MROOUCTKH - 2011
Colour, Silent, 5 min loop

‘In a moment in Quinlan’s MROOUCTKH (2011), the disembodied white mouth that has been mutely and fastidiously opening and closing envelops, like some cosmic trout, the crystalline rock that has been orbiting by. The mouth has been stretching and bending, as if warming up for an event and this might be it; it mouths and gums at the rock as if trying to feel its shape, to gain some blind, tactile knowledge of it.  After a few moments, it releases it again, and the stone continues to spin. But the two bodies have exchanged a sort silent, implicit acknowledgement of each other. The rock, emerging from the mouth, suggests itself as a form of utterance, some sort of speech akin to a comic book speech bubble that physically embodies language, the words here though are embedded in a web of quartz, a sentence in abstract geology.’

Extract from an essay by Chris Fite-Wassilak, on the occasion of Linda Quinlan’s solo exhibition at Bloomberg Space 2011.

This work was presented on a 27”Hanarex cube monitor, standing at eye level. MROOUCTKH was commissioned/exhibited for Comma Series at Bloomberg Space, London

Linda Quinlan’s practice weaves a kind of visual
alchemy, choreographing a playful set of relations
between objects, image and sound. Her work is grounded
in an investigation of material and traces the concrete
movement and interplay of matter and energy through the
evolution of cultural phenomena. Her most recent works
draw on materiality and touch within the technological
realm of music and acoustics, creating situations that
speak about connectivity, transformation, economy and
labour.

Her mediation on material, particular to surface and
contact burrows deep into the folds and forces of
representation that determine our understanding of the
material world. Her video practice mediates a space where
the physical can be spoken of in the virtual realm and
question’s what it might mean to be connected.

Dublin based Linda Quinlan has an MFA from the Piet
Zwart Institute, Rotterdam. Recent exhibitions include
a solo show at Bloomberg SPACE, London, curated by
Vanessa Desclaux, Love Magic Trade Object, curated by Jan Verwoert, Art Geneve 12, Geneva, Hypercolon curated by Nathanial Mellors and Chris Bloor, Smart Project Space,
Amsterdam and Screening Room: Dublin, curated by Regina Barunke, Koln Kunstverein, Cologne. She has exhibited at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, the Crawford Gallery, Cork, the Galway Arts Centre, The RHA, Dublin and the Glucksman, Cork. Recent residencies include the Centre Culturel Irlandias, Paris, Picture This, Bristol, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin and Fondazione Ratti in Como led by Yona Friedman. She was awarded the AIB Prize and is in the collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Arts Council of Ireland. She is currently on residency the National Art Studio in Seoul.