CIRCA 118 WINTER 2006 25TH ANNIVERSARY CONTEMPORARY VISUAL CULTURE IN IRELAND WINTER 2006 | ¤7.50 £5 US$12 | ISSN 0263-9475 c

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3 Editorial 22 | Update 24 | Features 26 | Reviews 60 | Project 107 |

(front cover) Susan MacWilliam Headbox (detail), 2004 stereoscope with wall handles, Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin courtesy the artist

Sam Francis (1923-1994), Imaginarium, 1988, acrylic on paper, 39 x 48 cm

Now there are two world-class galleries on Parnell Square

Hillsboro Fine Art 49 Parnell Square West, Dublin 1 www.hillsborofineart.com context galleries

Programme New & recent publications

11 Nov – 9 Dec New Irish Painting (£5 /¤7) Gallery 1 Christine Mackey Abridged02 Damaged Collateral (£2/¤3) catalogue available: incontext#20 Christine Mackey Sedative: Robert O’Connor (£3/¤5) inContext #18 Laundry: Aileen Kelly Gallery 2 Live/Archive 0-1: In the inContext #19 Damaged Collateral Orchard: North West Visual Arts inContext #20 Christine Mackey Archive inContext #21 Sara Greavu 16 Dec – 20 Jan Galleries 1 & 2 Miriam de Burca

16 Dec – 20 Jan Public Art Project Sara Greavu catalogue available: incontext#21 Sara inContext is free, For a copy, please send an Greavu SAE to the Context Galleries context galleries, the playhouse, 5-7 artillery st, derry BT486R supported by t +44 287 137 3538 f +44 287 126 1884 e [email protected] http://contextgalleries.blogspot.com/

national irish visual arts library

Public Research Library of 20th Century and Contemporary Irish Art & Design

National College of Art & Design 100 Thomas Street Dublin 8 T: 01 636 4347 [email protected] www.ncad.ie/nival 22 Editorialc c . Peter FitzGerald There is a lot of wit also in the work of Caroline McCarthy, whose output is analysed in this issue by Chris Townsend. Townsend detects in her art a ‘modernist’ attraction to consumer goods, but with little high-art seriousness. McCarthy has earned great respect over the last decade or so for the way in which ‘simple’ interventions on everyday goods can turn them into signifiers of much greater import, causing ‘throw-away’ objects to reflect back on their consumers.

If McCarthy’s is a could-be world, Susan MacWilliam’s is more a could-it-be? one. Noel Kelly writes about her in this issue. He describes the coming-together in her work of the vaudvillean, the paranormal and the scientific, all reflected in the looking glass of aesthetic analysis. The ‘work’ performed by Art History and Art Criticism MacWilliam’s work muddles how things ‘should be’; differs. Criticism, very broadly defined to include Visual in particular, science is supposed to be the objective 23 Studies, Cultural Studies and the like, is for now; it is arbitor, with art a softer, possibly more decorative, active, and for artists it can point the theoretical way adjunct. MacWilliam so mixes the ‘metanarratives’ of forward and impact directly on the art that gets made. science, art and the occult that primacy is neatly handed Art History is more reflective. It is telling, though over to the viewer; it’s quite an act of prestidigitation. perhaps near-inevitable, that many undergraduate What else? There’s the ‘25th’ cover. We felt it was Art History courses do not cover anything approaching worth signalling again that Circa is twenty-five years contemporary art; a gap is left for time to do its work. old this year; the first issue was dated November/ It isn’t that simple, though: the forces that turn present December 1981. Then there are the fine ads from fine art into the future past art of the Art History books are advertisers, the news, reviews and a project by Mary not passive or necessarily benign. This is a truism Healy that – echoing the Art History/ Art Criticism amongst most cultural theorists, but sometimes less so distinction mentioned above – interprets classic images amongst art historians. in a contemporary mode. Enjoy! In this issue we revisit an essay by James Elkins printed in the summer issue of this year. It was titled The state of Art History in Ireland, revisited. It looked at the problems Elkins diagnosed in Art History teaching here, and it suggested possible solutions. We are very lucky to be able to have in this issue eight responses to Elkins’ text, along with Elkins’ own response to those responses. It is easy to see enormous potential for dialogue and synergy. The stakes are high: if what is taught and researched at third level is appropriate to the matter in hand, the benefits can be enormous; if not, then art here will suffer.

Broad cultural criticism, with a Belfast accent, has been the seam mined for a number of years now by The Vacuum, a freesheet in which the serious analysis and the tongue-in-cheek happily coexist. When The Vacuum strayed into religious territory in 2004, it ran foul of one of its co-funders, Belfast City Council. Concerned as they are with very different ways of viewing the world and human potential, when art falls under the scrutiny of politics the result is seldom edifying and sometimes farcical. In this issue, Colin Graham analyses the ‘Vacuum case’, tracing how the freesheet has countered with wit and savvy the official commodification of Belfast. c . Update

24 Mulholland x 2 Tipp’s new arts centre Winners Following his very well There is a new arts centre Paul Rowley of Brooklyn is received curatorship of in Thurles. Linked with a the overall winner of the Northern Ireland's new library, and designed $25,000 Irish American Arts contribution to the 2005 by the studio of Niall Awards 2006. He received Venice Biennale, Hugh McCullough and Valerie the award in the category Mulholland has been Mulvin, it incorporates a 'under 35 years of age' as chosen to curate Northern gallery space. The gallery is, well. The Irish American Arts Ireland’s 2007 presence there. according to the press Awards were launched in He will present work by release, “An introverted, January of this year and Willie Doherty. Mulholland reflective space … its walls Rowley had been short-listed was picked in an open splay out towards the river along with four other artists. application process. front, taking up the geome- The winners were announced try of the site. Shielded at an awards ceremony on Undaunted by the issues behind the monolithic 12 September in Manhattan. surrounding the abrupt concrete entrance wall, In the second category, closure at the end of the space can be glimpsed 'Over 35 years of age', Mary February of the Ormeau through a porthole when Kelly of Greystones, Wicklow, Baths Gallery in Belfast, arriving, or alternatively is the recipient. of which he was Director, closed off for hanging. For further information about Mulholland has also opened The inaugural exhibition, the awards visit a new gallery, the third space. Tipperary exposed, featured www.irishamericanartsawards.org The inaugural show featured works by artists living in or the work of Mark McGreevy. from the Thurles area; it was the third space is at Suite curated by Ruairí Ó Cuív. 11/12, Scottish Mutual Building, 16 Donegall Square South, Belfast BT1 5JA; www.thethirdspacegallery.com Circa developments Seawright takes chair Culture versus New visual-arts 25 Georgina Jackson, Paul Seawright, well demolition Curator at Project exhibitions curator at known for his The artists of Creative De Appel-trained New Dublin City Gallery photographic images Exchange, whose studio Zealander Tessa Giblin is The Hugh Lane, has joined from areas of conflict spaces are located in the the new Curator of Visual the Board of Circa. More and deprivation, has Linenhall Works Mill on the Arts at Project, Dublin. new members will join the been appointed professor Castlereagh Road, Belfast, Having recently worked Board shortly. of Photograpy at the have been upset, to say the as Curator and Head of University of Ulster. least, by a recent notice to Exhibitions at SMART Scans of issues 1 to 110 of quit the premises. Nor are Project Space in Circa are now online. Go to they impressed that the Amsterdam, she was www.recirca.com/scans intention is to demolish the previously Assistant 1840s structure and replace Curator of ARTSPACE There is a new Circa it with a shopping centre. in Auckland. An readers’ survey, and It is something, they feel, Assistant Curator, we would be very that East Belfast scarcely Jonathan Carroll, was grateful for your feedback; needs, and they have been appointed at Project a please go to very active both in seeking few months ago. www.recirca.com/poll/2006 community support and in generating media attention for their cause. Failing all else, they may be saved by the roof of the building: its structure has been identified as “unique within Ireland” and the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society is now lobbying to have the building listed. Engine Room Gallery, Belfast, will host a Creative Exchange exhibition from 2 to 24 February 2007 which will “highlight the benefit of taking a creative approach to the regeneration of our industrial heritage.” More at www.creativeexchange.org.uk c . Features 26 Caroline McCarthy: best before yesterday Chris Townsend 28 | The state of art history in Ireland, replies and response 36 | An outsider in her native town – the work of Susan MacWilliam Noel Kelly 48 | The Vacuum and the vacuous Colin Graham 55 |

(background) Susan MacWilliam Kuda Bux, 2003 installation with video work Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast

2003

courtesy the artist c .

c . Chris Townsend Caroline McCarthy Promise, 2003 food packaging, plastic plant-pots, wood, wire, lighting 366 x 183 x 110 cm courtesy the artist

28 Caroline McCarthy: best before yesterday is a debased mimesis of nature growing out of a system of signs that exist and communicate for a purely com- mercial purpose – that have no other intended function as sign. McCarthy’s fragile saplings exploited the latent meaning in those signs that design would seek to close in its pursuit of single-minded salesmanship. Here, as elsewhere, McCarthy shows how the designation of the sign by the designer relies upon a clichéd cultural imagination of nature. These food products are about as distant from ‘nature’ as you can get; assembled from a multitude of ingredients in a sterile factory by cut-price labour and machinery in a matter of seconds. Any connection with the countryside is almost tangential; what really matters in the product is the ‘added value’ realised for its manufacturer and retailer through the application of cheap labour in the name of convenience. 29 At the heart of this endeavour was, in part, an interest in the ideological inscription carried by something as seemingly innocent as food packaging. By ‘ideological inscription’ here I mean the way in which the use of signs within such objects exploits existing cultural codes both to facilitate our imaginations of particular subjects (here ‘the natural’, elsewhere ‘the exotic’) and constrain It is surely now a truism to acknowledge that we live in us, to help us think in particular ways (so that we a commoditised world. Indeed, we inhabit a world so associate the factory-made to the organic). In doing this, structured around the exchange of objects, so saturated McCarthy doesn’t only participate in the same formal with signs, that people themselves have become economy as modernism, she seems to share an ethical commodities. Warhol, perhaps presciently, indisputably stance with artists as different as John Heartfield in inadvertently, demonstrated this with Marilyns, Elvises Berlin in the 1930s and Wallace Berman in California in and Lizies stacked up like so many towels or pop-posters. the 1960s. Crucial to the modernist project in the early There is a double action between human and object in twentieth century, before it enters the wholly self- this commodity culture: humans become ever more like referential phase of linguistic obsession, as formulated things, instrumentally useful sources of profit; things by Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried, is a concern become ever more like humans, anthropomorphised and with closing the gap between art and life. Furthermore, invested with ‘character’. Time, embedded in object and collage and assemblage isn’t just grounded in the human subject alike seems, however, not to obey this law materials of mass culture because that’s what everyday of oscillation. Rather, it is a one-way trip to obsolescence. life is composed of. The modernist strategies of abrupt Both human and thing are disposable commodities. juxtaposition and disorientation, that we find everywhere from Kurt Schwitters’s collages to Hugo Ball’s poems, Caroline McCarthy’s work plays with this awkward Dziga Vertov’s films and Joyce’s prose, themselves relation of us and it, with the problem of disposability in reflect the everyday experience of the subject with these a culture where the human, as readily as the fast food materials. Modernism’s treatment of the everyday is product, can easily slip past its sell-by date. Formally, ‘ethical’ and in some senses ‘political’: it presumes for much of McCarthy’s art is based upon the principles of art an elevated status which, through its treatment of collage and assemblage: it employs the found, everyday both the objective world and subjective experience within object and follows a modernist approach towards it. that world, can redeem the diminished and demeaning McCarthy takes the disposable commodity and condition of modernity. transforms it into art object. In recent projects such as Promise (2003) she created an extraordinary landscape using the cartons from supermarket ready-meals. By cutting round the garnish that accompanied each photographed, idealised, product, raising it from a ‘soil’ of packaging, McCarthy illustrated how readily our conventional signs for nature had been harnessed to the marketing of commodities. What we see in Promise McCarthy is, of course, far from unique as a contemporary looks at signs. She is not interested in the transformation artist deploying the historically established techniques of the sign itself (which could be understood as a utopian of modernism. But given the changed historical circum- longing, with the capacity for that transformation vested stances between the moment that those techniques were only in the singular figure of the artist) but in revealing forged and the present, can a form still adhere to ethical to us the ways in which we, as a culture, apprehend principles that developed to meet a particular demand the sign. So, her subject is not the ethics of the sign, but (in this case the denaturing effects of modernity)? our ethics; not the aesthetics of the sign per se, but the Critics such as Peter Bürger see all art after 1945 that aesthetic codes through which we read signs. adopts the techniques and aesthetics of modernism as nothing more than a parody driven by the demands of the Grand detour, vedute and other curious observations off art market.1 And, as Hal Foster has astutely pointed out, the grand route, 2006, a project undertaken for the a central characteristic of modern life, of post-modernity Parker’s Box gallery in Brooklyn, was a clever play upon if that’s what you really have to call it, is that the gap the different modes of consumption of experience – a between art and life has indeed been closed. The prob- comparison between the tours of Europe undertaken by lem (and it’s really only a problem if you believe in the young aristocratic gentlemen in the eighteenth century, individual dignity of human subjects, believe in people as the urban drifting of the nineteenth century flâneur, and 30 something other than commodities) is that the closure the ‘democratic’ encounter with largely pre-arranged was achieved not by art, but by “the spectacular dictates experiences of the tourist. The central subject of of the culture industry.”2 Capitalism itself, already McCarthy’s attention in this was litter; in particular the responsible for the denigration of subjective experience discarded cartons and polystyrene beakers of fast-food through certain effects of industrial modernity, occupied outlets. Walking the streets of the city, around newly the very field by which modernist art hoped for the fashionable Williamsburg – home to New York’s now redemption of the masses and mass culture. It did so largely exiled art community – McCarthy mapped the by utilising to its own ends the strategies first employed location of drink containers blown into weeds, burger by the avant-garde: ‘art’ became ‘design’, the image boxes hooked in the bottom of link fences. After photo- shifted from being something that could change your life graphing these overlooked, useless things, the artist to something that sold you something else. As the turned a number of them into small drawings, some with old-school Marxist critic Frederic Jameson has observed, a sepia wash, and made a selected eight of them into what really characterised postmodernity was the inte- etchings. The largest of these works was only on A3 gration of culture into the market society, so that art paper; most hovered somewhere just beyond the scale of itself became a consumable commodity rather than an the postcard. external, critical field through which some hope of redemption (whether secular or spiritual) might be offered to the subject.3

Where does this leave McCarthy, and indeed other contemporary artists who might hope still for something more from modern life than an endless and pointless cycle of consumption and repetitive mimeses of ‘experi- ence’? In using a modernist methodology, and adhering to what is, seemingly, a redundant ethical stance, is she wholly a part of the problem, rather than offering genuine criticism, far less a solution? Three recent projects have developed the ideas of ideological scrutiny that were manifest in Promise. They suggest that here is an artist with real insight into our everyday experience, and furthermore one not afraid to use a wry, gentle humour. Furthermore, it becomes clear that McCarthy’s concern with making assemblages out of the redundant detritus of daily life is not an appropriation of modernist strategies, but rather an important, and critically useful development of them. McCarthy’s use of everyday materials in art can no longer presume that such an elevation will redeem either those materials or the lives associated with them. She evades charges of cynical pastiche or naïve irrelevance through the way her work Caroline McCarthy Grand detour, 2006 drawing and watercolour on paper, pencil grid, parquet lino floor, 610 x 305 x 305 cm courtesy the artist Seen at a distance, and McCarthy exhibited them in a saturated with industrially produced imagery, to the dense hang on one red painted wall in Parker’s Box, point where the image exists almost as a chimera, without these drawings appear to be studies of nature, rendered value or effect; the visual equivalent of shopping music. in the traditional materials of pictorial art. As McCarthy remarks, it was important to her that they “tapped into This saturation was the starting point for the 2005 a knowledge of what a ‘proper’ picture should look like,” project Flowers, first realised at Keith Talent Gallery in so edges of pavement, for example, were used as horizon Hackney. The work was inspired by seeing a wastebin lines. This means that the works look very much like land- on the Beijing subway, decorated with a reproduction of scapes, but landscapes in which the microscopic and Van Gogh’s famous Sunflowers. The shift of the image fragmented come to stand in for the synthesis of subject between original and reproduction here is self-evident. and world that even the most humble sketch of scenery What was at one point the most expensive picture in the attempts. (Hence the reference to the vedute in her title, world (sold at auction in 1987 for $39,921,750) is reprinted itself rambling and inclusive in the manner of eighteenth- on a wastebin, gradually acquiring a patina of subway century literature. A vedute or ‘view’ is a term used by art dirt. What was once wholly auratic in Walter Benjamin’s historians to describe topographical sketches.) terms (its effect dependent upon its singularity and its McCarthy’s efforts might have been those mannered presence)4 is now mechanically reproduced across the 32 studies of Alpine scenery or Tuscan hills that young globe. Crucially, for McCarthy, there’s a further shift squires and margraves attempted whilst touring Europe – involved, within the attention we pay to reproductions. and especially the Europe of classical tradition – in the The democratic dissemination of imagery is accompa- hope of acquiring education and moral improvement nied by an indifference to it; the loss of aura causes a through studying the ruins of earlier civilisations. complete collapse of effect, or even its inversion. They might also have been a sample of those works by Everyone gets to see ‘great art’; no one notices. professional artists, living or ‘old masters’, that the McCarthy’s response was to make an image out of wealthier tourists purchased in their year or two away wastebins, or rather waste-sacks. Finding sacks made and bore back to England or Germany to line the walls of in the four colours of the palettes of inkjet printers, their grand houses. Even now, familiar with McCarthy’s she used hole punches of varying size to create enough drawings, I cannot help seeing them as something like coloured dots to compose a picture, which she then Piranesi’s elaborate studies of Roman ruins, real and ‘painted’ onto an outline. The chosen image for reproduc- imagined. (Which in a sense, they are, as representations tion looked something like Sunflowers, but it was impor- of the way in which the new Rome, the Empire of tant to McCarthy that it wasn’t Van Gogh’s painting she neoliberalism, is already crumbling at the edges.) attempted. Rather, she wanted something that was ‘just Hanging the drawings on a red wall, with the images an image’, the kind of thing that might crop up in generic seemingly jumbled one against another, reinforced this advertising or a manual; an illustration of what an image impression. Low, crowded hanging on dark backgrounds might look like. Furthermore, it looked like the kind of was the norm for the eighteenth century collector. image an inkjet printer might produce, especially of a The size of the works hinted at what has replaced the pixellated image downloaded from the web. If the dis- Grand Tour of the privileged individual: the ‘democracy’ placement of a classic work of art from gallery original to of mass tourism. We still send or take home images of subway reproduction represented a near perfect example our travels, but now these veduti are in the individually of the process of reification – whereby a unique art valueless commodity form of the postcard. The economy object or idea becomes a commonplace item of mass- of signs remains, but now it has shifted from the aura production – McCarthy’s Flowers was a parodic reversal and value of the unique artwork to the endlessly repro- of that process. She tried to create a unique art object duced same, the ideologically valorised image represents out of wholly industrial objects, and indeed one which and sums up your pre-planned experience. Within remained faithful to the look of industrially produced mass-tourism this image becomes as utterly disposable imagery. She exhibited the ‘painting’ along with the as food packaging. It’s perhaps too simple to see the waste sacks, which at least had the appearance of being postcard as a consequence of the expansion of travel to restored to their intended function. As with the drawings a widening, eventually almost universal, class within of food packaging in Grand detour, there is here a western society after the mid nineteenth century. One reintroduction of time to the object that mass-production might see tourism as a consequence of the postcard, or eliminates. (We might compare her work here to those at least of the growing popular desire for ‘views’ which early assemblages of an artist like Mike Kelley. I’m leads to an increasing mass-mediation of representation, thinking in particular of his More love hours than can ever the growth of mass-mediating technologies, and to be repaid – but McCarthy’s work is thankfully devoid of travel. Both tourism and the postcard are imbricated the sentimentality that pervaded so-called ‘abject art’, symptoms of a culture which becomes increasingly and instead is laced with humour.) Caroline McCarthy Flowers (detail), 2005 plastic bin bags, wall-mounted steel brackets, dimensions variable courtesy the artist In this reintroduction of time there is an exchange domesticity into one of comedy – a more momentary, between the mass-produced and the hand-crafted that but perhaps achievable freedom from the effects of is certainly ludic, and perhaps even ludicrous. McCarthy modernity. Modernism dreamed of redemption on the uses the humour of her ridiculous endeavour to point grand scale, through utopian projects that, inevitably, towards the serious matter of the devaluation of visual were compromised or corrupted (usually to such an rhetoric. Where a critique of reification and mass culture extent that art was as suborned to explicit ideological might tend towards the justifiable gloom of Adorno and expediency as it was, elsewhere, to the more subtle Horkheimer, say, in Dialectic of enlightenment, and of the dictates of the culture industry). McCarthy proposes loss of our rhetorical capacity within culture towards the a small-scale, human resistance to what might be revolutionary pessimism of Marcuse in One-dimensional understood as overwhelming effects. For her, it is the man, in McCarthy it provokes a parody. Whilst that human use of the everyday (our transformation of signs, parody is illuminating of the false promises of facility and conscious or otherwise) that might be redemptive, accessibility that accompany the mass-production of rather than the special effects of high art. Hope here culture (and this is vastly different from the democratisa- lies in the reclamation of the obsolescent, those things tion of culture), we might say that it also laughs at art’s (and perhaps those people) past their best-before date, own incapacity to either rectify this situation or indeed and in the subversion of the single-minded sign of the 34 prevent its own subordination to the culture industry. culture industry, as it fills the world with a language so blatant we can’t see it. But the question lingers if this If art, as a serious practice producing singular objects, will be enough… is incapable of redemptive acts, McCarthy’s project Happiness (after Dodd), made for the re-opening of the DeLeWarr Pavilion in the English seaside town of Bexhill, suggested that our loss of rhetorical felicity within high culture might be regained in other areas. Asked to provide work that fitted with a curatorial rubric of ‘variety’, McCarthy turned to popular culture and the now obsolete mass-cultural form of the variety artist. In particular, she appropriated the feather duster that in the nineteen seventies became the motif of the Liverpool comedian Ken Dodd as his ‘tickling stick’. A number of these dusters, mounted on long sticks, were arrayed along the walls beside an installation. That installation consisted of domestic furniture and found objects, neatly fitted within the floor plan of the artist’s kitchen. (An effect achieved by the expedient of removing her kitchen lino and re-installing it in the DeLeWarr.) All of these items came from McCarthy’s home; they were most of her domestic furniture – though not the bed – and ‘things’, whether useful or redundant, working or broken. The only criterion for selection was, as McCarthy put it, that on a moment’s consideration they seemed innately sad or gloomy. By sending these objects to Bexhill, a notable seaside resort, McCarthy hoped to give them a holiday, a break from domestic life that might cheer them up. This process was to be facilitated by visitors to the exhibition who were invited to use the ‘tickling sticks’ to dust, and therefore tickle and amuse the furniture and the objects it bore.

