Ballet of Stilled En(virions)
2022
Digitally printed satin and wallcovering, wood, MDF, lacquer, thread.
Installed Meta, Ballsbridge Campus, Dublin.
Images © Louis Haugh, courtesy of Meta.
Ballet of Stilled En(virions) was made in response to MacLeman’s 2km walks during Ireland’s lockdown. Combining digital photo-collage with the Victorian craft of flower-pressing, it depicts abandoned sports equipment in a shape-shifting dance with nature on GAA grounds – a construction site stilled by Covid-19 but not quite at rest. Collapsed goalposts and a redundant picnic table hang like trinkets from a mobile, their galactic backdrop rendered from the tarmacadam of vacant parking spaces. All forms acquire a new function. Traffic cones are upturned to become bell-headed flowers or a blossom-blasting confetti cannon – hazard barrier tape now stems or streamers. Petals become the embedded jewels in terrazzo, stalks the leading of stained glass, and grass fuses with the wires of a fence. On satin, golden banisters and the polypropylene rope of training equipment repeat to form the decorative border of a commemorative banner marking a moment in time.