MEGGA BUBBLE SPACE BURBS 2013

Vicky Smith’s Megga Bubble Space Burbs is a reflection of a six-month residency at the Galway Arts Centre. Smith’s practice centers on the production of art objects that are key components in the production of this physical bell jar city art installation. This is rooted in her interest in the ‘bubble enclosure’. These enclosures can be imaginary bubbles, real bubbles, and phenomenologically framed as a place/shape/form that people create during times of social and personal crisis that results in a lack of voice, protest, or disparity. The two center pieces of the exhibition are Squawk Box and Space Burbs both mimetic redundant bell jar machines that engage the audience in the analysis of the Bell jar syndrome conceptually. In this body of work, she uses the art object as a lever to open a dialogue about her research, collections, and analysis of this as well her curiosity with the Bell Laboratories. The Bell jar syndrome stems from Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar. It is the very pressure and vacuum of choice between binaries and the impossibility of reconciliation that is center to Plath’s novel The Bell Jar.