Ronan McCrea × Christina Kennedy
Medium (Corporate Entities), 2008–2014, by Ronan McCrea was a complex photographic project commissioned for 10,000 to 50, an exhibition I co-curated at IMMA to mark the twentieth anniversary of Business to Arts. Selected from artworks in corporate collections, the exhibition took place just prior to the 2008 financial crash. McCrea’s images embody a form of ‘portrait’ of the workplaces and reflect an array of architectural, design and social situations in which artworks were located. This work began as an 81-page insert in the accompanying exhibition catalogue and expanded into a 35mm slide installation accompanied by a selection of the images in gloss print. When the piece was purchased and displayed at IMMA in 2015, McCrea re-edited the slide work into a multi-layered array of dissolving images, with soundtrack comprised of quotes from the catalogue texts, like a dream sequence of times past. In the gallery space, McCrea’s architectural ‘dead end’ construction, as well as showing the structure of ‘behind the scenes’, seemed emblematic of the economic cul-de-sac. This prescient work continues to accrue meaning as it accrues iterations.
Christina Kennedy is Senior Curator: Head of Collections, Irish Museum of Modern Art
Ronan McCrea
Medium (Corporate Entities), 2008
Version IV (On-line Screening – Periodical Review X/ Pallas Projects) 2020
Digital sequence of 80 photographs, cropped to 16:9 ratio with sound and titles
Duration: 15mins 18sec
^Also in gallery
Ronan McCrea (b.1969) lives and works in Dublin. His most recent solo exhibition was Efference Copy Mechanism at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios in 2019. In 2018 he was shortlisted for MAC International, Belfast. In 2005 he was one of the seven artists to represent Ireland at the 51st Venice Biennale. Other exhibitions and projects include We Are Center, CSS Bard College, New York (2016); Film Materials Green on Red Gallery, Dublin (2016/); Fragments, Irish Museum of Modern Art (2015); Venn/Chroma Enclave Gallery, London (2014); Autodidact screenings at Cologne Kunstverein and Cobra Museum, Netherlands (2011); School Days, Glucksman Gallery, Cork (2010-11); Sinopale 3, Sinop Biennial, Turkey (2010); Coalesce: Happenstance, Smart Project Space, Amsterdam (2009); Nameless Science, Apexart, New York (2008); and School Play a public art commission for a CETNS school in Dublin (2009). Ronan McCrea is represented by Green on Red Gallery, holds a PhD from Ulster University and is a lecturer in Fine Art at Technological University Dublin.