The stones are beginning to make me frightened
The stones of the title are present in thirteen of the fourteen works in this show: sandstone slab, smooth river stones, small glossy pebble-like stones, together with photographs of stones. A couple of the works are straightforward photographic prints but the bulk is constituted by assemblages-of photographs, stones, wood and other materials. In many of these, Tony Murtagh's sculptural approach is combined with lan Poole's photographic expertise in the creation of individual dioramas, the titles of which, such as Shrine and Window Box, invite us to view them as gardens or shrines, or both.
The relationship between the photographs and the stones fluctuates from one work to the next. The strategy employed by Poole and Murtagh reminds me of a childhood game: paper, scissors, stone. The game sets up a constantly shifting hierarchy between these three elements-with each round any can emerge as dominant. In Small Boxes, glossy black and white photographs of stones have been folded into boxes which in turn act as containers for actual stones. Paper covers stone. Elsewhere, a large-scale photograph has been segmented into a grid, one square of which has been displaced forwards. Scissors cut paper. In the work Rebirth 1, the stone is sliced through with two parallel cuts which create internal planes onto which photographs of stones have been exposed. The viewer is left to ponder whether the stone or the photograph has triumphed.
The title of the show originates from a scene in a contemporary Japanese novel. The principal character looks onto a garden and finds that, as the dusk descends, the stones begin to frighten her. Perhaps the main clue to the reading of the works in