Carmel Buckley

“Trace,” Weston Art Gallery, Cincinnati, OH, 2009

Solo exhibition

The work in this exhibition took shape when I moved with my family to Cincinnati and became fascinated by the discarded objects left on the property surrounding our house. Amongst the unusual objects left behind were old buckets that seemed a shadow of what a bucket might be, a sturdy bird-house that was left lying in the wood shed, and an old gate that in its former life gave an entrance to the property. The discarded objects recalled to me the way inanimate objects in fairy tales are transformed to assist human protagonists in their struggles against oppressors. The house has a Hansel and Gretel feeling about it, and the trees surrounding the property, which are virgin woodland, make up an acre of dense growth that could be the setting for many popular fairy tales. I became fascinated with the sounds in this setting and it became clear to me that the work needed an audio component. A recording of early morning birdcall became a soundtrack for a video of the trees. This video played in the gallery as an acoustic and visual locator for the objects and drawings.

The series of drawings exhibited derives its imagery and treatment from Kay Nielsen’s 1914 East of the Sun and West of the Moon, an example from the classic period of art nouveau–influenced fairy-tale illustration. Sue Spaid wrote that my engagement with this source material helps “one to grasp Derrida’s view that memory traces precede experiences. Her prior familiarity with shapes present in Nielsen’s book gave rise to a subconscious preference for particular forms (a beehive mound, forest trees, an interior space) that were realized on paper and appear in her sculptures. Just as matter can neither be created nor destroyed, the trace is never erased and space can always be replaced.” With the drawings I set up systems for using nontraditional tools that mark the paper in unpredictable ways. By using nontraditional approaches such as printing with found materials or by sewing, I sought to draw the viewer’s attention to the depicted form or image as well as to the process or material used. Any systematization the drawing might appear to gain through its repetitive processes was always undermined by irregularities of the handmade form, the contrast in applications, or an invitation to wonderment. The particular physical qualities of the paper were also important in these works. The drawings were all done on hand- made rice paper and shown in groups where their variations could be more legible.

A catalogue with an essay by Sue Spaid, an independent curator and writer, accompanied the exhibition.

The exhibition was reviewed by Matthew Morris in Sculpture Magazine: “Cincinnati, Carmel Buckley Weston Art Gallery”; and in CityBeat: “The Best of Cincinnati 2010” and 2009 Year Review “Space Is the Place: A look back at the year in alternative art spaces and exhibitions.”

The show was also reviewed by Jud Yalkut for the Dayton City Paper, “Nature & Artifice Eclectic: Works at Weston Gallery.”