„Ślad / Trace” Ruth Le Gear

opening „Ślad / Trace” Ruth Le Gear in CCA Łaźnia, Strajków Dokerów str. 5 (additional event)

20.11, godz. 19.00

Exhibition period of duration: 21.11.2015 – 3.01.2016

Curator: Aleksandra Księżopolska

The exhibition titled “Trace” will present the outcome of Ruth Le Gear’s residency in CCA Laznia in autumn 2014. The artist is fascinated with the research methods of non-physical phenomena, in particular biological memory of water. Her projects are multidimensional compositions combining art with scientific research and unconventional methods such as homeopathy.

During her artist residency Ruth Le Gear collected water samples from different locations in the Tri-City. During a few weeks long period, she has conducted a series of experiments and artistic researches related to the “physical” memory of water. Her meticulous and consistent work will present the energetic, aesthetic and emotional image of accumulated liquid during her exhibition in CCA Laznia.

The following excerpt is from an email correspondence that took place between Ruth Le Gear and Pádraic E. Moore in Spring, 2015.

It would seem that during the residency at CCA Laznia you engaged in research regarding the sociopolitical history of the environment in which you were living and working. In particular the history of the Martwa Wisla (literally dead Vistula). This was perhaps inevitable considering how loaded this environment is. In this way you were exploring both the natural and historical resonances of the topography. Were any of the actions you performed during your residency carried out in response to the specific historical occurrences histories of the location? Perhaps these were motivated by a desire to retrospectively remedy past traumas which you were aware of?

My first conversation with anyplace when I arrive is with the waters, and I go from there. I try and not to research a place before I arrive so I can get a clear undisturbed reading of the land and waters. Of course, it being Gdansk and a branch of the main river, there was a lot of history held there. I found it curious that when they redirected the canal through the city they called it the Dead River. I did have a desire to set a catalyst of healing in process in the river. Even just the language around it was enlightened somehow, there is no life in this river, no movement in the waters. There was a connection between the people and the waters there in a very sensitive way, from the people sitting around the inhalation mushroom in Sopot for healing to the naming of the waters in the Marta Wisla. During my research residency had an in depth tour of the Port area, as well as taking a kayak around the canals and water systems of the city. My process involves walking meditations until I find a place to communicate with the waters. While in CCA Laznia, I visited many sites from the port to wells and sacred streams. I start with the Arctic Iceberg remedies to pick up a resonance of what is going on in the water. From there I take water samples and make remedies from them. I then take the remedy to see what it brings forth. Working in the Port was interesting for me. In previous times I would tend to overlook the polluted dark disturbed places and look for the clearer sites of work. My work there was with the water and it was after months of work with the remedy that I discovered what it was for. In my research I ingest the landscape in the form of a remedy and process it, bringing the remedy forth. The remedy is so full of light and hope and joy. I was confused when I first discovered it and made it again. I didn’t think a place with such grief, trauma and pollution could hold such light. It reminded me that nature will always find a way to heal itself and that we can’t turn our backs on places on those places which seem destroyed. To me waters are recorders of information. They record time and it also holds the key to unlocking itself, alchemy within water. In homeopathy you treat like with like. This has been my process here, making remedies from the waters and returning them to themselves. The return of the waters is always as a frozen sphere. This alchemical waters reflects ideas of the ouroboros as an archetype and the basic mandala of alchemy. Thus I am making a remedy from the water and then I ‘return’ it to the water. I am setting in place a process of ‘healing’ by giving it a focus that it currently does not have. The contradiction of a remedy made from water and diluted with itself presents interesting questions around the uses and permutations of a landscape whose energy­ fields mediate and co­-exist with the human body.

Pádraic E. Moore is a writer, curator and believer currently based at the Van Eyck Academy, Maastricht.

Le Gear graduated from Galway Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT) with a degree in sculpture in 2007. Her solo exhibition Water that Sleeps was exhibited at Galway Arts Centre in 2009. Recent group exhibitions include Crystalline at the Millennium Court Arts Centre, Portadown (2012), Ev+a (2008) and Claremorris Open (2008). In 2011 she was awarded a six-month residency in Fire Station Artists’ Studios, Dublin. Other residencies include: The Arctic Circle (2012); Culturia, Berlin (2012); SIM, Iceland (2012/09); Cill Rialig, Kerry (2011/12); Limerick City Gallery of Art (2008) and Tyrone Guthrie (2010).