Happiness is an interesting step for McCarthy, in its use of ‘performance’, or intervention by the spectator. The work extends and reprises those transformations of everyday objects into forms of liberation. But where in her projects with food packaging she examined ideas of utopia and our use of design and the sign, here she is concerned with the transformation of an object of 1 Bürger, P. Theory of the avant Chris Townsend is Senior garde, Minneapolis: Minnesota Lecturer in the Department University Press, 1984 of Media Arts, Royal 2 Foster, H. Design and crime Holloway, University of and other diatribes, London: Verso, 2002, p. 19 London. 3 Jameson, F. ‘Transformations of the image in postmodernity’ in The Cultural turn: selected writings on the postmodern, 1983 – 1998, London: Verso, 1998 4 Benjamin, W. ‘The Work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility’ (third version) in Eiland, H., & Jennings, M.W. Walter Benjamin: selected writings, Vol. 4: 1938 – 1940, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003 Caroline McCarthy Flowers (detail), 2005 35 plastic bin bags, wall-mounted steel brackets, dimensions variable courtesy the artist c .

36 the state of art history in ireland, replies and response Reply: Joan Fowler understanding” is uttered, there lurks the proposition that theory frames art. It doesn’t. This isn’t to say that art theory (I use the term vaguely, but I refer to an area that I think is loosely understood) is irrelevant; ‘it’ can be and should be a significant contribution to art practice. In this context at least, art theory should not be an end in itself, and this I think is the crux. This theory’s home is integral to art colleges/ departments and shouldn’t be consumed by academia.

Elkins cites practical issues and makes comparison between Art History in Ireland and many other countries. But I wonder if he acknowledges the potential for imperi- alism in what he says. While he advances links and inte- grations in higher education, it should be remembered that large institutions acquisition small institutions such It is not the business of art to save Art History. James as art colleges, and enforce their culture as well as their 37 Elkins shifts from Art History to Visual Studies to Art fiscal policy. Again, Elkins presumes a universal modular Criticism and back (indicating his own predilections en structure, despite the fact that in this part of the world route), but fundamentally he advocates a discipline(s). educators of art students have argued against it and with This, I would suggest, is antithetical to art practice. It is good reason. A global university system (which is essen- the business of those involved in and with art to ward off tially how modularisation is being advanced in Europe) advances from those who propose an academic disci- should not be assumed by default; the homogenisation pline within art education. Once ensconced, a discipline, involved should be sufficient warning. with its rigid methodologies, has the capacity to destroy Elkins will point to the insularity and defensiveness of the education art students have enjoyed for the past my comments. He is right to highlight the cultural, social, generation and which, in its prime, was revered across and economic realities that confront us. He indirectly the world. I refer to that open-ended, tutorial-based reminds us that Ireland is an overtly philistine society system with origins in the Bauhaus, revised in Britain within which its colleges and universities often aspire in the1960s, and adopted in Ireland in the 1970s. to little other than mediocrity. The role of art history/ I should be clear that my concern is with education theory/ criticism in art education has been and continues engaged in art practice. I should also say that I take to be a contentious issue, but one that is usually stuffed Elkins’s remarks at face value and assume he is under the carpet. Elkins, I think, implies that with the honourable in what he puts forward. I say this because help of university relatives, it could be stronger in regard there are quasi-managers and opportunists within the to practice. I would need an awful lot of convincing. As Irish third-level system who are only too willing to adopt far as practice-based art education is concerned, this is Elkins’s language, because this is the language that most a juncture where the specific aims and requirements effortlessly dovetails with government policy. of art colleges/ departments need to be articulated in Rationalisations, partnerships, and modularisation: contemporary terms (led by educators, artists, students, this is talking the talk that facilitates career paths but and critics, rather than Boards), and we need to commu- does nothing to advance the education of art students. nicate these loudly and clearly. There is an increasing disjunction occurring between studio floors and boardrooms. This is redolent of the split Joan Fowler teaches between the traditional intimacy of the tutorial system at the National College of in art education and the larger conglomerates which Art and Design, Dublin conduct education largely through lecture auditoriums.

Elkins says that art students should receive a “systematic understanding” in art theory. I don’t think so, not only because art students are rightly pre-occupied in trying to cope with art, but because partial understanding is a desirable goal, indeed it is the only goal available. Further, ‘understanding’ is not just partial, it is momentary. Where could ‘systematic’ begin or end? There are no fixtures or borders here. Once “systematic Reply: Lucy Cotter the 2006 follow-up. While the article’s stocktaking of recent developments is understandably schematic, lack of reference to recent interdisciplinary engagement with postcolonial discourse is disappointing. I personally ensured that Elkins received a copy of the Third text special issue which partly addressed this area of art-historical discourse in 2005, as well as inviting him to participate in the subsequent NIVAL forum and the forthcoming Association of Art Historians conference session in Belfast, which addresses the relationship between Irish Studies and Art History.

A re-conceptualisation of art’s position within Irish culture is a crucial precursor to critically re-situating the discipline. Without this foundation, broadening the remit of the discipline becomes random and eclectic. 38 James Elkins’ article is valuable in its foregrounding of The suggestions that follow Elkins’ urgent call that the potential for Art History to play a more pivotal role “Non-Western Art should be a priority” suffer from this in art discourse in Ireland. His call for a collaborative lack of purpose. The increasing cultural diversity of the nationwide dialogue is much needed, yet belated. If, as Irish population calls for a more considered response Elkins suggests, “a nationwide conversation could easily to why and how the department might broaden its be arranged,” it is a missed opportunity that he did not geographical remit. Why not consider cultural interfaces convene such a gathering during his three years at UCC. and the effects of human traffic and globalisation on art In some senses, the article embodies an attempt at such and culture, rather than prioritising study of ‘pure’ a conversation, yet it undermines the goals of real dia- cultures? 50% of the artists in Africa remix, last year’s logue – firstly by submerging the collaborators’ voices in internationally touring exhibition of contemporary a monologue and secondly by granting them anonymity. African art, lived in Europe or the U.S. When I hear The monologue results from the somewhat curious fact Elkins propose the establishment of courses on “Asian that the “collaborators” were invited to alter Elkins’ text art,” “African art” and “Oceanic art,” I think of Jimmie rather than co-write it. The anonymity is perhaps more Durham’s comment that we often look to the future as problematic. I am told that the six individuals’ anonymity though it will be the past. Irish Art History can outma- was due to their wariness of offending ‘the powers-that- noeuvre existing departments abroad by skipping these be’ for reasons of job security. Having just returned from much-critiqued models and work towards the future. Syria, where the police state makes academic free If it is courageous enough, the discipline can develop speech impossible, I was somewhat disturbed by this new models organically from its present situation explanation. If this is the real state of Art History in “as the most globalized of EU countries.” I second Elkins’ Ireland then surely proposals for change are redundant observation in his earlier article that the relatively small without confronting this status quo. Institutional size of the Art History discipline’s offerings harbours demands and professional etiquette are in danger of opportunities for rapid and radical change. But while becoming smokescreens for academic entrenchment if much is possible in theory, Elkins’ recent article inadver- they leave no room for academic risk – the hallmark of tently illuminates just why it is so difficult to implement any innovative discipline. Foucauldian institutional change in practice. critique is not something to be added as a mere method- ology for students, but a means for confronting power/ knowledge relationships within the institution itself.

Elkins’ observation that “the stress on English art and English interests crowds out many other possible subjects” is an important one. However, his suggestion that it “should be allowed to drift away” surely underesti- mates the extent to which this reliance is deeply culturally Lucy Cotter is a lecturer inscribed. This is precisely the place to start using the in Art Theory at the Gerrit “wider methodologies” Elkins promotes. Unfortunately, Rietveld Academy, his single mention of postcolonial theory in the 2003 Amsterdam. article was not elaborated upon, but omitted entirely in Reply: Maeve Connolly

My first impulse, when invited to respond to James Elkins’ article, was to decline on the grounds that I know relatively little about the practice of Art History in Ireland because the bulk of my teaching and research has been carried out within Film and Media programmes. In fact, my main insight into the current state of the field is via discussion with Art History graduates studying Curatorship and Criticism on the MA in Visual Arts Practices, run by the Institute of Art, Design and Technology. Based on this experience, I would agree that there is a need to expose Art History students to a greater range of critical methodologies.

Interdisciplinary programmes, such as Visual Studies or Visual Culture, present an important opportunity to explore points of intersection between Art History and 39 areas such as Film and Media Studies. But this type of collaboration is dependent upon ongoing institutional investment in resources for teaching. Greater interaction between art practitioners and students of Art History would also be valuable, but ideally it would take the form of shared seminars and projects, rather than an exchange of university ‘theory’ for art school ‘technique’.

Elkins emphasises the need for Art History departments to compete within a global economy, and he cites the internationalism of Irish art practice. Many Irish artists, and some critics, are strongly informed by the interna- tional context of production but, rather than simply embracing a global economy, they have often sought to establish artist-led networks and resources, taking on the roles of curator or policy-maker in the process. Art historians in Ireland should certainly engage with international scholarship, but they also need to be active across a range of discursive contexts. New scholarly initiatives such as Iris: international journal of art histories (a project led by Elkins) might provide a valuable critical forum within which to explore the global context of research, but Art History will become increasingly isolated if it ignores the apparently ‘ephemeral’ sites and forms of debate that have always animated art criticism and practice.

Maeve Connolly is currently (Acting) Head of the Department of Film and Media at the Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dún Laoghaire. Reply: Mia Lerm Hayes

James Elkins will, I hope, remain one of Irish Art History’s most insightful ‘critical friends’, especially through his involvement with many local colleagues in Iris: Journal of International Art Histories. The internation- ality that this project carries, and that he wishes to see strengthened in Irish Art History, I welcome for further reasons: if one of the particular fortes of Irish culture (during times when there were still centres and periph- eries) was to analyze the (colonial) centre, it could be equally valid that in order to assess Irish culture now, we should ask Polish and Chinese people and scrutinize their cultural manifestations in Ireland. In the process, we could find other art-historical traditions more conducive to Irish material than mainstream English- speaking methods. May the tendency in traditional Irish 40 Art History to under-theorize also stem from the inade- quacy of these models to Irish material? For instance, concerning the many current borrowings from Romanticist traditions, the background and politics of Romanticism seem to be a good starting point for approaching Mary McIntyre, Walker & Walker or Grace Weir’s far-from-internationalist clouds. Such work in ‘postproduction’ mode (like appropriation) requires much of us as critics and theorists. Why should disenchant- ment prevail when artists are increasingly attracted to working in art-historical modes like writing and curating? That field, alongside internationally prolific local artists, has gone from strength to strength, with especially Project becoming a hub, and it seems that (in Cork and UCD) Art History is not too far behind.

Practice-based PhDs can be a catalyst for closer ties between Art History and art; UU has strengths here. In Ulster, academic institutions usually have an advantage in being part of a larger system, but the art- historical world is shrinking, due to the closure of the only undergraduate course to teach it in Northern Ireland, at Queen’s. Nevertheless, the international AAH conference will soon come to Belfast. If we can, as Elkins suggests, collaborate and learn from artistic and economic developments – which we can’t help doing under the commercialization of research – then some of the outcomes could be to include Art History as one of the desired fields of knowledge for Board Members of arts institutions (in the recent Arts Council guidelines) and forge closer island-wide ties, as well as those between theory and practice.

Mia Lerm Hayes is Lecturer in Historical and Theoretical Studies in Visual Art, University of Ulster, Belfast. Reply: Róisín Kennedy As highlighted in the recent controversy over the proposed move of NCAD to Belfield, the idea of merging curricula in Art History and studio art is problematic. It can be done most satisfactorily within the art college unit. (The provision of life drawing classes for Art History students does not require the input of an art college). The application of the inclusive American model requires the kind of funding that top US colleges have at their disposal. In Ireland, there is little genuine thought of the requirements of art students in this scenario – mergers of art colleges and universities in these islands boil down to short-term cost-cutting exercises.

Perhaps if there was more open debate among the staff (permanent, temporary and part-time) of art colleges, universities, and indeed, museums and galleries, the gap I welcome Jim Elkin’s intervention in the (silent) debate between the creation of art and its critical and historical 41 on Art History in Ireland. His departure is all the more discourse might be bridged. Between the extremes of regrettable when one reads that his six Irish advisers traditional art historians and radical theorists there is couldn’t divulge their identities to readers of Circa. One a plethora of Art History and Theory graduates of art wonders what sort of punishment might have been meted colleges and universities who favour a more pluralist out to them for speaking openly of the sorry state of Irish approach. I think that they, like me, would like the debate Art History. on Art History to continue but in a spirit of transparency and tolerance that (Jim aside) has been distinctly lacking Few could disagree with the points raised by Jim, but so far. one has to deal with specifics. In defence of the conser- vative nature of Art History in Irish universities, I would assert that they offer depth rather than width, and that Róisín Kennedy is Yeats Curator they are outstanding in their dedication to undergraduate at the National Gallery of Ireland and formerly Teaching Fellow, teaching. The comparatively tiny Irish Art History depart- School of Art History and ments prioritise their existing resources and specialisms Cultural Policy, UCD, and and are aware of carving a niche for themselves in the Lecturer in Art and Design increasingly competitive arena of postgraduate study, an History at NCAD. area which they have previously neglected. The university sector, faced with the choice of exploring and expanding or playing to one’s strength, is taking, and is being forced to take, the latter course. For historical reasons this is focused on Western and particularly Irish art.

Irish Art History is not going to remain static, and the majority of those involved in it welcome change in spite of the potential erosion of the subject as a discrete discipline. The drastic changes being brought to bear on university structures will inevitably alter the nature of Art History in Ireland. Modularization (looking at it posi- tively) will allow students to benefit from expertise in other aligned disciplines. Currently postgraduates in UCD can participate in interdisciplinary seminars and networks through new initiatives, including the Humanities Institute. It is likely that future appointments within Art History will reflect the obvious need for courses on theory and contemporary practice, and possibly non-Western art. But given the current constraints this will be a gradual process. (Some of these areas are addressed, in a piecemeal fashion, through part-time and temporary lecturers). Reply: Rosemarie Mulcahy

It is difficult to know where to begin a response to James This brings us to the problem of overloaded curricula Elkins’ envoi to Ireland after his three year stint as head and the perennial difficulty of the wide-ranging first year of the History of Art Department at University College survey course (from Egyptian (art?) to Modernism). Cork. The state of Art History in Ireland (Circa 116) is Elkins acknowledges the problem, but then goes on to another example of his expertise in collaborative exercises criticize Irish Art History departments for not offering — although in this case his collaborators have requested courses in Asian, African, South American and Oceanic anonymity. Like Elkins, I too have “the unusual advantage art, as well as Visual Studies. Yet he recognizes that to of not needing to mind my p’s and q’s, since I am not compete and excell one needs to specialize, play to one’s beholden to anyone in Irish academia.” I write as an inde- strengths. I agree. He urges change for the sake of pendent scholar, with long associations with UCD and change. The small, fledgling Department of Art History Trinity College. at UCC, had only been running two years when he arrived and, he acknowledges, “the First Arts module has His investigation of the state of Art History in Ireland been immensely popular … But such courses need to be finds it woefully out of date in its approaches to curricula changed radically and quickly, or else their solidity and and teaching methods. In fact, we are ranked towards popularity will be mistaken for adequacy.” God forbid! 42 the bottom of his league alongside Central American One wonders why, during his three-year tenure, no countries, Ghana, Nigeria, Uzbekistan, Bulgaria, to name changes were made. but a few. His assessment is delivered with something of the authorative tone of an imperial envoy. He is particu- Although Ireland’s cultural and geographic proximity larly concerned by the separation between Art History to Europe make it logical that our courses should be departments in universities and art schools which, he centred on European art, Elkins believes that European believes, has a detrimental effect on both. As a teacher art content should be reduced to one third and the rest in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, it is perhaps made up by world art and Visual Studies. He has particular understandable that Elkins might take this line. However, difficulty in understanding the emphasis on things it is disturbing that he does not recognize the fundamen- English, which he perceives as “an unfortunate left-over tal difference in approach between Art History as an from colonial times.” Whether British postcolonialism academic discipline (involving rigorous study, analysis, would be a worse fate than American cultural imperi- research, publication) and Art History as a source of alsm is debatable. His comments echo remarks by some images and ideas at the service of studio-based art. It ultra-nationalist politicians and developers, in the bad would be absurd to expect artists, for whom Art History old days of the 1970s, as justification for the demolition is just one of many tools in the making of art, to pursue of part of our architectural heritage. Happily, Ireland’s Art History with the same academic rigor as art rich heritage of Georgian and Victorian architecture and historians. As for the introduction of practice-based artefacts is now universally recognized as an integral PhDs, surely this can only lead to academicism. part of our history and culture.

Elkins promotes Visual Studies (‘the study of all visual Much better use should be made of the rich resources objects, without reference to their status as high art or that are available by the sharing of expertise and even as art’) with the zeal of a new religion, and would facilities. For example, the Chester Beatty Library offers have us believe that if we do not practice it, Art History marvellous possibilities for the development of courses in (the study of painting, sculpture, architecture) is Islamic and Oriental art. The National Gallery, the centre threatened with extinction. Either accept the study of for Irish Art at Trinity College (TRIARC), the Irish advertising, television, film and other popular media, Architectural Archive, the Hunt Museum, the Crawford or perish. His admonition that “Art History needs to Gallery, all have outstanding collections and staff with continue feeling threatened by Visual Studies” sounds a wide range of expertise. A symposium comprised of uncomfortably close to Bushian rhetoric about the need representatives of the institutions concerned might be for a permanent state of terror-alert. I happen to believe a way to begin dialogue. that it is imperative that all students be introduced to popular media studies, and the earlier the better. In this way they can acquire the critical skills to analyse and Rosemarie Mulcahy has recently understand the powerful commercial and political forces published Philip II of Spain, patron of that are shaping their lives. However, in my opinion, the arts (Four Courts Press); she is a former Honorary Senior Fellow in the it would be more logical to include Visual Studies in History of Art at University College courses on Journalism, Sociology or Commerce rather Dublin and an Honorary Member of than History of Art. the Royal Hibernian Academy. Reply: Sheila Dickinson

I have taught previously in the Art History Departments at both UCD and NCAD, allowing me an insider perspec- tive on the teaching ethos in both the Irish university and the art-college settings.

In section one of his article, Elkins encourages a stronger bond between Irish universities and art colleges because “experts in such subjects as Foucault, Deleuze, semiotics, and psychoanalysis normally work in universities, not in art colleges.” This might be true in other departments within Irish universities but not in Art History depart- ments, a point with which Elkins concurs in section four, where he states, “there is relatively little evidence of the methods of the last fifty years [in Irish Art History]: Foucauldian institutional critique, Marxism à la Sheila Dickinson is a PhD 43 Candidate in the History of Art Althusser, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Peircean semiotics, Department at UCD, a former deconstruction, literary theory, feminism, and queer lecturer in Art History at theory.” This material is not taught by the permanent NCAD and UCD, and has faculty at UCD nor is it part of their research. Occasional recently returned to the US lecturers like myself are brought in to teach new after ten years in Ireland. methodologies in Art History for one semester, but the students, who are enthusiastic and excited by this material, are not consistently graduating having learnt these new methodologies.

