Family Ties Lewis Glucksman Gallery, UCC

Family Ties has the subtitle ‘relatives and relationships in art’.

The first piece one encounters on ascending the gallery stairs is Nevin Aladag’s ‘Family Portrait’, a group of five, wall-mounted mirrors. Each is of a different height and width, and none is a comfortable fit, which sums up how most people feel about their role within the family.

The idea of not fitting in is teased out in Eula Vassdosela’s ‘Family Ties’, a series of photographs of families at odds with their shadows.

Marko Maetamm’s ‘30 Stories’ focus on dysfunction between spouses, or parents and their children. Maetamm’s handwritten letters chronicle the resentments that characterise family relationships. “Dear Wife,” one begins. “I am leaving. I have taken all our money and will never tell you where I am.” It’s a note many people will have dreamed of writing.

Sound installations can be an unwelcome intrusion on exhibitions of visual art, but Chosil Kil’s ‘Scramble’ — a recording of humming voices — is a lovely fit. The recording is a pleasure to hear in the background as one drifts around the show. Some works are not quite as endearing. Gerard Byrne’s ‘New Sexual Lifestyles’ is a re-enactment, using actors, of a debate on sexuality published by Playboy magazine in 1972. Given its subject matter, one might expect lively banter, but the work is rather dull.

Trish Morrissey’s photographs are witty and provocative. The artist has traded places with one character in each of a series of family portraits. In one, she is the mother of a young child; in another, a daughter or sister. It’s a simple concept — would you fit in better if you were someone else? — but the artist has explored it imaginatively.

Clemens Krauss, in his photographs, ‘Look Alikes’, places an image of Michael (found in London) beside one of Gustav (Vienna), and one can barely tell the difference. The resemblance between two young women is more uncanny again: particularly when one learns they live in Berlin, but are unrelated.

*Until Nov 3.