RORY MAHONY: "LOOP," Esplanade Arts and Heritage Centre, Medicine Hat, Alberta, August 23 to October 4, 2014

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"Thursday’s Child"

Rory Mahony, "Thursday’s Child," 2014, video still from five-channel video installation, 12:18 min., dimensions variable.

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"Thursday’s Child"

Rory Mahony, "Thursday’s Child," 2014, video still from five-channel video installation, 12:18 min., dimensions variable.

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Expand

"Thursday’s Child"

Rory Mahony, "Thursday’s Child," 2014, video still from five-channel video installation, 12:18 min., dimensions variable.

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"Thursday’s Child"

Rory Mahony, "Thursday’s Child," 2014, video still from five-channel video installation, 12:18 min., dimensions variable.

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RORY MAHONY: LOOP

Esplanade Arts and Heritage Centre

Medicine Hat, Alberta

August 23 to October 4, 2014

By Aaron Nelson

In the short time viewers spend in Rory Mahony’s immersive exhibition, they are offered a glimpse of what portraiture’s future may or may not be. It may not be static, it may not be entirely visual, and it may not be easy to define. What Mahony has done is open a door, inviting visitors on his journey to the edge of a definition. Much like the ravens that make several appearances in the work, we are collectively and purposefully going somewhere. We just don’t know where. And, thankfully, as we move toward this unknown, the destination becomes irrelevant.

The exhibition’s highlight is Thursday’s Child, a multi-channel, multi-sensory experience at once elegiac and frenetic. One component of the piece is a saturated colour portrait of a young couple – contemporary and urbane, their gaze is open, confident and noncritical, reflecting intelligence rather than arrogance. Their oversized glasses may focus their vision of the future, but also shield them from the world they will help shape.

This is not a static rendering. It is a video of a pose set over a mesmerizing eight minutes and displayed as a loop on a large flat-screen monitor rotated to portrait mode. I felt compelled to peer at the subjects as they adjusted their glasses, scratched their noses and relaxed into the pose. I watched the loop several times, searching for a narrative arc, a thesis or a resolution. The subjects seemed to embrace the future, to even be the future, and prompted me to divine my own future from their gaze.

Meanwhile, a projected component of Thursday’s Child that features a compendium of traditional portraiture, self-portraiture and Jungian references can be viewed as a meditation on the past through the lens of the present. Here, subtlety is absent. Artifice abounds as Mahony’s runic renderings encroach and recede over various vignettes, creating both syncopated jitters and pools of tranquility. Images compound upon each other and, at times, synchronize with a soundscape that seeks to connect feelings and intellect. The effect is a portrait that is complex, multilayered and completely immersive.

As I left the exhibition, I was compelled to study a small group of traditional portraits, Talisman. My perceptions altered, my hunger for movement awakened, I yearned to see these portraits animate. My body craved a soundscape. Mahony had moved me and as I exited, I was akin to the young couple in the portrait: I was looking toward the future with eyes open, receptive to change.