"Ten Thousand Words" at the Solstice Art Centre, Navan, Co. Meath

This exhibition of 22 new works in mixed media explores concepts and emotions central to life, love and survival in modern Ireland and included a well attended Artist's talk at the Solstice Art Centre. The exhibition was opened by Sr. Stanislaus Kennedy and was extended due to popularity. It was featured on Culture Night - www.culturenight.ie/2011/08/navan.

Essay by Belinda Quirke

Ann Meldon-Hugh's figurative practice is concerned with body and soul, in greatness and in despondency, within and around. Her bronze and stoneware works are reflective metaphors of poignant human circumstances and story telling, juxtaposing the singularly personal, with larger themes of contemporary Irish life.

ten thousand words highlights the multifaceted responses to her work. The relationship between the viewer/community to the figurative work is essential to the artist. It must connect with people, communicate ideas for the viewer to explore. This relationship is also reflected in many of Ann Meldon-Hugh's public commissions, where her figurative work consciously reworks both mythical and modern folklore in its environmental setting.

Earlier this year Grainne Og, the 4 meter bronze and stainless steel figure commissioned by Westmeath County Council, was stolen from the roadside of Moate, presumably smelted down for sale. In a public commission by Meath County Council, her piece Spring to Autumn is being relocated due to vandalism. We are living in fraught times, in times of national insufficiencies and isolation. The universal concept of "burden" or "entrapment" is depicted by the sense of enclosure through Meldon-Hugh's works; figures are encased, boxed in, or trying to emerge from weighty stoneware infernos. This is most noticeably seen in Only bricks and mortar where faces and body are frozen within an infrastructure of brick; are they stuck, or are they emerging from the weight of negative equities? In Waiting, a congregation of people share an awkward space, echoing an increasing isolation in modern Ireland and disintegration of collective spirit.

There are emotive countermeasures to these challenges, to the nay saying and negativity of The Critics, found in the artist's notions of protection and shelter. A contemporary imagining of Madonna and Child is seen in This Woman's Work where a young woman dressed only in a man's shirt is breast-feeding her child. In Security, a young girl is shrouded in a large red blanket, her own personal protective wear. Embryonic pod shapes abound throughout her work, creating inner sanctuaries of reflective expression.

Ghost-like faces, the mostly smooth rendering of the clay, and gold leaf decoration found in much of Meldon-Hugh's sculptural and relief work, advocate an empathy with ancient sculpture and relief. Eyes, closed and open, hold the same dreamlike quality of temple statues of Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, in turn elevating the figures to a timeless elegance, mythical Hellenic models draped in everyday fashions.

the journey of life and death are also portrayed throughout Meldon-Hugh's work over the years. Spinning, Against the Tide and Revival are the most evident at this exhibition. The aforementioned Spring to Autumn, graphically depicts life as a journey from childhood to old age. Revival depicts a figure lying intertwined on a bed of forest life, reminiscent of Joni Mitchell's lyrics: We are stardust, billion year old carbon, caught in the devil's bargain, and we got to get ourselves back to the garden (Woodstock, 1969).

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