Limerick, Ireland

Amy Hauft

b. 1957, USA

My work is an intersection of haptic and cognitive incidents. I propose the viewer’s experience of the work function something like a dream. Within the dream, one’s actions make perfect sense. Only once out of the dream can one recognise what was impossible. Only once out can the dreamer comprehend possible sources for the dream’s details. In my project, the inside is experiential. It is only once outside that a framework asserts itself. Upon encountering one of my works, the viewer’s physical experience takes precedent. With time, while experiencing the piece and then during later consideration, an implied logic for the project floats to the surface, a logic that both challenges and concentrates physical memory.

For Fog Area/Watermark, a constructed optical illusion blurs the horizon-line at which the floor and walls meet. This blurring, the suggestion of a low-lying fog stewing just above the floor, undermines the viewer’s ability to achieve visual purchase on the space. From the side view, the illusion dissolves, the trick revealed.

A model bridge, based on Limerick’s Thomond Bridge, diagonally traverses the space, emerging from one wall and submerging into the adjacent. The bridge is not visible on first observation, and ‘looms’ into view at the wrong size, throwing the scale of the entire scene into question. Unconsciously, each of us is constantly referencing the built environment, gauging and adjusting our physical attitude in relation to these observations. I have caused these measures to be momentarily washed away, leaving the viewer new calculations.

(Text: a sense of place catalogue, 2007)

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