LANDMARK A PUBLIC ART PROGRAME FOR MAYO LANDMARK A PUBLIC ART PROGRAME FOR MAYO

Artists: Fionnuala Hanahoe Bridging Sounds, Jennifer Brady The Known World, Tom Swift Across the Lough, Rob and Matt Vale Lough Lannagh Ripples, Ian Wilson Still Life in Green and Red, Cleary & Connolly On Sight, Elaine Griffin Landmark

Texts and interviews: Sarah Searson

Commissioned by Mayo County Council Arts Office. Contents

4 INTRODUCTION

6 PROLOGUE: A WORKING ARM; THE STUFF OF LEGENDS.

13 BRIDGING SOUNDS | FIONNUALA HANAHOE

21 THE KNOWN WORLD | JENNIFER BRADY

29 ACROSS THE LOUGH | THE PERFORMANCE CORPORATION

37 LOUGH LANNAGH RIPPLES | ROB & MATT VALE

45 STILL LIFE IN GREEN AND RED | IAN WILSON

52 ON SIGHT | CLEARY & CONNOLLY

63 LANDMARKS | ELAINE GRIFFIN 4 LANDMARK 5

INTRODUCTION

Curated by the Public Arts coordinator In devising and managing the information tool for artists. They also weather, and in the far distance is with Mayo County Council, Gaynor programme, Seville was keen that the devised and ran Fake Public Art Panels, Croagh Patrick. There is archaeological Seville, Landmark was a multi- funds available under the government’s with artists invited to be judges for evidence of a submerged crannog, and dimensional public art project sited in Per Cent for Art Scheme be treated the day to raise their awareness of the it is estimated that a treasure trove of the area of Lough Lannagh, Castlebar. cohesively, and so rather than process and how best to present your Bronze Age and Early Medieval objects Planned in anticipation of a new park commission a plethora of disjointed work and ideas to panels. may lie on the lakebed. and its redevelopment, Landmark was individual artworks for unrelated sites a programmatic series of connected and communities, Lough Lannagh Very close to the town centre, Lough The artist Michael Fortune has made commissions. Seville supported would form the centre of a project Lannagh is parkland which had a short film and series of videos about artists to work through a number of which reached out across many until recently had been overgrown each of the commissions. These can be dynamic responses to the context. Two places and communities in Mayo, and hidden. Over the last two years found at www.landmarkpublicart.com. artists were selected to have works involving local people both as audience it has been upgraded, and these This booklet of artists’ interviews was permanently sited in the park, two and as participants. Alongside the improvements have changed the written and complied by Sarah Searson smaller commissions were designed to programme, professional development area’s usage pattern, as it had been to give a deeper sense of each artist’s be of interest to younger artists, there events were designed to support the site of much anti-social – or too- practice, and offers insight into their was a year-long residency project for a local artists in their practice via a social – behaviour, depending on your interests and approaches. composer and two commissions were professional development programme, viewpoint. temporary or performance-based. The Connect. The artist Aideen Barry The park is now changed, attracting programme, which was over two years developed Connect initiatives in runners and walkers of all ages. The in development, was launched in April collaboration with Seville, which water mass that extends into Bilberry 2012. included a new iPhone and android Lake can be as smooth as glass or app, artconnect, as a networking and rough and choppy depending on the 7

‘We want to live in a small Prologue: A WORKING ARM; THE STUFF OF LEGENDS. community with which we can identify and yet we want all the facilities of the city of millions of people. We want Since way back the romantic notion mistaken for the sounds of lovesick of a big windfall had the potential young swains. Lough Lannagh could to have very intense urban to realise my dream of living on a be lovely. crannog. Lough Lannagh would be ideal. From there, in the middle of lake, I’d keep it spruce – you would like it. experiences and yet we want I would look after a flock of Ariel white I would build it in the middle of the swans, I could shimmy in and out of lake, there in the sightline of the regal the open space right next to Castlebar, across to Tesco, over to the Croagh Patrick, which rises up beyond Cafe Rua by The Mall and on up to the the lake water’s vanishing point. This Theatre. mountain will be the important to me, us’. as it’s the spear behind which the sun The local youth might park up nearby and moon travel, helping to track time. Moshe Safdie[i] and pop across my gangplank for a The seasons will roll on, and I will nightcap; we could take in an episode grow old as winter passes into summer. of the Hardy Bucks [ii]. I’d ask them to In the dark times fog, ice, lashing be quiet after midnight, except on long wind and rain cuts up the water, but summer nights, when the distant high I would stick it out no matter how I jinks of men visiting with men could felt, because the truth is, out there, carry out across the water into the just me with nature, well, it could be dark of the night. They might be easily a bit daunting. Naturally, this is the 8 LANDMARK 9

aspiration of a city-dweller, under the small town in Ireland the pageantry of influence of an ’80s school textbook St Patrick’s Day parades raised a smirk filled with beguiling illustrations of as septic-tank-related ‘floats’ married the Bronze Age. I seem to remember the bounds of good taste with St Paddy a remarkably well groomed, nuclear to yield in all sorts of scatological family, all furs, big hair and fancy lace articulations, some of them really very work on the boots, living in natty lake witty. Waste and water, sea and land are huts. Nostalgic fictions of course. But all amenities which been be revised for a more bucolic setting would be hard ownership. As public goods now turn to find. We had a fondness, or those to commodities that can ‘return’, ‘pay who could afford it did, for such sites their way’, or ‘wash their face’. in Ireland. Any fan of Deleuze and Guattari will The meaning of public and private, tell you that there is no centre; any fan our understanding of the distribution of Bauman will talk you into a Liquid of it, has changed. Maybe as it always Life. All change always – but how? has been shifting. The emphasis on the picturesque and the pleasantness In 1846, the father of an eleven-year- of our green country has been to the old migrant Mayo boy turned child fore of our identity. How we value labourer saw his boy lose an arm in a this has not. How our sense of place spinning mule of a Lancashire Mill. sticks or falls away with ownership is This was a father who had failed in evolving. A reappraisal of our value of his rent payments, and was put off the the landscape and land changes with land. He brought his family away in the our desire to make it function, make it hope of a more stable life. It was from work, and this topic is once more very this perspective that his disabled son much to the fore. was politicised, all his life campaigning for fairness in tenancy and labourers’ How the natural world is utilised conditions. Beyond his work in Ireland, continues to draw tense lines through that young man grew up to take a this country. In 2012 in nearly every world view of his place and time: he ˆNapolean Sarony’s portrait of Michael Davitt, New York 1882, sourced from The Library of Congress. 10 LANDMARK 11

