Gierador

Gierador is a visual and musical interrogation of identity and power. In the context of this exhibition, it explores historic and contemporary attempts by various power structures to control the untamed power of the female body, of exposed skin. In Images of Lust: Sexual Carvings on Medieval Churches (1999), Anthony Weir and James Jerman reference the seventeenth-century synod of the diocese of Kilmore, which refers to a category of women called ‘gierador’ who are to be excluded from the sacraments. The meaning and origin of the word ‘gierador’ is unclear, though the authors suggest it might mean ‘women of loose morals’ or possibly even ‘living sheela-na-gigs’. In Gierador, Griffith situates the enigmatic pre-Christian figure of the sheela-na-gig as an enduring icon, one that has been subjugated and projected upon by the religious, gender, sexual, cultural and political contexts of the passing ages, sometimes literally mutilated and defiled before finally being given the name ‘sheela-na-gig’, and with it, a degenerated and circumscribed identity. To achieve ‘an aesthetics of damage’, Griffith used a mix of consumer-grade video cameras and VHS tape recorders, finishing the film with a process of live-to-tape distortion/treatment with hand-made circuit-bent editing equipment. It is part of the larger project entitled SacrumProfanum.

Gierador premiered at the Belfast Book Festival in 2015 at the Crescent Arts Centre.