Five Golden Haemorrhoids

Noel Brennan

Highlanes Municipal Art Gallery, Drogheda is delighted to announce its first site-specific exhibition. Five Golden Haemorrhoids marks the culmination of several years  of artistic and academic research by emerging artist Noel Brennan, commissioned by the gallery.

Since 2008, Brennan has been developing a suite of new works that mine the historic location of Highlanes Gallery for latent messages and tensions. Over this season the research has led to a series of interventions and works which are positioned at coordinates within the space and its social function.  The gallery is sited in the former Drogheda Franciscan Church and part of the Friary; known locally as the ‘HighLane Church’. The Franciscans gifted the property to the people of Drogheda when they ended their 760 year association with the town in 2000. The buildings date from the early 19th century, though elements date back to earlier times and include the former Franciscan burial crypts.

Art’s unique property of enhancing the connectivity of subjects is fore-grounded inthis exhibition. In the case of Five Golden Haemorrhoids, theology, architecture, politics, myth and ritual are woven together to create a contemplative environment. The design andfeatures of Highlanes Gallery provides an exquisite study of the overlaying of cultures. The artworks negotiate a pathway amidst the markers of Jewish, Christian, Pagan and Humanist traditions and rites. These words could bevariously substituted with the terms Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Semitic and Hellenistic which crash and coalesce sporadically in the gallery and town.

 Noel Brennan says of the work:

“These sculptures are triggers or tricks in so much as they are physical and, at thesame time, they are fictions. The become fictions in terms of their qualia.They exceed the categories provided by the oracles of scientific rationalism.

This body of work swings from the resolutely material to the immaterial. These movements and rotations cause the eclipsing of artworks by one another. The accentuation and blurring of definition causes shadow and object, idea and formto blend. The visitor creates the nexus of the works through perception and itsfloundering.

There are many ciphers in this exhibition which create a set of counterparts to the examination of architecture and site. This methodology has been assisted by the generous loan of Virgil Solis, The Society of Anabaptists after Aldegrever by The Irish Museum of Modern Art for the exhibition.”

Noel Brennan graduated from The National College of Art and Design in Dublin in2002.  His practice could be described as interdisciplinary with particular emphasis on institutional critique and architectural interventions. He is interested in the psychological and social effects of art and architecture and in particular the investigation of the coalescence of the two is central to his practice. In much of his work and projects to date, there are references to canonical moments in the history of Art. These citations are usually fused with contemporary modes of practice and display. 

Selected exhibitions include; Is Mise Ireland, 411 Gallery (China) 2008,The Spacein Between, The Basement Gallery(IRL) 2008, Some Kinda Monster, The GalwayArts Centre (IRL) 2007, They are doing something on us behind the fog, Draiocht(IRL) 2006, The Devil in Miss Jones, Meals and SUVs (UK) 2006 and warsaw, Goethe Institut (IRL) 2005.

In 2008, he was awarded First Prize at the Open Submission Exhibition organised by Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, adjudicated by curator Cliodhna Shaffrey and in 2009 he was awarded an Artist’s Residency and Draiohct in Blanchardsown,Dublin.

In 2008, Noel Brennan was selected along with atrists Shana Moultons (US) andFredrik Noren (SWE) by curator Padraic E. Moore for the Emerging Curator’s Space Platform at the Dublin Art Fair, RDS.

Highlanes Gallery has commissioned Dr. Siún Hanrahan, writer, artist,and Head of Research and Postgraduate Development at the National College of Art and Design to write a text to accompany the exhibition. It will be available from the end of February.

For further information:

Please contact Siobhan Burke at Highlanes Gallery T. 041-9803311, email sburke@highlanes.ie

New Gallery Opening Hours:

Monday-Saturday 10.30am-5.00pm

Closed on Sundays effective from the week beginning Monday 1 February.

 Artist's Gallery Talk Saturday 13 February, 2010 at 1.00pm