Faculty within the Art History departments at Irish art colleges are much more familiar with art-historical methodologies of the last fifty years and usually progressive in their research and involvement outside their institution. As a result of consistent teaching of theory and these contemporary methodologies of Art History, I found the students more engaged with theory, partly due to its potential impact on their practice, regardless of whether or not theory was being taught by studio tutors. Elkins refers only to the teaching of art theory by art teachers, not by Art History teachers within art colleges.

On the whole, Art History Departments in both universities and art colleges would benefit from a more coherent and thorough approach to the teaching of new methodologies in Art History; however, there is no indication that a closer alliance between art colleges and universities would aid this. Reply: Siún Hanrahan

James Elkins’ comments regarding the narrowness of provision in most of our art survey courses (to would-be art historians and artists) strike me as wholly appropriate. As do his observations regarding the need to engage with art theory and a wide range of interpretive mechanisms. The proposed remedy to the inadequacy of provision, developing a systematic collaborative curriculum at a national level, is exciting; likely to be much more difficult to bring into effect than Elkins assumes, but a suggestion that has enough merit to make it worth pursuing.

The general mismatch between the Irish art scene and the diet of Irish Art History provision has struck me in the past, and a greater exchange between Art 44 Siún Hanrahan is a writer and History departments and art colleges is highly desirable. artist, and Research Coordinator at the School of Art Design and My difficulties with Elkins’ account arise at this juncture, Printing at Dublin Institute of however. An exciting (but expected) list of resources Technology. that universities might offer artists is proffered, but his reflections on the reciprocal benefits for art historians is very disappointing and offers no guidance in overcoming ‘mutual alienation’. Furthermore, that the preferred, and possibly only, encounter with making art that art historians should have is a life-drawing class is surprisingly conservative.

Similarly, there is no reason why an art student should be immediately eligible to register for a History of Art PhD; an Art History student would not automatically be eligible to register for an MFA or a practice-based PhD. The comment regarding our graduates’ ineligibility for art programmes such as the Whitney et al would be problematic if it were true. But it does not bear close scrutiny (unless you assume that exceptions simply prove the rule), nor does it tally well with Elkins’ assess- ment of the Irish art scene.

For the record, Elkins’ list of art colleges offering practice-based PhDs is not comprehensive, as has been drawn to his attention in the past.

It can be difficult to offer candid opinions and it is often difficult to hear them but such open commentary is very welcome indeed. Response: James Elkins 1. Trading faculty between art schools and universities. It’s very true, as Sheila Dickinson says, that Art History faculty in art colleges tend to be “more familiar with art historical methodologies of the last fifty years” than fac- ulty in universities. That presents interesting possibilities for collaboration. In Cork, for example, Lucy Dawe Lane teaches both in the Crawford and at UCC. Crossovers from art schools to universities are more common, in my experience, than university faculty who go to teach in art schools. But both are salutary. There’s a world of possibilities beyond drop-in visits to life drawing classes (as Siún Hanrahan rightly points out). Faculty exchanges aren’t always very feasable, given the pressures of It’s been a half-year since I’ve been back in the full-time teaching and the problems of commuting: but States. Virtually all of my 400 television channels they can be an excellent bridge, demonstrating new originate in the US, including the strangely edited possibilities to students on each side. ‘BBC America’, which offers such classics as Benny 45 Hill and a steady diet of Alan Partridge. If I remember I don’t think any institution in the world has succeeded in exactly when to tune in, I can get Six one, and producing a seamless integration of studio art classes there’s a scattering of news shows that originate and Art History. It’s a matter of local arrangements – in Taiwan, Japan, Korea, India, and China. The local a cross-listed class here, a common event there, shared Polish, Mexican, Indian, Bulgarian, Romanian, and offices and classrooms. As Róisín Kennedy observes, Korean communities in Chicago have their own it’s “problematic” in all cases. Joan Fowler points out stations, with mostly home-grown programming. that it doesn’t make sense to say art students should But that’s nothing compared to the international have “systematic understanding” of art theory, and she channels Sky offers in Ireland, in dozens of says she’d need “an awful lot of convincing” that univer- languages – including my favorite channel, OBE, with sity-style art theory could be apposite in art practice. its Nigerian soap operas, such as the excruciatingly From my perspective, this is a philosophic issue: it goes odd Dada boat. to the different histories of Art History and studio art This is the weird disparity between Ireland and the instruction. I agree with Joan that an importation of US: in Ireland, foreign languages and stations are all university-style visual theory can be inappropriate, over the airwaves, but foreign minorities of any size because what counts as ‘systematic’ theory can end up are a relatively new phenomenon; in the US, it’s being unhelpful. Yet there are complex issues here, to do more or less the opposite. In Ireland, the art world with kinds of discourse. What’s important is to keep and the world of academic Art History have different experimenting, keep trying to find ways to bring the two ways of responding to Ireland’s escalating global- together. As Róisín says, the gap could be meliorated ism, and that was part of what I wanted to register “if there was more open debate between the staff in the State of Irish Art History essay. (permanent, temporary and part-time) of art colleges, universities, and indeed, museums and galleries.” It’s a I am tremendously grateful for all the help and fabulous idea. More on it at the end. encouragement I had in writing that essay. It isn’t the best way to collaborate! – and it ended up sounding ‘authoritative’ and even imperalistic as both Rosemarie Mulcahy and Joan Fowler say. For that, I’m genuinely sorry. I’m grateful, too, for the eight responses, almost all of them friends and acquaintances. Conversation and exchange is what matters, and it is good to know that a ham-fisted intervention can be (at least partly) forgiven.

I’d like to do some mending in this Response. What matters most, I think, is finding ways develop Irish Art History, Visual Studies, and Visual Theory. Here are some points for further discussion, in no special order. 2. The practice-based PhD is here to stay. There are eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English art could be several projects underway in the States at the moment. seen as a kind of nostalgia, out of touch with contempo- It definitely does “lead to academicism,” as Rosemarie rary developments. Mulcahy says, but then again that is what people said about the MA and the MFA in the States after World War Or again, from a practical standpoint: II. This new ‘terminal’ degree can hardly be stopped, and Pro: One should “play to one’s strengths,” as our essay so my sense is that it should be studied so that it can be put it. This is also true generally, I think, across all of Art implemented in an optimal fashion. Reading groups and History. Any number of large universities that aren’t periodic conferences would be good for that, as in the particularly known for their Art History departments ones Mick Wilson, Tim Jones, and others have instigated. could quickly become internationally prominent if they specialized. In a country of Ireland’s size, that’s even 3. What to do with Visual Studies? more attractive as an option. It’s what we tried to do at I do think Art History departments are sometimes UCC, and what Trinity is doing with TRIARC: a nameable insufficiently threatened by the growth of Visual Studies, specialization is also attractive to students. because they let it develop outside Art History, until it forms full-fledged centres and departments of its own. 46 Con: And yet, it’s also true that smaller countries can That has the unfortunate result of dividing the study of be less attractive to international students if they do visuality among several different units in the university, not demonstrate that their curricula are connected to and it also saps students from Art History. On the other wider themes. hand, there are plenty of places where Visual Studies (under whatever name – Image Studies, Media Studies, 5. World art. There are also pro and con arguments for Visual Culture) is developing organically within existing increasing the amount of world art that’s taught in Irish Art History curricula. I’ve just visited a couple of institu- curricula. tions in the States where that happens: the Rhode Island School of Design hardly notices the difference between Con: In favor of retaining the current emphasis on Irish, Art History and Visual Studies (they call both ‘Liberal English, western European, and North American art: it is Studies’), and Lipscomb University in Nashville, true that Ireland’s geographic position means that its Art Tennessee, a small Christian institution, does Visual History curricula will have a lot to do with English art. Studies from a Church of Christ perspective. That’s to Irish curricula should “prioritise their existing resources,” say there are many possibilities. Rosemarie Mulcahy as Róisín Kennedy says. has an excellent idea, which I have never encountered before: she suggests Visual Studies could find a home in Pro: But on the other hand, Ireland’s exponentially “journalism, sociology, or commerce rather than history increasing globalism means that world art is increasingly of art.” What matters, I think, is to create or maintain pertinent. The argument in State of Irish Art History was links between nascent centres, departments, and other that Art History around the world is becoming more units, before their bureaucracies solidify. I don’t think global. I didn’t see the plea for including world art as there’s a good argument in favor of studying the visual anything particularly American, except in the inevitable world in many disconnected places in a university – and sense that global capitalism follows American models. there is much to be gained by trying to gather everyone Art-historical curricula are becoming more global in who studies visality under a single roof (if not under as many places, including China, India, and South America. single Department). World-art curricula in non-Western countries aren’t “homogeneous” and so far, thank heavens, they haven’t 4. What to do with that British heritage? It’s a tricky led to “a global university system.” (One of the books we question. Let me put it as pro and con arguments. produced in UCC in 2005, Is Art History global?, debates this at length; it will be out in January 2007.) The world- Pro: In favor of retaining substantial emphasis on English wide trend to diversify the subjects of Art History is art and its influence, it can be said that English interests the main reason why Irish Art History should continue and tastes are an indispensable part of Irish history, to develop offerings outside Western Europe and and therefore of Irish art. The Grand Tour, Neoclassicism, North America. the Georgian inheritance, and other subjects can’t be omitted from curricula without wilfully distorting history.

Con: Against that it might be argued that it is possible that Art History may have developed a special interest in just a part of its cultural heritage, and that interest may be perpetuating an undue emphasis. An emphasis on 6. A second reason comes from postcolonial studies. about specialization underway. The UK and Switzerland Lucy Cotter points out that Ireland’s current situation are among the countries that have been working at iden- entails new kinds of international encounters, ones that tifying their strengths in various academic institutions. have been articulated in postcolonial theory. As Mia The conversations themselves can be valuable, even if Lerm Hayes says, “we should ask Polish and Chinese they don’t lead to institutional changes, because they let people and scrutinize their cultural manifestations in people compare their interests and skills. Ireland.” And Maeve Connolly observes that “Art History will become increasingly isolated if it ignores… I don’t know what happened to that particular initiative apparently ‘ephemeral’ sites and forms of debate.” at UCC, but I completely agree with Rosemarie Mulcahy’s closing suggestion: “a symposium comprised To me, the current multicultural climate in Ireland is of representatives” of the Chester Beatty Library, TRI- a pressing reason to include questions of nationality, ARC, the Irish Architectural Archive, the Hunt Museum, ethnicity, community, and hybridity in university and the Crawford Gallery – and, I would say, all the depart- art-college curricula. (I’d love to see a course on OBE ments in art colleges and universities that are concerned and Dada boat.) This is a distinct problem, in my mind, with visual art – “might be a way to begin dialogue.” from the previous point, which is to do with adding And to that let me add Róisín Kennedy’s idea: “more histories of, say, South American painting, to Irish Art open debate between the staff (permanent, temporary 47 History curricula. The previous point had to do with the and part-time), of art colleges, universities, and indeed, discipline’s broadening scope, and this has to do with museums and galleries.” postcolonial theory. I’m in favor of both. When we advocated the inclusion of “courses, streams, and How about a meeting – large-scale, open to all, with a specialists in Asian art, African art, Precolumbian and series of short talks and open-microphone conversations native American art,” the idea wasn’t to go back to – on the optimal configurations of Art History and studio some old-fashioned Art History: on the contrary, those art in Ireland? Something that could be published, specialties are current, cutting-edge interests in Art discussed in classrooms, and re-convened the following History. They don’t represent unreconstructed colonial year? An open-ended, nationwide conversation on the categories; rather, they blend, by imperceptible degrees, best ways to teach art? I can’t think of anything more with contemporary studies of postcolonial and promising. noncolonial conditions around the world. I just mention this because it might be useful to distinguish these two different reasons for including world art: one driven by the discipline, which is developing shared interests around the world; and the other driven by Ireland’s current configuration and the interests of the people who are coming to live here.

7. The Arts Council wasn’t mentioned in this round of responses. I stand by what I wrote to Brian Hand in the last issue of Circa, number 117: the Arts Council needs to start generating a paper trail, so people can see where its decisions come from. It needs to be more critical, on the record, and less invisible to working artists and academics. Mia Lerm Hayes has a good idea along those lines: “include Art History as one of the desired fields of knowledge for Board Members of Arts institutions”!

8. Ways to keep talking. Here’s the crux of the matter: to keep talking, to keep conversations going across disci- plines and institutions. Just as I was leaving UCC, there was some discussion of a new government initiative to Professor James Elkins teaches identify more specializations within individual depart- at the Department of Art History, ments in Irish universities. The idea had already created Theory, and Criticism, School of controversy in 2005, with rumors of language departments the Art Institute of Chicago; he being shut down in different universities. It’s not that was head of the Art History Department, University College specialization is painless, or without its bad side. It’s that Cork, from 2003 to 2006. it takes a concerted effort, at a high level, to get talks c . Noel Kelly (below) Susan MacWilliam Headbox (detail), 2004 stereoscope with wall handles, Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin courtesy the artist

48 an outsider in her native town – the work of susan macwilliam Turning off the main Dublin-Belfast road onto the in Belfast. Manchester provided a decisive ground for construction-crowded entry points to Belfast city, independence from nationalistic, religious and political the primary view is of development and an apparent categorization. This independence has continued to be renewed prosperity. This is when Belfast hits you with a prominent part of MacWilliam’s practice. Returning to an intensity and aggression of modern living, manifested Belfast, and avoided by the hip curatorial visits that amongst the rejuvenated anachronisms of imperial would continue to question her reasons for not addressing buildings and monuments. the political situation, MacWilliam took her apparent ‘apartness’ as a point of negotiation for a series of bodies This is a new world economy of social change that of work that continue to this day. masks itself as striving for something better. Hyperconsumerism provides the most visible of MacWilliam operates in the area of alternative distractions, and television is its primary purveyor, observation. Prominent in early work is a personal with the ‘gospel’ of the moment being reality TV. Groups search for the familiarity and comfort of the symbols of strangers line up to march down the aisle to marry and materiality of a bygone, infectious spirit of curiosity, a partner randomly picked by a bunch of other strangers. fun and freedom. Taking the faded elegance of the Another group of near-strangers, in a fierce match for dilapidated, she realised works in the window of a a fast buck, gorge upon animal parts even the butcher derelict shop (Disco inferno, 1995) that used the gaudy, 49 doesn't like to talk about; families exchange spouses; tinsel-curtain backdrop of working men’s clubs and and celebrity wannabes reveal their innermost selves offset it with a constellation of glitter-covered balls, in the desire to be famous. This is the new vaudeville, a crossover of the last remnants of the vaudeville with a pathological reality of metaphors, cheap pranks and the fetishism of recently demised disco. This form of twisted observations; a world where nothing is new and symbolism continued, with a particular nod to the fading the self-absorption of daily life becomes a safety barrier theatrical temples of entertainment and an aesthetic against raw reality. that referenced her past in painting, with the exhibition Curtains, (1997), a plasticine representation of a theatre Before movies and television, society flocked to curtain, in the Project Art Centre in Dublin. fairgrounds and burlesque shows, where they could find every kind of marvel and amusement. Freak shows gave MacWilliam democratises within her work. Precisely them escape from their own banality. The entertainments, defined and assigned, objects are bestowed with a form with their emphasis on illusion and trickery, relied heavily of privilege. The commonplace and familiar are endowed on the imagination and naïveté of their audience. With with aesthetic and ideological complexity. This placement the new age, such entertainments could not keep up of symbols and staging is important as a memory point with the sophisticated tastes of the audience. This new for individual history. The use within works of family sophistication, born of the projection of the moving objects, in the form of chairs, televisions, and other image, encouraged the development of a world of remnants of MacWilliam’s domestic history, lends them ‘falsified reality’; in parallel, it fostered para-scientific the role of totems and fetishes of moments of past life. curiosity, whereby the apparent ‘others’ of the freak The common items address the viewer and set the shows became the ‘subjects’ of scientific investigation. context in an assured fashion. It is in this loaded context that stability evolves and becomes the foundation for The emergent anomalistic reality is one which Belfast- historical placement within MacWilliam’s work. based artist Susan MacWilliam exploits for a ‘sideways’ viewing of the normal; in more recent work she looks at the apparently empirical claims of the extraordinary. This is a world where science is burlesque, where the naïveté of the audience member is the dominion of the charlatan, and the crossover point provides a confused picture that insists on both the verifiability and ‘falsifia- bility’ of claims that are correspondent with their degree of extraordinariness.

Born in Belfast, MacWilliam moved to Manchester to study art at Manchester Polytechnic. For her, Belfast was a place of deep-seated family memories and support that provided her with the impetus to get out of an atmosphere where the background of ‘The Troubles’ was the only identity allowed to artists studying or working This is not a primitivist approach. Instead, the references person3, 1998, first shown in Catalyst Arts and later to the familial objects of MacWilliam’s childhood and shortlisted for the 1999 Glen Dimplex Award, in addition adolescence provide an elemental view of notional to the stage settings, moved strongly into the world of ‘enlightenment’. This is clearly seen in Kuda Bux1, 2003. the para-scientific, and specifically into the para-normal, In this work MacWilliam carefully chooses to present her and ‘grotesquely’ questioned the role of the victim and video-based pieces on a 1950s television set that can be the perpetrator. The central placement of the ‘person’ viewed from a 1930s armchair, allowing the audience to as a symbol of ‘vulnerable’ and ‘enabler’ points to a experience the work from within the work. A pseudo- romantic and almost sinister study of human naïveté. vaudevillian backdrop, an illuminated text in the style of In Faint4, 1999, with the sound of bird song placed over fairground signage, creates an overall effect of extreme images of a fainting girl, the direct references to pathos, and yet the installation places no judgement on mesmerism and trance are taken out of the closed, the core subject of New York mystic Kuda Bux, who was controlled environment of the parlour game, and partially famous during the 1930s and ’40s for his dramatic moved to the verdant surroundings of Powerscourt demonstrations of eyeless sight. Gardens and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. This careful investigation, combined with the focus on construction, Placement is a strong factor within MacWilliam’s can also be seen in 45rpm5, 2000, a short, black-and- 50 practice. In preparing installations, a large amount of white video work that presents images of a spinning time is spent in the selection of the correct staging for zoetrope. Within these fabricated zoetropes are images the ‘re-enactment’ of scenes. Her deep-rooted need to of the artist repeatedly raising her hand to her forehead, understand not only the subject matter, but also the which directly references the earlier subject matter fabrication of the surrounding objects, is key to of Faint. MacWilliam’s sympathetic approach. The term ‘sympa- thetic’ is much overused in modern society; it has an In addition to these earlier reflections on representation, almost romanticised connotation. However, MacWilliam MacWilliam’s fascination with ’70s late night TV, such eschews this romance in favour of understanding the as the BBC’s Open University, comes together with original circumstances, without promoting any revisionist early-twentieth-century ‘chicanery’ and combines with theory. The discomfort of analysis is given over entirely the very real negotiation of ‘anomalistic’ experiments to the viewer. for which there seems to be no acknowledged scientific explanation. The raw sets, the staged experiments, The quackery, chicanery, and deceit come only from are bereft of their commentator or apologist, and are the viewer’s apparent 20:20 vision of what is now known removed from the diagrammatic representation of a to have been the reality. For example, Experiment M2, ‘solution’. Carefully crafted by MacWilliam, works such (1999), an installation which comprises a set and a as Headbox6, 2004, turn the gallery setting into that of two-screen video work, recreates the spaces within a laboratory, where research into the areas of illusion, which the séances and experimental research of Dr falsification, trickery, visual perception, notions of William Jackson Crawford and Belfast medium Kathleen otherness, and normality take place with the audience Goligher took place. MacWilliam expands the scenography as the main protagonist. This installation of objects and by carefully investigating the manufacturing processes video works initially focuses on research with Rosa required to create the props as used by the original Kuleshova, a young woman whose remarkable ability to subjects – in this case the table and ‘foot box’ reproduced read with her fingertips made her the subject of intense using images and measurements in Crawford’s texts. scientific observation in Russia in the 1960s. In Headbox, MacWilliam continues her interest in the support props In writing about MacWilliam and her practice, this used in research. But, as with most video works, repeated back-referencing becomes very obvious. MacWilliam places herself in the role of the subject, From this an almost fractal mix of patterns within re-enacting singular moments of their particular claims patterns within patterns. This mix underscores to fame. These re-creations invite the audience not MacWilliam’s huge concern with ideas of re-production only to enter the installation but also to become key and illusion, as she explores aspects of the history of characters in the judgement of the experiments. photography and the presentation of the image as well as their sometimes crude use in the recording of para-scientific experimentation.

