Ivana's Answers

Artist Jaki Irvine (b. 1966)

Date2001

MediumDVD

DimensionsDuration: 10 mins

ClassificationsVideo

Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. Purchased from donations given the the Hugh Lane Gallery Trust, 2005. © Jaki Irvine.

Object number1976

DescriptionIt is the indefinable fragmented nature of the human condition, overheard conversations and casual incidents that inform the haunting work of Jaki Irvine. Her single and multiple screen projections avoid linear narrative, exploiting discontinuities between music score, moving image and narrator.

Ivana's Answers, filmed in Prato, Italy, centres on the conversation between two women. As one reads the tea leaves of the other, questions emerge around the nature of perception, memory, estrangement and desire. The conversation is broken by views of a hazy park, falcons, and insects, as time folds back into itself, appearing almost static, and forward again. Irvine rejects the manipulative strategies of conventional cinema, distancing what is seen and what is heard, thus unsettling the viewer into a place somewhere in the middle. Half-remembered dream-like moments resonate in the mind of the viewer, undermining certainty and allowing thoughts to wander, personal histories replayed, new and alternative histories imagined.

After graduating from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, in 1989, Irvine completed a Masters in Fine Art in Goldsmith's College, London, in 1994. She has exhibited widely, notably at the Venice Biennale, in the exhibition of Young British Artists, General Release, in 1995 and representing Ireland in 1997, and at the Tate Britain. (GJ)

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