supported Jews of Kishinev in Russia, to Lough Lannagh. Out there the So now I remember sometime round 1997 in a lecture hall in Dublin, a man from where vicious anti-Semitic persecution light flickers on Clew Bay as the day Mayo County Council[iv] gave a talk on a geographic approach to arts planning, was bubbling up in the early 1900s; declines over the Atlantic. Castlebar based on ideas from the French Pays. He was suggesting that we should be thinking he would influence Gandhi; and is a busy and important town in Mayo, deeply about the local; about townlands, clustered specialisms, that this is a sensible credited with being a founder of the and like so many Irish towns, it has a approach to the future, because it acknowledges what is known, what has been British Labour Party. A remarkable spreading footplate. It’s a short drive established, and it is from that place what can be applied will emerge. Illuminating Mayo man, a remarkable life. out to Westport, the ribbons and dots of the point where psychology and geography meet is the work of thinkers and houses seem to reduce the expansion makers; is the function of the wander, of the artist too at times. The need for this it In 1930, a teacher who shares the same of the landscape connecting the places seems is not news in Mayo. name as the famous painter Patrick as if they are suburbs of each other. Caulfield, was cutting turf on a blanket They blur. Sarah Searson bog on the Erris Peninsula, then a quiet place. It’s a hotter spot today, as it must In this small Island, distinction has have in the Bronze Age, today newishly been everything. It’s how we operate. found fault-lines in the sea bed Distinction is identity, we know running westerly have brought the big this, as worldwide we figure out our guns in. While working for the winter parameters. Clarity about who we are fuel, Caulfield discovered patterns that is increasingly complex and difficult. identified Neolithic and Bronze Age Rebecca Solnitt wrote about Ireland in settlements known now as the Ceide the 1990s, in The Book of Migrations Fields. This led to an unearthing of [iv], she spoke then of the dangers of ______evidence of a sophisticated agrarian trying to establish a single truth about [i] Moshe Safdie, Israeli/Canadian architect, is an urban designer, educator, theorist, and author. [ii] “The Hardy Bucks is an Irish mockumentary TV show written by Chris Tordoff, Martin Maloney and Mike community, one of the oldest types in a place, that blurring distinctiveness Cockayne. The Hardy Bucks started out with a series of largely improvised online webisodes. A six-part Europe. There was a big population on renders culture meaningless. It seems webisode series went on to win the 2009 Storyland competition held by Irish national broadcaster RTÉ. those north Mayo fields successfully for so many people, included those It is set in a small town in West Ireland, following the misadventures of five hapless men down on their luck, trying to leave their backwards rural hometown and attempt to reach Galway and sample modern working land into a useful living, of us who haven’t won the lottery and civilization. Sourced at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardy_Bucks” innovating, striving, making good built on a lake, things haven’t panned [iii] Rebecca Solnitt, A Book of Migrations: Some Passages in Ireland, Verso; Pbk. Ed edition (June 17, 1998) what surrounded them. How the land out as planned. Change hasn’t come in ISBN-10: 1859841864 [iv] was settled, how it would have been the usual pattern of peaks and troughs, John Coll, who at the time was Mayo County Arts Officer, is currently Director of Services, Community and Enterprise. contested, who distributed it – well, but has appeared now as a long, slow these are the stories of myth. tourniquet that would nearly take your The road to Westport runs parallel arm off. LANDMARK 13

BRIDGING SOUNDS | FIONNUALA HANAHOE

‘It is the juxtaposition of [this] non-expert use of music in a context that has been Installed over the launch weekend, Bridging Sounds was a temporary interactive expertly perceived in visual and audio and sculptural work made for the new bridge that spans Lough Lannagh. These multiple sculptural objects, suggestive of megaphones, generated sound when activated by walkers and passers-by. Each one emitted ethereal musical experiential terms that is really tones, making it possible almost to play the bridge. Walkers could make a fleeting soundtrack, which bounced eerily out over the water, back towards the town on one interesting to me.’ side, and out into the far-extending lake on the other. This was an invitation to be playful and celebratory, but also to pause and observe. The installation of the new Fionnuala Hanahoe pedestrian bridge makes it possible now to walk out alongside the lake and loop back on the opposite shore, bringing walkers back close to the centre of the town.

INTERVIEWER By populating the bridge with numerous custom-built loudspeakers activated by participants, you recast social and sculptural relationships as musical. This was exciting because it blurred a line between improvised and incidental. And the visual impact was engaging and playful and really successfully resolved. Can you speak a bit about these choices and the process which brought the piece to realisation? HANAHOE In Bridging Sounds, the sound modules – large white megaphone-type structures – were used to visually entice engagement. The synthesized choir sounds that 14 LANDMARK 15

music is a language of structure and in a musical sense. My intentions form that brings exciting interests and in my work, for me as much as for constructs for visual artists. Or is it the other users of the work, are also to be other way around, in that visual arts and playful, immersive and experimental. music support each other and work well I composed the music for Bridging in exchange, leading to innovation and Sounds on an inexpensive synthesizer artistic reach? app, which I downloaded from the App HANAHOE Store. This music was then re-recorded Yes, I think they support each other. onto cheap, low-tech, battery-operated I am interested in the work of artists sound cards with low quality speakers. who use music in their work – Susan The environment of the site did the Philipsz being an example. I think work in terms of amplification and the way she dramatically alters the atmospherically carrying the sound. perception of a space, not usually INTERVIEWER associated with music, through the This new bridge has changed the use of music is disarmingly simple way people use the park, as it’s now ˆBridging Sounds Installation. and beautifully poetic. Music can possible now to cross the water and have this immediately emotive walk about the lake in a loop. And emanated when the modules were and socially. I set up 32 modules in and engaging power. Philipsz uses so your work sonically and visually activated by passers-by were used for four groups of octave scales – directly her unaccompanied, untrained inhabited this new space. It’s a work the same reason. mimicking these toys. And although voice in a lot of her work – a sort which is celebratory, and musically My research for the work involved the aesthetic of Bridging Sounds was of everyday voice, how one might loops too, Were those your intentions taking apart and exploring the much more sublime, visually and sing in the shower, for example! It is when responding to the site? mechanics of children’s early learning sonically, than the typical primary- the juxtaposition of this non-expert HANAHOE musical toys. I adapted the low-tech coloured musical toy, the underlying use of music in a context that has My initial consideration when technology used in these gadgets and principle of exploring through process been expertly perceived in visual responding to the site was the name of applied it in order to turn the bridge was the same. and experiential terms that is really the commission. The meaning of the into a sort of musical learning tool. INTERVIEWER interesting to me. My experiments word Landmark includes a ‘boundary’ These early learning toys are used by Are you interested in the increasing with music as a material for Bridging or an event or an object in the children to learn about themselves and hybridization between the domains of Sounds were likewise non-expert landscape that directs. Breaking up the their environments, both physically visual art and music? It strikes me that 16 LANDMARK 17

