Killing Time/2002 The Phatory Gallery, New York and Talking in Turns, Galway Arts Centre, Ireland 2002/4

Killing Time/2002/4

Talking in Turns (2002–2004) was initially conceived as a three-room installation/intervention within the former drawing room and parlour of Lady Gregory’s House, now the Galway Arts Centre. The work extended an ongoing investigation into queer culture, sexuality, theatrical display, the manipulation of atmosphere and ambience, and the unstable tension between spaces that are simultaneously controlled and permissive. By occupying rooms historically associated with domestic refinement, social ritual, and cultural memory, the installation introduced a disturbing counter-narrative that unsettled the familiarity and nostalgia attached to the building.

In the middle room, the installation Killing Time, consisting of a black military rubber raincoat, hung suspended on a motorised high wire moving mechanically back and forth through the room like an absent or ghostly body. This empty garment, mounted with ceramic fittings and blue bulbs, carried associations of fetishism, authority, discipline and sexual protection, while also evoking vulnerability and confinement, as black wires trailed from under the coat. Through the combination of kinetic movement, sound, reflective surfaces, and tactile materials, Killing Time created an immersive environment that explored the dangerous pleasures existing between public and private experience, memory and fantasy, exposure and concealment. Custom-built software controlled the blue light bulbs mounted onto the black rubber coat, turning on and off in some unknown sexual code, possibly seen as viruses activated by some unknown, maybe responding to movement and in doing so, altered the mood of the installation, while listening devices outside suggested hidden observation and the possibility of overheard conversations or concealed histories.

In the other rooms, a range of materials and devices were used to accentuate this psychologically charged atmosphere. Green chiffon curtains covered the windows, veiled like translucent membranes separating the interior from the outside world of Ireland, filtering light and creating a sense of enclosure, secrecy and grief. Rotating disco mirror balls, like some fractured nightclub, scattered fragments of reflected red light across the room, producing an unstable and disorientating environment that shifted between glamour, surveillance, and spectacle.

Curated by Helen Carey