George Bolster at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre
George Bolster’s exhibition “Communication: We Are Not the Solely Ones Speaking” immerses viewers in a mix of reality and fiction, of documentary and mythology. A rounded alcove, The Impermanence of Safety: Huge Bend Nationwide Park, 2023, constructs a panorama from a Jacquard tapestry of the Texas land protect, a latest goal of then-President Trump, who needed to roll again land protections alongside the Mexican border. The tapestry has a cinematic high quality about it, however, on nearer inspection, the imagery reveals itself as pixelated and frayed in elements, upsetting the phantasm. The set up Actuality is greater than We are able to Comprehend, 2022, presents one other desert scene, this one practically fifty ft lengthy. The awe within the face of nature—it’s no shock the American Southwest is commonly used as a backdrop for science-fiction movies—is offset by implications of the fictional or constructed facet of the scenes and thus by political implications concerning the meanings of landscapes. Some sections characteristic an overtly unnatural palette, as if the colours had been skewed in Photoshop, whereas one other giant weaving, We’re Neither Above Nor Other than Nature, 2021, boasts each day and evening skies.
The exhibition developed from Bolster’s ongoing analysis with the Seek for Additional-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) in California. The artist’s new forty-five-minute five-channel movie, Communication: We Are Not the Solely Ones Speaking… or Ulysses: Animal Syntax and Non-human Intelligence, 2022, juxtaposes footage of a whale with that of figures like Laurance Doyle, a scientist who found syntax throughout the calls of humpback whales and is at present researching alien transmissions. Bolster interprets these insights into questions of how people reply to recognition of their place within the universe.