word into land and mark I considered INTERVIEWER Sounds), and injects new intentions HANAHOE mark-making on the landscape and Many of your works are modular; they into the work and its interpretation. My work is concerned with the users how we do and can do that. The are objects which can be built, changed This inherent open-endedness gives of the work and the potential creative newest prominent landmark at Lough and re-made. Will you talk about the the user a role that is very active. It is power that they have in a space. I am Lannagh is the new bridge, and as you device of re-presentation and your not that I think that contemplation interested in facilitating people who say, it guides and facilitates people in artistic influences and intentions in of a more finished work is inactive or would normally or routinely use a site, walking a full circle or loop of the site. this? passive. Far from it: the contemplation interrupting this routine, and somehow So while the new bridge acts as a very HANAHOE of a so-called finished work can be encouraging them to make their own permanent and functional mark in In my work I investigate ways to very active on the part of a viewer. public artwork. the landscape, it was my intention to encourage people to re-engage with a It is just that by inviting viewers to provide people who use the site with creativeness and playfulness which, carry on the task of making a work, Public space and contexts suggest the the chance to make their own marks I think, are inherent in all of us. My you are inviting them into a process communal and an opportunity for – albeit very temporary and intangible job in making the work, as I see it, is that is very physical. You are inviting relational engagement. While I am ones – on it. to make sure that the materials and them to be the artist, and in inhabiting interested in this aspect of working in structure of the work do enough to that role, to investigate a space that public space I am also interested in This led me to the use of sound as encourage this creative and playful is process-driven and poetic. I think providing the users of the work with a material. Mark making is a way of participation. I like to literally place this offers a very different perspective an opportunity for an introspective communicating and sound seemed the work in people’s hands. A work and an opportunity for learned rather and immersive and very individual like a very good tool in such a vast that is modular in scheme allows this than mediated knowledge. Work that involvement with their environment. space. The vast space of the Lough is to happen. In the objects of the work is modular in nature helps to facilitate I am interested in placing objects in intersected by the new bridge, making I can engineer material elements that this process. public space in order to encourage it an appropriate and effective place to will react to and with the environment, INTERVIEWER and facilitate the user, to depart from set up an intervention. Sound is also and I can suggest, again through What about your interests and the his or her normal or routine use of a a material that works well with the the material and structure of the importance to your practice of engaging space and to instead explore a creative space as it is carried by the elements of components, how they might be used with public spaces and contexts? For process and exchange with and within water and wind – the bridge occupies a or put together. Ultimately, however, it example, you have worked with curators that space. So the ‘Public Artwork’ is very exposed site. There is this idea of is the viewer, through his or her own who are interested in these areas such not the objective of the work but the ‘connecting’ in the work, and the site creativeness and action, who decides as Sally Timmons in St Anne’s Park vehicle. The objective is to facilitate a also seemed symbolically appropriate the composition of the work visually and Sculpture in Context, but also with particular and unexpected communal in this regard. (or sonically in the case of Bridging curator Elizabeth Hatz. experience, individual experience and the memories and considerations 18 LANDMARK

of those experiences, in a particular have a healthy interest in history and context and environment. politics, I do not, however, consciously INTERVIEWER include any political influences or Has your background in politics and intentions in my artworks. My art history positioned your arts practice? practice is more fundamentally concerned with individual creative HANAHOE experience and exploring a poetic space I suppose that, to an extent, we are in that experience. all subconsciously influenced by everything in our own backgrounds, which for me would include my degree in history and politics. Although I

Fionnuala Hanahoes work investigates the experiential elements of time and space. Using materials which encourage immersive, playful and open-ended engagement, she seeks to simultaneously promote an introspective and extrospective involvement of the viewer. She is interested in placing the work literally in the hands of viewers so that they may create their own space. She is making artworks that offer the potential for experienced knowledge rather than mediated knowledge. Her work specifically investigates the notion of a poetic space through the exploration of our physical environment. Hanahoe is based in Dublin and holds a BFA from the National College of Art and Design (2009) and a BA in History and Politics from University College Dublin (1995). Her recent exhibitions include Hopeful Structures, Dublin (2010), EV+A, Limerick (2010), NCAD Degree Show, Dublin (2009), RDS Student Art Exhibition, Dublin, Tipperary and Tyrone (2008), and the RHA Annual Exhibition, Dublin (2007). 21

THE KNOWN WORLD | JENNIFER BRADY ‘I was looking at different approaches to the representation of nature in film, approaches which complicate its representation. Like for instance, the ways in which Werner Herzog portrays

nature in some of his films’. Made over the period of a year The Known World is an experimental nature documentary focusing on the Mute Swans living at Lough Lannagh. Borrowing Jennifer Brady from the language of the familiar televisual format, the video conceives of the swan as a symbol of uncertainty, mapping a natural history of misinformation, transition and change. The work was presented on a monitor in the sitting room of a cottage in Lough Lannagh holiday village. It is the fourth in a series of films made by Brady in a variety of urban contexts. Of note in this commission is her collaboration on the development of the soundtrack, which extends her visual language to represent the animal world as imbued with the peculiarly complex physiological behaviour which is the preserve of humans observing them. 22 LANDMARK 23

contemporary imaging of the ‘real’. wanted to stretch it to allow the work Rancière has commented on these to absorb broader thematics. I had problematics in The Future of the imagined the narration being in the Image, declaring ‘…there are no more style of a nature documentary, but images but only a reality incessantly framed as though the narrator were representing itself to itself’11. We have reflecting on the subject rather than completely absorbed the language of describing it in great factual detail, documentary filmmaking and are now occasionally introducing less than familiar with the ‘structured reality’ of reliable or exaggerated information current reality TV programming. There about this species of bird. is confusion between what is ‘real’ and what is ‘staged’ and I’m interested in Also, I wanted to consider the swan the murky territory in between. as a symbolic creature, looking at INTERVIEWER swans and symbolism within a nature The Known World is the fourth in a documentary format. Obviously in series of short video works made Ireland, the swan is a familiar motif by you over the past three years. It in mythology, but I wanted to frame The Known World (video still) ˆ resembles a nature documentary of the swan as a symbol for uncertainty – sorts; the script, initially, seems to be that the work would become a sort of natural history of uncertainty. This was INTERVIEWER BRADY written and delivered with a fairly stolid perhaps prompted by the times that we One of the themes I see in your work is I suppose conceptually I’m interested BBC-like tones; observing the nature are living through, as well as having an interest in engaging with the notions in ambiguities. Although I use factual and representation of swans. Is it an Nassim Taleb’s theory of Black Swan of the periphery. I think you do this by information about real events, people anthropomorphic comment on where events in my mind. choosing to work within the thin line or places as starting points, my working we are at right now? that can exist between fact and fiction. processes often involve tempering this BRADY I was interested in this theory of Black In this way, you consider how fictional information, complicating it, pulling Yes, the video emulates and breaks Swan events in relation to the notion narratives are used to illustrate, or give it apart and putting it back together in with certain structures and conventions of prediction; that improbable and openings to the unexplainable. The a different way. I think that we have within nature documentary, but I unpredictable Black Swan events lead research and decision making for this an increasingly complex relationship 1 to the ‘degradation of predictability’. video work was extensive. with reality and this is reflected in Jacques Rancière, The Future of the Image (2007), Verso I think that due to the fact that our 24 LANDMARK 25

