MAGIC

Mikala Dwyer's work predominately lies in the irrational. She talks about ghosts, the paranormal and the occult with the same gravity of a natural science. She has suggested seances and covens and worked with black-arts paraphernalia, including candles and Ouija boards. She has employed clairvoyants to serve alongside her art during exhibitions, made art professionals dress up as crystals and even channelled spirits of female convicts.Dwyer's work is playful but simultaneously serious, dealing with themes such as mortality and the mysterious. Ultimately it is about the return-of-the-repressed; the infantile, the feminine and the irrational. Her work pushes the boundaries of our expectations by forcing us to re-imagine everyday objects as evocative objects of substance; shifting, fluid 'carriers' of emotions or spirits. It forces us, not necessarily to believe in the paranormal or supernatural, but to see the material universe as in itself, magical.


Mikala Dwyer's 'Drawing Down the Moon' will be at the Institute of Modern Art until April 14.