Gerard Byrne, 'Images or shadows of divine things', (2005 – ongoing) (detail). Courtesy of the artist.
‘Images or shadows of divine things’ is an on-going series of photographs accumulated since 2005 by Byrne. The modestly presented monochrome images of the United States share a distinct ambiguity; although made over the course of the five years leading up to the exhibition, the images appear to depict a much earlier time. Whilst evoking vernacular photographic idioms of American mid-century photography, cumulatively the series pointed towards the complicated relationship between time, appearance, and the photographic document. Anchoring the project with a reference to a text by the 18th century American theologian Jonathan Edwards, the work shadowed an American intellectual tradition stretching back to the Puritans which perceives the world as inextricably prefigured in the bible.
Gerard Byrne is an artist whose work regularly reconstructs found scenarios from the past, often drawing from television and magazine culture. Using video and photography, he explores how the future has been envisaged in the past. This exhibition accompanied, and was a counterpoint to, Byrne’s major new video work commissioned by and for Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art. Entitled ‘A thing is a hole in a thing it is not’, the project comprises four films that look at Minimalist sculpture as a pre-figuration of time-based artistic forms.
Gerard Byrne, 'Images or shadows of divine things', (2005 – ongoing) (detail). Courtesy of the artist.
Exhibition Details
Artist Talk
Gerard Byrne talked about his exhibition at The Common Guild ‘Images or shadows of divine things’ on 17 June 2010.
Exhibition Talk
Katrina Brown, Director of The Common Guild, talked about Gerard Byrne’s work including his commission for Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art ‘A Thing is a hole in a Thing it is not’ on 24 April 2010.
