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The Project Arts Centre installation space has been fully revamped and is refreshingly unrecognisable for Garrett Phelan’s A Voodoo Free Phenomenon. Entering the exhibit feels like walking into a virtual reality simulator reminiscent of a game of Qazar. A garish, radioactive green wall, hosting a gilded vintage radio and one of Phelan’s trademark microphones leads the viewer through the dark where we are presented with two screens, two identical golden sculptures both entitled Ethereal Assemblage, and the first focal point of the installation. A nine-minute hypnotic video work where movement through rotation plays a central focus revolves between primitive computer graphics and a series of animations, signalling that nothing is fixed amidst the flux of culture. The same animation reveals a panoramic view of the inner workings of what appears to be a microchip and is offset by a thought-provoking cartoon box which makes its constantly shifting claims through writing on its protruding corner: “free from symbols/politics/institutions/history/future/tension/controversy/culture/language/invention…” Phelan thus begs the question: can we encounter objects or artefacts devoid of cultural constructions?
The artist himself then invites us to witness a candid and self-conscious storytelling monologue through the main 28-minute film, A Voodoo Free Phenomenon, where he describes his experience of the winter solstice at Newgrange behind a green washed colour palette. There is satisfying visual continuity between the mise-en-scene and the sculptures which gives way to an entrancingly slow-paced scene in which the camera prudently navigates its way through a cluster of ambiguous bronze artefacts. A final extreme close-up shot of a microphone acts as a mediator between the artist and the viewer.
The intersection of meaning, making and knowledge production through the digital age with ancient culture marks the overarching conceptual theme of the installation, albeit this is not made consistently clear across the exhibits, the relationship between the works remains open to interpretation.
A Voodoo Free Phenomenon runs until April 9 at Project Arts Centre.
