Heartland

‘Heartland’

‘Heartland’ will be a four part multimedia exhibition about the awareness and preservation of the human heart.

Over two days I had two very powerful yet different experiences. I read an article that said in one year, 1 million Americans will have a heart attack, the population of Dublin is approximately 1 million.

Later in conversation, a friend spoke about the food industry in America and how, over 30,000 artificial food products are introduced into supermarkets every year. I felt compelled to say something about these two experiences, the state of our hearts and how delicate we are as human beings. They are after all our engine room. It becomes even more evident to me how mortal we really are and it made me question the quality of our self-preservation.

Like the chambers of a heart, Heartland will be a multi-visual art exhibition broken into four elements – photography, mixed media paintings, video installation and scultpture. ‘Heartland’ will also involve my own heart since I am a smoker and a drinker. I will film an Echocardiagram of my own heart in a hospital and document the results for use in video-installation part of ‘Heartland’.

Sculpture:
64 pigs hearts will be placed in a 4.5ft X 4.5ft container. Each heart will be anchored in place and submerged in isopropyl alcohol for lifelong preservation. The complete set of 64 pigs hearts will be hermetically sealed and under-lit with a light-box.

Photography:
4 photographs of a single hearts will be produced in a sepia tone. One will be crowned with thorns. One will have a brass lock embedded in the front wall of the heart with a key protruding from it. Another will have a cigarette lying beside a heart and another photograph of a heart revealing the inner workings of a clock embedded inside the four chambers. Each photograph will be limited to an edition of 25 each.

Mixed Media Paintings:
a) Three mixed media paintings of two hearts side by side. They will vary in size from A4 – A1. Each painting will be printed onto etching paper and finished adding oil, beeswax, Indian ink, varnish and fine sand.

b) A triptych of two hearts together with differing coloring formations. These will also be printed onto etching paper and finished adding oil, beeswax, Indian ink, varnish and fine sand.

c) A canvass (4.5ft x 3.5ft) containing thinly cut slivers of a complete pigs heart laid out onto the canvas in a very uniform manner and covered with a thin coat of varnish.

Each painting will be limited to an edition of 25 each.

Video Installation:
2 X looping Hi-definition video projections –

Film 1: We see a heart with a key protruding from it’s side. A hand winds the key. As we hear the sound of a clock ticking, we see the aorta begin to throb and the insides of the heart become illuminated. Ultimately the sound of the clock eventually slows down, the inner illumination of the heart fades, the pumping aorta slows until eventually everything stops.

Film 2: A filmed Echocardiagram of my own heart will be looped into a kind of time-lapse movie. The audio and visual footage of my heartbeat will regulate and alternate intermittently so that the viewers own heart rate will be affected by my own heartbeat as it increases to an insane speed and then slows down to a gradual crawl and eventual stop.