There is a seamless flow between media in MacWilliam’s work. She exploits the investigational-laboratory setting as much as experimental forms of subject matter editing, with many possible realisations of the ‘para’. The Last Susan MacWilliam The Last person, 1998 DVD stills, black-and-white silent, 10mins 30secs courtesy the artist MacWilliam uses the realm of ‘psionics’ and the scientific are a means to expose the artifice that binds realities study of paranormal phenomena as a backdrop to the together. MacWilliam unfolds the past as a new event exploration of human identity and the need for under- before the eyes of the audience, creating a new whole standing. It is an investigation of diversion. The self- within an artistic space. contained installations, that place the viewer and ideas of

human experience at their centre, challenge us to further 1 installation with Video Work DVD, black-and-white and colour, stereo; investigation. The lack of definitive findings becomes a winner of Perspective 2003, Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast, curated by starting point for more discovery and reflection. Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA 2 installation with two videos, both black-and-white, silent, 5 mins 43 secs The building of physical and sensory environments 3 black-and-white, silent, 10 mins 30 secs demonstrates an eye for detail and quality of construc- 4 colour with sound, 3 mins 40 secs] tion. There is a sense of totemism that is moved forward 5 black-and-white, silent, 4 mins 34 secs and aestheticised by MacWilliam. In addition, there is 6 installation of objects and video works a notion of referencing the ‘garden shed inventor’, a distinct moment when ‘boffins’ took highly practical approaches to the creation of solutions and mechanisms. 52 This was a time of practical realities, lived not in opposition but in parallel – an adjusted sideward view. MacWilliam’s work shows a strong interest in the mechanical. In a similar manner to artists such as Steven Pippin, it stems from early childhood memories of the father figure and it leads to an interesting questioning of gender roles and role-crossover, where the ‘girl artist’ makes stuff like her father, learning the trade/ skills to complete the work.

Marx noted the similarity in logic that explains primitive fetishism, “the primordial religion of sensual desire, ” and the modern belief in political economy. MacWilliam displays ‘divinised’ material objects in a world that sees economic capital as a magical source of wealth and value. She carefully negotiates and removes the subjec- tivity of Modernism, and places herself firmly into the current moment. In this way, the underlying ordinariness becomes a criticism of contemporary life; the present is a place where the very definition of ‘civilised’ seeks to distinguish anything that is past as primitive and paradoxically returns us back to a fetishistic abandon.

For Althusser, as for Lacan, it is impossible to access the ‘real conditions of existence’ due to our reliance on language; however, through a rigorous, ‘scientific’ approach to society, economics and history, we can come close to perceiving if not those ‘real conditions’ at least the ways that we are distinguished in ideology by complex processes of recognition. MacWilliam can be seen as a key contributor to this argument. The pared- back use of language and the keen eye provide for a successful marriage of ocular and emotional recognition.

There is a brutishness to the science as displayed within MacWilliam’s work. Ugliness of nature is provided with a façade of burlesque respectability. The works moves away from simulacra; they retain the ability to turn a theatre of shadows and universally accessible illusions into the concretism of experiential knowledge. The installations Noel Kelly is a curator and Susan MacWilliam’s website is (below) art critic based in Dublin. www.susanmacwilliam.com Susan MacWilliam Experiment M, 1999 video still Consortium, Amsterdam, 2000 courtesy the artist

53 (below) Susan MacWilliam Headbox (detail), 2004 three TV Cubes Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin courtesy the artist

54 c . Colin Graham

the vacuum 55 and the vacuous

On 15 December 2004, a grey double-decker bus toured Belfast with the word ‘Sorry’ obscuring its windows at the back and sides. Protesters outside the City Hall carried placards with slogans such as ‘So, So Sorry’, ‘All Apologies’ and, more obscurely, ‘Down with that Sort of Thing’. And there was a Sorry Santa. ‘Sorry Day’ was not quite an artistic event, and not quite a protest. It was, though, a physical manifestation on the streets of Belfast of what had previously been mainly confined to the iconoclastic, anarchic and unpredictable pages of The Vacuum, a free ‘arts’ newspaper distributed across the city more or less monthly. Factotum, the organisation behind The Vacuum, had found themselves in dispute with Belfast City Council, who were partial (and slightly unwitting) funders of The Vacuum. Some members of the City Council had taken a dislike to the dual ‘God’/ ‘Satan’ issues of The Vacuum from the summer of 2004. The outcome was that the City Council had demanded an apology from Factotum for the offence it had caused, and said that it would retain payment of a grant already awarded to The Vacuum until an apology was forthcoming. As Richard West, one of the editors of The Vacuum, wryly noted in a letter to the Council, there was no suggestion as to what form this apology might take. So The Vacuum invented its own sardonic apology, and ‘Sorry Day’ and a special ‘Sorry’ issue of the newspaper followed. The story of The Vacuum’s dispute is unfinished, and has On 1 September 2004 the Council overturned its own the potential to stretch out for some time to come. Most Arts Committee’s recommendation. Ignoring its own obviously, the Council’s decision borders on censorship, Director of Legal Services, the Council decided to make and for that reason may yet be found to be untenable. any further monies granted to The Vacuum dependent on However, the case is also a lesson to all artists and arts the provision of “an apology for any offence which may organisations working in an era in which grant aid is have been caused to Members of the Council and the necessarily the main means of financial sustenance. citizens of the City,” and that an undertaking would be The Vacuum has deliberately pushed at the boundaries of given that any future publications would “meet such what the arts authorities in Belfast can accept, but in criteria as may be established by the Council.” doing so the editors have provoked a reaction which indicates a pressure that is always subtly at work in Looking back at the controversy, it is easy to be misled funded or grant-aided art, and that is that the funder can, into seeing the vociferous, if ill-formed, objections of in some way or other, be tempted to dictate the nature some of the councillors as demonstrating a kind of DUP/ of what is produced. Belfast City Council’s heavy-handed Free Presbyterian reaction to the arts, in much the same approach only reveals this in starker terms than usual. way as that ideological set demonstrated against the Some of the elected members of the Council seem unable Gilbert and George exhibition in Belfast some years ago. 56 to grasp the idea that the art they fund may have things However, a look at the division of councillors on the matter to say or impressions to make which do not reflect what is more sobering. All DUP members voted in favour of they imagine their electorate to be thinking. In fact, The the resolution, as did the UUP and the PUP. But equally Vacuum’s argument with the Council reveals not so much all members of the SDLP also voted in favour, with only a desire to censor as a desire to make the arts bland and the Alliance Party and Sinn Féin against. Quite why this vaguely agreeable to an equally bland political agenda. issue should necessarily lead to such a split on party lines is, in one sense, unimaginable, except that party The Vacuum began life in a haphazard way, piggy-backing politics work thus in Northern Ireland. That the SDLP on an existing and anodyne publication called Citywide. joined in the vote which punished The Vacuum suggests Having tested the formula, The Vacuum took over and that the confessional (as opposed to purely sectarian) Citywide disappeared, leading to the marvellously aspects of Northern politics are strong as ever, and that resonant and memorable advertising line, “The Vacuum; the mainstream parties have a fear that if they are not it’s citywide,” which is still one of the best commentaries seen to defend the religious sensibilities which they think on post-Peace Process Belfast to have been formulated. their electorate has, then they will be punished for their And so themed Vacuums began to appear, leading up laxity. Obviously, yet ironically, it was this pervasive and to the offending ‘God’ and ‘Satan’ issues, published in many ways unexamined religiosity which The Vacuum simultaneously in June 2004. The Vacuum has always was poking at with its ‘God’/ ‘Satan’ issues. A different been, to use an appropriate metaphor, a broad church, perspective is provided by thinking about numbers. and these two issues were as eclectic as ever. When the The Vacuum distributes a print run of 20,000, meaning storm began about their ‘offensive’ nature, West was that, by most media audience measurements, at pains to point out, in interviews, that the issues somewhere near 30,000 people potentially read the contained serious articles on church architecture and newspaper. The total votes for all DUP candidates in the on theology, and a piece by an Assistant Pastor at 2005 elections to Belfast City Council was 25,722, and Jordanstown Christian Centre. Those who came to be only Sinn Féin had a larger vote at 30,351. We can safely outraged pointed to articles such as I peed in church assume that the possible 30,000 Vacuum readers are not (actually a memoir of childhood), and others which, the same 30,000 people who voted for Sinn Féin, and in extremis, they imagined were promoting Satanism the conclusion then must be that there is a serious because discussing it. democratic deficit somewhere in the city. The Vacuum’s vibrancy, its satirization of parochialism and yet its The controversy first made an appearance in Belfast retention of a sense of Belfast as a living city, mean that City Council’s Development Committee on 1 July 2004. it represents Belfast in a way that its councillors never After discussing The Vacuum, the committee wanted could. The ‘God’/ ‘Satan’ controversy brought these the Arts Subcommittee to consider asking to have sight two constituencies of the city into frictional and direct of all funded material before giving out grants. This was contact, making it all the more darkly humorous that the obviously preposterous, both practically speaking and for Council had been blithely funding a publication which it its brazen introduction of censorship, but it did kick off a did not like without really giving it any consideration. series of discussions of The Vacuum at Council meetings, while in the media Councillors voiced their (generally religious) objections and offence at the “dirt and filth” in The Vacuum, to quote Councillor Jim Rodgers. 57

(clockwise from top left) Factotum: cover of ‘Sorry’ issue of The Vacuum published on 'Sorry Day', 15 December 2004, a satirical response to Belfast City Council's demand that Factotum apologise to the Council and the citizens of Belfast.; courtesy Factotum Factotum: cover of ‘Satan’ issue of The Vacuum published June 2004; courtesy Factotum

Factotum: cover of ‘God’ issue of The Vacuum, published June 2004; courtesy Factotum West eventually applied for a Judicial Review of the City The peace dividend for Northern Ireland may eventually Council’s decision to withhold further funding while be financial. Most obviously at the moment, it is more waiting for an apology, citing, in short, the freedom-of- simply in the fact that a substantial number of people are thought-and-conscience and freedom-of-speech Articles alive now who wouldn’t have been otherwise. But it is (9 and 10) of the European Convention on Human Rights. glaringly the case that Belfast, and the Northern Ireland The verdict, delivered on 4 May 2006, was that judicial in general, are more starkly divided in sectarian terms review would not be granted. The judge held that than they ever have been. According to some evidence, Factotum (publishers of The Vacuum) had not been the city is even more rigidly sectarianised by geographical prevented in their freedom of speech, since they had area than ever. The result for culture and the arts is that gone on publishing The Vacuum (and, as the judge noted, post-Belfast Agreement Northern Ireland has tended to making fun of the Council in the process). And their settle into cultural forms which confirm what sociologi- freedom of thought, conscience and religion was cal studies show – that the two sectarian identities are unaffected, according to the judge, because they had stronger and further apart now than ever. The Vacuum not been compelled to or prevented from practising any does not take part in this quiet apartheid; nor does it religion (a curiously Northern Irish way to read Article 9, gently cajole from some liberal position which assumes assuming that it only refers to religious and not critical that the people of Belfast have a shared history around 58 conscience). This judgement may not be the end of the which they can rally. It does not encourage the citizens legal process. The practical outcome, for all the hysteria, of Belfast to forget their past and live happily in an is that Belfast City Council’s Annual Funding for Culture ecumenical future. In fact, it does not really engage with and Arts, Guidance Notes, state that on published material politics in a narrow sense at all. Instead, The Vacuum is associated with grant-aided projects the following words gloriously unrecognisable to mainstream Northern Irish shall appear: “The views expressed are not necessarily ‘culture’. Adopting Roland Barthes’ rather despairing shared or endorsed by the Council.” A long way from the notion that sarcasm is now the only condition of truth, madness of proposing that the Council vet every word, The Vacuum uses irony, parody, seriousness and above all image, opinion and sentiment which it funds. an unsuppressable energy, not to make a point, but to make itself. In this it has more to say, and to say better, The Vacuum’s ability to ruffle the feathers of some about Belfast than arts which might, conceivably, members of Belfast City Council is really a measure of contribute ‘positively’ to Belfast’s image. the newspaper’s success, and that it became caught up in such a fracas is a sign of how ‘culture’ is becoming a dead sign of the marketing of Belfast by the City Council. Interestingly, the Development Committee of the Council, way back in July 2004, had an objection to The Vacuum which was subsequently lost in the process which saw the ‘offence’ turned into a purely religious one. The Development Committee were equally worried that The Vacuum did not “contribute positively to the image of Belfast.” This notion has become settled in the language and thinking of Belfast City Council over some years now, and its intent is to market Belfast as a tourist destination (perhaps in tandem with marketing the city as a place for investors). Culture in the city is now to fulfil its part as a tourist attraction, and art of all kinds is increasingly in danger of being measured by the same quantitative means which are used for assessing the value of theatres and sports venues – ‘bed nights’ (ie hotel stays) is a favoured mechanism. That ‘positive’ image is not long turning into an always utterly neutral one, afraid of causing offence both in the city and for outsiders. Strangely, Belfast has found a way of turning its militaristic murals into the highlight of the city tour – that The Vacuum exists in a mode outside the recognised ‘communities’ (nationalist, unionist and liberal) makes it incapable of such assimilation. (below) A group photo for the press of demonstrators on Sorry Day, 15 December 2004 courtesy Factotum

Colin Graham is Lecturer 59 in English at NUI Maynooth and co-editor of The Irish Review. c . 60 Reviews

Carrick-on-Shannon Helen O’Leary and Sarah Schwartz: Kite project Sharon Ní Cuilibin 64 | Cavan Niamh Smyth: Those who hear not the music think the dancer mad / Troubled images: Posters and images of the Northern Ireland conflict 76 | Cork Cooling out – on the paradox of feminism Treasa O’Brien 92 | Derry Dennis McNulty: dx/dt Damien Duffy 78 | Dublin Stephen Brandes: Klutz paradiso Tim Stott 66 | Plane Eimear McKeith 70 | Niamh O’Malley Brenda Moore-McCann 86 | Factotum: the choir Rachel Ní Chuinn 101 | Willie Doherty: Empty Declan Long 104 | Galway Icelandic love corporation: Eruption – corruption Katherine Waugh 68 | 126 Gavin Murphy 83 | Kilkenny (Dispatch from) Kilkenny arts festival 73 | Limerick Anne Cleary and Denis Connolly: Here there now then Karen Normoyle 98 | Linz Ars electronica 2006 Paul O’Brien 80 | Sligo juneau/projects/: The Black moss Andy Parsons 96 | Venice Venice Biennale: 10th international architecture exhibition Gemma Tipton 88 | Book Maria Eichhorn: Publishing the fact that something will remain unpublished Ciara Healy 62 |

(background) Maria Eichhorn Publishing the fact that something will remain unpublished (detail of book)

courtesy National Sculpture

Factory c . c . Ciara Healy Book, commissioned by June 2006 the National Sculpture Factory, Cork

62 maria eichhorn: publishing the fact that something will remain unpublished Trying to define an artist’s book is same time the small-scale lavender the notion of the ‘public sphere / difficult as many don’t look or hard cover is inviting. One letter per space’. behave as books. In the beginning, page spells out in Irish, English, and artists collaborated with writers to German the sentence “Publishing Perhaps there were moments or produce conventional book forms; the fact that something will remain events that took place during later, they moved on to create a new Unpublished." This sentence only Caucaus which language cannot medium for themselves. Max Ernst, becomes apparent when leafing capture, no matter how many Matisse, David Hockney, Eduardo through the book, letter by letter, languages they are written in. If this Paolozzi, Ed Ruscha, Damien Hirst and word by word. (In my case this is the case then the book is an and Tracy Emin have all applied took a number of attempts.) object that celebrates the quiet their art to the book form. In recent times when a room might suddenly years, artists’ books have become Eichhorn developed her book during fall silent, or the nervous tension an increasingly popular format for a residency period in Cork for the between two newly acquainted integrating the formal means of European City of Culture 2005. It is people when they run out of things conception and production with difficult to decipher what she is to say, or the excited energy that aesthetic elements. This is mainly trying to say with this mysterious fills a room when everybody speaks due to the fact that many artists sentence in three different lan- together. Or maybe there were 63 now have access to computer guages. The artist herself is slow to things that were left unsaid during facilities for publishing at home. discuss her work, leaving the viewer the Caucus discussions and Many alternative bookshops, such alone to interpret the meaning of seminars. Maybe angry words were as Anthology Books in Dublin, or the book. Eichhorn addresses the exchanged and secrets disclosed exhibitions such as the Wexford question of ownership, of economy, during art-world bitching sessions Artists Book Festival, celebrate of art issues, of the environment, as over late night pints. Whatever the these developments in Ireland. In well as politics in her work. At the case, they will remain unpublished London, LAB’06, the annual London Istanbul Biennale, for example, she and only those who experienced Artists Book Fair, was held from developed a newspaper project these interactions will know what 3 to 5 November in the ICA and called Campus, and invited artists they were about. The book simply featured many Irish artists’ books. and writers to contribute their view presents us with the idea that an on these major themes. event took place. Like a sealed file Today t he ar t is t’s bo o k c an be in an archive, we are made aware of viewed as a portable gallery space As much of Eichhorn’s work its existence, but will never be told where artists can experiment and involves collaboration, it is likely of its content. play with text and images, stretching that the book refers in some way to their possibilities within the bound- the complexity of communication. Maria Eichhorn aries and confines of an accessible Eichhorn is interested in creating Publishing the fact that a space for dialogue on social and something will remain and traditional format. Maria unpublished (detail of book) Eichhorn’s Publishing the fact that political issues. The Cork Caucus courtesy National Sculpture something will remain unpublished programme of 2005 also shared Factory does just that. The book, which was a similar remit, examining the created by the Berlin-based artist, connection between art and social Ciara Healy is an artist, and commissioned by the National change with over eighty-five writer and curator currently based at the Backwater Sculpture Factory as part of Cork international and Cork-based artists, writers, critics and curators, Artists Studios and the Caucus, is elusive yet simultaneously Lewis Glucksman Gallery, straightforward. through discussions, seminars, Cork. projects and social events that took Published in May 2006 by Verlag der place in the National Sculpture Buchhandlung Walther König, Factory as well as other areas Cologne, in conjunction with the around Cork County. graphic designer Judith Schalansky, the book is uniquely cold and It is possible that Eichhorn’s book removed and yet stretches the is a quiet monument to her boundaries of traditional format in experiences in Cork and her a fascinating way. Both the cover dealings with the groups she met and colophon pages are completely during her time here. Both blank. There are no page numbers ‘Publishing’ and ‘unpublished’ and no year of publication. At the are linked to the ‘public sphere’ or c . Sharon Ní Cuilibin The Dock, June – July 2006 Carrick-on-Shannon

Helen O’Leary and 64 Sarah Schwartz: Kite project Recent critiques of ethnography surfaces mirroring our gaze. At first the material shown. Equally, though, and fieldwork, basic practices these appear to be abstract compo- perhaps that would be to generalize of anthropology, have raised sitions, with patches of colour and make a mistake myself, an fundamental questions about the trapped in black line echoing the Orientalist assumption that the nature of representation. While the sparse aesthetic of O’Leary’s more opinions of my Eastern friend might implications of these questions for recent paintings. Closer inspection be taken as representative of others contemporary art practice were reveals kites trapped in the heavy from India. This is a mistake that being explored at London’s Tate line of telegraph cables; these are the artists avoid: seeking a shared Modern in last September’s the fallen kite soldiers of heritage of India and Ireland, the Fieldworks symposium, an exhibition Makarsakranti. battles of our colonial past and on Irish soil has provided an present are reflected in the engagement with just these ques- On one wall hangs what on first battling kites, an enduring spirit of tions and even adds a few more. appearance seemed a tablecloth celebration, and tradition unbroken. yet proved to be a sample of pure Kite project is a multi-media artwork Indian silk on which bandhani tie This work might be contrasted and the result of a collaborative dye marks the flight paths of with that of Susan Hiller, who uses effort between two female artists, battling kites; tenderly the work cultural artifacts as starting points 65 one Irish (Helen ‘O Leary) and one echoes the colour in some of the but differs in taking the viewer to American (Sarah Schwartz); both surrounding photographs. new territory across cultures. of them trained in the US, O’Leary Ireland exists in this exhibition as after doing her time at NCAD in Approaching a room adjacent to shadow sister to India’s colonial Dublin. A text piece by Joseph the main space we hear the sound heritage. In a reversal of past Lennon, author of the book Irish of a bustling city; inside we meet ethnographic practices, which Orientalism, accompanies the projected footage of Makarsakranti might have viewed countries as exhibition. The artists visited the in full flight. The slight movements India through a rear-view mirror, city of Uttarayan, Gujarat, in of the projected image betray the Kite project problematizes Ireland’s Western India during the annual artist’s presence, capturing the film ‘first world’ status and what this kite festival of Makarsankranti. Kite with her hand-held digital camera. has meant for the integrity of our project involves the presentation of We are placed on the rooftops and own culture. materials gathered there, including feel ourselves standing with the artist, allowed to share in the spec- film and photographs, in an effort Sharon Ní Cuilibin to, according to Lennon, “explore tacle of thousands of colourful kites in battle. Glass-coated strings for the more obscure associations (opposite) between India and Ireland.” controlling these kites make them Helen O’Leary and Sarah deadly to other kites; through Schwartz: from Kite project, A wooden table case occupies collision or friction the battles are DVD still; courtesy the artists the centre of the exhibition space, waged. The only people that we supporting an array of exotic-looking meet are silhouetted against the rocks, some polished and thus setting sun in two dimensions, reflecting light; smaller other ones like the projected film in which they are more pointedly colourful. This make their appearance, watching presentation is reminiscent of an the skies. ethnographic presentation of expedition findings; inside beneath I viewed this exhibition with a friend the polished glass we discover from Bengal who finally admitted samples of Indian jewellery amid an that he “just didn’t get it” and so assortment of rocks. I thought this I concluded that for this reason a tongue-in-cheek reiteration of (failure to communicate meaning) fieldwork practices, presenting the exhibition was not a success. representative findings, but the Does this suggest that the exhibi- presence of Indian jewellery and the tion can only work for those who seeming randomness of the objects have not been to the Kite Festival seem to counter that reading. themselves? I might then conclude that this exhibited material is not Large-scale photographic images self-critical enough, that its grace the gallery walls, their glossy strength lies in the exotic nature of c . Tim Stott RHA, Dublin July – August 2006