world seems to be hanging in the many ways, is a wonderful motif for emulate the tone of writing, which is 1982 Les Blank documentary about balance, we have seen an abundant this, would you agree? often quite pompous. In something the making of Fitzcarraldo, Herzog use of science fiction tropes in recent BRADY like Life on Earth, David Attenborough’s describes the jungle as being ‘full of contemporary art practice articulating Yes, I would certainly agree. pioneering nature documentary series obscenity’; he speaks of nature that is these anxieties and speculating on from the 1970s, there is a definite violent, like a malevolent force. I was INTERVIEWER what is to come. I wanted to explore weight to the words in the script. interested in this depiction of nature This project has been in development this notion of prediction in relation to that has some sort of agency. Also, for over a year, and to me, it marks a narrative structure, evoking a doom- I was also interested in Walt Disney’s David Gladwell’s recently redistributed change in your cinematic language. like, apocalyptic tone towards the 1958 nature documentary White film Requiem for a Village from 1975 BRADY end, leading the viewer to anticipate Wilderness, which used various staging is a great example. The film itself is a I suppose my work comes from a a certain type of ending, which tactics in its production, one of which sort of elegy for the demise of pastoral curiosity about film language, and in never arrives. In the end, the work led to the perpetuation of the myth life in England and its entire cast was particular its ability to make viewers undermines itself, challenges the of lemming suicide. Lemming mass local residents from the town in Suffolk empathize in various ways with certain credibility of its own message and migration has often been mistaken for where it was shot. It seems like the type images. This commission has allowed destabilizes the reliability of everything mass suicide. One scene in the film of film that could emerge from a public me to become looser in my working that has gone before. fabricated a mass suicide event when a art commission today. processes. In terms of image-making, INTERVIEWER group of lemmings were propelled over INTERVIEWER there is more movement in this work In a previous work you referenced the a clifftop by a rotating platform. I was You collaborated in making the work than in previous videos, simply due Hungarian physicist, Dennis Gabor’s interested in this element of also with artists and musicians Andrew to the fact that I was filming animals 1972 book The Mature Society: a Vision of staging and their use of this unreliable Fogarty and David Lacey, whose original whose movements are unpredictable. the Future, who like the scientist, Joseph information, as we assume that nature score adds to the atmosphere of your You can’t anticipate their behaviour and Weizenbaum, was part of the Jewish documentaries provide the viewer with film and its narrative structure. In what compose shots in advance – you have exodus from mainland Europe. These reliable, authoritative information. way do you think this collaboration to be ready to move with them, and two men, who suffered catastrophic enables a development of the work I think that this has led to a looser style. traumas, became concerned with the But mostly, I was looking at different and sees you move towards a more In terms of research for this work, ethical and humanitarian perspectives approaches to the representation of conventional director’s role? With all there were a number of films that of man and his machines. Ideologically nature in film; approaches which the benefits and insights that working were important to me, but no one film today, Ireland is a country at sea, complicate its representation. Like for with other practitioners brings, is this in particular. I watched quite a lot of and yet, in this window there is both instance, the ways in which Werner the type (and level) of engagement you nature documentaries when doing possibility and danger. The swan, in Herzog portrays nature in some of his would like to work with in the future? research for the script, as I wanted to films. Even in Burden of Dreams, the 26 LANDMARK 27

BRADY In terms of a score, I wanted to use Yes, working on this project also sounds which were alien or unfamiliar allowed me to think about sound to nature documentaries and was and score a very different way. Until thinking about the film Images (1972) recently, the only extra diegetic sound by Robert Altman (shot in Ireland), I have used in my work is voiceover, which featured an amazing timbral and this has been an important device score by composer John Williams for me. My videos often play on the and percussionist Stomu Yamashta. relationship between text and image I wanted to feature a score that was and identify with certain ideas about not overly melodic, so I worked film and illusion central to structural/ with percussionist David Lacey, an materialist filmmaking of the 1970s. improvising musician who uses a lot of extended techniques. He recorded But one of the reasons I wanted to use a bank of sounds that I could use to music in such a prominent way in this construct the score, which I made in work was an observation that nature collaboration with another musician ˆThe Known World (video still) documentaries are very heavily scored. Andrew Fogarty. I used music as Often, musical score is used in a very another tool, a ‘building block’ in heavy-handed way to add dramatic the construction of this video work, Jennifer Brady was born in Dublin, Ireland (1983) and received an MA in Visual tension to particular scenes, implanting just as I would use a script, visual or Arts Practices (First Class Honours) from the Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, a human notion of filmic ‘drama’ onto field recordings. This has been a new Design and Technology (2010) and an undergraduate degree from the National the animal world. In this way, nature departure for me, afforded through College of Art and Design, Dublin (2005). She has exhibited widely in Ireland, documentaries tend to be absurdly this project. Andrew also developed the including recent solo shows in Mermaid Arts Centre, Dublin (July 2011) and 126 anthropomorphized, something that is electronic part of the score at the end gallery, Galway (2010), for Tulca 2010 and screening of work in The LAB as part of abundantly evident in the soap-opera- of the work, made from a combination the Quantified Self exhibition (2011). Selected group shows include Public Gesture, like Meerkat Manor TV series. of manipulated field recordings of The Lab, Dublin (2010), Flicks: The Cinematic in Art curated by Cliodhna Shaffrey, birdsong at Lough Lannagh and a the Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda (2009) and Sounds Like Art, Draíocht, Dublin synthesizer. (2009). She has presented artistic research at the In These Troubled Times project led by artist Jesse Jones, and recent awards include Arts Council Visual Arts Bursary (2011) and Travel and Training Award (2012). Her work has been purchased for the AIB art collection 29

‘The melancholy came from a number of different places. The environment on and around ACROSS THE LOUGH | THE PERFORMANCE a lake changes so much. CORPORATION One minute it’s a peaceful, pastoral and calming place, the next minute it’s wild Across the Lough is an intimate theatrical experience for an audience of three, who are ferried across Lough Lannagh by a boatman/performer on a small rowing boat. On this journey, the boatman and sole performer delivers a powerful monologue, and threatening, but most which meditates on themes of life and death and includes abundant mythical references. The work was written by Tom Swift, directed by Louise Lowe and often there can be an air of performed by Steve Blount.

