Pamela Hardesty at the Fenton Gallery by Mark Patrick Hederman

Preliminary thoughts on Pamela Hardesty’s exhibition in the Fenton Gallery, Cork. 5 December 2002

Click here for images from the Fenton Gallery exhibition

Pamela’s ‘The Water and the Blood’ exhibition is in the stone-walled, barrel-vaulted space, entered through a narrow awning. The titles nearly put me off: Christ’s Passion, the Water and the Blood, The Sacred Heart! However her focus is on the role of the physical in spiritual transcendence; how the body can be vehicle for the Spirit. ‘Complex, dense, structural compositions, using glass and stone units linked by wire’. Impressive = sacred hearts and stations in abstract textures like flesh. Using the softer, more skin-like surface of paper, she depicts abuse – cutting, piercing, peeling, and the effect is startling.

The Water and the Blood: Christ’s Passion exhibition catalogue

by Pamela Hardesty
Fenton gallery, Cork 16 Nov – 7 Dec 2002

Click here to view the work

This body of work arose out of an interest in the physicality of spirit, the role of the body in spiritual progress and transformation. This interest came out of my own struggles to understand my faith in relation to the sacramental life of Catholicism, and also out of my own developing awareness of my humanity, my physical self and its relationship to the Divine through the practice of prayer and my life in Christ.