Aaron Alexander Smyth

  'Caoineadh na Maighdine', Single Channel Video



Taking the Pieta as a reference point for this new work, Smyth aims to re-contextualise and reframe this classical motif within an Irish context, shifting the perspective to present a tender reflection of loss.

Utilising the medium of digital sculpture allows him to place the camera within, looking back out. This fragments the sculpture and provides this distinctly unique perspective, freeing the body of marble, the moment, the loss, held weightless. The title of the work perpetuates and complicates this further in its translation from Gaeigle, primarily the word Caoineadh, which is held in between keening, lamentation and crying.

The work seeks to embody this act of keening in its visual form, its loops, rhythm and recognisable fragments. In mimicking the form the intention is for the image to hold the óchón with meaning to be found in its tender silence.