INTERVIEWER loneliness about it. And that You have been to the forefront of theatre-based public art. Would it be fair to say that our reading the practices of theatre has changed and developed hugely in the ten loneliness and sense of hidden years since The Performance Corporation has been in existence? TOM SWIFT depths comes through so often Yes, I think the whole concept of what theatre is has changed and continues to change. I think there’s a lot of really exciting work going on. When The Performance Corporation started we didn’t have a clear plan, other than to try to in folklore and myth.’ make exciting work. Our move into site-specific work was somewhat driven by the fact that we had no money to rent out a venue. And once we got a taste for being Tom Swift ‘outside the box’ we began to ‘think outside the box’. Certainly, to the general non- theatre going public theatre is still Synge, Friel, Murphy, The Abbey, The Gate and the amateur drama scene. But the reality is that people are making all sorts of work 30 LANDMARK 31

labour of the production; the acting, the Performance Corporation. That doesn’t setting, the movement, the writing, the mean they have to ‘participate’ in that collectiveness of audience, it’s all a feat embarrassing way typical of some in traditional theatre, but sometimes children’s theatre, but it does mean the its pace can be too formalised for me. audience have to be aware that they are Is what you are interested in almost the playing a role in the drama. opposite of this construct, in that the audience is not outside of a production, Our challenge is to make them but inside the work? understand that they are playing SWIFT their role, while allowing them to feel Yes, very much so. I suppose with comfortable with that, and making it our work we’re looking for ‘naturally clear where the boundaries we won’t occurring theatre’. We want to mine cross are… and the context also limits occasions, social conventions and to how much we want them to engage. situations that are naturally theatrical Of course you can’t control the level of – where there’s a kind of interaction audience engagement, and sometimes that makes sense as theatre, but is it can be disruptive when the audience ˆAcross the Lough (performance still) not inside a formal theatre building. feels too comfortable (wanting to have In Across the Lough, my impression a chat with the actor mid-play) but that has no relation to that classic ‘write of headphones. So theatre has cross- of getting in a boat and being rowed that unpredictability can also lead to a play, put it on’ model. We have people pollinated with lots of art forms and across a lake seemed very much like beautiful and powerful moments. devising plays and performances as ideas and the Irish theatre sector is one of these instances. There’s a INTERVIEWER ensembles, we have people using very, very diverse. kind of contract between oarsman I imagine that when theatre is discussed their own life experiences and self- INTERVIEWER and passengers, in just the way there in the public art context, there is performing, we have crossovers The spectacle of theatre – its is between performer and theatre an idea that there is a mass appeal between gaming and theatre, we have movement, the confluence of reality audience. When we are making of participatory performance. It’s documentary theatre using anything and unreality – I find very beautiful work, and when I personally am interesting that this work in Mayo was from diaries to court transcripts as the visually and aurally. But sometimes, writing the work, I’m thinking about so quiet, intimate, almost poetic. The basis for performance. We even have perhaps because it’s not an art form the audience, because the audience actor Steve Blount was perfectly cast. theatre where there are no performers, don’t I know well, the very unreality are characters in the work of The Can you talk a little about writing for just the audience member and a pair of theatre can be odd; observing the 32 LANDMARK 33

such closeness, for Steve, the Ferryman knew I would have an utterly captive We all talked a lot while Steve rowed about scale, and the challenges of it for and the audience? audience – unless they decided to jump us round and round this small lake your writing. SWIFT overboard!. Not a lot of words were and we tried out a few approaches to SWIFT In terms of public art, I think the needed. And this was reinforced when storytelling. And we asked Steve to Certainly it’s great to have a huge immediate reaction is to think about I interviewed some local older men sing a song – the only one he seemed canvas to work with. Theatre should something that will reach the masses in Castlebar. They had a way of telling to know was ‘Do You Love an Apple’. have an element of wonder and and give ‘bang for your buck’. But their life story with incredible economy And later on it seemed an absolutely surprise, and if you can take people sometimes that’s a trap and leads to of words. And yet, reading between the perfect song for the piece – a kind of into a huge space, especially one they work that isn’t truthful and doesn’t lines, you could feel there were hidden sea shanty with a dark underbelly. haven’t been in before, then you’ve properly respond to the environment depths of unspoken emotions, regrets, got a head start on the wonder front. and the community. When, I first passions. Steve was always the actor we I think that archetypal stories and For Swampoodle that scale certainly visited Lough Lannagh I was drawn to had in mind for Across the Lough. He legends are always a starting point for seemed to work in emphasising one the lake and the idea of show in a boat looks the part, he’s physically tall and my work. There were swans in the lake of the themes of the play, which was was almost immediate – one of those strong. He has great charisma, and yet in County Meath, and I had a memory the smallness of individual human very simple, clean ideas that you wish he can play with those hidden depths of of swans on Lough Lannagh, so that endeavour and existence when placed you could have all the time! character so well. kind of led us down the avenue of against the backdrop of history. looking at the Children of Lir. Then I INTERVIEWER INTERVIEWER went away and wrote a draft of the two Personally, the intimacy of the piece Who and what do you think of as Across the Lake was melancholic and central scenes in the piece, the two was partly a reaction to the previous formative in your writing decisions and yet soothing; there were references to stories told by the boatman. We tried play I’d written. That was a piece practices? a shortness of time, death, suicide, them out and they seemed to work – at staged in a semi-derelict 9,000-seat SWIFT failure, the loss of male identity through least that’s what I was told. sports arena in Washington, D.C. It This was very much a collaborative migration and our relationship with was a hugely ambitious project with process with the director Louise Lowe INTERVIEWER nature – all pertinent to the underside a huge venue and a large audience. and the actor Steve Blount. We did Prior to the production of Across the of contemporary life. Our relationship But it was very challenging, too, and two ‘development days’ when we went Lake for Landmark, you had written with nature is complex. The paradox certainly there were moments where out in a rowing boat in County Meath. Swampoodle, which was really quite of a real need for urban spaces which the personal connection between The first time we had very few firm an epic achievement by all accounts. are close to rural environments seems audience and performers got lost – and ideas in our heads – I was interested This was produced on a massive site fascinating. Can you talk about the the words too, due to the huge echo in the mythic stories that related to the in Washington, D.C. – a vastly different social and geographic contexts of the in the venue. For Across the Lough, I experience of making a boat journey. scale. I am interested in your thoughts commission and this sadness? 34 LANDMARK

SWIFT and weaving disparate strands into The melancholy came from a number something new. These strands were of different places. The environment encountered either through personal on and around a lake changes so much. experience and concerns, local One minute it’s a peaceful pastoral research, stories I was told about the and calming place, the next minute lake, and myths I already knew. So it’s wild and threatening, but most you have the Children of Lir, which is often there can be an air of loneliness a deeply sad story, the Greek legend about it. And that loneliness and sense of Charon the boatman of dead souls of hidden depths comes through so (death again), life stories told me by often in folklore and myth. When I was older men and women about their life researching for the play, there were far experiences (taking the boat to England more dark and tragic stories coming and all that entailed) and then you have through than I expected. the silences of the boat journey, which I hope gives the audience a rare chance Like every attempt at creativity, to reflect, think, experience a moment writing the play was about gathering away from life’s hectic demands.

The Performance Corporation was founded in 2002 by Jo Mangan and Tom Swift with a mission to create ‘daring performance adventures in surprising places’. We base our work on big ideas, rigorous physicality, razor-sharp writing, thrilling visuals and the sheer joy of discovering new dramatic possibilities across all art forms and media. We like to take risks and create work where others fear to tread. We have jumped off the towering sand dunes on Ireland’s Atlantic coast, tip-toed through the Gothic halls of Edinburgh’s Old Medical School, electrified a crumbling sports arena in Washington, D.C, driven at top speed through Dublin’s dangerous docklands, and danced a dance in the shadow of a tree in a Kenyan fishing village. We also host The SPACE Programme, a multi-arts research and development residency at our base in Castletown House, Co. Kildare. And we’re also hatching plans for Big House, a site-specific arts festival to be held in Castletown in 2013.

