Review: Masterful exhibition a highlight of Galway arts festival
Shadows of the Wanderer, part of Ana Maria Pacheco's exhibition in Galway. Pictures: Patrick Redmond
★★★★★
Ana Maria Pacheco is Brazilian by birth, but has long been based in the UK. At 79, she has distinguished herself as one of the most exciting artists working today.
She creates paintings, drawings and prints, but is particularly well known for her large figurative sculptures in wood.
In 2017, Pacheco presented the hugely impressive exhibition Dark Night of the Soul at Galway Arts Festival; this year, she returns with the masterful Remember, a series of sculptural vignettes that are as beautifully made as they are sinister in subject matter.
The first group of figures one encounters on entering the gallery is Shadows of the Wanderer. At the front, a young man carries an older man on his back. The two are stripped to the waist, and the impression one gets is that they are escaping some kind of conflict. Behind them are arranged ten figures clad in black, observing their flight.
In the next room is Remember, a group of twenty figures arranged in various vignettes. The most striking is a young man being manhandled by two others, while others feature young children and veiled women.
Beyond that room is another featuring three groups of figures: Some Exercise of Power, Acrobat and The Banquet. These are undoubtedly the most disturbing.
The first has two men in suits standing over a naked man strapped to a wooden contraption. The second has two men hanging upsidedown, in jaunty underwear. The third is particularly terrifying, featuring as it does a group of men in suits gathered around a naked man they seem about to devour.
In the final room is a series of seven carved blocks of limewood, collectively titled Be Aware. They correspond loosely to the seven cardinal sins, though one would hardly need to know that to appreciate just how macabre they actually are.
The strangest features four young women clad in white seated on a long low sofa, with four men’s heads arranged behind bars above them.
Pacheco’s work recalls the wood carvings of religious figures in ancient churches, and often seems to reference repression. It is not often one gets to experience so complex or provocative a body of work; the effect is riveting.
