Bill Quinn

EVEN the smallest degree of familiarity with the work Billy Quinn had scattered around his studio at IMMA earlier this year would be enough to confirm that Traditional Family Values, the title of his latest show, was in some degree ironic. More than simply finding that the phrase is inadequate to the experience, however, Quinn's images here adopt a sexual and emotional frankness that offer to remake all three terms.

Scattered around the gallery are several sets of colour prints of photographic images, each featuring one person in various poses. In every set, some of the images are overlaid with text while others remain unadorned. The texts are written in solid blocks of monumental capitals, printed in black and coaxed out of the shadows with gold leaf.

Sometimes the images seem to form portions of a burst narrative, while at others they seem to ridicule the idea of a such a structure.

In every sequence there are theatrical hints. Sometimes these are boldly stated, with the help of a dramatic red curtain or a pair of giant, strap on birds' wings, and sometimes the staginess is reined in.

The most anatomically explicit set of images, which includes one of a male figure on hands and knees and wearing a saddle, exposing his anus to the viewer, is also the most uncertain.

The first person narrative that scrolls across these images - a story of sexual abuse in a stable - is as full of grief as any of the others, but Quinn's images determinedly pick up on the burlesque humour of the scene. It is an obvious willingness to pace this kind of unsettled territory that makes the work so impressive.

When the work is at its best the tone is deliriously complex. Certainly the work is respectful of suffering but it is never dour or pious. Quinn is never lured into reducing his subjects' histories to a series of lessons or accusations. Instead he manages the formidable task of building bright, humble images of resilience out of nothing but uncertainty.