Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »
VISUAL ART:THE Infectiousexperience begins with each visitor being screened and electronically tagged by a couple of suitably impassive, overalled attendants.
It’s contrived but still slightly unsettling and appropriately depersonalising. After which, equipped with a fold-out guide to the exhibition, a guide closely modelled on the sheets of instructions found in boxes of pills, you can make your way with varying degrees of interactivity through a succession of installations dealing with aspects of contagion and containment. In the light of what you learn you could easily conclude that, in the real world, the odds are stacked in favour of contagion, while containment is usually costly and problematic. All of which, given current events, makes Infectiousa bit too topical for comfort.
