Pruːf

Black Church Print Studio is pleased to present Pruːf, a group exhibition curated by Sarah Pierce at the Library Project in Temple Bar.

Pruːf draws on guest curator and artist Sarah Pierce’s ongoing interest in alternative ways of knowing, thinking, acting and making. Queer(ed) identities, false histories, and radical mysticisms overlap as drives in the exhibition. Pierce has selected twelve works from across geographies and historical periods focusing on artworks that question what is seen, cast as truth, and where the image lies (or lies). Several works in the show are unfinished, damaged, or refer to research in progress or artworks that were never made; others were never intended to be seen as art and have been gathered for this presentation only.

The show’s title, Pruːf, uses an alternative spelling to orthodox English to suggest intrinsically modular attributes, less about legibility and more about enunciation. Proof refers to evidence but is always accompanied by interpretation, and its meaning includes aspects of calibration, such as the proof of alcoholic spirits or the proofing of dough that allows it to rise. In printmaking, the artist’s proof indicates a trial impression outside the final edition. Texts are proofed to remove errors. Proof may indicate a trial or the ability to withstand something. Resistance.

A starting point to the exhibition is a small bronze maquette by British-American sculptor Jacob Epstein that shows the preliminary stage for what would have been one of his final works. The artist’s choice of subject – a Christ figure rising from the tomb – connects to other restagings and appearances in the exhibition. From precarious archives (Davidson and Finucane) and transgressive research (Lynch and Byrne) to un-ready-made objects (Mc Gardle and [O+F+C]) and hidden systems (Mc Donald and Prendergast) to conceptual copies (Burn and Price) and low-fidelity prototypes (Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle) Pruːf celebrates the partially complete and effectively unseen as evidence of art’s uncanny ability to represent the unrepresentable.

A special edition zine with the artist’s biographies and an expanded list of works will accompany the exhibition