The exhibition “Changelings in Nighttown” will take place from the 12.06 to the 26.06. 2024. The painting and drawings in the show will be from my “Changelings” series. These works were begun during the lockdown when the absence of my regular life-drawing group, I began to alter existing life- drawings by allowing them to freely mutate into new beings. Transcending the faceless nudes which they originally were , they became creatures with their own lives, problems, aims and agendas
The “Nighttown” of the title references the Circe chapter of James Joyce’s Ullysses which is also referred to as the Nighttown section. The works, however, are not illustrations of scenes from this section of Ullysses but rather find echoes in it’s atmosphere and mood. The section is set in a famous “red light” area of Dublin and has a dreamlike, sometimes even nightmarish, quality. The beings, in both book and images, morph into each other as threatening presences on the edge of perception. These fluctuations in person, gender and role can be both alarming and playful at the same time. They are anarchic and challenge the concept of the fixed. The Changlings inhabit a dystopian “Nighttown” but their ability to change is a seed of hope that change is always possible, even in the darkest of nighttowns.
Bleibtreue Strasse, in Charlottenburg, where the gallery is located, is the only German street to be mentioned in Ullysses. An advertisement which Bloom reads mentioning Bleibtreu 34 triggers reminiscence and there is a suggestion that his ancestors may have been connected to this street. The gallery is located at Bleibtreu 3 and on Bloomsday the artist will do a “walk and talk” from number 3 to number 34. There will be readings from relevant sections of Ullysses and musical episodes will occur.
The exhibition opening will take place at 19.00 on 12th June when the artist will be in conversation
with curator, culture worker and founder of Irish Berlin, Beate Lemcke. There will be live music!
Galerie Michaela Helfrich, Bleibtreustraße 3, Berlin 10623
Opening times: Wed – Sat., 14:00 – 20.00
and by appointment. Tel: +49 1793 400 341 oder +353 852748144
“Changelings in Nighttown” is part of Zeitgeist Irland 24, an initiative of Culture Ireland and the Embassy of
Ireland in Germany
