sink drama of scattered interiors and instead
only implying a human narrative of the
domestic as lived space, and one primarily
focused upon the strangeness of its artefacts.
Untitled (Crystal Cabinet #2), a photographic
collage, is the only direct imaging of people in
the exhibition. Small black and white
photographs of what appears to be a dinner
party sit underneath flocked wallpaper, cut to
give a glimpse of finely dressed figures who
seem strangely dissociated from each other. It
is a good example of the way in which form is
used to resist hackneyed narratives, the sharp
geometric cuts into the wallpaper which
reveal the image below allow both elements
to exist materially and conceptually, creating
thematic
coherence,
but
avoiding
straightforward conflation.
Angela Fulcher: Crystal Cabinet
The Black Mariah, Triskel Arts Centre,
Cork
Rachel Warriner
In The Black Mariah it looks like someone has
been carefully butchering a house. Bits of
flooring, banisters and soft furnishings are
spread throughout the gallery; they constitute
discrete elements providing carefully dissected
evidence of a place that is out of date and
grubby around the edges. These pieces, each
one extracted in some way from a domestic
setting, are butted up against the rigours of
geometry: not just domestic artefacts, these
are loaded symbols transformed by their
precise interactions with form.
The material for this exhibition comes from
objects created for decoration: sparkly
hanging things, patterned clothing, carpets,
wallpaper, curtains. However, Angela Fulcher
treats something potentially trivial with
intelligence and delicacy, intervening with a
touch light enough to avoid a kind of kitchen
What is interesting in Fulcher’s treatment of
her materials is that it is the material itself
that really comes to the fore; this exhibition is
compelling because of the unexpected
sharpness and precision with which she
approaches familiar objects. One of the
standout pieces is the three-metre triangle of
carpet that sits in the centre of the gallery.
Simple in its conception, this worn piece of
patterned carpet is inset with a smaller
triangular section of similar pattern that
highlights the geometric against the
ornamentation
of
the
original.
This
intervention is seemingly straightforward, but
it does much to such a loaded artefact.
Fulcher chooses a section of carpet that is
patterned according to the ubiquitous fashions
of the recent past; it is strikingly familiar but
equally nonspecific. That the pattern is cut
into in an exercise of precise shape-making
means that the busy visuals of the carpet are
sharply brought to a halt, the contemporary
popular interest in clean straight lines
obliquely superseding the more florid
decoration of the past. The wear and fraying
that subtly mark the material makes it seem
lived with, perhaps for too long. This
treatment of materials is repeated in Untitled
(Crystal Cabinet #3). This synthetic satin
curtain material is carefully scored with sharp
lines, a regular and repeated pattern that is
echoed in the strange wallpaper construction
that sits on the floor in front of it. Looking
more organic than synthetic, the folded
wallpaper resembles an origami hedgehog in
pale pink. Again, the curtain is marked by
age; rust coloured stains discolour the cloth,
barely perceptible from a distance, but
Text copyright Rachel Warriner. First published in Enclave Review, Summer 2012, p.12.
complicating the surface of the piece from
close up. Where it would be easy for Fulcher
to emphasise the kitschness of the materials
she chooses, encouraging disdain for chintz
and tastelessness in her viewers, instead she
considers these things seriously, showing
them as everyday items well used,
appreciated, but also loaded with meanings
not often regarded.
The photographic collage Untitled (Crystal
Cabinet #6) shows images of the front walls
and gates of northside estate houses, the little
details that individualise the photographs:
pillars, cars, gates and satellite dishes again
portray mass design and lived in and
personal. Cut across the images is a thin
white line, scoring a gap into the
representation of familiar environments. It is a
line thin enough that it does not obscure that
which it represents, but instead reminds the
viewer of the representational, the white of
the gap echoing the white of the gallery wall.
Again, loaded and familiar imagery competes
with formal concerns, the straightness of the
line highlighting a grid like pattern in the
work, the vertical, horizontal and diagonal
lines of the photographs become visual
echoes of the patterns that Fulcher scores
onto materials elsewhere.
Scholar. Angela Fulcher: Crystal Cabinet was
on view 19 January – 23 February 2012.
Untitled (Crystal Cabinet #5) 2012, Angela Fulcher.
Dress, banister, 110 x 275cm. Installation view of the
exhibition Crystal Cabinet at The Black Mariah, Triskel
Arts Centre, Cork, 2012.
In this way Crystal Cabinet is a coherent and
condensed exhibition. The precision of line
and pattern in the interventions that Fulcher
makes to all of her materials (whether found,
like the carpet and curtains, or made by the
artists, as in the photographs), a visual
language is established that repeats across
the detritus used to construct the exhibition.
Fulcher’s skill is to make familiar items strange
enough that we can perceive them without
being
overwhelmed
by
their
initial
associations, but not so strange that these
resonances are removed completely. In this
way we are given a means to approach these
ubiquitous objects so that we can appreciate
their peculiarity, but we are also invited to
analyse, connect and reimagine them within
new aesthetic and symbolic frames.
Rachel Warriner is a PhD candidate in History
of Art at UCC, writing a thesis on the work of
Nancy Spero and Mary Kelly. Her project is
supported by the IRCHSS Government of
Ireland Doctoral Funding and she is a College
of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences PhD
Text copyright Rachel Warriner. First published in Enclave Review, Summer 2012, p.12.