About the postcard
"This business of symbols is rather confusing. I am not, I think, a symbolic writer in any allegorical or complete sense. Symbols come in, perhaps more in some novels than in others. I would want them to come in a completely natural way, through the characters. That is, being a symbol maker is not a kind of an odd thing which artists are, it’s something which everyone is. One notices in any kind of family situation or love affair, people invent symbols, all sorts of things become symbolic. This kind of pattern–making, although it may be concerned with art in some genetic way, is not just an effect of art, it is something one spots if one looks around at human beings."
Iris Murdoch interview with William Kent Rose, A Tiny Corner in The House of Fiction: Conversations with Iris Murdoch (University of South Carolina Press 2003)
Reading Iris Murdoch made me aware of how important the recognition of human detail is. Her descriptions of the minutiae that make up a life. The constrictions and pressures of social and domestic worlds and idiosyncratic meals: beetroot on toast. All this resonated and inspired me to continue trying to be an artist in my twenties after I had finished art college. There was something in the formation of these worlds that generated sculptural responses. I imagined the shapes in between the characters out of what was said and also unsaid. This postcard is representative of that way of working in between literature and visual art.
About the artist
Aleana Egan lives and works in Dublin. Recent solo exhibitions include Spitze, Farbvision, Berlin (2019); A House and Its Head, Kerlin Gallery; NUI Maynooth (2017); Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2015 and 2012); The Drawing Room, London (2011); Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin (2009); and Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2008). Recent group exhibitions include staring forms, TBG&S(2019); Aleana Egan/Pearl Blauvelt, Mary Mary, Glasgow(2018); Marian Cramer Projects, Amsterdam; Project Space Tilburg, The Netherlands (both 2017); CCA Derry (2015); Kettles Yard, Cambridge (2015); Vestibule, a large-scale public commission, Merrion Square, Dublin (2014); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2013); Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh (2013); Sculpture Center, New York (2010); Landesmuseum Münster, Germany (2010); 5th Berlin Biennale, Berlin and Kunsthalle zu Kiel (2008)
Postcard sponsor:
UCD, Centre for Ethics and Public Life
