Sir, - Far be it from this grandmother to try to teach her young colleagues how to suck technical eggs, but it seems to me that neither Luke Clancy nor, indeed, Aidan Dunne in the Sunday Tribune, have grasped the technicalities of Frances Hegarty's work Voice Over at the Project Arts Centre.
The live colour sequence projected on to the back wall, of the gallery is the actual visual imprint of the Bosnian women's voices telling their stories. As such, this visible rendering of their voices lifts the work out of a purely documentary mode into a realm of poetic audio visual art. Nor is the colour sequence just there for decoration; it is the visible sound of the voice, making the narratives more poignant while enhancing the cool, unsentimental, black and white treatment of the women's images in profile on the video monitors.
The tone of the piece hits an exactly accurate pitch in what could be an overheated emotional area; the work is all the more powerful for that. I found this installation to be one of the most accomplished and moving multimedia pieces I have seen anywhere for some considerable time. Given the abuse of a marvellous medium which we witness constantly on our television screens, it is most heartening to see a serious artist address a serious issue with such skill and aesthetic commitment. - Yours, etc.,
Saint Mary's Lane,
Dublin 4.