SLADE 2007 SUMMER SHOWS, Aisling Bolger, MFA,

Boxer, 2005
Boxing ring and one boxer, 12 ft x12 ft, 2 hours

Communal Wardrobe, 2006
My clothing and my three male housemates clothing, 12ft long

Chess Team, 2007
Tables and a chess team, 2 hours

Artist's Statement
In my studio practice I mostly present live installations with groups of people and frequently use ready made objects. The duration of the presentations with people are normally 2 hours and viewers often enter the presentations one by one. The work is partially autobiographical.
The work looks at areas such as everyday experience, preservation, perfection in relation to youth obsessed culture and memory.I work from a social anthropological point.

In presenting actual people not through other mediums such as photography,it is a real moment happening in time gives a different type of feeling or reaction to using more filtered mediums.The work isolates and intensifies aspects of everyday experience.Moments become extended in time.

I frequently work from memory. I try not to just create the aesthetic but rather the feeling I experienced at that time. It will of coarse not be the same but thinking about memories can produce similar sensations which can produce a similar type of emotion. My work is very narrative. I am interested in how memory is composed from experience which transforms itself into representation and becomes a narrative.

I see the work as kind of 3D paintings/photographs.The pieces are usually static, silent. I take small sections of areas I have encountered and represent them by stopping them, so for a time they are preserved moments. My main interest in youth obsession today is driven by the Latin term 'puer aeternus'meaning eternal youth, this is also used to describe a certain type of man who is ever in pursuit of his own dreams and remains in adolesence well into adulthood. These type of men usually lack conventional masculinity. I particularly try to look for this ambiguous masculinity within my research in such places as sports environments and have created situations I have experienced with females using males. Such 'puer aeternus' individuals frequently create a world of their own within the world I associate people such as the singer Michael Jackson and the writer J.M. Barrie with this type of figure. I make a link between myself as an artist and the 'puer aternus' figure not as eternal youth but rather in my pursuit of understanding or seeking for something which has no given formula so always rather ambiguous.

The social anthropological aspect
I present pieces I have come across in day to day life but also choose specific areas to research. In which case I will arrange to visit people, talking to people and sometimes use questionnaires.