Conor Kelly

6 January 2006 - 4 February 2006
Opening Reception 6 January 2006 6pm

Mercer Union is pleased to announce two new exhibitions – Leah Garnett’s Greater Than Smaller Than and Conor Kelly’s Plainsong.

Artist Talk: Conor Kelly: Friday, January 6, 2006 7:30pm

Back Gallery:

Plainsong

Conor Kelly’s Plainsong is a five channel video installation that is “an irreverent, infectious hymn to the mundane and the temporal” (Art Forum, Sept 04). Conor’s stationary camera captures unedited moments (flickering lights in a storefront window, rain hitting a sidewalk, a tree blowing in the wind) and he scores them with delicate, subtle melodies. The five video works gradually overlap to produce an ever-changing larger composition.

“In the installation Plainsong by London based Irish artist Conor Kelly we fall under a hypnotic spell as we hear musical tones emanating from the humble landscapes that he presents to us. Plainsong is comprised of five image/sound compositions arranged in a circular configuration with the viewer placed in the centre. The hegemony of proscenium or frontal presentation (the screen – viewer dichotomy) is done away with here in favour of an installation that privileges the viewer’s physical presence, allowing Plainsong to act upon the body and reinforcing the pleasure of reception. The viewer is free to turn towards any of the five simultaneously present video screens to have the sound and image act on the body, upon the skin.” – Paulette Phillips, 2005

Conor Kelly is an artist and musician based in London, England. Often working with film and sound, Kelly takes his cues for Plainsong from a myriad of mundane places in the landscape. Sequences of blinking lights in the city, rustling leaves on a tree, or rippling surface s on water, providing a starting point for a multi channel score played out in the gallery.

For more information, please contact info@mercerunion.org or 416.536.1519.

Mercer Union
37 Lisgar Street
Toronto Ontario
Canada M6J 3T3
(one block southwest of Queen and Dovercourt)

www.mercerunion.org

Mercer Union acknowledges the support of its membership, The Canada Council
for the Arts, The Ontario Arts Council and The City of Toronto through the
Toronto Arts Council.