Peter Shelton's extensive, multi-piece exhibition is called Godspipes and though it is apparently conceived as a single piece, or at least as a single idea, it is enormously ramified and varied. It relates, so it seems, to the architectural structure of Kilmainham and from first to last it sets up a kind of sustained sculptural rhythm which runs through various rooms and corridors, thematically and in variations. In that, it has something in common with the sculptors of the Baroque Age, who - Bernini is an obvious example - could set and sustain such a complex rhythm with the virtuosity of a skilled musician composing a lengthy fugue.
The basic unit is a cylindrical pipe-like form, made from fibreglass and lead, from which the variations and permutations flow. Many are wall sculptures, some are lie-on-the ground pieces, others again are virtually free-standing. It seems that Shelton at one stage in his life worked as a medical or pre-med student and had a strong, perhaps obsessive interest in biology and anatomy. So the numerous pieces (and there are nearly 200 of them in all) often relate to human trunks and limbs, but always suggesting dismemberment or even, on occasion, the dissecting room. There are torsoes, abdomens, arms and legs, thighs - all quite self-sufficient sculptures in themselves, yet somehow stressing their own fractured incompleteness.
Human characteristics are not the only ones involved, however; there are "pipes" which suggest snakes and animals, while others resemble the boles and limbs of trees. It is, in fact, almost an animal-vegetable-game, played out with much technical aplomb and imagination, and sometimes it is rather a sinister one. The placing of each individual is obviously relevant to the whole, since there is a consistent sense of formal interrelationships, however complex and varied and asymmetrical.
Considering that the material used has no inherent quality in itself, and is in fact rather neutral and uninteresting, it is remarkable that it does not pall before the finish; but it does not. The overall tension which unites the 193 pieces is perhaps the two-way tug between unity and dismemberment - almost as though some unseen force were pulling the scattered limbs and pieces alternately together and apart again.
Dismemberment of course has ancient and mythic undertones, going back to the Orpheus legend, as well as summoning up the grim days when traitors were hanged, drawn and quartered, and finally evoking the massed corpses of Buchenwald and Belsen and the wartime victims of air raids and civilian massacres. It may not - in fact, it almost certainly was not - Peter Shelton's conscious intention to evoke these ghosts, yet I for one found it hard at certain moments to shut them out.
Runs until June 14th.