Stephen Brandes: 66 Klutz paradiso Line carries thought, darkly; less a least lay a hold of the ghosts traveller might intimate the unifying process of illumination than of with- encountered en route. force of God’s plan. Like these drawal. Drawing a few unsuspected ‘spiritual itineraries’, Brandes leaps, Stephen Brandes embarks on As Barry Schwabsky notes, that reverses the direction of map-making, arboreal wanderings across a terrain imagined past is reconstructed so that the map does not give onto marked by opaque yet familiar from notations Brandes makes of the objective world but to a greater signs, uncoded architectural frag- real or imagined details of present- degree of fictive complexity. These ments, peculiar props, backyard day Eastern Europe – ‘graphically are historia rather than geographia. detritus, and the ruins of various distilled details delicately prised However, as might be expected, faiths; a pilgrim’s itinerary plotted loose from their context’. These Brandes offers no ascent, more a out in those mildly sinister moments details provide numerous points of lurch across, which catches the of suburban ennui that leave one departure and return, or an attic to desire for this ascent – this clear doodling on the linoleum floor, repeatedly ransack, but Brandes vision from on high – unawares. dreaming of northern vistas and performs a further operation on For example, the homely is uprooted, Classical passions – Sibelius them. Like a child surrounded by its turned over and its underbelly beneath the Leylandii, Jerusalem toys, he is an exemplar of bricolage, exposed, so that from amidst in Wolverhampton. taking ‘crumbs’ and ‘scraps’ from suburban effluence the towering 67 diverse sources and reconstructing purity of the Urwald emerges. It has long been second nature for by means of what he calls ‘barbed the complex line to confuse and magic’. Through processes of minia- In his travels Brandes forewent fascinate, capture and divert. It does turisation, graphic dismemberment, the techniques of the snap-happy so by leading the eye into perceptual and grotesqueries of scale, Brandes tourist, framing the unfamiliar within knots, designs of bewildering loosens the temporality contained a series of recognisable images, intricacy from which it cannot in objects, presenting them on the deferring the anxiety produced by extricate itself, and thus it diffuses margin of the ‘once’, the ‘no longer’ the world’s sudden estrangement; or redirects the eye’s original and the ‘yet to come’. One can deci- against this, Brandes makes use of purpose. The complex line is a trap. pher the desires that have traversed the slowness of his materials to To achieve graphic convolution this margin. They are those that return the world transformed, Brandes uses various means: make history. yet with all its initial foreignness brickwork, piles of planks, fake intact. Memory, imagination and broken-tile flooring, unexpected In much medieval cartography, observation encounter each other shifts of scale. Most importantly, nature is given as a negative space, directly, catastrophically, denying such meandering patterns elaborate a space of discontinuity, outside the the easy partition demanded both upon confined spaces, expanding sites of civilisation through which of consumable images and the them indefinitely: a sofa becomes the pilgrim must travel. However, suburban dream. a vast terrain of hills, forests, fields, in Brandes’ case, between sites of lakes; the roof of a B&B carries a imaginative catastrophe, clusters of Tim Stott is a critic based suburban estate. And as they broken figures, identical housing in Dublin. expand and grow in complexity, so units – demolition sites; the ruins their viscosity increases. of civilisation, one might say – (opposite) linoleum occupies the non-space of Stephen Brandes The map is also a puzzle that nature, a DIY replica of history and The Canaries, 2006 permanent marker and places a course of obstacles in status, a substitute for a nature not acrylic on vinyl, 201 x 226 cm one’s path, to be successfully so much lost as unknown. courtesy RHA negotiated. Brandes’ drawings, then, present a navigational Brandes’ terrains are always isolat- problem, and as such they are a ed and enclosed on their ground. distant echo of his grandmother’s What is imagined lies parallel to flight from the pogroms of Romania the mundane, upon its surface, in the early twentieth century. not in perspective. There is no clear Freed from the brute necessity of threshold connecting here with his grandmother’s journey, Brandes’ there. This ‘self-distancing’ move- flight loops back upon itself, tracing ment of the map once prepared the the longest possible route between medieval pilgrim tracing an imagi- here and there, or now and then, nary itinerary for the ‘contemplative in the hope that this tracing shall at ascent’, to the point where the c . Katherine Waugh Ard Bia Gallery July – August 2006 Galway

The Icelandic Love Corporation’s exhibition in Ard Bia Gallery took icelandic place as part of an ongoing curatorial strategy on the part of its owner, Aoibheann MacNamara, to love introduce challenging international artists and artforms to the Galway 68 artscene. MacNamara has been corporation: extremely proactive in establishing links through her travels with artistic networks in Iceland, Beirut eruption – and Japan. With ILC’s Eruption – corruption one corruption suddenly understands the inevitabil- ity of the Matthew Barney/ Björk coupling – a baroque performative aesthetic drawn towards a uniquely Icelandic creative eccentricity. ILC seem to encapsulate both. In Modern painters (September cynicism, incorporating danger cut through with the childlike 2006), Arthur C. Danto, in a dialogue and death into its narratives in a appropriation of accidents à la with Barney, suggests that the latter way which echoes early children’s Tommy Cooper. There is the charm shares a “philosophy of salvation” rhymes and street games. They of early vaudeville about it all. with Joseph Beuys, a desire to aspire towards “innocent, yet effec- overcome boundaries and engage in tive terrorism; Sugar in the The photographs from Cardiac a kind of primitivistic ‘healing’ form Gastank” (ILC statement). circus are of staged symbolic acts of creativity: art as a series of trans- (an example of which graced the formative acts. ILC have also been This exhibition saw ILC interweave front cover of ArtReview in July) noted as having a ‘salvationary’ three different elements of their and draw on the element of meta- element in their work. In the late practice: performance (Eruption – physical allegory which plays such ’90s they staged a performance, corruption), video/ photography a dominant role in Icelandic and Memories of feelings felt in the (a video of an earlier performance Scandinavian culture. Love, death red-light district of Amsterdam, and large laserchrome prints from and a subversive mischievousness distributing champagne and cakes a series Cardiac circus), and onsite laced with revolutionary intent whilst displaying wall plaques sculptural work produced from remain the dominant themes. commemorating the spectrum of locally sourced materials. Eruption Finally, a giant nest was constructed 69 emotions felt in the stripclubs and – corruption sought to explore the by ILC from branches gathered in sidestreets of the area. In an “duality of creativity and destruc- Barna woods outside Galway and accompanying poem they said: tion” and was structured to unfold filled with objets trouvés – an Arte like some cryptic fairytale in rela- Povera gesture to seal their idealistic Here we have four hearts, tion to the spatial specificities of and romantic intent. Place yourselves on their outlines the gallery surrounds. ILC arrived, We will give you the stars crawling along the pavement at dusk ILC manage to exude a charismatic covered in white duvets, making eccentricity which almost provides ILC seek a poetic, almost self- their way like overgrown larvae them with a cloak of immunity redemptive tone in their work, and a blindly shuffling in the gallery door, against critical analysis. They wear relationship of playful innocence in through the gallery and into its homemade costumes that could their use of objects.Their mantra, walled courtyard. ILC favour the only be described as ‘medieval- “Love conquers all, the future is demonstrative mode used by magi- baroque’ and use their bodies in a beautiful,” seems almost painfully cians, performing a short sequence way which defies conventional naïve, yet they also explicitly invert and then using an almost mannerist narcissism. Although pursuing a Jacques Rancière’s conception of choreography to draw the audience utopianism that one sees in a lot of the “theatricality of politics” by cre- in. They create a ‘spectacle’ in the work which has emerged under the ating impromptu stages and using sense articulated by Guy Debord, ‘relational aesthetics’ umbrella, megaphones to broadcast their an adventure mediated through the nevertheless, as with Beuys and aphoristic declarations. It is worth relations it creates. There was an Barney, they seem to occupy an noting that ILC emerged from a intentional fostering of the amateur artistic landscape of their own unique artistic scene in Reykjavik in the performance, and a deliberate construction with its own peculiar which fostered a highly idiosyncratic appeal to the audience to drive the yet consistent vocabulary. collaborative community of artists. narrative forward. A chair was Icelandic art has a strong performa- constructed with great muscularity Katherine Waugh is a tive element, drawing on both a and theatrical flair, the wielding freelance writer and medieval theatricality which still of hammers, an axe and nails teacher based in Galway. resonates in their culture and suggesting exaggerated pride and a symbiotic dynamic between art, achievement. ILC then proceeded to (opposite) culture and nature. They are far smash their giant makeshift chair Icelandic Love Corporation enough north to feel neither and burn it in a pot nested in their Eruption – corruption performance shot connected to nor removed from duvets. Tricks with balloons, milk, Ard Bia Gallery European or American aesthetic and glasses followed, all intention- photo Rosie Lync traditions and yet appropriate and ally naïve and slapstick. What courtesy Ard Bia Gallery subvert both. ILC also have a raw results is a strangely cinematic punk aesthetic (again recognizably combination of the stylized tableaux Icelandic), enabling them to of Sergei Paradjanov’s Colour of produce work which is playful but pomegranates performed with the not ironic in that it eschews burlesque physicality of Fellini, c . Eimear McKeith RHA, Dublin July – August 2006 plane70 transform and are transformed by Karl Burke, Alter their surroundings. Many of the installation shot, Plane, 2006 courtesy Mark Garry artists use simple, everyday materials, which they reconfigure, Christophe Neumann also utilises recreate or push to their very limits. everyday materials. In the case of They also demonstrate a workman- Filter, it is the bottom half of empty like dedication and a painstaking plastic bottles – essentially recycla- attention to detail. Interestingly, in ble rubbish. But in his hands they Plane , a group exhibition curated by are joined together and stacked up Mark Garry, is the fourth in a series interviews with the artists featured in the catalogue, some mention the in layers to become a floating, of Artists curate idea of beauty. These artists translucent sculpture. Again, there Royal Hibernian exhibitionsAcademy. Asat thean is no attempt to disguise what they artist who has steadily developed embrace beauty, but in an unosten- tatious, nonseductive manner – it is are – the remains of labels are still his curatorial practice alongside his visible and the colours are mis- artistic one, Garry has thus been an appreciation of the inherent beauty of materials. matched – and yet, these bottles given an opportunity to stage a have been transformed. large-scale show that consolidates The recycling or reconfiguration of ideas and interests he has been objects is of prime importance for Likewise, Robert Carr’s sculpture is71 developing for some time. Canell & Watkins. They create made of the cheapest, simplest of materials – black and white paper – Featuring eight Irish-based prac- custom-built entities and sounds from outdated, discarded objects although it is based on complex tices, Plane mathematical calculations and a the is a strong instalment in and simple materials. There is no Artists curate attempt to hide the means of their computer-designed 3D model. The are undoubtedly thoseseries. who While will there creation – the wires, the plugs, sculpture is constructed in a similar question the merits of artists way to corrugated card, with sheets ‘crossing over’ into curation, this the parts. This making anew has a hopeful, almost idealistic flavour: of paper separated by small triangles exhibition demonstrates that artists and built up layer upon layer. acting as curators can often display “We often aim to set up situations in which [found objects] form a new However, he exploits the potential a deep sensitivity towards and of paper to such a degree that the understanding of other practices. entity or organism – a functioning system – which hopefully can end result transcends the humble medium. Hanging suspended from Garry selected A = Apple, Karl become part of the world again.” the ceiling, it is a delicate, almost Burke, Nina Canell & Robin precious structure, but at the same Watkins, Robert Carr, Paul The evocative installation time it has a rough, handmade McKinley, Christophe Neumann, 06 is an ambitious example of their Sea chant finish. As the viewer moves around Jennifer Phelan and Martha Quinn, approach. In a darkened corner of the work, its form is constantly a group of artists working in a the gallery, a piece of tarpaulin is changing. From one perspective, variety of media, including painting, stretched into a sail-like shape. It is dramatic spiral shapes curve in and sculpture, sound and installation. shielding a Styrofoam screen onto out in a complex pattern; from While the individual qualities of which a super-8 film is projected. another viewpoint it dematerialises each artist are highlighted, there The grainy film depicts a group of to almost nothing. are many subtle links and individuals standing on a windswept hill. Each is holding what looks like crossovers between their diverse Jennifer Phelan also explores the approaches and, indeed, with a circular ball of light, which they shake in unison to create a mes- physical properties of paper. While Garry’s own artistic practice. By mark making is of importance, the placing them together, a rich frame meric percussion-type sound. Meanwhile, on the other side of the simple sheets she uses take on a of reference emerges, with the sculptural form as well. Hanging works interacting with each other, tarpaulin is an old record player on which a circular plate of metal is against the wall is a wide, floor-to- the space and the viewer. Perhaps ceiling strip of burnished orange what links them all, and what seems spinning. The surface of the metal has small scratches, bits of string paper. A delicate leaf-like design to interest Garry in particular, is has been scraped onto it, with their preoccupation with materials: and a seemingly haphazard piece of sellotape stuck onto it. When the pieces of the outer layer of the the use of materials, the apprecia- sheet curling away from the page tion of materials, and how they needle of the record passes over these grooves and bumps, it creates like leaves. Meanwhile, placed at a sound that somehow, miraculously, seemingly arbitrary intervals on mimics stormy weather. the floor are small stacks of cerise- coloured paper, the centres of which have been cut out into semi- organic abstract shapes. Karl Burke’s chosen medium is min- A photograph was the source for other. For Plane, A = Apple, a band imalist planks of wood. Burke works Paul McKinley’s richly textured oil comprising Garry himself, Burke with other media, including music, painting, Park series no 10. Its and Nina Hynes, gave a perform- but whatever medium he adopts, square format, however, distances ance and produced a record. Their the interventions within a particular it from its photographic source or multilayered sound, while richly space and the participation of the traditional landscape painting, and meditative and melodious, is filled viewer are crucial. Alter comprises there is something curious about with unusual quirks brought about a row of planks propped up against the still scene, emptied of signs of by unconventional instruments and the skirting board. Evenly spaced life. McKinley has painstakingly sound-sources, creating a dynamic and delicately balanced, they draw built up dabs of paint, a method tension between the rehearsed and attention to the architecture of the which stimulates the eye and draws the improvised. space: the empty wall they lean attention to the physicality of the against, the floor they hover above. painting: from far away it is a star- With Plane, Garry has demonstrated tlingly naturalistic parkland scene his ability to draw out complex Martha Quinn also uses simple with a reflective expanse of water; nuances in the work of a group of building blocks of natural material. up close everything dissolves into talented artists. As an artist-curator, 72 Long rectangular strips of limestone blobs of colour. Garry may leave his fingerprint, but have been stacked up to create a his touch is light. cube that is at once dense and airy. In a number of ways, Plane was From some perspectives it seems a development and expansion of Eimear McKeith is solid and impermeable; from others, Bo r der l i n e, an exhibition Garry visual-arts critic for the gaps allow you to look right through curated at Four gallery which also Sunday Tribune. it. Like Carr’s sculpture, there is featured McKinley and Carr, and in a mathematical order to its which music played an integral Cannel & Watkins construction, but it also exploits part. The integration of music stems Plane, 2006 installation shot to its full potential the inherent from Garry’s interest in how different courtesy Mark Garry qualities of stone. artforms can interact with each c . Fergal Gaynor Kilkenny August 2006

Tina O’Connell Cube descending staircase installation shot, Kilkenny Castle courtesy Mike Fitzpatrick

(dispatch from) kilkenny 73 arts festival Kilkenny has a particular strength as a setting for art: it takes art, especially contemporary art, out of its usual context and presents it in an environment that is defined by historical change. Even craft- aware work, responsive to the slower, less artificial life of the countryside, camouflaging itself in premodern materials, finds itself jolted out into the landscape of severe incongruities that is Economic Boom rural Ireland (a zone of embarrassment that provides Nevan Lahart with his playground). Slick cosmo- politan pieces, on the other hand, have to vie for attention with ads for mastitis cures and Bunny Carr catchphrases. There is no simple now in which the artwork can make its claim, which is to say that the ‘contemporary’ of ‘contempo- rary art’ comes under scrutiny. The effect extends as well to the inhabitants of the artworld. After pub closing on Thursday night, I found myself at a confluence of cultural streams in the ‘Home Rule Club’. There were national and international arts players slopping about, along with the local movers and shakers, but the surrounds were genuinely those of a ‘Home Rule Club’ – there was a palpable sense of continuity with the values of the nineteenth century about the music, and the instruments of the feeling that something had gone sparsely furnished rooms. Suddenly minstrel-like Istanbul-based wrong somewhere along the way. current interests were in a different musicians, amplified as they were, The fact that the pieces presented perspective. were probably closer to medieval at Kilkenny were text and aural styles than to anything that had performances of entries to architec- Of course, the historical continuum developed in European modernity. tural competitions that hadn;t even generated by Kilkenny goes back And any simple notion of harmo- made the model stage, sharpened considerably further than the age nious secular absorption was the issue. There was real tension in of Parnell. If you arrive in the city completely swept away as a number the battle between Acconci’s through the train station, you are of youths carrying a national flag charismatic, forceful gravel-pit of granted an interesting vista from (I am guessing that they were a voice and the airy impossibility the slightly raised ground. Only Kurdish) made their way to the front of the constructions described, ecclesiastical and medieval perpen- of the all-seated affair (drawing a tension somehow lacking in his diculars break the low skyline of anxious glances from some in the finished or more finished buildings. rooftops: there are no midrise audience, and probing looks from As Acconci’s recent work Victorian commercial and institu- the musicians) and, after attempts approached the issue of failure, 74 tional blocks, the glass and at making contact with the band, it grew in strength. concrete quick-grow towers of organised a group dance in one of global capitalism have yet to sprout. the aisles. There was nothing really The direction which my puzzling out It struck me forcibly that this must sinister about the whole affair, but it of this conundrum took, and the have been what the great European jarred nonetheless. History, which idea that posessed me that Acconci cities all looked like in the era had seemed so well managed, so could be viewed as a kind of patron before industrialisation. In a country neatly in the background, had saint of a ‘masculinist art’, was with a unique continuity of contact managed to take centre-stage. certainly influenced by my with the middle ages, Kilkenny is surroundings on Friday: the Norman particularly close to the world of So what happens when a canonical fortifications and priory in which scholasticism and Christendom. figure of contemporary art like Vito the Sculpture @ Kells exhibition was Which is not as great a boon to Acconci is brought into such a situated. Most of the work here, the the tourist trade as it might sound: context? This is what Mike result of a Welsh – Irish exchange, the main effect of this sense of con- Fitzpatrick, director of the Limerick was informal, inconsequential, tinuity is not one of romance and City Gallery and commissioner of ephemeral – it nestled weed-like the charm of bygone days, but of Ireland’s next entry for the Venice among the monumental walls, and strange cross-historical resonances. Biennale, had done as part of his prided itself on its marginality. Failure show. In general, I was far Craig Wood’s three small glass Up until recently we might have from sure that the word ‘failure’ domes, of the kind that usually thought of such resonances in could be credibly associated with contain funerary wreaths, but here terms of ‘historical irony’, especially his offering of lo-fi American and holding memorials to failed modern if we viewed matters from the internationally savvy Irish artists empires, set the tone: this was art perspective of a Francis Fukuyama. (and the celebrated poetic loser legitimising itself in terms of its But history in the new century has Bas Jan Ader). Something along posthumous character, art after proved itself all too real, too close the lines of ‘slacker’ or ‘slackness’ the grand nomoi, the socially and too much alive for us to main- would have been more accurate. constructive ideals, not quite resist- tain the position of ironists (or for But Acconci’s work was a different ing anything, but politically beyond Fukuyama to remain confident matter. Ever since I’d heard him in suspicion. Tina O’Connell’s work, about the triumphal march of global Cork in 2005 describe the trajectory represented at Kells and as part of capitalism). A good example was of his work, from the extremely the Failure show, pointed to the provided by the Aynur Dogan con- interesting text pieces of the late formal issues at stake: subversive, cert, also on Thusday night. History sixties (eg the almost Beckett- or opening up the gestalt forms of a crackled as a powerful voice out of Geoffrey Squires-like RE: [1969]), to Minimalist aesthetic to temporal an Islamic tradition issued from the famous performative Following and perceptual processes (a black the high altar of the crusading piece (1969) and Seedbed (1972), geometrical form slowly melted Normans’ Christian cathedral. through his installations and their down the steps of Kilkenny Castle). I began to wonder whether here increasing concern with architec- Thrown into relief, the buildings was an authentic testament to an tural space, to the establishment of begun by Strongbow’s right-hand all-inclusive culture of secularism. an actual architectural practice, man Geoffrey FitzRobert, Then it dawned on me that the Acconci Studios in 1988, I’d had the confidently set their nomoi, formal and ideological, into the landscape, structures. As successful buildings establishing an order that can be they possess all the ‘now’ of still felt in the Ormonde territories. Greenbergian Modernism, but in Serenely impressive, it was still their inhabitation of the post- possible to be reminded of the Minimalist world of purely spatial scenes in the background of values, a success facilitated by the Maclise’s Marriage of Strongbow use of engineering software, they and Aoife, the Victorian’s counter- are curiously lacking in real tension pointing of the harmonious birth or interest. But as failures they are of a new order with scenes of the something else. The hollow forms wanton destruction of the old. become inflated, lift briefly and shift and shimmer on the artist’s Like Tina O’Connell’s objects, breath. A last remnant of embodi- Acconci’s work is phenomenologi- ment, Acconci’s deep insistent cally aware, and his most famous voice conveys through Hemingway- pieces are directly related to like staccato sentences a male Fergal Gaynor is a writer, 75 Minimalism. The latter movement desire to construct and order, but in independent scholar and was in itself an answer to an an environment already ordered out member of the art-group inherited set of values, some of reach of the old, dangerous art/ not art. “objectionable relics of European nomoi. Acconci is back again art” as Donald Judd put it, and put masturbating under the gallery in their place a ne plus ultra of floor: a frustrated Le Corbusier with spatial aesthetics. Going beyond the body of Picasso. Greenberg’s models for an interna- tional Modernism, delocalised and Which is not to say that the referenceless and thus translatable managed society is firmly in place. globally (from a New York base), From the perspective of Kilkenny they established the gallery space and its intrusive histories, ‘now’ is itself as the last artistic value. For something both established and Acconci this was all too impersonal, unresolved. and in Seedbed he inserted his own smelly, demanding body into the same space, already aestheticised by Minimalism. The recognition of this act as ‘masculinist’ is unavoid- able: quite apart from the sense that this a gesture in the tradition of Jackson Pollock’s machismo self-projection, there is the concrete reality of Acconci’s body to deal with. Once this convulsive bond with the public was achieved, however, he became more and more concerned with the manipulation of this interpersonal space, eventually ending up in an architecture conceived in terms of phenomeno- logical navigations of bodily space.

