Abstract:
Over the past three years both artists have worked collaboratively in an installation format under the broad theme of landscapes of the past. For this exhibition, Deirdre Mackel has produced an installation entitled ‘Accidental Gardens 2’. It consists of a child-like garden made from an enclosure of miniature barbed wire fences, and toy gardening tools, including elements of Nuala Gregory’s flower works and small sculptures or ‘shelves’, assembled together allowing for the combination and interplay of ideas and materials derived from two locations. Deirdre references her remembered landscapes of growing up in West Belfast throughout the conflict and Nuala responds with objects representing those commonly found in the earth - old bottles delicately embellished with buttercups and daisies, combining them with lemon wood blocks to reference her current landscape of New Zealand. This assemblage of objects, symbolises the way things are thrown together in chaotic metropolitan space, forming accidental relations among which new possibilities might yet be glimpsed.