Across the Lough (Audio Installation still). › 37

LOUGH LANNAGH RIPPLES | ROB & MATT VALE ‘We are responsive, we absorb spaces and people and ruminate on and with them to develop our ideas. And Lough Lannagh Ripples was a choreographed performance with light and sound on the new bridge at Lough Lannagh. Having worked in collaboration with the alternative to public art students from St Gerald’s school, Davitt College and members of the Mayo Concert Orchestra, this carefully orchestrated light display was created by the subtle, is private art, which doesn’t repetitive gestures of its large cast whose cumulative movement created a stunning audio-visual experience. The performance was filmed and featured in the Landmark sound at all appealing to us’. programme as an outdoor projection. INTERVIEWER The works you make are highly interactive, and you often involve large groups of Rob & Matt Vale people in realising them. A surge in participatory practices, shifting the role of viewer as passive spectator to that of active participant and producer has been one of the hallmarks of twentieth-century art. How would you describe the participatory aspect of your working processes and its role within your practice in general? R & M VALE The participation aspect is critical to our practice. Wherever possible we look to work with others to generate the artworks themselves, and to try to avoid a separation of workshop activity from final piece. If you look at many of our works they simply wouldn’t exist without participation from the outset – The Penny Drops, oor to door, and especially Lough Lannagh Ripples – these projects start as an idea 38 LANDMARK 39

that requires participation. You can of scale escalates. The key for us, make them in your head quite easily, though, is trying to produce something but it’s about putting everything in for and of its surroundings that place to allow people the opportunity develops through an interaction with to participate, then hoping that they that space specifically. So for Lough do. I hope that our work encourages Lannagh, whilst the space is large, an interaction with artwork and the experiences people have there are technology that is not passive, that smaller. We liked the gentle ripples allows true involvement in a one-off across the lake surface, the interplay event. between the mountain beyond and INTERVIEWER the circular walk, and wanted to create There is an exciting tension within something that referenced these your work between the large scale of elements. We loved the idea of all of the projects and the relatively simple these individuals creating a very small gestures and actions enacted within gesture, which through repetition them, which cumulatively produce became large, but gentle. Other spaces a high impact. For Lough Lannagh can take great spectacle and scale, as ˆLough Lannagh Ripples (performance still). Ripples, this impact was produced by they have this about their character, so the collective action of performers on we work with what we find. R & M VALE it exists as a memory of something the bridge, yet it avoided spectacle. Are INTERVIEWER It’s a key part of our practice that you saw, something you were at with these considerations in relation to scale I am interested in how your work the experience of the works is what others. It can take months to create and spectacle important within your often culminates in unique, one-off matters, and that this is a shared some of the works, and there is a huge work? events, which draw large audiences experience. We’re often asked how sense on our side of the importance of – gatherings of sorts. As these works R & M VALE it feels, given that the artworks we getting that 15 minutes right, because are temporary, lived experiences, their I think they are, yes. There are produce predominately last for about you often only get one chance, but I legacy forms part of the collective elements of spectacle when the work 15 minutes and are then gone, but I think the audiences feel some of that memory. To what extent does this gets very large – inevitably when pieces think that’s part of the appeal. You are sense of the one-off as well. We’ll notion of ‘gathering’ and collective require large numbers of projectors working in the present for the next spend a lot of time trying to think about experience factor into your thinking? and sound systems, road closures, piece, and once a work has happened it where an audience will be, how they’ll street diversions and so on, the sense exists as recorded footage, but mostly stand next to one another, what view 40 LANDMARK 41

they will get of the work, and these damage to it, or having to hang things INTERVIEWER within this piece’ or ‘let’s set this work things will really impact on the piece. off it and so on. Interestingly, for the You work in collaboration with one to a poetry-based underscoring’ and we The angle of the torches in the Ripples projection work it’s often as important another on the overlapping elements know we can produce that ‘in- house’, piece, for example, was choreographed what buildings surround a potential of sound, visual, and in the case of if you like. We all do it and it’s a real to work based on where the largest site as the site itself, as these have to Lough Lannagh Ripples, choreography. asset, as it opens up possibilities before part of the audience would be. It’s house all the equipment, so the whole Can you expand a little on this primary you’ve settled on an idea. For Matt wonderful to gather people together lay of the land becomes key. The works collaboration between each other as and I, it’s sort of second nature now. for a shared event, often to experience often happen after dark as well, when artists? It’s hard to pull a piece into the bits a space they already know in a wholly buildings take on different functions, R & M VALE he does and the bits I do; Matt tends different way, and what we aim for is or are sleeping, and we come and I think that because Matt and I are to lead on musical composition and I that the next time they pass by that wake them up again as something brothers, we have a shorthand way of guess I lead on visuals, but not always, place, they remember how they saw it completely new. Taunton Stop Line approaching projects, where we can and we know what the other will do when it became one of our artworks. Live was an incredible project for us, look at them and bring our different and how, so it works well. INTERVIEWER not least because the physical effort thoughts and styles together based on INTERVIEWER Recently, you made another work, of projecting on 100 pill boxes in ten our backgrounds. I’ll throw an idea Finally, British journalist Jonathan Jones Taunton Stop Line Live, in Somerset, days was hugely daunting, but what out without necessarily knowing if it has decried public art as ‘a production which illuminated some of the 300 was really interesting was the sense can be done, and Matt’s brain will go line for boring art, and mavericks have military bunkers built during World War of pilgrimage involved – we would into technical mode and I’ll get a sense no place in its dreary ethic.’ How would II that create the Taunton Stop Line. locate these little buildings on maps or from his expression of whether we’re you respond to this statement? What Many of your works literally shine a light GPS by day, then at night would push just asking for trouble or whether this are the key aspects of working in the on forgotten or overlooked landmarks, our equipment in a buggy to them, kernel of an idea can grow into a real public realm, that makes it rich and vital sites and structures, as well as on often accompanied by a little group of thing. That can happen the other way territory? observers, and we’d all be stood there wholly familiar buildings. Can you talk round too. But I think the main thing R & M VALE in a farmer’s field as this little concrete a little about your engagement with the is that we have different skills that we I don’t believe that ‘boring art’ stems box was illuminated for 5 minutes built environment through technology? know we can draw on to create work. out of the fact that it’s public, I think it out of the dark, with a little bit of its R & M Vale Our sister, Alice is a choreographer arrives from those involved not being past life and message projected on I think what the projectors and and dancer, our other sister Ella is an creative or looking at a project in a it. They were really intimate one-off technology allow you to do is to actress, director and writer, so as we new way. If by ‘maverick’ he means experiences, linked together through physically interact with, to morph are looking at projects we might think, someone who intentionally sets out the work. and change a space without causing ‘Let’s choreograph some movement to alienate, to work in isolation and to 42 LANDMARK 43

