Temple Bar Gallery and Studios is presenting Sonia Shiel's new exhibition Bran New Brains, an installation that has been built and amended over a four week period, in the gallery space. Having become empowered by the placebo of his awarded intelligence, the Scarecrow, in L. Frank Baum’s ‘Wizard of Oz’ explains the recent cereal deposit and metalwork to his head, as his ‘bran new brains’. Thus revealing to the reader the will of his self-deception. Bran New Brains combines paintings and painted objects into a complete installation. Carrying the idea of origin throughout, many of the works have undergone a series of superficial changes and declare an inflated history of how they have come to be. Often using the idea of the artist’s pursuit beyond make-believe into various lawless environments, as her central muse – in the wild west, outer space, cartoon territories and anarchic streets, for Bran New Brains, Shiel situates the artist directly in the studio, where amateur investigations seem to have taken on profound effect.
