"Cleary Connolly’s meta-perceptual helmets ingeniously invite us to set aside our preconceptions and to experience things in ways quite different from the norm"

Aidan Dunne, writing for The Irish Times. 2 December 2014.

☏ Vincent O’Shea (project manager) 087 2384599)

If we have two eyes, then why is our vision so limited? Why do we have so little depth perception? Why don’t our two eyes offer us two different views of the world? Why don’t they allow us to look behind and in front at the same time, or sideways in both directions? Looking through Michael Land’s defining work Animal Eyes, we see that nature has explored all of these possibilities: the Hammerhead Shark has hyper-stereo vision; the horse sees 357° around itself; the chameleon has separately rotatable eyes...

Artists Cleary Connolly have spent several years developing an extraordinary series of helmets, art that can help us to explore these and other mysteries of visual perception. The artworks are inspired by early 20th Century experiments in perceptual adaptation, and the complex optics were developed over eighteen months by Cleary Connolly in consultation with research institutes in Paris and Montreal, through funding from the Arts Council. The collection has been hand-crafted in aluminium by master coach-builder Neil McKenzie, and now, through an Arts Council touring award, will tour to six venues around Ireland from July to September 2015.

L’Ecole de Breuil, May 2015

☞project    ☞photos     ☞video     ☞drawings     ☞press release    ☞pdf   ☞future helmets

At the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, August 2015

At Emo Court, September 2015

Garter Lane Arts Centre, Waterford, July 2015

Rothe House, Kilkenny, August 2015

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