2024
Festival Cinedans in Eye highlights the postcolonial pain on an African rubbish dump: 'Dancing? Here? First clean up your mess!' by Fritz de Jong
'Trees on a pitch-black beach':
A completely different atmosphere is evoked in the program part Iceland in the Eye. The key words here are tranquil and alienating. This certainly applies to The Heart of a Tree (2020), shot in beautiful black and white. Three human figures in white suits descend into a glacier landscape. It could just be another planet. From a great distance, the camera follows the movements of the cautiously moving group, which seem to harvest oxygen in billowing dust bags.
Later the camera comes closer and we see the trio planting trees on a pitch-black beach. A sparse composition by the late Jóhann Jóhannsson emphasizes the desolate, yet hopeful atmosphere.
Read full article here: https://www.parool.nl/kunst-me...
2023
The Irish Examiner: Clare Langan at Castletownbere gallery, 'There’s a great stillness involved in taking photographs' by Marc O' Sullivan.
Only an artist as inventive as Clare Langan would find commonality behind the ancient beehive huts on Skellig Michael and the contemporary Bur Khalifa building in Dubai. Both feature in her 15-minute experimental film, The Floating World.Langan used infrared film when shooting on Skellig Michael, which gives the impression that snow is falling on the monastic settlement. In Dubai, she filmed the 830-metre-high Bur Khalifa building and other skyscrapers shrouded in mist. Both contribute to the dream-like quality of The Floating World, which, like much of Langan’s work, is an enchanting synthesis of sound and vision.
Read full review here: https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/artsandculture/arid-41198221.html
2022
Gemma Tipton (Irish Times) reviews 'Living Canvas' at Wilton Park. Europe’s largest dedicated art screen has popped up in Dublin. What’s going on?
Clare Langan’s River, on the screens at Wilton Park in Dublin, shows water shot in extreme close-up and extreme slow motion, which becomes hypnotic.
"Maybe it’s the cranes, but I’m thinking of Blade Runner: those vertiginous cityscapes where vast screens present a glittering array of faces, all enticements to desire. It’s no surprise to find that director Ridley Scott cut his filmmaking teeth in advertising. At its best, advertising creates hugely memorable images, but commerce always wants its cut.
So, when I first came across the huge digital screen showing contemporary art at Wilton Park in Dublin, my first thought was: what are they selling? We are so used to everything having a commercial imperative that without one, Living Canvas seems like an outlier. That’s because the screen is solely dedicated to art, and is the first of its kind at this scale in Europe. It is also the second only in the world, the other being at the M+ museum in Hong Kong."....
Read full article here: A very big space for art at Wilton Park (irishtimes.com)
2021
Christmas in Confidence: Barbara Polla (Switzerland), December 23, 2021
Flight from the City: A mother and daughter swim. I've watched this video by Clare Langan, with the mysterious title, hundreds of times. I love this work for many reasons: its hypnotic magnetism, the quality of the images, the link to the music, its extreme softness, the slowness, the water of course - the water from which we come, the water that constitutes us, crosses us, the amniotic water… and above all, I love it for the trust forged between the two women, a mother and a child, one imagines. One human being's absolute trust in another human being is a rare and beautiful reality. The total letting go of the child in this liquid space-time, dreamlike, on the body of the woman, guided by her, carried by her, held, let go, eyes closed, eyes in the eyes too, for a moment, until the adult gently separates from the child, throwing her into the world, once again.
It is this magical trust that the child has for the mother that allows it to definitively appropriate this feeling: then, trust in the other becomes self-confidence. The respect that emanates from the adult, the attention paid to the child, the physical tenderness, are transformed into respect and tenderness that the then grown-up child will be able to give other humans. I like this work because the apparent absence of narration is actually nourished by a psychological depth, even philosophical, a reflection on existence, on the future of the child, the disappearance of previous generations, the promise of other generations, on transmission.
Transmitting trust, in this Christmas 2021, is more important than ever, it seems to me, don’t you think so? The video is currently running in a loop in the gallery, until January 31st, 2022. Do not hesitate to come and be inspired by this wonder, come with your children – and until then, to you who read me, thank you – and let us all offer, in this vigil of gifts, one to the other, an extra confidence.
2015
Aidan Dunne: Visual Art round-up: Worlds on the brink and cosmic explorations (irishtimes.com)
2014
Island Odyssey, Art and Context by Joan Fowler: Brendan-Earley_Gravitational-Waves’_Joan-Fowler_Art-and-Context_March-2014_©All-rights-reserved.pdf (motherstankstation.com)