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Rose Finn-Kelcey's work has embraced an extraordinarily
wide variety of
media and styles including performance, sculpture, sound and most
recently a
series of works using LED technology. References to the spiritual
and the
use of language are recurring motifs in her work and these themes
are often
explored within a public context by siting her moving/ animated
messages
outdoors, in direct view of passers by. Through the use of subtle
interventions, Kelcey subverts existing social mechanisms or conventions
to
portray an entirely different message, usually with witty and ironic
results.
Her early work, Flags, 1971 displayed slogans such as Power to The
People
fluttering above Battersea power station or Nottingham Castle. Other
work
has more humorous references to spirituality such as 'Jolly God'
a gigantic
Vatican stamp featuring God wearing a eye patch and the oversized
'Pearly
Gates' featured in her solo show at the Camden Arts Centre in 1997.
More recently, her interventions have involved a more direct relationship
with the spectator.
In 1999 for the meadow outside the millennium dome, she installed
four
customised chocolate vending machines or 'Prayer Machines'. Instead
of the
desired chocolate bar, a prayer unfolds, rotating and flashing on
the
machines customised LED screen. Like 'inner voices' or confessions,
their
mood ranges from happy to neurotic, from childish to elegiac. Having
divulged it's wisdom, the machine returns your money, completing
the cycle
of this unusual encounter.
For a commission for the Teresa X convent in Mexico City in 2000,
mics
inside the collection box relayed the sound of the falling, chinking
coins
into speakers positioned in the grand dome of the ceiling. Hence
the visitor
hears the amplified sound of their donation falling from above,
making one
think of the proverb 'pennies from heaven'.
Rose Finn-Kelcey has a history of exhibiting in public spaces and
buildings
throughout London. Solo exhibitions include the Camden Arts Centre
in 1997
and the Chisenhale Gallery in 1992. She has also exhibited 'a shot
in the
locker' at the Conventa X Teresa, Mexico City and 'Jolly God' at
the Total
Museum in Seoul, South Korea. In March 2001 she showed in 'Dead'
at the
Roundhouse, London. Her work is in the Welkunst Foundation, Bernard
Starkman
and the Arts Council of England Collections.
For Art and Sacred Places Finn-Kelcey worked with
St Paul's Bow Common - see 2003/4 Programme.
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