ceiling. It forces the viewer to make a decision as to veer left or right, as if guiding us subconsciously around the exhibition. Choosing to follow it's path left, one encounters a plastic oil container with an overly engineered pulley system, suspending it from the ceiling. Dripping water seeped down a string onto map-like form, made from branches on the floor. Unfortunately due to the floors unevenness, the water strayed outside the frame onto the walkway, creating as we overheard, 'a health and safety hazard'. Whether this was intentional or a happy mistake we can only guess, but an interesting happy mistake none-the-less.

The exhibtion also has an interactive element, where viewers can climb a wooden ladder to view a small drawing hung high on the wall. More cocoons in a pile, hung in the corner of the space surounding a laptop placed on a very intersting plinth of sqaure pieces of MDF arranged into a spiral staircase design. Which is the work? The plinth or the video? The video, a jellyfish with a glass placed over the screen to distort the audeiences view. The center of the floor was covered by sculptures of a ball and some kind of bushell with tentical like tubes emerging from it, with a video monitor built in.

The question we need to ask ourselves is though is... how much work is too much? In Dead Zoo, the space : work ratio was sometimes out of balance, creating difficulties on how to navigate through the space. A group show should allow each participant's work to stand alone but also together as a unit. However the conversations that the work created between them were interesting. The work that was the most engaging alone were Maria McKinney’s cocoons. They were visually striking and took control of the space forcing the viewer to navigate around them in order to view the rest of the show. Well worth checking out!