Michael Canning

THREE rooms devoted to assemblages which would seem to postulate moods of dramatic and menacing import and a fourth room featuring a slide projection of a sea bird constitute the current show by Michael Canning at the Arts Centre, Galway. The slide projection of the sea bird hovering in a Limbo between life and extinction possibly endows the show with the title Phoenix.

The assembled cans, boxes, mouldy bread and a 40 watt bulb would seem broadly to project a mood of dereliction and neglect, a quenching of the light, inviting the advent of decomposition. Room two features a tank of blood being routinely recycled, suggesting the frailty of mortality and our dependence on the mysterious mechanics of the human machine and the dynamics of animation. Room three has a mural arrangement of jars filled with lichen and mosses which would appear to look at plant life from a similar stand point suggesting, possibly, its dependence on the observation of environmental standards.