Or, to look at it from another angle, he ended up with Autocad and an endlessly proliferating set of spatial navigators – ‘inside/ outside’, ‘curved’, ‘twisted’, ‘perforated’, ‘above/ below’, etc – by which he conceives his c . Jason McCaffrey Johnston Central 14 August 2006 Library, Cavan and June – September 2006

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niamh smyth: troubled those who images: hear not the posters and music think images of the dancer the northern mad ireland conflict A young woman in a loose-fitting street, to arrest the attention of argue across these walls. The use black dress slowly washes her feet passing pedestrians and motorists. of Irish on certain posters by in a basin with a jug of clean water. For the most part they would have nationalists and conversely of While she does this the sound of been pasted up in areas sympathetic Ulster-Scots by the UK Unionists cellos adds to the impression that to their messages, making them is a tactic of further entrenchment we are witnessing a profound act, topical momentarily not only as which precludes facilitating under- a cleansing ritual which is both the information and propaganda, but standing or listening to the other dancer’s preparatory care for the also as a disposable form of side’s opinion. Those who hear not body, and a symbolic yearning for re-territorialisation of a particular the music think the dancer mad, a fresh beginning. Taking to her feet, neighbourhood. In this manner they as a title, asks us to step back a she circuits the room and glances would perform the same function little and take in the noise coming over the framed images on the as the more permanent gable-end from the other side, which may help walls, not settling on any one. murals seen in Belfast and Derry. to clarify a seemingly crazy and A neutral position seems to be The republican movement’s usurping incomprehensible situation. The adopted from the outset, a step and appropriation of the markers of dancer’s movements centre the back from the angry tones prevalent national identity were made mani- human body as the physical site all around. Niamh Smyth’s dance/ fest in Smyth’s dance, by way of and symbol of the atrocities 77 performance entitled Those who elements of paramilitary posturing committed throughout the conflict. hear not the music think the dancer reminiscent of the IRA’s propaganda An interpretation of these images, mad, performed in response to the material. their historical legacy, and future exhibition Troubled images: posters hopes is realised through bodily and images of the Northern Ireland Dancing about graphic art about actions and not words. A tentative conflict, attempted to re-interpret political conflict may appear to be optimism is displayed by Smyth’s these divisive and propagandising as deliberately convoluted as Frank laying out of sheets of white paper images. The piece was divided into Zappa’s assertion that “writing to walk upon, which crucially are two distinct parts, beginning with a about music is like dancing about marked with red-stained footprints. performance-art action and ending architecture.” Rather than compli- She follows this path, then steps off with a hybrid dance, bringing in cate an already well worn quagmire it, washes her feet again and begins elements of ballet and traditional of religion, social class, ethnicity, to lay a new path, this time of Irish dance. identity, history and politics, untainted white paper. Smyth’s performance enlightens by The exhibition comprises a collec- its direct confrontational nature. tion of posters spanning a period Watching the performer frantically Jason McCaffrey is an from the late ’60s up until 2000. pacing every floorboard as if unin- artist and critic. Graphically, the design, layout, tentionally retracing her steps, and colours and typefaces used tend to thereby re-living again and again a (opposite) Niamh Smyth echo the prevailing political ideolo- recurring nightmare, added an extra performance shot from gies of the warring parties, while dimension to the space. In my eyes, Those who hear not the music somewhere in between there tends it became not just a room in a think the dancer mad, 2006 to be more free play, both ideological building; the performance provoked courtesy the artist and aesthetic. A coloured drawing an air of claustrophobic angst which by notorious loyalist Michael Stone temporarily transformed the room of the UDA prison wing in the Maze into an enclosure – an enclosure is an exercise in order and ritual, which echoed the entrenched a triumphant gesture by a mass positions of closed minds made murderer seeking to take control visible by the posters, in which of his world view, now greatly some key words are repeated: ‘yes’ diminished. At the other political and ‘no’. These simple words reveal extreme is a poster from Republican the depths of a polarised society in Sinn Féin, whose traditional and which no room for transformation, conservative design is married to the inherent in words like ‘perhaps’, breakaway faction’s brand of carry- ‘maybe’, or ‘possibly’ is considered. on-the-fight-style republicanism. A little history of Northern Ireland’s A feature of such posters is that recent troubles is contained in they were initially designed for the these posters, which shout and c . Damien Duffy Void, Derry September 2006

Dennis McNulty: 78dx/dt Dennis McNulty from dx/dt; courtesy Void photo top row centre: Douglas Dickel dx/dt: [Transitional] Change in a reflective works of Brian Eno, or the In the sensory deprivation of the subject or event X over time T. Canadian outfit Godspeed You! disorienting blackness, the ampli- Black Emperor. fied audio becomes acoustically The reductive mathematical unsettling. This feeling slowly eases notation of the exhibition title distils Gallery One also contains a long, as the eyes adjust to the spatial all the experiential pleasure of this curving mobile. Hung from the ceil- uncertainty. show to a formula, a hint of the ing on an array of interconnecting ‘process’ basis of its beginnings. red cords are a hundred or so pho- Three books sit on the laptop key- tographs, each cord rising up to a board: Teach yourself Portuguese, Mc Nulty's first gallery show custom-made ‘hanger’ and shifting When Brazil was modern, and attempts to shift the use of docu- direction to drop again to another Modern music, the discarded mentation of a previous project into photograph. Each of these ‘hangers’ material of the artist after the the realm of installation, allowing forms a junction for eight/ sixteen event, language, architecture and the video, photographs and audio images. This mobile chronicles the music defining the artist’s interests recordings to function as aesthetic audience’s engagement with the in social, physical and theoretical components on their own rather Magic hour performances, incidental structures. In this space, the events than simple formal records of the details and the locations along with of Magic hour filter further into 79 piece Anti-tour no.1 – magic hour. images of the artist performing. memory, as if that hour has elapsed, Recordings of improvised audio the show now over and the artist works, performed in apartments in On the reverse of each photo is a and audience long gone. São Paulo, Brasilia, Porto Alegre drawing, made on index cards the and Rio de Janeiro, play on a home same size as the prints. These are On a pillar in the darkness a small stereo in Gallery One. The perform- more personalised documents. flickering screen is visible; footage ances took place during the hours of Details, people, stereos, interiors, of the photo/ index-card piece in sunset (magic hour), sound-tracking are sketched in a casual but graphi- Gallery One plays for a minute and the transition of day to night. The cally linear photorealism, annotated stops, repeating after a pause of a domestic set up is replicated in with cartoon thought-bubbles or few seconds. With the appearance the gallery: sofa, two chairs, a small quasi-scientific diagrams; the con- of a tiny magic lantern, this display TV showing footage of the events. tent of the photographs re-charac- device emulates the raster scan of (Just like home. TV on with sound terised through recollection. a TV set using a rotating ring and a off, t’yoons on the stereo and the white LED, its flicker effect again sun going down.) Performance The piece is a sculptural flowchart registering the slowing down of locations, specifically apartments of Anti-tour no.1 – magic hour, an time, extending the temporal space near the top of tall buildings, were informal model reminiscent of from the original event further. This found through the mailing list of Cornelia Parker's suspended piece documents Gallery One, dilut- São Paulo-based Bizarre Records exploded Shed. The array is subtly ing the social and physical records (the artist/ musician has previously lit, the cords and hanging photos into a third tier of representation played in the electronic music duo casting shadows onto the surround- and recollection, but nonetheless Decal in the ’90s, releasing three ing walls like musical notation. The magical in its articulation of events. albums). glow of club culture still apparent in the photographs, snapshots taken The title dx/dt and the work’s origin McNulty used pre-recorded sounds, by members of the audience, casual in process belies the over all char- guitar notes and field recordings, and unstaged; the chill-out set in acter of this show, its installation played forward, backward and that Bacardi ad who rush from floor sculpting the transition in various slowed down to create a sonic land- to floor in chilled/ hot pursuit of the subjects, natural, social, physical, scape focused on the relationships sun’s last few rays – both are under- theoretical, and charting their flow. between the sounds and their currents within this piece. Much more than documenting transition from background to Anti-tour no.1 – magic hour, dx/dt foreground and back again. Noise Gallery Two is entered through a engages with its imprint in memory from the streets below, traffic, chil- black curtain. The space is in total and the articulation of its flow. dren’s voices and bird song are also darkness, except for a half-closed audible in these sound-performance laptop in one far corner. The white recordings, adding further layers, light of its blank screen slowly Damien Duffy is Artist other variables to the equation. undulates, synchronised to the in Residence at Void. Far from the formulaic, this audio is audio transferred into the space more attuned to the evocative and from an open mic in Gallery One. c . Paul O’Brien Linz August – September 2006

Ars electronica 80 2006 (opposite) Florian and in the Danube-side More ‘traditional’ visual VR was to John Gerrard Brucknerhaus – Maeda has written be sampled in the CAVE of the Ars Smoke tree – a virtual sculpture courtesy the artist/ Ars a new book called The Laws of Electronica Center, where one could Electronica Center simplicity. Some of his (large-scale, wander through a number of kinetic, abstract) work was on immersive, three-dimensional VR display in the Lentos Kunstmuseum, worlds, including one based on an a building which glows blue and imaginary Renaissance city which purple at night, overlooking the river was brought to virtual life. nearby. Part of the intellectual fare Elsewhere in the Ars Electronica consisted of a day-long seminar in Center was a treasure-trove of the Lentos building entitled ‘When interactive installations. These cybernetics meets aesthetics’, included Smoke tree, a virtual sculp- where issues around prominent ture of a carbon-producing tree by names from Joseph Beuys to Irish digital artist John Gerrard, Norbert Wiener were discussed. with unsettling environmental A spectacular Moon ride took place references, and Morphovision in Linz’s main square, with riders (Toshio Iwai, NHK Science and 81 of stationery bicycles generating Technical Research Laboratories) power for a large balloon hovering where a rotating solid object illumi- over the town centre, which with nated in a special way appeared to a bit of imagination took on the liquefy like a computer-animated appearance of an extra moon. object – life becoming film. This was the year that Ars electronica got religion. Or at least, the partici- Paul de Marinis was the star of the The winner of the Computer pants, from many different countries, Interactive art section, winning the animation section was 458nm by took a day off from downtown Linz Golden Nica award for The messen- Jan Bitzer, Ilija Brunck and Tom to relax in the sun-drenched splen- ger, a system whereby the individual Weber, a film affectingly depicting dour of the baroque monastery of letters of e-mails sent to him are a romantic encounter between two St. Florian, about a half-hour’s drive laboriously spelt out in receivers clockwork snails. Of note in the from the Austrian city. ‘Simplicity’ (bowls, jars and dancing skeletons). Digital communities section was was the title of this year’s Ars The work made reference to some Roman Bleichenbacher’s electronica, a value reflected in the anachronistic telegraphic theories Codecheck (www.codecheck.ch) a space offered by St. Florian for and also to the ‘dead letters’ of the project that allows users to access relaxation and meditation with both digital age, the lost and meaningless information on products from a a Western and Eastern flavour messages that circulate around wide range of sources including (Japanese archery and origami were cyberspace. Also of note in this consumer organisations, thus both on offer within the precincts). category was The robotic hair potentially enabling feedback and As a counterpoint to all the (Raffaello d’Andrea, Max Dean, empowerment on the part of the spirituality of various kinds, Italian Matt Donovan) which perpetually purchaser. The issue of imparting photography star Oliviero Toscani falls apart and puts itself back power to consumers has been a (his work is familiar from the together again. relatively neglected one in political Benetton ads) injected a note of terms, but will probably become Seriously cool in the Digital musics acid secularism in his talk. Japanese increasingly important in an era of section with an honorary mention interactive media artist Toshio Iwai growing health-consciousness. was Sonic bed_London by Kaffe featured prominently. (Having got The winner in this category was Matthews and Annette Works: you lost in the labyrinthine precincts Antoni Abad’s canal*ACCESSIBLE, lie down on a large bed and feel the I missed his contribution, but was which enabled people with mobility sound of the music with your body told it was awesome). Music of both problems to create a digital map of as well as hearing it. It really does a traditional and experimental kind Barcelona, signposting inaccessible work, and opens up possibilities in was to be sampled, including a places. Again, empowerment was the currently underdeveloped tactile composition by Michael Nyman for on the agenda, and given due region of virtual or immersive reality. the bells of the monastery. recognition. The winner of the Net The main prize in the music section vision section was The road movie Japanese-American computer was won by veteran French compos- by exonemo, a combination of road artist/ academic John Maeda was er Eliane Radigue for her haunting trip, video and origami (that’s right). to the fore in the discussions in St. work L’Ile re-sonante. An intriguing project on display in nirvana. At the other end of the Paul O’Brien the Brucknerhaus was REGRETS eschatological scale, metaphorically ([email protected]) teaches Linz (Graham Budgett and Jane speaking, was the highly-addictive at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. Mulfinger). People walk around with computer game Snowman in hell. computers mounted on a kind of The game, based on Dante’s backpack, inviting participants to Inferno, is by students from the list the things they regret in their University of Art and Design, life, for public digital display. Helsinki (Janna Kaasalainen et al), Feedback is available from previous and was on show at Linz’s Kunst users with similar regrets. The Universität. The game is available metaphor is to offset your mental at mlab.uiah.fi/snowman – check it burden onto the back of another – out, and help to release the poor an intriguing exercise in social snowman from the infernal regions. psychology and one, no doubt, with (Although I didn’t succeed I’m told potential for future development. it’s possible – perhaps a suitably Some of the contributions were theological note on which to (below) 82 painful and poignant. conclude the report on this year’s Max Dean, Raffaello D’Andrea, Ars electronica.) Matt Donovan In the Electrolobby beneath the The Robotic chair Brucknerhaus were some courtesy rubra/ Ars Electronica Center ‘hands-on’ workshops on computer hardware entitled ‘Make it simple’ – a flourishing dork paradise or nerd c . Gavin Murphy Galway Arts Centre, September – October Galway 2006

Nevan Lehart Galway’s visual-arts profile in the 83 Vegetation ain't mute we're just west has long been overshadowed deaf to it, 2006 mixed media by those of Limerick and Sligo. courtesy Galway Arts Centre For a city that prides itself on cultural vibrancy, the recent spats within the visual arts scene have come as somewhat of an embarrassment. This is to the extent that a consider- able effort has been made to 126reaffirm a commitment to the visual arts. Indeed, the establishment of Project 06 as an alternative festival, seeking to highlight the shortfalls of the Galway Arts Festival in terms of its obligation to local practices, is further testament to the wider tensions characterizing Galway’s cultural scene. The Galway Arts Festival’s emphasis on the visual arts this year can be seen as one attempt to address these tensions. Exhibitions by established interna- tional artists such as Peter Blake, Ori Gersht, Josef Albers, Hughie O’Donoghue and David Mach were bought in and support was given to local art spaces and artists by including their exhibitions in a lavish brochure produced specifically to highlight the sheer quantity of art on show. The exhibition 126 in the Galway Consider first of all the selection If the preceding paragraphs suggest Arts Centre can be seen as another of paintings on show. Several works a strict coherence running through attempt to address current concerns have a distinct interest in the tension the selection, it should be noted by backing the initiative of artists/ between the formal charms of paint that this is but one strand. A certain curators Ben Geoghegan and Austin and the task of representation it is anarchic wit can be found in the Ivers. The origins of 126 lie in called up for. Mark O’Kelly’s Concert contributions by Iain Hetherington Geoghegan and Ivers’ decision to (2006) is a good example. A distant and Nevan Lehart. Tom Molloy’s set up a gallery in their house viewing reveals an interest in a Swarm (2006), to take another exam- (126 Laurel Park). The idea was to photo-realist aesthetic that quickly ple, is a piece made up of hundreds approach established artists who dissolves on closer observation. of small black paper planes stuck had as yet little opportunity to The little whorl of clotted paint that into the wall as if each were fired at exhibit in Galway. The initiative initially appears as a badge stands it by force. It stands as a chilling highlighted two things. First, it as a celebration of the physicality metaphor for the new imperialism. exposed a gap between the com- and rough-cut nature of the Once again, it is the sheer array of mercial art market and public- surface. Of course, the quality of concerns and points of comparison funded space in Galway that many the work is not simply down to this that make this a compelling show. 84 significant artists were falling gameplay. The angled gazes of the between. Second, it showed that crowd have the eye darting across 126 does not end here. It is the the best means to address this was the surface of the canvas to the intention of 126 to set up an inde- by biting the bullet and doing some- point that it is rarely allowed to pendent gallery space modelled thing about it. After six exhibition settle. Working across each other, loosely on initiatives such as openings where the local arts com- these two features conjure a rest- Catalyst Arts and the Transmission munity shuffled tentatively around less intrigue in the act of viewing. Gallery. This will be with the backing their kitchen, the success of this The friction between formal and of Galway City Council. The aim venture has been recognized and representational strategies is con- must be to continue to redefine rewarded, in the first instance, with tinued in works by Sarah Durcan the cultural profile of the visual arts the show in the Galway Arts Centre. and Philippa Sutherland. The warm in Galway. With other emerging tones characterizing each help galleries such as Ard Bia also The show itself reveals the limits generate a delicate vision mediating contributing to this invigorated and strengths of the 126 venture. on the landscape tradition. Indeed, cultural scene, one senses exciting The selection reflects the range themes of frailty and an innocence times ahead. The challenge now of contacts both curators could of vision are echoed in the works of for 126 is to retain the energy and draw on and develop in a short Fionna Murray and Beth O’Halloran. enthusiasm that brought it into space of time. Subsequently, there being in the first place, particularly is a strong representation of artists Where many of these pieces draw in the light of its forthcoming currently working in art colleges in consciously on the traditions of administrative burden. One reckons the west (GMIT, LIT and the Burren paint in the light of the ubiquity of that its success will hang on this. College of Art) as well as a number photography in contemporary of artists based in Dublin and practice, Mike Minnis’s large C-Print, Gavin Murphy is a lecturer beyond. The selection also reflects Airport (2006), appears to work this in Art History and Critical the particular forms of art practice dynamic from the other way round. Theory in Galway-Mayo each of the curators have an The work is a muted vision of the Institute of Technology. interest in. Photography, paint and Shannon landscape with Aer Lingus print are well represented, whereas planes barely detectable on the slip sculpture and time-based media are of land caught between the stretches significantly overlooked by compari- of water and sky. Where the best son. These limitations, as any show of seventeenth-century Dutch will inevitably have, prevent 126 landscape painting have summoned from being seen as an accurate tranquillity from the vast expanse, reflection of current practice in a similar mood is tempered by the the west, or Ireland for that matter. ghostly presence of international What it does highlight though is the travel. This is one of the strongest array of concerns that characterize works in the show for its subtle contemporary practice. It is this reworking of the landscape tradition that the venture has brought to in the west of Ireland. the fore. (above) Sarah Durcan In the gardens, 2006 oil on linen courtesy Galway Arts Centre

