Ronan McCrea Latent at Green On Red Gallery

Dates, dated-ness and timeliness are recurring tropes in the work of Ronan McCrea. For his fourth solo exhibition at Green On Red Gallery the artist engages in a recursive turning over of long-held materials. 

The centre piece of the exhibition is Study for Decade-ism ( early & late) 2003-2023,  a suite of black and white photographs installed in the gallery on steel storage shelves laid flat to the wall. 

The images are a re-consideration of the materiality of McCrea’s sculpture Decade-ism (early & late)  from twenty years ago, a work that rendered in language periods of time -  late sixties – early seventies, late sixties - early seventies, late seventies - early eighties, late eighties – early nineties  - in glass neon tubing, but without illumination.

Twenty years later, the disassembled glass sculpture, in fragments and in pieces, dusty and scratched, becomes a tricky photographic subject.  Shot through a red filter onto black & white film, the resulting images are hand processed and printed by the artist the darkroom, transforming the object to something else, if not exactly something new. 

This work is counterpointed by the Study for Projection series featuring projection lamps and packaging in product photography style, subjected to digital process of montage, layering and inversion. 

In the recess area of the gallery, a new 35mm slide work entitled Fade is projected onto a gallery pillar. Two close-up photographs of lamps used in 16mm film projection form a kind of mirrored diptych that alternately fading up and down in opposite relation to each other.

Ronan McCrea is based in Dublin and works with photographic and filmic images.   In 2005 he was one of the seven artists to represent Ireland at the 51st Venice Biennale.  In 2018 he was shortlisted for MAC International, Belfast for work from the MATERIAL(s) exhibition in Green On Red Gallery in 2016.

Other exhibitions and projects include: Sinopale 8, Turkey (2021), Periodical Review X, Pallas Projects, (2020), Efference Copy Mechanism, ( Solo show ) Temple Bar Gallery 2019, We Are Center, CSS Bard College, New York & P! Gallery, New York, (2016); MATERIAL(s), ( Solo show )  Green On Red Gallery, Dublin (2016 & 13/11); Fragments, Irish Museum of Modern Art (2015); Enclave Gallery, London ( Solo show ) (2014); The LAB, Dublin (2013); screenings at Cologne Kunstverein and Cobra Museum, Netherlands (2011); We are Grammar, Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York, (2011); School Days, Glucksman Gallery, Cork (2010-11); Sinopale 3, Sinop Biennial, Turkey (2010); Coalesce: Happenstance, Smart Project Space, Amsterdam (2009); Nameless Science, Apexart, New York (2008); School Play, a public art commission for a CETNS school in Dublin (2009); Project Arts Centre ( Solo show ) (2003); Glassbox Paris (2002); Temple Bar Gallery (2000). His work is represented in the collections of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon, UCD, OPW, The Krehbiel Collection, Chicago, and other private collections. McCrea is a lecturer in Fine Art at Technological University, Dublin.