Red-to-Red - The MAC, Belfast (7th April - 28th November 2023)
An exhibition of work created during an ACNI Fellowship at the British School at Rome, Italy, Jan - Mar 2023. Curated by Hugh Mulholland.
Kelly has taken markers from observances and encounters from her time in Rome and created work, externally affirmative and universally connective in nature. Her sensibility to the body, in particular the fragmented body - the torso and broken gesture are recurrent motifs in Kelly’s work. With its generative force emanating from personal encounters with severe illness and its aftermath, her work also embraces ideas of liminality and transformation.
The colour red has developed as multi-charged, with multi-layered resonances; the residue of a staunched wound; the symbol of blood, the universal force and flow of life; the symbol of bloodshed, sacrifice, often seen in religious depictions. A marker for warning or impending danger. Red is the colour symbolising authority, or status; generals in the days of the Roman Empire had their bodies painted red to celebrate victory. Red was also the colour of protective amulets. Red may indicate energy, vibrancy - the longest-lasting and most dominant of the colours of the Etruscan fresco wall-paintings. These red figurative images, fragmented over time, depict life, death, and the transitional space.