(below) Fionna Murray Rock garden, 2006 oil on linen acrylic on canvas courtesy Galway Arts Centre c . Brenda Moore-McCann Green on Red Gallery September – October Dublin 2006

86 Niamh O’Malley The combination of two space, notions of the ‘real’ become lack of fragmentation, the dramatic representable objects achieves challenged to highlight the age-old unity of space and time. However, the representation of something tension between seeing and this is paradoxically overturned by that cannot be graphically knowing in a novel way. Perhaps the constant looping of the video- represented. Sergei Eisentein O’Malley’s strategy could be film where figures appear and described as a new form of mon- disappear from the centrally- On entering the central space of tage? Eisenstein, explaining how framed spotlight. In these reflexive the gallery, we are presented with montage worked, used the analogy documentary films, the spectator three screens on adjacent walls of Egyptian hieroglyphs: “… each remains a voyeur distant from the each with its own projector. There is taken separately corresponds to filmed events, in part due to the no curtain to the usual dark an object but their combination documentary form but also to the enclosed viewing area leaving one corresponds to a concept.” If we static position of the camera over free to walk between screens in a accept this analogy, in which a long period of time (5 minutes 28 random fashion. Each screen shows abstract meanings can be created seconds). O’Malley constantly a different scene using looped by the juxtaposition of two different repositions the viewer by disrupting videos of varying length. In Talbot kinds of objects/ media, what con- the processes of viewing from the Street ‘vignette’, the only urban cepts are explored in O’Malley’s art? comfort of habit, as the gaze 87 scene, we see people coming oscillates between gestalts and the towards us or passing away from A number of points become clear rabbit/ vase paradox created. us down the street. Initially this on close observation of the three appears to be a view observed every works in the exhibition. The circular, O’Malley’s work operates within day in the city as a train passes on repetitive visual structure employed the gap between formalism and the bridge above and flags and a in each vignette creates an echo realism, between the notion of tree gently wave in the breeze. with the mechanical means used to realistic ‘truth’ associated with But very quickly the scene becomes produce the moving imagery. In the documentary form and the spatially and visually disorientating. addition, the experience of looking illusionistic realism of the traditional The figures take on a ghost-like becomes intensified by the com- hand-painted image. But in addition, immateriality as they walk through plete elimination of sound. Thus the by framing and reframing people the tree or a black bollard in the gap between two different modes and events, O’Malley’s hybrid films foreground of the screen. As the of representation is maintained: make a montage that suggests 3 minute 46 second loop ends, the the silence of painting and the abstract notions of time, transience, tree and the bollard are revealed typically narrative mode of cinema. and human mortality. Her work to be oil-painted representations The effort to assert a pictorial takes its place alongside artists of beneath the looped video imagery. rather than a cinematic response an older generation, like Patrick In the other two rural landscape to the moving imagery is further Ireland and James Coleman, who scenes, Lough Owel ‘vignette’ and reinforced by the use of ordinary also probe the complexities of Croagh Patrick ‘vignette,’ a similar video projection which effectively perception and reception, although experience occurs as the ghostly eliminates the lush glossiness with different means and in different figures pass through a solid diving associated with the cinema screen. ways. O’Malley’s continuing platform beside a lake or through The utilisation of a pictorial rather exploration will be worth following the rocks of Croagh Patrick. In spite than a cinematic scale for the in the coming years. of knowing and anticipating moving imagery reinforces this anti- cinematic, anti-narrative mode of O’Malley’s unique superimposition Dr. Brenda Moore-McCann of two different modes of represen- reception directing attention to the is a writer, critic and art tation, for this viewer at least, they hand, touch, and physicality of paint historian based in Dublin; still exert a strong impact. This is as opposed to the ‘neutrality’ of she is a member of because the work manages to do a technological production. The AICAIreland. number of things simultaneously. painterly treatment of the static (opposite) By complicating viewing conventions acidic-coloured sky in Talbot Street Niamh O’Malley associated with the painted and ‘vignette’ is an example of this. The Lough Owel. ‘vignette’, 2006 filmic image, O’Malley neatly sub- white static ‘spotlight’ in Lough DVD projection 5 min 28 sec loop Owel ‘vignette’ on the other hand, oil on canvas 163 x 122 cm verts them and makes it apparent courtesy Green on Red Gallery that the assumptions surrounding may refer to the ‘long take’ and them are inherited, cultural, histori- ‘deep focus photography’ of earlier cal constructions. By exploiting cinema, most notably in Citizen pictorial, cinematic and temporal Kane (1941).The ‘long take’ implies a c . Gemma Tipton Venice September – November 2006

88venice biennale 10th international architecture exhibition (opposite) tecture that we can best glimpse information-packed it might have ElasticCity the look of modernity today.”2 been better to have been a book. henengan.peng architects Presenting an at-times relentlessly The reconciliation between the doomsday-gloomy view of our worlds of art and architecture isn’t teeming, socially unequal cities, always a good thing. There are the the relieving elements came in the attempts to force collaborations form of occasionally visionary ideas, between artists and architects, and planning and design. Impossible there is the growing but misplaced to take in all at once, the overall belief that all architectural planning impression was one of vital big needs is a few artists, and then questions urgently demanding everything will be all right. There answers. How can cities are also the cases of exhibition accommodate waves of strategies borrowed from art newcomers? How can the greed installations, where ill-conceived of developers be offset by planning buildings, a lack of real ideas or the principles and policy? How can bad intent of developers, are hidden cities make space for families? 89 with artistic and idiosyncratic How many ‘iconic’ buildings can presentation. That said, architects one city take? How can we balance have been misrepresenting their urban and rural? And how can we buildings through mendacious best use our limited resources? models long before they renewed their love affair with art. The worst It was with these in mind that I and most brutally disproportionate turned to the national pavilions towers and buildings are usually housed in the Giardini, and dotted modelled in gleaming (and some- around the rest of Venice. The times illuminated) perspex. The pavilions are an interesting mixture word ‘podium’ conjures bandstands, of national pride, quirky gestures but usually means a cement block and, yes, some architectural By 2050 more than eight billion people with a car park underneath. The enquiry. And many do suffer from will be living in cities.1 Eight billion skies are always blue and nothing is overly artistic exhibition strategies. people represents three quarters of ever ever dirty. This thought came Parts of the UK pavilion felt like an the world’s population, and it was to me in the Singapore pavilion at art installation; one that was high with this insistent headline that the the Biennale, and again while on concept, short on practical Venice Architecture Biennale flicking through the Arup book that ideas. Exhibiting by country also announced its dedication to explor- was handed out to people drunkenly means that of course there’s always ing Cities. Architecture and Society. leaving one of the event’s many going to be some nationalism (or Architecture is becoming sexy opening parties. Pages and pages of national self-promotion) from some again, in a way it hasn’t been since images of beautiful meadows and countries; it’s inherent in the – oh, around the fifteenth century, blissfully peaceful wildlife seemed structure of the pavilions, all when Brunelleschi was working out rather incompatible with the competing for attention. Some how to build Florence’s Duomo. development the book was intending countries transcended this – ‘Sexy’ in the sense that even though to promote. There was also a Hungary, for example, wittily raised the Architecture Biennale isn’t quite certain level of incompatibility in an issue that Europe and the US the star-and-schmooze fest the the volumes of paper, leaflets and urgently need to address, the Venice Art Biennale is, people are books handed out by so many of often-ignored influence, through starting to wake up to the fact that the pavilions promoting ideas of immigration and commerce, of architecture is about more than the sustainability.3 East Asian culture (although they constructions (good and bad) that didn’t explore it fully, and so the line our streets, litter our cities and The Biennale’s main exhibition was presentation was irritating, rather mark changes in our countryside. at Venice’s Arsenale, a huge cavern than interesting); meanwhile And the artworld is noticing of a building dedicated to exploring South Africa had tourist brochures architecture too; the introduction to the present condition and future available, belying the impact of Hal Foster’s article on Zaha Hadid prospects of the world’s some of their exhibition with glossy in the September issue of Artforum metropolises. Curated by Richard testaments to the country’s suggests that “it may be in archi- Burdett, the Arsenale was so achievements. You could see the relative successes dream of a job in the city and a to remember to try to look at the of the publicity games over the house in the country. Henchion ideas in the presentation, not the opening weekend in the bags on Reuter suggested high-speed rail politics of the country. In this, of people’s shoulders. Rotterdam 2007 links, to ‘shrink’ the country, by course, Israel failed on both counts. was a big hit, and so were Denmark shrinking the temporal distance and Great Britain. And even after between our cities (Sligo to Dublin ‘Starchitects’ travel the world, all the other shoulder bags had in forty-eight minutes). Heneghan bringing their visions and solutions been handed out, Israel couldn’t Peng imagined a road bridge across the divisions that the have given them away. I wasn’t between Ireland and Great Britain. national boundaries (exemplified by anxious for an Israeli bag, even MacGabhann Architects suggested the pavilions) create. Commerce before I had seen the content of ways in which holiday homes could also transcends national bound- their pavilion (an exhibition of sink underground when not in use. aries, and it seemed to me, as I memorials to dead Israelis, difficult ODOS built up instead of out, thought about how unfair I was to consider when placed in context proposing vertical sprawl in an being to the US, that as national of the current situations with imaginative way that was political influence loses ground Lebanon and Palestine), but it was fantastical and fun. And Dominic to international trends and 90 to the United States pavilion that Stevens came up with the idea of multinational finance, political I brought my real prejudices. I riverside settlements, where the nationalism grows ever stronger. walked around Building on higher attractions of the city float along, Leaving the pavilions, however, ground with a sense of anger. bringing the cinema, theatre, bars thoughts of nationalisms and also Asking myself with what hypocrisy and restaurants past every now of highlights (Korea, Japan, the could the US present responses to and then. RCA London and MIT in the Italian the devastation wreaked by Pavilion, Ireland, China) are quickly Hurricane Katrina, when the actual What SubUrban to SuperRural did dissipated by Venice itself; Venice, response had been so negligent? was underline the idea that that fantastical city, where Where were the panels addressing architecture is about how we think architecture has triumphed over the displaced poor? Where were the about how we live, as much as the geography and society over nature – admissions that the government buildings that actually go up. for the time being at least. had ‘messed up’? And it was only Deciding to dispense with the usual later, after I had visited, been reams of paper, much of the really 1 Statistic from La Biennale di Venezia, engrossed in, and generally gritty (and interesting) information www.labiennale.org/en/architecture was not in the elegantly executed 2 Hal Foster, ‘New fields of architecture’, applauded the presentations in the Artforum, September 2006, p 324-331 Irish pavilion that I realised how exhibition, but in a book, published 3 Parts of this discussion are also included in unfair I was being. by Gandon, which will hopefully be my contribution to the Venice Superblog available long after the Biennale is www.venicesuperblog.net 4 A PDF of the book SubUrban to SuperRural SubUrban to SuperRural showed the over. Unfortunately, this had sold can be downloaded at responses of nine Irish architectural out its initial delivery to the www.architecturefoundation.ie/vb06/book.html practices to Ireland’s growing urban Biennale after the opening weekend, 5 Reported by Frank McDonald, Irish Times, 4 October 2006 and suburban sprawl. Some of the and the exhibition made less sense presentations were sensible, some without it.4 But if I was angry with fantastical, some extremely clever the US pavilion, where was my Gemma Tipton is a writer and some thought-provoking. sense of disgust at the Irish and critic on art and architecture based in Boyd Cody proposed reclaiming Government? Their historical Dublin. the Boora Bog from Bord na Mona corruption, which has led to a to create a new county for Ireland. blighted countryside and appalling Bucholz McEvoy reimagined the problems for suburban commuter way rural public life and families, has also led to Dublin communities might be organised. being singled out by the “European de Paor Architects suggested a Environment Agency (EEA) as a return to the Irish Tower House as ‘worst-case scenario’ of urban a new vernacular, to replace the planning so that newer EU member bungalows dotting the countryside. states such as Poland might avoid FKL (also curators of the Irish exhi- making the same mistakes.”5 bition) proposed a reorganisation of While government support is the way the countryside is settled, generally necessary to bring an so that people may indeed enjoy the exhibition to the Biennale, I have SubUrban to SuperRural: (top) Irish architects at the 10th Venice Demographics Architecture Biennale Henchion + Reuter Architects

Boyd Cody Architects (below) Bucholz McEvoy Architects Tideaways (detail) de Paor Architects MacGabhann Architects FKL Architects Henchion + Reuter Architects heneghan.peng.architects MacGabhann Architects ODOS architects dominic stevens architect

Commissioner: Shane O’Toole curated by FKL Architects c . Treasa O’Brien Lewis Glucksman Gallery, September – November Cork 2006

92 Cooling out – on the paradox of feminism (above) that brings the agenda to the works straddles the boundaries between Úna Quigley rather than the other way around. documentary, fantasy and portrai- Larissa, 2006 DVD still In fact, if I had not read the curators’ ture. In the video, we see Larissa courtesy the artist/ statement or title, I would have dancing. In the accompanying Lewis Glucksman Gallery thought it was a show reflecting on voiceover, she speaks about her job (below) femininity or even “Female Imagery as a stripdancer. The setting of the Sharon Hayes and Andrea in the 21st Century” rather than on dance in a domestic sitting-room Geyer political and cultural feminism. and the ordinary attire of the dancer Cambio de lugar video stills Remarkably, all the works portrayed depletes the expected frame of courtesy Lewis Glucksman the female figure. So, one thing this exoticism and emphasises the Gallery exhibition has established is that sensuality of her dance and her we are still ‘gazing’ – albeit gazing obvious revelry in it; the pleasure on each other. the viewer experiences watching her is one of empathy rather than Our gaze now is more voyeuristic voyeurism and prompts us to than objectifying, it seems, as many examine our own prejudices. of the works took the form of a The paradox of this piece is that 93 Is ‘cooling out’ a euphemism for documentary or social project. The the sex worker has become a hero, dying out? Is feminism dead? video Boygirl by Aurora Reinhard, of rather than a victim. There is a Is postfeminism dead, too? teenage girls who identify as boys, complicitness here with sexism, and The curatorial aim of the Cooling depicts them speaking about their of course one must ask, how am I out exhibition at the Lewis day-to-day social experience: implicated as a viewer/ voyeur? Glucksman Gallery was very explicit “I stand for nothing and a little bit and based itself on the premise of everything.” This video contrasts Josephine Meckseeper’s Pyromaniac that feminism is fading away. It’s with the teenage girls of Elodie – a blonde blue-eyed woman with a dying because it has achieved its Pong’s Pretty pretty, who are also lit match in her mouth gazing out in main aims, the struggle is over and fascinating in their cute-sexy-bored a larger-than-life poster-size glossy therefore success = death. girliness which, in this context, can photograph – seemed to be another be read as another constructed devil’s advocate in the exhibition. However, as we all know, feminism identity. Other documentary-style At first, I read this as a postfeminist has not been ‘achieved’. Although videos, like Esra Ersen’s Which one work saying “it’s ok to be sexy.” there is better equality legislation do you choose?, looked at the But I was perplexed by the fact that now and more participation in caricatured identities of ‘sweet’ and it was paired with an image of public life and the workplace, these ‘cool’ as being the only two options smoke from a Berlin demonstration. benefits are mostly enjoyed by available according to Japanese The only correlation I could make white middle class women of the contemporary women’s magazines. was that the pyromaniac started ‘Western’ world. Even there, the fire! Or that feminism and cultural feminism and equality still P-star, an interview with a nine- activism can be packaged as have a long way to go. So, the year-old rap singer, is overshadowed objects of desire/ fashion. question is: is the momentum as her father’s dominance becomes According to Susan J. Douglas, slowing down? And, if so, why is apparent through Dani Gal’s postfeminism is a myth that has society bored of feminism? inclusion of the footage in between been manufactured by the right takes. It may have been included in and the corporate media and sold In the weeks prior to the show, the exhibition to illustrate how this to us through advertising to keep us my interest was piqued by the ‘woman’s’ independence and consuming. Similarly, activism and Cooling out title. Are contemporary confidence are really controlled by counter-culture are eventually main- artists apathetic to, or reactive the patriarch. However, I got the streamed and sold back to society. against, feminism? How would an feeling that this piece, while artwork overtly convey the entertaining, is more about the It also occurred to me that the phenomenon of the dilution of the music industry and egos than about Berlin smoke photo is the only feminist ‘debate’ from the current feminism, and would have been as artwork in this exhibition (and is generation, ie, are its inheritors effective if the protagonist had only half of one artwork) that does biting the nipple that fed them? been a nine-year-old boy. not depict a female figure; woman is the object of all these pieces; In a show with such a specific Úna Quigley’s Larissa is a she is invented and re-invented in curatorial framing, it is the viewer deceptively simple work that every image. Another documentative work, and sometimes explicitly adding to the landscape was also on show at one that was very relevant to the conversation. This process the same time, so that visitors overall concept of the exhibition as demonstrated the impossibility of wandered from a contemporary art a literal survey of feminism today, pure translation and symbolised the show surveying feminism today into was Cambio de lugar_Change of notion of the translator or mediator a room of paintings and Virgin Mary place_Ortswechsel. These videos, as involved, partial and never ‘artefacts’ with a heavy hand of by Andrea Geyer and Sharon Hayes, neutral. The metaphor of the didactic curating – however, the are documents of 52 people who noninnocence of the mediator can Gendering show really felt like were interviewed in New York, be extended to curatorship, where illustrations to accompany ideas, Mexico and Germany “who identify the curator is the translator. Each which while lots of fun for a curator as, have identified as or are/ have artwork is changed by inclusion in and indeed for the viewer, can be been identified (from an external this framed exhibition. dangerous in rendering an artwork perspective) as a woman.” The readable one-dimensionally, only as artists asked them what the terms As well as documentary of ‘real’ literal illustrations of another’s idea ‘woman’ and ‘feminist’ means to people, there were also some pieces (the paintings were chosen as them, about transgendered culture, that examined the woman as illustrations for the essay 94 history of the women’s movement, actress or role-player – Casting: Landscape, space and gender: their the relation of queer theory to James Dean. Rebel without a cause role in the construction of female feminist theory, and other questions by Ana Carceller and Helena identity in newly independent Ireland relating to their experience of Cabello was boring to me, and by Síghle Bhreathnach-Lynch, society and feminist culture today. Actress by Jaki Irvine was elusive. curator for Irish Art in the National The same set of questions that However, they were well placed Gallery of Ireland) . the interviewers asked each among the explicitly documentative interviewee are printed next to the pieces, challenging the supposed The aim of Cooling out was to video screen for viewers to question ‘reality’ and ‘fiction’ of these film survey this generation’s relationship themselves. works so that the ‘truth’ of to feminist issues, as epitomised by role-playing could be examined contemporary artists, with the The individual interviews were rather than the ‘fact’. premise that feminism has engaging and thought-provoking, dissipated, or cooled out and so were the comparisons and Michaela Meise had three separate (paraphrased from the curatorial contrasts between speakers. pieces in the exhibition; each work statement by Sabine Schaschl- What separates this work from was very much about itself, Cooper, Bettina Steinbrügge and mere social census was the fact although the source material of René Zechlin). This is an ambiguous that we never see the speaker, as it women’s image through the media ‘statement’ to base the show is only the translator between the linked them. Frauen und Tiere around, but it becomes more interviewer and the interviewee that [women and animals], one of the intriguing when one starts to read it is visually filmed; we hear the other few works of the show that was not as a conclusion, a question (cooling two parties and see the translator lens-based, outlined the shapes of out?) or even a devil’s advocate title. look from one to the other as she the women (white) and the animals/ However, although most of the speaks. The translator relayed pets (black) taken from magazines. individual works were engaging in everything in the first person, These series of drawings are their own right, the overall feel of having to play the role of the other exquisitely made and seem to high- the exhibition was lukewarm (in the two when delivering her speech, light a similarity between the two Glucksman show at least; it had two highlighting the social roles that subjects – that of the domesticated other parts with different works in interviewer/ artist and interviewee/ or tamed and also that of the Basel and Lüneberg). As such, I find woman were playing or indeed instinctual and unintelligent, both it difficult to declare the overall living through. clichéd. However, I do feel that I exhibition a success or not, because may be imposing this political the whole idea seems to be that Although this made the interviews interpretation on them, as the there is a dumbing down of double the length, it also meant drawings themselves are really so feminism as a theme. Is the title that discrepancies in language and visceral that it seems inadequate to Cooling out, in fact, a judgment culture were highlighted, and the talk about them only in terms of on this generation? For me, the translator was an active agent in their symbolism. paradox is not that feminism has the exchange, at times changing “positive changes and … negative It was no accident that the the conversation through editing, connotations” (from the curators’ exhibition Gendering the Irish estimating the translation and statement), but that if you think that artists are ‘cooling out’ or don’t really care about feminism any more, how do you show work by them about it? How does (or why would) an artist make work about something she didn’t feel strongly about?

