Four

SONIA SHIEL
"Babel's Biting the Moon"

11th September – 20th October

Four presents Sonia Shiel's solo show 'Babel's Biting the Moon' opens at the
Roscommon Arts Centre on the 8th of September. Through a collision of
media Shiel's installation articulates a place of rough and menacing
beauty. Shiel's work typically augments mythologies and anecdotes from
popular history and romantic culture as found in painting, music,
literature and film. In doing so, she utilises her own factual
proclivities and inaccuracies, confessing a subjectivity inherent in
the representation of established histories.
This exhibition stems from work begun during a residency at the Cable
Factory in Helsinki, which is awarded by the Helsinki International
Artist in Residence Program and Temple Bar Gallery and Studios. Her
narratives, while intimate and reductive in nature, seek to reclaim
the familiar or undermine the monumental with disproportionate
consequence. As the title implies, this body of work investigates the
notion of mankind's idealism with the threat of an ultimate Babylonian
fate. Such aspirations are echoed in Shiel's use of common materials
as they strive to achieve epic form, while her paintings explore the
base relationship between man, woman, animal and shelter. In 2007
Shiel completed her MA in Visual Art Practices from IADT. Most
recently, she was the recipient of the Tony O'Malley Award from the
Butler Gallery and has commenced a three-year residency at Temple Bar
Gallery & Studios. This body of work has been supported by Culture
Ireland, the Arts Council, FRAME and The Finnish Institute.