At The Gates of Silent Memory

Luan Gallery is pleased to present At The Gates of Silent Memory; a solo exhibition of photography by internationally acclaimed Irish artist Clare Langan, curated by Eamonn Maxwell. Known for her expansive and award-winning film projects, which have been seen in galleries, museums, biennales, and film festivals across the world, Langan has a parallel photography practice using digital SLR and the unique Hasselblad XPan cameras. These images are taken in locations around the world including Dubai, Iceland, Kerry, and Monserrat reflecting Langan’s practice and environmental concerns. This exhibition is a rare opportunity to see a significant body of Langan’s photography practice in a public gallery.

The exhibition was launched by Mary McCarthy, Director of Crawford Gallery, on Saturday 18th February. The official opening was preceded by an insightful, engaging and thought provoking In Conversation event with Clare Langan and Mary McCarthy. 

At The Gates of Silent Memory takes the threshold between worlds, climates, and reveries as its starting point and brings together a series of works never previously seen. These works have been shot over a number of years, interweaving with a number of Langan’s different projects.  As climate change is sadly now part of our everyday lives, due to how we choose to live and exploit the earth, this exhibition amplifies how Langan’s work has dealt with these concerns for over 25 years. Whether dealing with the human figure or a particular landscape, or environment one thing that has linked all of this work are her concerns with the fragile nature of this earth that we live on and humanities tenuous and transient relationship to it. In a sensory and information overloaded world, Clare Langan’s poetic sensory approach to her subjects can perhaps quietly leave us with a vision of a planet going through a profound transformation, of a world that we thread gently on less it disappears into memory.

“In a sensory and information overloaded world, Langan’s poetic approach to her subjects quietly leaves us with a vision of a planet going through a profound transformation, of a world on which we tread gently, lest it disappears into memory.”- Eamonn Maxwell (Curator)

There are lots of aftermaths in these works – storms, volcanoes, and relationships – asking us the viewer to consider the circumstances that created the conditions for these photographs. We see people struggling to hold on in the wake of these losses, frozen embryonic-like in Pompeian stillness, or framed in stark isolation. In a way Langan is saying that in the end what is happening around us is both universal and deeply personal. Humans have acted as both the keepers and the destroyers of this planet and each other, but clearly, we are at a point of realisation where we need to rethink our beliefs – we are part of nature and not apart from it. Each of us experience loss. But there is also a beauty and poignancy in these images, and we have to spend time engaging with the poetic photographs to find our own Elizium. In the artist’s own words “we are but a moment here”.

Supported by the Arts Council.

Curated by Eamonn Maxwell