Duality of form is a philosophical inquiry into the nature of objects and how their
meaning comes into being. The world of objects and artifacts are a trove of hidden
meanings that evolve and change over time. As artworks, objects demonstrate theircapacity to elude definition. In contemporary society we are defined by what we consumeand collect, within these parameters we tend to define our environment. The invitedartists explore and elucidate the idea of an object’s plurivocality through sculpture,
photography, drawing and text.
In his book Illuminations, Walter Benjamin wrote that every object was invested with adouble valence: negative and positive, like an object and its shadow. In the lifecycle ofan object when it is created he viewed it as vested in its utopian dimension, its cynicaldimension was as a commodity and only in its obsolescence could it regain its freedom. He
remarked: “only in extinction is the (true) collector comprehended”1 . Both Caoimhe
Kilfeather and Barbara Knezevic play with this notion of the artist as a collector, as
someone who ‘liberates things from the bondage of utility.’ What is decisive for Benjaminis that the “object be dissociated from all its original function in order to enter into
the closest possible relationships with its equivalent. This is the diametric opposite ofuse, and stands under the curious category of completeness”2 .
Caoimhe Kilfeather’s photographic series titled Skep, looks at the properties of adefunct object that reflects outmoded practices as well as form and aperture. A Skep wasused for collecting bees and has now become an ornament. Kilfeather’s oval line of bronze
shown in conjunction with the photographs delineates the base of the skep as it rotatesand outlines a boundary that alludes to drawing and perhaps a space that objects arecontained. Her second photographic series in the exhibition of facades relate directly tothe hanging ceramic tile works. They point to real world environments and reflect on thesubjective nature of memory when recalling details of places. Memories tend to be aconstruct of objects, which retain significance only when recalled.
Through her sculptural pieces Barbara Knezevic traces possible meanings that are trappedin material objects that conspire to evade us through their presence and absence. Pinebroomhandles are scorched and burnt in coded patterns, a floor piece of a knotted rope
the center of which burnt is out, a clear cast glass object is placed in the center. Theinterconnectivity between the pieces allows us to decode possible interpretations of theworks. Fire is a signifier of civilization, it destroys, illuminates, purifies. Knezevic
edits and rearranges objects into unstable and often temporary arrangements creating new
relationships between objects.
The artist Marcel Broodthaer’s when talking about his work stated; ‘that fiction allows
us to grasp reality and at the same time what it hides’.3 Similarly, Eleanor Duffincreates a fictive space through her publication Phantom of Form; using text and graphics
she creates a narrative around a fictional ‘other’ woman whose primary focus ismateriality in relation to objects and their functional presence. The female protagonist
is a device to create distance between the artist and her work. This resonates with
Benjamin’s idea of the ‘double valence’ – in this case the artist and her shadow. Duffinthrough this work explores how language can inform sculpture and how material/immaterial
language can be manifested in text and in visual formulation.
We have now entered speculative realism - ‘a world where the object, whether thing, tool
commodity, thought, phenomenon or living creature has regained its rights, freed from thesubject of mind, body and gaze’4 . The artists demonstrate this liberation through artworks
that obstruct, disrupt and interfere with social-norms. In a time when objects tend todefine us through our reliance on them for validation, to communicate, socialise, weperhaps need to re-assess our relationship to the object and turn our gaze.

1

Benjamin, Walter, Illuminations, Fontana Press, UK, 1973, 41.
Ibid., 38.
3
Krauss, Rosalind, A Voyage on the North Sea: Art in the age of the Post-Medium
condition’, Thames & Hudson, UK, 1999, 41.
4
Hudek, Anthony, The object: Documents of contemporary art, Whitechapel Gallery & MIT
Press, UK, 2014, 16.
2