Memoryhouse is an exhibition intervention in response to the Derek Hill collection at the Glebe House in Donegal opening Sunday 10th of September at 3pm, and runs to Sunday 5th November. The exhibition places the works of artist Myrid Carten and collaborative artists Éiméar McClay and Cat McClay in relation to this collection.
As an artists’ collection, the works that Hill collected during his lifetime do not fall into any single-threaded thematic narrative. Instead, the works in the collection tie to Hill’s life in a personal way. They give expression to Hill’s artistic interests, the relationships he shared with the people he knew, and the memories born from those encounters.
The exhibition aims to invite visitors to consider how the subjects of the collection still have relevance to contemporary visual practice, challenging our understanding of memory as something fixed in the past and instead as something being reworked according to the needs of the present.
Filmmaker Myrid Carten’s work explores both the struggle for intimacy and the ways we are compromised by our pasts. Using a playful combination of documentary and fiction, Carten’s work challenges the reliability of memory, the artificial versus the real, and power relations between the sexes.
The joint practice of Éiméar McClay and Cat McClay consider ideas of queerness, abjection and systems of power. Through video, 3D models and installation, their work creates animated tableaus of religious paraphernalia and strikes of elemental weather accompanied by text, exploring the historically fraught relationship between queerness and institutional religion.
Memoryhouse is produced and presented by the Regional Cultural Centre and Glebe House & Gallery, curated by Early Career Curator in residence Daniel Nelis.
Kindly supported by the Arts Council Ireland, OPW – Office of Public Works and Donegal County Council.