Overall, I felt in some way left out of the exhibition, invalid or looked over. I had expected to feel more empathy and understanding, or even revolt against it. The inclusion of artefacts from Attic Press of posters from the women’s movement in Ireland brought the recentness of events in Ireland into 95 focus; we seem to have moved on to postfeminist culture without ever having experienced feminism in the mainstream. But forward we go – please, oh please, when can post- postfeminism start heating up?

Treasa O’Brien is a writer and artist, and is currently programme manager of the National Sculpture Factory

Michaela Meise from Frauen und Tiere [women and animals], 2001 ink, watercolour on paper series of 7, each 46 x 34 cm collection G. F. courtesy Lewis Glucksman Gallery c . Andy Parsons Model:Niland September – November Sligo 2006

96 juneau/projects/: The Black moss Ben Sadler and Phil Duckworth publicly funded gallery – where The children and teenagers involved have been working collaboratively education and engagement of youth in their work have no apparent as juneau/projects/ since 1999 are essential to funding? misgivings about the idea of using a range of approaches individual creative genius. incorporating installation, video, The work does stem from a They would probably like to be seen graphic design, painting, genuinely democratic impulse. as Romantic heroes. The answer to performance and music. If parts of it appear to be a the question ‘Why do they work celebration of the amateur or the with kids …?’ is that the kids are The Black Moss charts the amateurish should this necessarily proxies; they are able to say things development of the duo’s themes, be a criticism? You could say that that the artists cannot; their voices particularly nature and technology, juneau/projects/ are having a party are unmediated and unconstrained Romanticism and the Sublime. and we are all invited. Engagement by embarrassment. Early works are based on the with the exhibition is in no way destruction of pieces of technology contingent on prior knowledge of Just as The Black moss was opening in natural settings; this conflation contemporary or modern art, or in Sligo, a sperm whale beached of themes is evident in walkman/ indeed any other cultural factors itself nearby and the event lake, 2001 which records a tape other than pop music and culture prompted memories of the near 97 recorder being lowered to its doom since the 1980s. hysteria generated in London when in Coniston water in the Lake a whale lost its way and swam up District while it plays Richard juneau/projects/’ interest in the Thames into central London. Strauss. Romanticism and the Sublime may Both events highlighted our odd stem from a desire to pick up from relationship with nature and Recently they have begun creating an art movement that is untainted produced an unlikely but strangely work in collaboration with children, by the perceived failures and compelling spectacle. This show partly, they say, to offset the elitism of Modernism and its does the same thing. juneau/ destructiveness of other strands of descendants. Their energetically projects/ create a spectacle which their practice. During the show’s euphoric vision of nature bathed thrusts contemporary culture and run at the Ikon gallery in in pathos has links to Romantic technology into an uneasy meeting Birmingham juneau/projects/ poetry. Wordsworth and Coleridge with nature. The result prompts a organized two groups of kids into were the ‘pop stars’ of their day; number of questions about the role two bands, the results of this they achieved popularity by of the artist in society and the process form the final piece in the communicating society’s anxiety enduring power of nature as a show, I’m going to antler you, 2005. about technology and theme in art. Using backing tracks created by industrialization and its relationship juneau/projects/, the kids made with the natural world. juneau/ Andy Parsons is an artist their own songs and devised their projects/’ work seems to be based in Sligo. own band identity which they used connected to this era when an on clothes and other paraphernalia. artist could be a ‘genius’, an (opposite) The songs and the artifacts are an individual creative visionary. juneau/projects/ from I’m going to antler you amalgam of the endeavors of the That connection runs contrary to 2006, courtesy Model:Niland artists and the children. An integral the dissolution of identity implicit part of juneau/projects/ work is to in working collaboratively, and to perform this growing repertoire as a the notion of socially engaged kind of tribute band. practice. This creates an interesting paradox at the heart of the artists’ The work produced collaboratively work. On one level they eschew brings to mind many questions. the vulgarity of stardom and One of these concerns the role of attempt to celebrate people’s the participants – are they being creative endeavors in areas that manipulated into producing fall outside the traditional system self-consciously naïve work that fits of values of the artworld; on into current taste in the art world another they create such a singular but does nothing for them in terms vision, with each item in the show of making something of genuine branded with their logo, that it is worth? Is it the sort of work that hard not to think of them more as can only exist in the context of a auteurs than facilitators. c . Karen Normoyle Limerick City Gallery of September – October Art, Limerick 2006

98 anne cleary and denis connolly: here there now then Anne Cleary and Denis Connolly There and then, 2006 video installation, dimensions between art and life have There then that materialise into the variable; courtesy Limerick City preoccupied artists since the present exhibition. Gallery of Art first Futurist ‘evenings’. These nonnarrative and everyday activities The delight in voyeuristic pleasure further influenced performance and is the primary concern of the Fluxus artists, who set themselves exhibition, and Cleary and Connolly in opposition to the elevated art expose the gallery as, what they object observed with adoration and term, a “temple of the regard.” awe within the respectful confines The five interactive pieces work of the museum/ gallery. So too by placing a camera on the viewer artists Anne Cleary and Denis as they enter each installation, Connolly attempt to break down whereby the image is then institutional ideas of the function projected onto gallery walls/ of art in their Fluxus-inspired screens. A complex and interactive exhibition Here there technologically advanced program now then. Invited by curator creates a series of different effects, Michael Fitzpatrick, the exhibition such as silhouetting, outlined 99 was specifically created for the drawing, colour separation and spaces of the Limerick City Gallery, computerised time delays, that are the heightened spatial awareness of triggered by movement. In typical the exhibition further revealing the Fluxus fashion, the works depend artists’ background training in on the active presence of a architecture. participating audience. Through this interactive exhibition, Cleary and “All of life presents itself as an Returning to Ireland for this show, Connolly create an awareness of immense accumulation of Cleary and Connolly have been bodily presence/ movement in time spectacles,” or so says Guy Debord. based in Paris since 1990, where and space. The whole exhibition The constantly shifting boundaries they first became exposed to the transforms into an elaborate, between art and life have preoccu- Fluxist and situationist ideas that complex yet unified performance. pied artists since the first Futurist have incessantly informed their Sophisticated sound, integral to ‘evenings’. These nonnarrative and work. In their early performative the exhibition, forms a rhythm everyday activities further works, such as Touchy, the artists which follows the intensity of the influenced performance and Fluxus documented their attempts to movement of the participant. Thus artists, who set themselves in disregard restrictions and the participant creates the musical opposition to the elevated art object convention and touch works of art score (revealing traces of John observed with adoration and awe in museums. The mischievous, Cage’s experimental ideology) within the respectful confines of humorous and often disruptive based on the movement of their the museum/ gallery. So too artists spirit of their earlier works can be body in the space. Anne Cleary and Denis Connolly seen, albeit in more subtle tones, In both Now and then and Here and attempt to break down institutional in Here there now then. Each of the there, participants become acutely ideas of the function of art in their works in the exhibition is a variation aware of the poetic beauty of each Fluxus-inspired interactive of the title and the concept for individual movement of their body. exhibition Here there now then. the show hangs on the only In Now and then, moving bodies are Invited by curator Michael noninteractive installation, split into three primary colours Fitzpatrick, the exhibition was There then. Japanese artist and before converging again once specifically created for the spaces curator Eriko Momotani plays motionless. The multi-faceted of the Limerick City Gallery, the classical scores on the piano while effect of this piece is strangely heightened spatial awareness of the the artists’ twin daughters play in reminiscent of Marcel Duchamp’s exhibition further revealing the the cramped apartment. As in the Nude descending a staircase. The artists’ background training in intimate and poetically constructed graphic black and white stripes of architecture. narratives of RVB from 2004, the artists document all they can see Here and there, suggestive of piano “All of life presents itself as an inside and directly outside the keys, split the participant into immense accumulation of apartment. However, it is the cascading negative silhouettes, spectacles,” or so says Guy Debord. central concerns of playfulness set off by corresponding piano The constantly shifting boundaries offset by musical synthesis in notes. The more unreserved the participant, the more varied the Eriko Momotani on the opening Karen Normoyle is an art effect, with the most spectacular night, and at a later date dancers historian and visual arts effects produced by young children Laura Murphy and John Hurley writer. and those with no sense of social provided an interactive dance constraint. performance.

Now outlines the moving body Cleary and Connolly set a against a backdrop of varying, voyeuristic cycle, but furthermore intense hues and corresponding they force the viewer from his/ her notes, while Here is more traditional passive role of observer concerned with stillness and to an active one of participation. presence, as body parts slowly Indeed, Here there now then is emerge from the empty grey screen, preoccupied with role reversal; only to disappear in the silent in the artists’ own words, “the stillness. As the movement spectator becomes actor, the increases, layered musical and gallery becomes theatre and Anne Cleary and Denis Connolly 100 street sounds reach an intensity the artist becomes spectator.” (below left) and the work evokes Futurist artist Perhaps most importantly, Cleary Now, 2006 Luigi Russolo’s ‘noise instruments’, and Connolly have successfully interactive video installation where everyday urban noises pro- dimensions variable shifted the focus away from the courtesy Limerick City Gallery of Art vide an avant-garde symphony. artwork, and by extension the The final interactive work, bearing artists, and onto the viewer, a task (below right) the exhibition title, blurs the Anne Cleary and Denis Connolly not easily achieved. Now and then, 2006 distinction between past and interactive video installation present. Ghosts appear on the dimensions variable screen and fade away as the courtesy Limerick City Gallery of Art present gradually solidifies. Yet interaction does not end here, the collaborative and performative aspect remains pivotal to Cleary and Connolly’s work. Musical accompaniment was provided by c . Rachel Ní Chuinn Project, Dublin October – November 2006

factotum: the

choir 101

Belfast-based Factotum has a fundamental inclusiveness when it comes to art. Following on in the tradition of Joseph Beuys, it is clear from projects they have undertaken that they believe art should have a place in daily life for everybody. Launching The Vacuum in 2003 was an effective way of bringing their writing and ideas to a wider public. Factotum: Factotum Choir In transforming Project’s gallery into a performing at the opening of reliquary of material tracking the history the Project exhibition, 2006 of ‘the choir’, they have created an courtesy Factotum accessible, enjoyable exhibition. Four monitors show footage from came into being in 2001, one can twisting and skewing the facts to the different directions taken by the see the reverberations of situation- elucidate the ridiculous in our social choir over the years under various ism and Fluxus on their perspective. behaviours is an effective way of prophetic leaders. A desiccated One of the fraudulent claims is that expressing dissatisfaction and cat, programmes and scores for Patrick ‘K’ Kelly in 1971 performed frustration without alienating a fictitious musical events, inventive Die Orgiegeheimnisse, “a six hour complicit public. The Choir presents rusted musical instruments, an LP epic of duck wagging misery the truth as a clouded fiction. made of cured meat (part of a representing conflict in Northern It represents the petty politics of vegetarian campaign), a poster Ireland,” in the ICA as part of the group dynamics, from internal advertising the digital opera The second Destruction in Art squabbles to leadership succession Hund of Ulster, and examples of symposium. There never was a sec- stories, in the guise of an archive of uniples (one-off pieces made ond Destruction in Art symposium. fifty years of a socialist choir. through the processes of mass One of the pieces is labelled as production), create a rich and courtesy of the Bethlehem Hospital Many of the parallels for this diverse archive for a group that Museum and Archive, a famous exhibition are with mainstream never existed. Well, to say ‘never psychiatric institution that has culture. This is Spinal Tap comes to 102 existed’ is perhaps not entirely given us the word ‘bedlam’. mind when reading the blurb for accurate. Initially, Factotum were A contact number on correspon- The Hund of Ulster, “a multi-media to pen and perform a corporate dence from a Dr Nils Garman of the spectacular concerning a scientist song for Project Arts Centre; this Technical Institute of Port Stanley who invents a time machine and developed into the creation of a in the Falklands is fictitious. goes back into the distant past to choir for the opening night of the Factotum’s website1 reveals that rescue Cuchulann before his death exhibition, a choir which incidentally Nils Garman is an occasional on the battlefield. Cuchulann then still meets every two weeks to contributor. Despite the fact that comes back into the future to do rehearse an ever-expanding the number given for the Port battle with the UVF and IRA who repertoire of socialist songs, Stanley Institute of Technology have stolen his identity for their amongst them Fujitsu, a workers’ was inoperative, Stanley’s motto respective causes.” Humour song about labouring in a is indeed “Desire the right.” perhaps has been a coping and a multinational corporation. In reality, A scrawled phone number on the cloaking mechanism for expressing the songs are quite thin on political score for Die Orgiegeheimnisse frustration with group dynamics. content but big on humour. anachronistically led me to one The SWOT analysis (a fictional of the choristers from the modern survey of the choir) has some The phony retrospective is an choir. telling feedback from members of accurate model of the information the choir on disputes and we are accustomed to hearing In some respects Factotum appear disagreements in relation to in ‘behind the music’-style to be outsiders in the art world. creative decisions. Couched in the documentaries. Internal politics The emphasis is placed on involving joke one can’t help but feel there is and group disputes colour the people who might not necessarily real expression of an inability to development and progression of consider themselves participating assume leadership or direct others techniques. From the beginning in an art event. Humour is the without having to kowtow to a there are clues to the irreverence mainstay for Factotum events. dissenting public. There is ample of the archive. Inspiration for a Despite their populist leanings, room for interpreting this difficulty socialist choir is cited as coming there is an academic history of the to lead and coordinate divided from Mark Carter’s grandfather, absurd supporting their efforts. groups in relation to politics in an adventurous seaman who had Eugene Ionesco’s absurdism and Northern Ireland. travelled the world; later we are his sense of nihilistic pointlessness subsequently notified that of course has a resonance with the Klapdans none of the family were remotely and Slatt dancing of the imagined connected to seafaring. There is Mark Carter. Perhaps it is even a enough mixture between truth and particularly Irish history. Irish fiction to make it difficult to be literature has a warm and cosy confident of what is true and what place for Lawrence Sterne and is not. Citing the Destruction in Flann O’Brien, with their tangential Art symposium in 1966 as an digressions and imagined influence on the choir is not wholly particulars. Telling stories within unfounded. Although Factotum only the bounds of convention but Following on the situationist and Rachel Ní Chuinn is an anti-gallery guerilla tactics laid out artist and occasional by Fluxus artists in the ’60s, there is writer. a satirical undertow. The humour, jokes and elaborate hoaxes flum- mox the viewer, leaving them unsure of what is real and what is not. This intended confusion can be alienating, but perhaps more subtly it expresses discontent at the many recent exhibitions that take on a curatorial role of archiving rather than encouraging and presenting new works. Even the freshest of artists can be given the archive treatment, where past works take on a venerated status and new work exists only in the form of reconsti- tuted tomes or anthologies of things past. By inflating the importance of the past, new works have to be prematurely aged to pass into the holy sanctum of the retrospective. Information, background and paraphernalia have become at home in the gallery, joining the ranks of museum and library.

1 www.factotum.org.uk

Factotum: Poster for 1985 performance of The Hund of Ulster featuring Hugh Allen and his innovative Digimitt technology, 2006 courtesy Factotum c . Declan Long Kerlin Gallery, Dublin October – November 2006

104 Willie Doherty: Empty (opposite) of nonnegotiable limits are repertoire, are ultimately Willie Doherty therefore combined with potentially resistant to easy categorization Local solution II 2006 c print on aluminum with pleasing evocations of an and premature critical ‘closure’. plexiglass, 121.9 x 152.4 cm unbounded world beyond. And yet, The anxieties prompted by courtesy Kerlin Gallery despite the difficulty and danger Doherty’s ongoing interest in implied by the edgy, often off-kilter, exploring a terrain vague between (following page) close-ups of brutalizing image and reality were also to be Willie Doherty mechanisms and materials of experienced in viewing the film Local solution IV, 2006 c print on aluminum with conflict, it may be the dominant Empty, which premièred alongside plexiglass, 121.9 x 152.4 cm stretches of the great blue yonder the sky photographs at Doherty’s courtesy Kerlin Gallery that are most profoundly jarring. recent Kerlin Gallery exhibition. In Empty we see a series of fixed views Just as these skies seduce, they of an office block and its environs, mystify. There is a captivating the scenes showing the imposing chromatic intensity to these cobalt building in a state of steadily skyscapes; but what is it exactly advancing dereliction and decay. that we are drawn towards? Does The looped film moves again and 105 this newly dominant nonterritorial – again from dawn through to dusk nonterrestrial – context offer a and as the light and surrounding refreshing, urgently sought, weather conditions slowly change, In 1982, a Yorkshire Television film reminder of a bigger picture, we repeatedly scrutinize the crew arrived in Belfast to shoot the suggesting a space that persists building’s exterior, examining it for espionage and assassination thriller above and beyond our restricting any further revealing information, Harry’s game. Expecting a city of sign-systems and human hoping, perhaps, for clues as to the perpetual gloom, of unbroken cloud squabbles? And so, perhaps, former function of this abandoned cover and never-ending drizzle, the is a liberating metaphor of post- structure. Immediately, given the production team’s location Troubles optimism proposed? Or, longstanding concerns of Doherty’s requirements were abruptly thrown frustratingly, have we encountered work, it would seem reasonable to into crisis – the city was enjoying a a further ‘fiction’: a fantasy rooted suppose that the fragmentary views sudden, unseasonal heatwave. in quite conventional and thoroughly of this forgotten place allow us to Out of the blue, as it were, the ‘cultural’ associations of nature’s piece together a metaphor of makers of a gritty Troubles tale scale and splendour? Such a contemporary Northern Ireland as were compelled to negotiate with construct, of course, may continue a crumbling bureaucratic (or the unthinkable: a Belfast lit by to mask social division where it is corporate) edifice. Doherty’s glorious sunshine, its contented mobilized in the service of trade considered formal focus on citizens happily baking under clear and tourism – vital considerations architectural features – order and skies… in the context of post-ceasefire organization being measured economic regeneration. (And per- against disorder and dilapidation – This, perhaps apocryphal, clash of haps it is worth noting in passing might in this light be understood as fictional necessity with something that the term ‘blue-sky thinking’ is a strongly focused symbolic reflec- like elemental reality, where media a recently popularized and fatuous tion on political entropy. Yet, there stereotyping meets the messy addition to the banal lexicon of seems something unsatisfactory contingencies of everyday life, business management, identifying (or excessively satisfactory) in such comes to mind in contemplating an a kind of open-ended corporate a reading, suggesting a too-perfect unlikely outbreak of fine weather in brain-storming.) Doherty’s densely plenitude of available meaning in a the recent work of Willie Doherty. layered manipulations of media film tellingly titled Empty. Instead, In Local solution and Show of codes and viewer expectations have it seems important to insist on the strength, two series of absorbing long involved the holding of contra- stubborn withholding of evidence new photographs, Doherty has set dictory messages and incompatible in Doherty’s film – the protracted representative bits and pieces of meanings in an uneasy balance – gazing on the deserted building the customary iconography of his work functioning, as Caoimhín ultimately being a process of ‘conflict’ in contemporary Northern McGiolla Léith has observed, surveillance without end, research Ireland – flagpoles, security according to a logic of “dual without resolution. Rather than cameras – against great expanses articulation.” As such, photographs practicing confident socio-political of open sky. Blunt symbols of social such as these, which appear to critique, then, Doherty’s film enters control and the aggressive defense plunder an all-too-familiar image the realm of the unknown: the secret history of the unidentified contemplating how this crumbling of photographic works bring to building will remain ever unavailable building “concealed its history in mind Fredric Jameson’s description and the role and value of visual the opacity of its surface.” In Palast of the spectral: it is “what makes documentation is potentially there is a play of reflections on the the present waver: like the vibra- brought into question. windows of this modern ruin that tions of a heat wave through which has an almost spectral effect and the massiveness of the object world In this regard, Empty might recall there is arguably a corresponding – indeed of matter itself – now the disquieting, lingering view of a ghostliness to the manner in which shimmers like a mirage.” Paris home that opens Michael reflected images of moving clouds Haneke’s disturbing surveillance and darkening skies in Empty turn drama Caché – a film centering on the solid structure into a highly Declan Long is a lecturer how the private past of a media unstable, shape-shifting semblance at the National College of personality is intimately connected of actual, physical presence. Art and Design, Dublin. with repressed elements of French Doherty’s haunting of a now- history. Or, perhaps, there is an unpopulated place has therefore an echo of Tacita Dean’s elegiac recent outcome which is itself somehow 106 work Palast, in which the former haunted by the instability of any government building of the German effort to capture any tangible Democratic Republic is observed present moment. In this regard the from a distance, the film film Empty and its affiliated series c .

Contemporary adaptations of iconic works A Circa project by Mary Healy

My greatest appreciation to: Joseph and Evan Gordon, Niall and Mary Healy, artists Dan and Meg Kenny, to all the models within my work, Ronan and Ann Brannigan, the Market Square Brasserie, Limerick, Gaye Moore, the Wedding Shop, Limerick. Mary Healy [email protected] The last purity The Creation of Woman The Marriage of Venus The Bather of Rite Laura