Yellowstone

We all come to terms in different ways after being struck by bad news, a personal tragedy or illness. We deal with such events with different coping mechanisms- and the technical language here shows the way we often speak about it- in various ways: panic, understanding, acceptance, denial…

The coping mechanism for the young artist and filmmaker Éanna Mac Cana//Enda Oisin Kelly McCann to a life changing experience - as he formulates it- over the summer of 2017, works through and with art.

What happened to him and in the aftermath of months spent in hospital is not directly the subject of his filmic work in this exhibition, 

Creating and re-constructing short moving image pieces, containing intimate flashbacks to childhood and moments from the past, he contemplates his experience and finds unexpected ways to communicate his feelings.

In carefully staged and filmed scenes and situations, he composes moving images and gesture, the making of a bed, the filling of a jar, still life like observations, spilling over with a sense of quiet, but tumultuous unease.

A sudden sense of personal loss of control and identity are key themes within the works, as he explores both physical and psychological boundaries. Utilising digital and analogue footage, scenes of an everyday nature are imbued with a deeper personal significance.

The feeling of premonition permeates through the work, a vague anticipation of something unnerving, like living on a dormant volcano - the title Yellowstone refers to it- with a gloomy chance of erupting.

Éanna Mac Cana has carefully considered the environments when shooting each piece of film and the situation and the manner in which they are presented.

The work is shown in decreasing formats: in a large scale projection, on a TV monitor and on an IPad, but with reversing effects, the smallest display is the most direct; the largest in size has the most distance and control to the subject.

Yellowstone visually translates themes of vulnerability, faith, memory and trauma, yet despite the emotionally charged subject, Éanna Mac Cana avoids any sense of self-pity and open confession. Instead he finds highly poetic and lasting images.

He writes in a short note:

A major eruption from one of the world’s largest volcanic systems would lead to endless global consequences.
Do we hope to avoid chance? Or embrace an event that was always bound to occur?