Shrouded Spirits, Photography 2013
SHROUDED SPIRITS
This intriguing spectacle of wrapped, barricaded and curtained shelves and boxes of alcoholic beverages is a series of images taken on Good Friday 29th of March 2013 documenting how different shops in Ireland upheld Ireland’s Intoxicating Liquor Act of 1927. The act states that shops cannot sell or expose for sale intoxicating liquor on that day. The Intoxicating Liquor (Amendment) Act 2018 was signed into law in 2018 lifting the ban on the sale of alcohol on Good Friday.
Betty Gannon
Gannon’s informal photo-documentation quietly exposes the contradictory tensions of consumerism and prohibition, the result of a historical collusion of Church and State that persists into the present day. While the ‘forbidden’ alcoholic products are still physically present in the shops, on the specific day they are rendered ‘inaccessible’ through physical concealment, an action that adds a complicit (though clearly transparent) air of mystery and secrecy. There is also the associated implication that the general public cannot be trusted to comply with the law if the alcoholic products remain in view. This yearly phenomenon may be viewed as a visible demonstration of a deeper undercurrent of censorship, control, and the external forces that govern our everyday lives, and also the tacit general acceptance of this expression of non-permissive ‘normality’.
Ian Wieczorek 2014
This intriguing spectacle of wrapped, barricaded and curtained shelves and boxes of alcoholic beverages is a series of images taken on Good Friday 29th of March 2013 documenting how different shops in Ireland upheld Ireland’s Intoxicating Liquor Act of 1927. The act states that shops cannot sell or expose for sale intoxicating liquor on that day. The Intoxicating Liquor (Amendment) Act 2018 was signed into law in 2018 lifting the ban on the sale of alcohol on Good Friday.
Betty Gannon
Gannon’s informal photo-documentation quietly exposes the contradictory tensions of consumerism and prohibition, the result of a historical collusion of Church and State that persists into the present day. While the ‘forbidden’ alcoholic products are still physically present in the shops, on the specific day they are rendered ‘inaccessible’ through physical concealment, an action that adds a complicit (though clearly transparent) air of mystery and secrecy. There is also the associated implication that the general public cannot be trusted to comply with the law if the alcoholic products remain in view. This yearly phenomenon may be viewed as a visible demonstration of a deeper undercurrent of censorship, control, and the external forces that govern our everyday lives, and also the tacit general acceptance of this expression of non-permissive ‘normality’.
Ian Wieczorek 2014
