Bold Writing

The artist explores the ramifications of imperialism through gender, language, the teaching of writing, materiality, and identity in order to mediate on subjugation and dispossession. In this work she draws parallels between past histories and present realities of social, political and cultural injustice in a contemporary society. Remembering the past affords us the opportunity to reflect, to take account, to change; it should inform the present. By focusing on the past through the collective consciousness of a repressed national psyche, we are confronted with not just our own visceral national reality, but with the reality of others who have become displaced and dispossessed - the profound stigma that remains and the confused nature of identity.

Bold Writing is a collaboration with writer and poet Máighréad Medbh. It is a response in poetry and visual art to a copybook in Vere Foster's 'Bold Writing' or ‘Civil Service’ series, found in Mountjoy Prison in the late 1990’s. The video work explores the paradox of the colonial position, in which the subject population is allowed freedom only within the prevailing mindset. The incongruity of a beggar, in prison for petty theft, learning a beautiful hand script while writing that she 'must deserve before [she] can desire' is highlighted by the image of a hand copying the proverbs, but rendering them as dialogic anagrams. In doing so the artist juxtaposes the historical narrative in a contemporary context and offers a renewed perspective.

Bold writing | 2016 | 2’  08”

Full Duration: 7’  18” - Format: Digital HD - Aspect Ratio: 16:9 - Sound:  Stereo

Impedimenta

Impedimenta ( 2’ 46”) records the list of items looted by women who were sentenced to time in prison for illegal possession on the 9th May 1916. Both looters and rebels were sentenced and transported to Mountjoy Prison on that day for two very different offences. Impedimenta documents these items of basic materiality in different native languages, giving a current frame of reference to the work; that of disenfranchisement of language through colonisation, and the struggle for survival.

Impedimenta | 2016 | 2’  48” 

Full Duration: 2’  48” - Format: Digital HD - Aspect Ratio: 16:9 - Sound: Stereo

‘To think of this word, displacement, conjours within us a penumbra of meanings, places and peoples, a network of relations ever expanding out from its centre. Perhaps we can just enter into this space for a moment, to sweep our eyes across this landscape of associations? We might first think of refugees, of forced migrations, the immigrant experience, the crossing of boundaries, camps, and exile. Displacement is often a foundational experience for the Irish diaspora, and for all the myriad diasporic communities scattered across the globe. Liminal spaces open up before us, a sense of the distance between one and another. We find displacement activated between self and other, in the negotiation of difference, across time and space, of identity, language, and place’.
Curator Richard Ashrowan MexindeX Open 2020

Installation Composite 2 Channel

Text:

Screenings and Panel Discussions:

Mexindex 2020 Open Submission, curated by Richard Ashrowan, founder of Alchemy Film Festival, Scotland (18-12-2020) 

Homeland ‘On Changing Your Mind’, The Institute Cervantes, Dublin 2 (24-11-2019)

Homeland ‘On Changing Your Mind’, The LOOP Festival, Cage | Contemporary Art Gallery Exhibitions | Cortines 23 BAjos 2, 08003 Barcelona, Spain (22-11-2019)

Homeland ‘On Changing Your Mind’, Damer House Gallery, Roscrea, Co. Tipperary curated by Angel Garcia, Natalia Foguet, (Safia Art Contemporani) Barcelona, artists Patricia Hurl and freelance filmmaker Barbara Henkes, and moderated by artist and filmmaker Therry Rudin (10-08-2019)

Glitch Festival, Digital Traces, curated by Matthew Nevin and Ciara Scanlan of MART (17-05-2017)

Discover Hidden Gems, MFA Group Show, curated by Sarah Durcan, The Annex, 101 -103 James St, Dublin (06-07-2016)

bernie.masterson@gmail.com