Scopophilia
'Woman is [considered] secondary and so supplementary and so an act. Her great art is the lie, her supreme concern is appearance and beauty'
(Joan Riviere, 1929)
Ciarán Power is focused on addressing the notion of sexuality as a form of dominant social performance. Joan Riviere's 'Womanliness as Masquerade' states that the outward projection of femininity is a necessary cover- up to conform with social constructs; a masquerade whereby the woman as a category, does not exist. This would suggest that sexuality is a central part of social performance. This performance reveals a structure; it is a response to a patriarchal fantasy.
The artworks open a discourse and provide a reference point for speculation surrounding issues that are fundamental to the nature of contemporary social life. The series titled 'Scopophilia' becomes a substitute for provoking and satisfying the voyeuristic and fetishistic needs of the traditionally masculine viewer.
In their creation, the hyper- mediated artworks must pass through Power - a male artist - in order to be realised. A charged relationship between the viewer and the frame is thus construcuted. In this way, both the male fiction of (mis)representation and the social construction of sexuality are depicted. One's own perception is joined to the orchestration of the male gaze and is forced to be its active bearer. The subject of the artwork is rendered as passive object.
This results in a disturbing and complex body of work regarding power, pleasure, agency and fantasy in the broad world of contemporary popular culture.
Displacement
Reticent....Recessed.... Mute
Dis-empowered
Pathos of lost and forgotten lives
Essence which clings to the site
Subtle resonance.....Super sensory
Quiet desolation
Shafts of light
Dark immersions
Refractions and reflections
Peel of layers
Skeleton of history
The Limerick Sailors' Home
(Phyl Guerin, 2015)
This series by Ciarán Power deals with the obscuring of subtexts that are associated with the family archive; the clichés that are the sense of nostalgia and sentiment while looking at imagery from the past. In the context of the Sailor’s Home, Power places an emphasis on identity by representing the human form in a removed way, with the introduction of several interventions to the picture plain.
The dispersion of wax interposes on the image. The wax, which is fragile and brittle in nature - when layered in this manner - is a physically destructive force when applied to the artwork. This is symbolic in relation to the family archive photographs. These images are also considered fragile and perhaps, invaluable. The fact that these destructive layers of wax cover and obscure the images transforms these paintings into objects that in turn, take on a physicality of their own.
The super-sensory presence that exists within the Sailor’s Home is not represented through the depiction of flesh, but a trace of it. Therefore, the body of work becomes a mirror for human condition.