cause controversy, then of course this them to develop our ideas. And the Rob Vale is one half of Illuminos, with his brother Matt, creating visually inventive, is likely to be difficult to square in a alternative to public art is private art, memorable artworks and experiences. Their practice is inherently collaborative and fully public environment, because there which doesn’t sound at all appealing cross-disciplinary. Whilst their work incorporates new digital media and complex are stakeholders involved who will to us. equipment, they are interested in combining these new technologies with notions have to pick up the pieces afterwards. of the curio, the Victorian penny machines or Edwardian automata, visual wonders Artists who want to show their work to and spectacles that amused, engaged and intrigued. Recent works such as The others in any form are in a sense public Penny Drops/Ca fait Tilt or Kaleidoscope and Time and Tide seek to recreate and artists, and if they want a response elevate this visual experience for the contemporary society through digital means. from the public to their work, then They seek to create work that is a representation of spaces, visual poems that coax they need to encourage that public to the viewer into considering a place, playing with their expectations. make it clear that they are welcome to respond to the work. This doesn’t Previous works where this can be seen include a symphonic film capturing the in any way mean that you should thoughts and feelings of community musicians in a church in Barnsley (Orkestra, produce something that bows to the in collaboration with Dominic Moore) the beauty, magic and majesty of Tatton Park lowest common denominator, but it sewn together through dance in Le Ballet De Cour, or the spectacular 100-metre does mean that barriers to engagement projection of hundreds of participants and their front doors on the Le Mans shouldn’t be thrown about for the Crescent in Bolton (door to door). Brought up in Derbyshire, and coming from a sake of it. I think that there is a certain creative family (one of their younger sisters is an actor, the other a choreographer) level of hiding bad art behind a wall they pursued the arts via degrees in music and fine art respectively. of ‘I don’t care what you think’ or ‘you won’t understand it’. People do Matt went on to study lighting and sound at Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in understand if invited to see. Asking 80 London, and Rob undertook an MA in Contemporary Fine Art Practices at Leeds people to stand on a bridge and wave Met, and worked as Digital Fine Art Lecturer at Lancaster University for three torches around in the rain could, if not years, and as Arts Projects Manager for Lime, in Manchester. They have exhibited explained, sound like a fairly alienating internationally in France, the US and Ireland, and were nominated for the 2010 conceptual work, but for those who Northern Arts Prize. were encouraged to take part and view the concepts behind it, the work became, I hope, self-explanatory. For us, we are responsive, we absorb spaces and people and ruminate on and with 45

STILL LIFE IN GREEN AND RED | IAN WILSON ‘My public art work over the past seven years has opened up a new expressive and conceptual world to me, Over the period of about a year, Ian Wilson set about collecting snippets of speech and recording conversations which offered examples of optimism. His travels one which I think has great brought him to places like Ballintubber, Partry, Glen, Ballindine, Mayo Abbey, Glen Abbey, Balle and Tourmakeady. Interested in how people were responding communicative, musical and to the economic fall, he particularly wanted to talk with people making positive and proactive choices, and to record their responses to the changes they were experiencing. The work included a soundtrack featuring recorded interviews with even social potential.’ local people speaking about the mood in the county and the austere economic climate. Part music, part sound art, part poetry, the result is a surprisingly optimistic snapshot of everyday life in Co. Mayo. The seven movements of Still Ian Wilson Life in Green and Red was performed at Knock Shrine, a school in Claremorris, in Ballintubber Abbey and at Lough Lannagh.

INTERVIEWER Music is a highly social and primary language; is also one which offers both private and public resonances. It seemed to me that this was addressed in the various strategies you brought to the residency and final work. What were the dimensions and interplay between the found or recorded sounds and those that you have composed? 46 LANDMARK 47

WILSON is so privately centred. The residency A very important element in this brief seems to have had an ambition work was my collaboration with to include your presence, ideas and computer-music composer Stephen responses to the geographic and social McCourt, who made the soundtrack changes in certain areas in Mayo. for the work using my suggestions WILSON and recordings as guidelines. Working One allows me to do the other, really. with Stephen enabled a sophisticated The intention is to involve local people treatment of the recorded interviews from wherever I work as a public and field recordings I made. Once artist in the making of the piece of the soundtrack was complete I then music – not in terms of them having wrote the music, which the quartet a direct musical or conceptual input, plays live along with the soundtrack but rather, in this case, by focusing on and, with seven movements involved, I what interviewees have to say on the allowed myself to use a broad range of theme of the project (‘Optimism’ in approaches, from the more personal, this instance) and then finding a way intimate kind of writing closer to some to bring parts (or in one case all) of of my ‘non-public art’ work (the first those interviews into the work. That two movements, for instance) to a more mostly worked in the Mayo piece by ‘public’ approach which incorporates finding appropriate fragments – stand- well-known tunes, such as in the third out phrases or sentences – which and final movements. In this way I encapsulated the essence of what the get to satisfy my own artistic needs as interviewee is saying. I then created well as bearing in mind that the public what I thought was a suitable and needs to feel it has been included in the appropriate musical context for those work’s evolution. fragments to be heard in, which meant INTERVIEWER thinking in terms of an overall musical How to you address the duality of a mood and then working from there. role like resident composer? Its role The text fragments are important, is social and public, when creativity ˆStill Life in Green and Red (promotional poster) 48 LANDMARK 49

but the music has to work as well; compositions have been performed in otherwise it’s just wallpaper. the Royal Albert Hall, Carnegie Hall, INTERVIEWER the Proms, the Venice Biennale, etc. Still Life in Green and Red covered – you are communicating with really an arc of references from the rebel diverse audiences, all with varying song ‘Sean South from Garryowen’ to musical experience. Can you talk a little the Fukushima nuclear power plant about this and your relationships with disaster. You grew up at a time and in a musicians and the audience? place when there was huge division in WILSON Ireland. Has this influenced your work At the root of all this activity is a desire and working interests? to keep composing, to keep trying WILSON new things and not to repeat myself. Surprisingly not, or at least in no I have a restless imagination, which conscious way I’m aware of. The is sometimes too ambitious for my thing that actually politicized me far own good, but then sometimes that’s more than growing up in the North (if how my most interesting and unusual ˆConTempo Quartet in rehearsal anything, that made me a liberal and works get made – blind ambition. Having been a professional composer I will just say that my public art work open person) was living in Yugoslavia My public artworks are where I do for nearly 25 years now, I count myself over the past seven years has opened at the time of the Kosovo war; suddenly consider the audience because those very fortunate to have a number of up a new expressive and conceptual finding yourself in a place where works need to have some concrete good friends who are musicians, people world to me, one which I think has world media and NATO attention was points of relevance to people. In other I like to write for, people who like to great communicative, musical and even focused was a sobering experience. works I tend (selfishly!) to think only of myself and what I want to hear in play my music, and people who are social potential. INTERVIEWER a new work – that’s usually all the fun to hang out with. This is one of INTERVIEWER As one of Ireland’s most successful encouragement I need. Of course, the biggest joys of being a composer, Still Life in Green and Red has seven composers working in public contexts some commissions have more specific that developing of rewarding, strong, movements, each with their own – for example, you have had public briefs than others and so certain long-term artistic relationships, and ‘texts’; Church, Art, Parade, School, art commissions in Wexford, Dun criteria perhaps come into play, but it’s ongoing, which is very exciting. Meditation, Trains and GAA. It is Laoghaire -Rathdown, Donegal, etc., I usually have enough freedom to I have friends who are writers, poets compelling how you have edited and and a range of settings from hospital express myself. and visual artists as well as performing arranged the recorded speech of the units to youth orchestras; your musicians. 50 LANDMARK 51

