"what"

 

 

 

In Skins, corks have paint tipped down them, pins stuck into them, and are then arranged casually within portrait or landscape format to resemble a painting. Thus Darragh gets at the skin of things, then re-presents her objects with a wonderfully practised eye and a keen sense of composition. Individually, elements sing within a wider whole. And that is the gift of this installation.

"what" comprises everything from haberdashery ends (in Web) to kitchenware (Stacks); from ping pong balls to the sticks, toys and tins in Silverware. "what" is both exclamation and interrogation - with wonder.
Through quirks of lighting and a black ground, sixties plastic looks more substantial photographed than as the real thing. Gorilla glue becomes dribbled hokey-pokey and dough-like trickles down pastel plastic homeware of yesteryear. While in Stacks (glass), the same adhesive announces and then denies the classical transparency of blown and cut glass.

Darragh's attention to surface then, is both physical and allusive. Drawing our attention to the subtleties of surface, illusion and the transformation of the found, Darragh moves us from kitsch to the present with a smile. "what" has a lightness of touch that quite genuinely lights us up from within.
 

Stacks (photograph)