Alice Maher | Becoming | IMMA @ NCH
by Sarah Allen
Aesthetica
Spanning painting, sculpture, photography, animation and video the work showcased in Alice Maher’s mid-career retrospective exists in a state of metamorphosis, a state of ‘becoming’. In keeping with the notion of change the show forgoes a chronological layout in favor of rooms that mix media and periods prompting the viewer to uncover the overarching themes and preoccupations of the artist. Playfully renouncing divisions of high and low art, kitsch figurines are cast in bronze (a material typically reserved for monumental sculpture), drawings of humble subjects are hung at a height suggestive of a Classical frieze, decorative illustration is not dismissed but celebrated and the unassuming objet trouvé becomes the uncanny source of new meaning.
Alice Maher
By Barbra A. McAdam
Irish artist Alice Maher, who’s long been pulling it all together (myth, magic, folklore, memoir, in video, music, drawing, sculpture, and more), turned this unlikely venue into a small theater with viewers sandwiched between screens that tantalized and confounded with a kind of primitive animation.