Temple Bar Gallery and Studios is pleased to present the installation 'Artificially Reconstructed Habitats' by Dublin-based artist Finola Jones. Jones' well-established art practice is predicated on the conceptual notion that "the idea dictates the medium" and because of this she has worked in a broad range of artistic approaches from relatively traditional object-making to and ephemeral installation. All this is brought to bear on 'Artificially Reconstructed Habitats', which although primarily a multi-channel video and audio work, is intended as a coherent experiential sculptural work.

Jones is concerned with nature and culture, reality and reality TV, art and artifice. She adopts varying strategies, from that of the documentary film-maker, to the global tourist with hand-held camera, underpinned by a tacit understanding of the theoretical structures and meaning of both. Jones camera is trained on the simultaneously humdrum and exalted business of day-to-day living, shifting from the particular to the universal. The individual film components of the installation observe very ordinary moments which when re-seen in the overall context of the installation become extra-ordinary and comment on the life experiences which engulf both the participants and viewers, forming a discursive bond.

The work reflects Jones fascination with animals in captivity or anthropomorphic domestication and humans in more 'willing' confinement (cities, culture and other forms of societal structures). However Jones focuses on the details, by which all her 'subjects' create situations of normalisation, to adapt and cope with the unavoidable given. Oscar Wilde once wrote; "the problem with modernity is that it makes tragedy seem like comedy", Jones "electric eye" misses none of this irony or pathos: a sleeping figure from a reality TV show mimics a great leader, shrouded and lying in state. Another TV 'captive' exercises in a paddling pool, mimicking the repetitive disorder of the captive animals on the neighbouring screens. Jones marries all these elements, creating a subtle and interlacing audio-visual installation that is as beautiful and compassionate as it is compelling and funny.

All of Jones' installation works share the commonality of focus on detail as well as presentational and engagement strategies. She has exhibited in New York, Sydney, London, Belfast, and Warsaw, amongst others, and represented Ireland on the P.S.1.International Studio Program (1994-5). Finola Jones has been awarded a place on the prestigious Art Omi International Studio Residency programme for 2005 and is currently working towards a one-person show at the Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast (2006).

Artificially Reconstructed Habitats is accompanied by a fully illustrated publication with texts by Lisa Byrne and Meave Connolly.
For further information or to request images for publication please contact
Claire Power t. 671 0073 m. 086 357 2527 or claire@templebargallery.com.

Gallery opening hours Tues - Sat 11.00 - 18.00 and Thurs 11.00 - 19.00