In the ticking room
16th January - 1st March 2025
Mon - Sat, 10am - 6pm
The Lab Gallery, Dublin
Curated by Margarita Cappock
Eileen Leonard Sealy's work ruminates on the human relationship to objects, striving to challenge the accepted notions that the realms of the animate and inanimate are impenetrable to each other. Exploring the layered relationships between humans, objects, and places, at its core is a fascination with how environments, whether personal and well lived in or abandoned and disused, can carry traces of human presence. Key paintings in In the ticking room depict interiors and items that are personal to the artist, as well as imagined scenarios from the lives and homes of others, breeding a disjointed narrative, rendering the artist as an unreliable narrator on both the actual or emotional truths that construct our memories. The exhibition explores the role that objects may have in containing memory, the unseen forces that animate life and whether humanhood can be extended beyond the person. The work can be characterised by the extensive use of the human figure, while items such as fireplaces, chimneys, bellows, bagpipes, ornaments, puppets and a rocking horse play a supporting role. Questioning which are more reliable indicators of time spent, accrued objects or ambiguous recollections, the artist looks at ideas of form, void and existence. Recurring motifs in the work are fireplaces, chimney stacks and bricks, as the artist finds that the perceived boundaries between inert and latent forms becomes muddied. Fireplaces serve as a conduit between the internal and the external, and on the mantlepieces of which, are traditionally where prized possessions such as ashes and trophies are displayed. While bricks are often used as an example of the most inert object possible, as in ‘as thick as a brick’, when they are assembled in their intended use they can become the keystones in housing personal attachment and meaning. With what certainty do we have the sole rights to emotion and memory and what else aside from humans may have a degree of sentience? If we suspend the disbelief that we are the only observing party in a room full of objects, how might you move around that room?
The title of the exhibition In the ticking room derives from a line in the Scottish poet W.S. Graham’s (1918-1986) poem I Leave This at Your Ear.
Comissioned texts from Sofia Rudi Kent and Evan Kelly
A Canvas for a Silent Witness
Chimneys, bagpipes, horns and windows.
What happens when I transform these objects into another object— painting them to death. They reincarnate onto a canvas in this life cycle.
Perceiving them as they perceive me.
A chinwag between the lips of oven fans and creaks of enthusiasm from the noble chairs speaking in unknown tongues.
Last flickers of a dying worn out bulb as it attempts to guide me to my lonely bed.
The squinted eyes of the blinds, veiling me from the sun's probing. The virtuous telescope, resting in quiet corners, has seen more than my eyes dare to imagine.
The gutter beside the oak front-door gurgling for breath and soaking the dirty rain into its belly. These sacrifices do not go unnoticed.
We cover the patina and the wear and tear with earnestness.
The material witness of time on an object. The decay, the rot from what is alive— rain, mildew, mould, cobwebs, and fingerprints disrupting the inanimate.
Animism, does the word ask more than if it has a soul? What is my soul without this thing? What is this thing without my desire?
It isn’t about answering but forever posing questions, lets not pretend to have all the solutions although we hold our paintbrush loose and keep our mindseye tight.
Great aunt Lucy might have deserved better but also this is exactly what she got and is that so wrong? She led me to you. With too much good intent I packed you up and brought you far from your dwelling. I needed some solitude for further interrogating, but in the process, I only added to your burden.
This stately house is my stage, each thing my tyrant actor, some cooperate, some do not but i respect their resistance. Aggie and the puppets can be divas but when they sit centre stage everything melts away and I am left with some semblance of the truth.
I capture them in mid chaos immortalising forever the romance and the obscure.
Fireplaces, needles, dolls and bellows.
I've held her in the hush of my walls. She is a mystery— awkward and confusing—and she changes, more than me, she has turned into something I cannot hold. This enigma in a sack of naked flesh.
I stand tall to honour little girls who envision whole worlds from forsaken tchotchkes, for little boys who idolise plastic heroes.
I watched her stretch and shift, limbs and heart unfolding into something I cannot name. Her eyes, once wide with wonder, now narrow at me with questions I cannot answer. The air between us thickened with my half attempts but my silence has pissed her off.
I retort in sighs from my fireplace—my dear lungs, this seems to calm her down.
She used to press her hands to my windows, chipping the rust off my hinges, grappling with some truths, beyond my mutism.
I am testimony of her life. Blood splashes, tears, sweat, dirt, piss, runny noses and scratches.
I have held her in mid journey immortalising forever the elegance and the turmoil.
Sofia Rudi Kent
Pigment
When I came to, I found myself in the back garden, dripping in dew. Up above hung lazy
stars and in my head a haze of ill formed memories swirled back and forth, sometimes
almost taking the shape of people and places I could recognise, but dissolving as I tried to
place them in context.
I staggered to my feet, and as my balance adjusted, I realised I was naked. Red splotches
covered my body, marks of what was a bitterly cold night. Golden light spilled from a glass
door at the end of the garden, and I thought, Warmth. I ambled forwards, listening to the
steady trickle of a stream somewhere in the darkness. It followed me as I walked, never
seeming to drift from earshot. Only as I opened the door, did the sound leave. I entered a
kitchen with garish, yellow walls, the tone and shade of which skewed and morphed as I
moved.A smell of citrus and the creak of floorboards. The effect made me nauseous, and I
sat on the floor amidst all manner of kitchen utensils.
A fine china plate caught my eye, and I held it up to the light to see it better: it displayed what
seemed to be a medieval scene, various villagers on a riverbed dancing around a fire and a
hill on the other side dotted with collection of cows, some grazing and some gazing on with
mute curiosity. The ceramic triggered in me a faint recognition, something from a childhood.
Running my hands over the tiny, glazed images further illustrated a memory: sitting in this
very kitchen, staring at the very plate through jelly and custard, pushing them around the
plate as kids do, I wasn’t hungry, in fact - suddenly, a shrill sound shattered my
reminiscence! It did not hold a note, and instead offered a truncated, staggered melody.
At the end of the hallway I saw the source of the noise: at first what I thought was a dog then
revealed itself to be bagpipes. Only these bagpipes seemed to be walking! The
instrument dragged itself forward by the front pipes, with one trailing behind. A maternal
affection took over me, seeing this apparently injured creature and I ran over and gathered it
into arms. I ran my hands over its course, tartan body as it whimpered harsh sounds and
nestled itself against my chest: evidently, it was hurt. Further inspection revealed its back
pipe was stuck in a leather strap. I freed the leg and instantly the pipes leapt from my arms
and its whimpers turned into beautiful melodies as it galloped around the kitchen.
These sounds restored reality to the room, and I at once felt familiar. Faces of family
emerged from the mire of memory. In this very house. In this very room.
I awoke again, now on the hearth of a fireplace. It was the same house. I knew it was. All
about the place hummed a sense of mystery. The residual warmth of the fire lapped against
my back. Strong winds whistled down the chimney and seemed to beckon me to relax: I had
questions, but the house had answers.
Evan Kelly
