As a curator there are many ways of working with an artist. Some depend on a high degree of collaboration, and some require a lighter touch. Working with Mark Garry required an even more demanding strategy — complete trust. With the exception of planning technician support and a decent installation period in the Gallery, the process was handed over to the artist to conceive and execute. Being aware of Mark’s methodology and of his sensitivity to spaces, it was a thrilling time to see the exhibition slowly unfold within gallery arena.

Mark’s sensibility is somewhat formed by landscape and its topographical and cultural determinants. Music also permeates his approach. Trading on paradox and counterpoint, the largest work created for the space was also the most ephemeral. Over three hundred threads, spanned and sliced its volume. Installed near to the ceiling their spectrum colours could be intermittently perceived from different vantage points, a fugitive rainbow evading fixity. Beneath this celestial event, a considered small number of objects were placed, the distances between them becoming journey’s, as the viewer went from one feature to another. The space became a landscape, the viewer became the protagonist, the experience became the narrative.

A New Quiet is the fifth major solo exhibition Garry has undertaken over the past twelve months. Mark creates beautifully considered ephemeral works that act as an embodiment of slow time. His works are measured and quiet often requiring meticulous systems of construction. They Combine physical, visual, sensory and empathetic analogies, enabling arrangements of elements that that intersect space and form relationships between a given space and each other.

This exhibition of new works incorporates a diverse range of media and materials that combine to form carefully constructed poetic narratives between images, materials, sound and objects. It quietly notes the manner in which actual and historical cultural elements resonate in this particular moment and the types of shadows we as humas cast.

*These texts are an amalgam of extracts taken from curators notes written by Ruth Carroll and an introduction to the exhibition the RHA director Patrick Murphy.