A N A B S E N C E , A N E D G E
TRISKEL SAMPLE Project Space, Triskel Arts Centre
14 May – 1 June, 2025
A N A B S C E N C E , A N E D G E
S O L O E X H I B I T I O N - K A T E M C E L R O Y
An Absence, An Edge is a constellation of works by artist Kate McElroy, examining the interlinked environmental and societal conditions at this critical juncture. One starting question was Is Ireland’s media responding with urgency to the climate emergency Ireland declared in 2019?
To investigate, McElroy analysed the most read and watched mainstream media in Ireland The Irish Independent, The Irish Times, and RTÉ News focusing on front page and headline coverage as indicators of what is deemed most critical. This analysis was conducted throughout 2024, the hottest year on record and the first to exceed the 1.5°C threshold above pre-industrial levels on an annual average, a symbolic and scientific crossing point.
The resulting works form an archive of the warnings embedded or absent in the year’s news. A video installation condenses almost a year of RTÉ News headlines into six minutes. Each white flash marks a passing day; the dominant impression is of glitching absences capturing the days when climate coverage was not featured.
The adjacent wall is etched with a grid which acts as a calendar and layered with delicate porcelain paper clay sheets. Up close, the tiles are inscribed with headlines from the days when climate change made the front page. At the entrance to the space, the viewer passes through a long corridor where a pulsating red-orange glow flickers at the threshold, evoking temperature graphs, a sun or a silent alarm.
At the gallery’s end stands a scaffold-like sculpture cast in concrete. Is it under construction or coming apart? Clangs of metal echo through the space in a sound and spoken word composition. The structure bends and twists in a sheet of mirrored film, forming a rippling, liquid wall. Through its distortions, graph paper can be seen peeling away, suggesting unravelling or recreation. The sculpture slants as if on the verge of collapse, mirroring the tension in the other media: a tipping point, edging, but not quite collapsing.
Light alters across the work’s surface, evoking biological textures, the inner architecture of cells or spines. The installation blurs the lines between self, structure, and environment, suggesting that none are fixed. The space suggests the interstitial, like a hypnagogic state where solidity wavers and the constructed becomes malleable.
What time is now?
What space is ____
Images by Roland Paschhoff
14 May – 1 June, 2025
A N A B S C E N C E , A N E D G E
S O L O E X H I B I T I O N - K A T E M C E L R O Y
An Absence, An Edge is a constellation of works by artist Kate McElroy, examining the interlinked environmental and societal conditions at this critical juncture. One starting question was Is Ireland’s media responding with urgency to the climate emergency Ireland declared in 2019?
To investigate, McElroy analysed the most read and watched mainstream media in Ireland The Irish Independent, The Irish Times, and RTÉ News focusing on front page and headline coverage as indicators of what is deemed most critical. This analysis was conducted throughout 2024, the hottest year on record and the first to exceed the 1.5°C threshold above pre-industrial levels on an annual average, a symbolic and scientific crossing point.
The resulting works form an archive of the warnings embedded or absent in the year’s news. A video installation condenses almost a year of RTÉ News headlines into six minutes. Each white flash marks a passing day; the dominant impression is of glitching absences capturing the days when climate coverage was not featured.
The adjacent wall is etched with a grid which acts as a calendar and layered with delicate porcelain paper clay sheets. Up close, the tiles are inscribed with headlines from the days when climate change made the front page. At the entrance to the space, the viewer passes through a long corridor where a pulsating red-orange glow flickers at the threshold, evoking temperature graphs, a sun or a silent alarm.
At the gallery’s end stands a scaffold-like sculpture cast in concrete. Is it under construction or coming apart? Clangs of metal echo through the space in a sound and spoken word composition. The structure bends and twists in a sheet of mirrored film, forming a rippling, liquid wall. Through its distortions, graph paper can be seen peeling away, suggesting unravelling or recreation. The sculpture slants as if on the verge of collapse, mirroring the tension in the other media: a tipping point, edging, but not quite collapsing.
Light alters across the work’s surface, evoking biological textures, the inner architecture of cells or spines. The installation blurs the lines between self, structure, and environment, suggesting that none are fixed. The space suggests the interstitial, like a hypnagogic state where solidity wavers and the constructed becomes malleable.
What time is now?
What space is ____
Images by Roland Paschhoff