Megan Mc Namara
V E R S E (2022)
Exploring conversations around language and text in contemporary art practice, this exhibition seeks to deconstruct the ways in which we convey personal and geographical histories throughout the African continent. The title V E R S E speaks to two literary terms, one the poetic, a space for language to speak in a metaphorical and nuanced manner and the other speaks of a biblical sense, in which throughout the African continent much of the language we have been provided has come from the colonizing west, this speaks of the more critical sense, and explores works that deny the western structure of narrative and instead examines alternate methods of employing our own definitions of what the telling of culture and history on the continent look like, no longer imagined but carving a new identity, these could look like love letters, performances, video art, installations.
Selling the Sun (2021)
Selling the Sun (2021) is an installation consisting of reconfigured tourist brochures, the kind which would often find seen in a large stand at the airport or local backpackers. Many of these mass-produced brochures often advertise some kind of an experience and a good time. In order to subvert this culture and critically look at the “experience” which is being sold to tourists, I used concepts and found text pieces based on a collection of critical texts by African writers and have placed these as the new version of my tourist “experience” guide. The works sit as an essay, a mind map, a library of sorts. The brochures provide an alternative means of sharing and gaining knowledge and looking at the history of Africa in a new perspective.
Where the sun sets (2021)
Where the Sun Sets (2021) provocatively examines the romanticized perception of Africa by adopting a critical approach of the viewers gaze. The gallery's window facade is veiled with hues of orange and yellow, reflecting the tones of the evening sunset. The tinted windows, reflecting ever-changing patterns onto the gallery floors, create a captivating and romantically charged ambiance throughout the space. The artwork looks at the Western perspective to view Africa through "rose-tinted glasses." By employing this metaphorical filter, the installation draws attention to how observers often choose to bask in the grandeur and opulence that is presented, rather than critically engaging with the contested history and complex narratives of the continent.
Mrs. Muscle (2018)
A familiar household cleaning spray, its label quietly altered from Mr Muscle to Mrs Muscle. The change is so small it is almost missed, which is exactly the point. The work attends to the subtle ways society conditions us into assigned gender roles, how those roles are written into even the most ordinary objects we live with, and how readily we accept them. One substituted word is enough to reveal the convention beneath.
Lovers (2016)
Two boulders bound together by a single length of rope, which I carried down a mountain on my back. Lovers holds hardness and intimacy in the same gesture: the near-impossible task of pulling a rope tight enough to bind two immovable forms, and of softening them in the act of doing so. It speaks to relationships, and to the duality that lives between two people who are held together, and apart, by effort.
Tired Hammer (2012)
A claw hammer cast in bronze, its handle bowed as though too exhausted to lift. The work grew out of a weariness with institutional critique itself: the tiredness that sets in from hammering away at an institution that will not move. Casting the tool in bronze turned its making into the real labour, and turned an instrument of force into something soft, spent and unable to strike. What remains is a monument to its own fatigue.
All Nighters (2012)
Exploring the compulsion to extend time beyond its natural limits. An illuminated window simulates daylight, creating a false sense of certainty while concealing the darkness beyond. Suspended between comfort and unease, the work reflects the anxiety of relentless productivity, where familiar objects become subtly disorientating and the pursuit of completion feels endlessly just out of reach.
Flood (2012)
Flood (2012) presents a domestic basin within the gallery, its tap seemingly left running in a continuous state of unresolved action. The work lingers within the psychological space between certainty and doubt, drawing upon the familiar sensation of leaving a place while questioning whether the water is still flowing. Rather than depicting an event, it materialises a fleeting cognitive condition—one in which memory, imagination and anticipation momentarily collapse into one another. The result is an encounter with a shared experience that is instantly recognisable, yet remarkably difficult to name.
Catch me if I fall (2012)
Catch Me if I Fall suspends the moment between balance and recovery: the familiar sensation of tipping backwards on a chair before instinct pulls you safely forward again. This brief, almost imperceptible experience is translated into a sculptural form, allowing viewers to recognise a feeling that is difficult to describe, yet instantly understood through the body.