Distance is a Measure of Closeness (Exhibition)

Distance is a Measure of Closeness was a solo exhibition by Dr. Kerry Guinan at Ormston House, Limerick, which took place from 17 May – 26 July 2025. 

The exhibition presented three works exemplifying an emerging methodology in Guinan’s postdoctoral research project, ‘The Political Aesthetics of Scale: Artistic Practice at the Limits of the Political Imaginary’. Essentially, this artistic methodology seeks to make sensible the vast geographic scales of economic and technological systems, which produce alienation between interdependent actors across the world. In this exhibition, a triad of works juxtapose people or places separated by national and international distances, drawing these entities closer through digital mediums. Communicative strategies of telepresence and telepathy render these connections with a sense of immediacy and intimacy; simultaneously, the Brechtian distancing effect is leveraged to interrupt technological mediation, evoking the physical distances between the connected actors. Developing an aesthetics shaped by paradoxical dynamics of expansion and compression, connection and alienation, and closeness and distance, the exhibition explores how extremes of space and scale structure affective politics.

Portraits (2025) A series of three, six-hour live-streamed video portraits performed by content creators across three continents: Oleg Repetskiy in Ukraine, Europe, Maimana Ghonim in Egypt, Africa and Nirvaya Subedi in Nepal, Asia. The performers sit in a still pose in their home locations, broadcasting a personalised portrait to a wall-mounted screen in the gallery. Presented in the style of a traditional portrait, an accompanying contextual text informs the audience that the sitters in the picture are posing in real-time.  

The Red Thread (2022) Documentary film (directed by Anthony O’Connor) and archival material pertaining to the production of The Red Tread (2022). The Red Thread was a live, networked installation of six industrial sewing machines in The Complex Gallery, Dublin, which were controlled remotely – and in real time – by workers performing their labour in a garment factory in Bengaluru, India. As the workers carried out their ordinary work duties, sensors underneath their foot pedals recorded their activities, which were instantaneously recreated on the foot pedals in The Complex using networked motorised technology.  

Landscapes (2019) A photographic diptych of the lowest and highest value land for sale in Ireland, as of December 2018. The landscapes are depicted in a strict rule of thirds composition, reflecting the artificial nature of the mathematical values that are imposed upon land.  

Supported by Ormston House, Limerick, the Arts Council of Ireland, Limerick City and County Council, and the Centre for Art and the Political Imaginary.