Drawing a line under the Burren landscape

ARTIST Marie Hanlon and composer Rhona Clarke will join their talents linking music and the visual arts in a collaborative exhibition for the eighth annual Burren exhibition.
Between The Lines opens this Saturday at 5pm at the Burren College of Art under the curatorship of Josephine Kelliher.
It features both individual and collective pieces, prompted by and developed in response to the unique environment of the Burren. Although not all pieces are collaborative, there is a cohesion that is central to the exhibition with a strong dialogue between sound and image.
A video work, entitled Relic, draws its visual material directly from the topography of the Burren. Initially sequences appear unconnected, but as the film progresses, a pattern of cycles emerge. These include the cycles of the tides and the seasons and, ultimately, the cycle of life and death.
Dublin born Rhona Clarke studied music at University College Dublin, before completing a PhD at Queen’s University, Belfast. She is currently a music lecturer at St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra and a guest lecturer at the National Concert Hall. In 2005 she was elected to Aosdána, Ireland’s state-sponsored academy of creative artists and her work has been performed and broadcast throughout Ireland and at several European music festivals.
For Between the Lines Rhona will show three sound works in the main gallery, presented as individual pieces.
As in the video, the raw material for these pieces was generated mainly by percussion instruments and then manipulated electronically. The works address time and space and in this sense provoke associations with the natural environment whilst also reflecting the linear nature of the drawings.
Marie Hanlon studied art history at University College Dublin and began painting in the early 1990s. Since then, she has had numerous solo exhibitions and contributed to several group exhibitions in Ireland, Europe and America.
Marie’s drawings for this exhibition take their lines from the unexpected as well as the obvious and include wire, wood, water and fissured stones shaped over millennia.
“The dialogical aesthetic formed from the merging of sound and visual disciplines opens a discourse that questions the possible and supports the autonomous work. Exploring the same terrain by different means and experiencing the work in synchrony generates a new dimension. The work acknowledges its location and draws upon the Burren’s ecosystem, contradictions and mysteries,” said a spokesperson for the Burren College of Art.
For more information about the exhibition or the Burren College of Art visit www.burrencollege.ie or telephone 065 7077200.