Moyna Flannigan

The haunted, often fragmented nature of Francesca Woodman’s photographs have a kind on empathetic connection with Moyna Flannigan’s recent collages, in which elements from art history, mythology, and popular culture combine to explore the representation of women. Her figures are an amalgam of memories, experiences, and ideas; the identity or essence of her characters remaining ambiguous and suspended, just out of reach. There’s often humour (as there is sometimes in Woodman’s compositions - her body squeezed into unexpected places) but also a darker, almost melancholic, sensibility.

Moyna’s most recent works have often begun with an element of chance - the artist cutting up her own drawings and reusing abstract body parts to create a new order from the original components. This celebration of the fragmentary nature of things finds a clear expression in today’s film, made by Moyna (to round off the ninth week of ‘the Unseen Masterpiece’) which is in itself a kind of collage. It offers a glimpse into the diversity images that fuel her work. As she says “to a casual observer these images might seem completely disconnected, but for me they have associations to my life, my interests and to memory. I’m looking for ways to connect them in new work… sometimes these connections are purely visual, but often I’m trying consciously to connect disparate elements in new formal arrangements like collage, which change the meaning and the impact of the original material.”

An exhibition of Moyna’s newest works was scheduled to open in the gallery this coming September, but like so much of life it will now be delayed. We look forward to staging it next year.