Durational Practice, interactive engagement

 

Monica de Bath’s paintings, actions and conversations with others construct a language of the place in order to investigate and create a new dialogical narrative with Plot 1. In the Paintings we see a specific place in a more abstract, universal way, pointing us towards the future, its potential and possibility. The paintings become records of conversations  and are also ‘a way in’ for the artist to instigate new conversations with the workers and in turn, the audience.  Paintings are exchanged for engagement and are also inserted into the land itself, immediately displaying the difference between language and landscape. This is what de Bath is creating: a language for us to investigate  this multilayered site, as opposed to viewing it as a disconnected landscape. It becomes a subjective place, filled with stories, actions and consequences.  De Bath has invested in the space both as an artists and as a ‘worker’. As a result we are not just aware of the physical presence but de Bath shows us a poetic space, or to refer to Hannah Arendt, “The Space of Appearance”:

 

 “…It is the space of appearance in the widest sense of the word, namely the space  where I appear to others as others appear to me, where men exist not merely like other living or inanimate things but make their appearance explicitly.”

 

Extract from an essay Collective Consciousness by Maeve Mulrennan Plot 1 /Ceapach 1