Des Kilfeather new exhibition at Portsmouth Central Library

James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, A Visual Response

A Travelling Exhibition

by Des Kilfeather

This body of work by Des Kilfeather comprises pigment ink prints from scanned or photographed watercolour marks made on pages of a found, 1966 copy of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The work includes the original source book, with pencilled comments by a previous unknown reader.

James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a Visual Response, represents a continuation of Kilfeather’s philosophical exploration of power, apathy and time. Drawing on his own personal experience of Irish Catholic culture, the work was Kilfeather’s emotional and reactionary response to his first reading of the book. Kilfeather absorbed the texts, made abstract watercolour marks onto pages of the book, plein air photographed these then applied a process of semi-destruction of the book in sea water.

To resolve this phase, Kilfeather scanned pages containing anonymous handwritten comments, prepared for digital printing and published Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a Visual Response, as an eBook on Amazon and Google. These materials and processes establish the connection between Joyce’s early 20th Century, Kilfeather’s critical 1966 and contemporary culture.

“Portrait” is Kilfeather’s third body of work exhibited that visually explores the philosophy of James Joyce. Dubliners, a Visual Response and Contemporary Contextualisation, a travelling exhibition, was first published and shown in 2010, The Philanthropic Atheist was first shown in September 2011.

For more information visit http://www.deskilfeather.com/