This exhibition was the first occasion Grace Weir’s recent films and installation works will be shown in London. The filmic processes Grace Weir employs take us on journeys where we witness unfolding contingencies; how her source material leads research and the decisions ensuing from these encounters with specifics; thinkers, locations, theories, archives, and objects. As viewers we are brought into constellations - processes of intersection and divergence. These decelerate and give elasticity to a feeling of history experienced as if for the first time in the present moment. Mainie Jellett, leading Irish Modernist in the early 1900s and Mary Rosse, a photographic innovator during the 1850s, are major figures in Irish history and their oeuvres are the subject of two of the films in the exhibition. Like many women, their contributions to knowledge and culture are little known outside very particular contexts.
The exhibition was curated by Jo Melvin, Reader in Archives and Special Collections Chelsea College of Art and Design, UAL.