Michelle Hannah

A dark view of a corridor with red lights and two cristal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. There is a spotlight on a microphone stuck in a glass in a table.

In a dim-lighted room there is a spotlight on a crystal decanter on a table with a purple mantel that shows chondrite meteorites.

In front of a brown wooden piano a LED Backlit Collage Print With Electrical Tape of a face in red hues.

A red-lighted room has balcony handrails and a focus in purple light. In the floor there is a led-light laser engraved acrylic in red.

Michelle Hannah is performing in a dark dress and sunglasses, looking down towards the camera, with a microphone in her hand. Behind her, a circular balcony and an image on a screen of purple rain. This image also shows a chandelier and the circular ceiling.

The Savings Bank

Keener was a new durational performance and exhibition by Michelle Hannah, exploring the thematic tropes found in Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi, cosmic pessimism, the materiality of fashion/corporate events, post-digital beliefs and the Irish tradition of keeners.

The term keener references women hired to sing at funeral wakes as a vocal form of mourning. Through this exhibition this analogy is used to grieve the Anthropocene; to lament, entice, and detach. Photography, soundscapes, video and theatrical apocalyptic aesthetics combined to provide a decadent sculptural ambience.

Keeners were historically at odds with the church, which saw them as challenging the hierarchical role of the male priests.

Performances happened daily at 3pm.

Supported by Glasgow International, Inhouse and Creative Scotland.