cracked_looking

Addressing a heterogeneous public, these three environments create an ever-changing universe of line, colour, movement, sound and silence, where the traditional roles of artist and public are reversed. In Pourquoi pas Toi? the spectator is the actor, the gallery a stage and the artist, a spectator.

Anatole France once said that ‘truth is not the point of art, if you want truth, ask science’ Combine this with James Joyce’s ‘symbol of Irish art, the cracked looking glass of a servant’, and what do you get? ‘Pourquoi Pas Toi?’ a strange Irish/French exhibition where a series of technological looking glasses invite spectators, passers by, dancers, actors, and anybody who wants to have a go, to see what they can do with their own reflection, and above all, enjoy the show.

In Pourquoi Pas Toi? Anne Cleary and Denis Connolly use science to serve the purposes of art. The show uses a combination of interactive technology - computers, video cameras and projectors - to put the spectator at centre stage, and create a series of visual interactive sets where artists from other disciplines are invited to intervene.

Pourquoi Pas Toi? synthesises themes that have been recurrent in the artists work for over a decade. Since their early conneries in 1996/97 - ephemeral pirate interventions, and practical jokes in galleries and museums, - their work has continually called into question the role of the individual in art, and arts’ relationship to life. Refusing the elite structure of the contemporary art world, they have systematically attacked, in a very Irish way, the static role of an art that simply serves up luxury goods for the market and titilating images to the media. In their work everything has its place, humour and the burlesque rub shoulders with reflection, observation, real life events and fiction. But first and foremost Pourquoi pas toi? is an invitation to all ages and all publics to become involved. In the words of Joseph Beuys ‘everyone is an artist‘. Perhaps this is the truth that Cleary’s and Connolly’s cracked mirrors are to reveal.