Celebrated for his kinetic installations of robotic figures employing familiar materials and sophisticated choreographies, Irish-born and Paris-based artist Malachi Farrell probes the political landscape with a shrewd wit and uncanny humor. In the Main Gallery the artist animates white plastic air-conditioning tubes to a hypnotic effect – calling forth a range of associations from a strict military cadence to childlike freedom of movement. The Shops Are Closed refers to the military curfew during the violent conflicts in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s, when the chaos of war brought civilian life to a grinding halt.

The exhibition extends into the Upper Main Gallery with a second installation Too Early For Vacation (2008). Originally exhibited in King John’s Castle, Limerick, Ireland, this piece is a sarcastic, sculptural tableau of two artillery bombs lounging on a pebble beach under a parasol. The accompanying audio, which further personifies the bombs, presents two opposing narratives: one, a conversation between a couple, collectors of contemporary art with American accents, discussing their collection – specifically a Jackson Pollack painting; the second audio track layers recordings of the surge of airplanes taking off from an airport. Too Early For Vacation pokes fun at tourism and the art world, and is a critique on the war as enmeshed with consumer complacency amidst a sea of luxury goods.

Malachi Farrell: The Shops Are Closed is curated by Jane Kim/Thrust Projects and is concurrent with Farrell’s show at Thrust Projects: Strange Fruit in the Streets (November 13, 2009 – January 3, 2010). In each piece Farrell presents, he skillfully navigates through an array of political issues in a narrative mode. He combines craft and ingenious technology to achieve a synthesis of sound, light, machines, everyday materials and articulated objects. His sculptures are not fixed objects, but spectacular, overwhelming, grotesque, moving apparatuses in a multi-dimensional space.

Born in Dublin in 1970, Malachi Farrell resides in Paris, France. His installations have been presented in major museums worldwide, and have been featured in Artforum, Flash Art, Time Out New York, The New Yorker, Le Monde, Liberation, and Artpress. His 2009 projects include Centre d’Art le LAIT, Albi, France where “Strange Fruit in the Streets” was first shown, and “Gaz Killers” at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris.

Farrell’s debut work at Jane Kim/Thrust Projects, “Nothing Stops a New Yorker,” (2005) has been invited to the forthcoming exhibition “Dreamlands,” Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris opening April 2010.

This exhibition is made possible with the generous support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and Culture Ireland.