Limerick, Ireland
Brian Magee, Couch, 2004, lambda prints, each 84 x 119 cm

Brian Magee

Ireland

This work concerns the isolation of such random objects as those found in any servite shop or charity store – items alienated from their context, part of someone else’s story, someone else’s world, their meaning fractured. I am interested in our relationships with objects and how they can spark our memories into action. In the case of the couch series, to observe them is to observe the tastes, socio-economic background, and physical histories of not only the objects but also of their owners. All photographs were shot on location in St Vincent de Paul. The absence of physical context within the photographs concentrates our attention on the objects before us and yet has the opposite effect of deflecting our attention from the object by creating a portrait through absence.

(Text: OPEN e v + a catalogue, 2005)

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