participants. You were bringing forth the of whatever area it’s situated in, those Ian Wilson has written nearly one hundred works, including chamber operas, voice and reincorporating it into your people must recognise something of concertos, string quartets, a range of orchestral and chamber music and multimedia composition, almost working as editor themselves in it, and perhaps even pieces. His compositions have been performed and broadcast on six continents, or director. Can you talk about this? Are know that some of them participated or and presented at festivals including the BBC Proms, Venice Biennale and Frankfurt you interested in literature and film? fed into the genesis and development Book Fair, and at venues such as New York’s Carnegie Hall, London’s Royal Albert WILSON of that work. This way I have of Hall and Vienna’s Musikverein. I am very interested in both literature interacting with people in my public and film, but not in the sense that I artworks is the best way I know of He is a member of Aosdána, Ireland’s state-sponsored body of creative artists, feel they influence how I compose. involving them, and if I had done the and in recent years has been AHRB Research Fellow at the University of Ulster, What I am also interested in is music same research in a different part of the Composer-in-Association with California’s Camerata Pacifica ensemble and An theatre, and perhaps this is where the country, the resulting piece would have Foras Feasa Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Dundalk Institute of Technology. From more ‘dramatic’ approach to the use sounded completely different – that’s 2010 to 2013 he is Associate Composer with the Ulster Orchestra. His music is of ‘found’ (or ‘elicited’, perhaps) texts a testament to Mayo, and to any place I published by Ricordi (London) and Universal Edition. comes from in some recent works. work like this in. Actually, the first piece I used this INTERVIEWER approach in was my Double Trio from Is there a particular school of twentieth- 2008, the result of a one-year public century composition that you are art residency in the Glencullen area influenced by, e.g. minimalism, neo- of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County classicism, neo-romanticism, serialism? Council. I realised then that it’s a WILSON fantastic way to incorporate real people, No, not really. I have always had a very their thoughts and ideas into a piece broad musical taste, incorporating of music, which is normally much everything from rock and indie to jazz, more abstract. For so many years it contemporary classical and much else was visual art which cornered the besides. There are certain principles public art arena (and it still does, but of taste, balance, colour and drama I there’s much more scope for other always try to bring into play, but beyond artforms to get involved now). I feel that I try to always write music which very strongly that for a piece of public feels ‘true’ to me. art to have meaning for the inhabitants ‘All of our installations are 53 about some shift in normal perception, and this almost always means taking ON SIGHT | CLEARY & CONNOLLY something away: show only what moves; show only what is still; show only 13 points of the body; show only surfaces. On Sight is an installation of four permanent video/sculptural works at Lough It’s interesting to think that Lannagh exploring the principles of binocular vision and human perception. Taking the form of viewing posts, each sculpture features a video tableau of the lake made for the left and right eye which, though filmed from the same position, include this is a strictly artistic strategy: differing visual information, which the brain tries to consolidate into a stereo a scientist would always think image. The resultant images are both haunting and beguiling. about what he could add in order to augment perception, to expand our mental capacities, or to extend the body in some way.’

Cleary & Connolly ˆOn Sight (video still) 54 LANDMARK 55

INTERVIEWER Looking back now I suppose what still that a museum, a house interior or a perception, and this almost always The artist Michael Fortune mentioned connects us with that work (should I lakeside. means taking something away: show that he remembered some of your be calling it work?) is that Debordian INTERVIEWER only what moves; show only what is early work as being performance- or tradition of art as connection as The recent books In the Mind’s Eye still; show only 13 points of the body; action-based disruptions in galleries opposed to commodity. We have never and Musicophila, neurologist Oliver show only surfaces. It’s interesting and institutional spaces. This is so sold a work in our lives (apologies Sacks addresses the human experiences to think that this is a strictly artistic interesting, as many of your more to anyone who has bought anything of sight and sound. He is interested in strategy: a scientist would always think recent works in public spaces provide from us) but we have made a world dimensions of perception, particularly about what he could add in order to structures and frameworks that offer of connections, not just with places, they are absent or distorted. You have augment perception, to expand our little moments of disruption which but with people. Visitors to our been working with a public research mental capacities, or to extend the body encourage us consider to be in a place shows are never passive spectators, laboratory in Paris specialising in in some way… differently. Can you talk through your but participants. Participation has the experimental and development I don’t know Merleau-Ponty well, I’m thoughts about introducing these become the central notion of our psychology of perception philosopher, afraid, but I would follow Deleuze’s devices and technologies into public artistic practice. We think of the works Merleau-Ponty, whose works centred idea that there is no primacy between places? as ‘observer-participation’ projects: on perception as a total experience the three disciplines (philosophy, art CLEARY & CONNOLLY extracting moving bodies from the and who was acutely aware of the and science) that we use to explore Michael has a long memory! Touchy fixed place; transforming them into failure of science in its regard of this reality. It was amazing to think when seems like a century ago now. We were lines or dots or pure colour moving totality. At Landmark you spoke about we first started working with scientists cheeky little runts (though far too old through the present moment. The engagements you have made with a few years ago, it was the scientists to be runts) running around getting one consistent technological element scientists. Have these connections who came looking for us. Thi-Bich thrown out of museums and upsetting has been the camera, or rather the thrown up some interesting mutual Doan from the College de France was all the nice people. In fact, most of different strategies we have come up absences and perceptions? looking for artists who were interested with for introducing cameras into in collaborating with scientific what we did in the ’90s might be CLEARY & CONNOLLY places, into situations. In Touchy, it was researchers. From her point of view, described as elaborate practical jokes: In fact I’m reading The Mind’s Eye right a hidden camera in the museum; in Le researchers had much to learn from we tried to create a cheekily subversive now, and I’m amazed that we made Boulevard, it was camera zoomed onto artists’ less rigorous way of thinking: anarchy in well-ordered institutions. On Sight without having read it. Sacks the street from a balcony; in Moving scientists could think vertically or Not exactly a career our parents would always starts with brain damage, and Dublin, it was a steadicam wandering laterally, but they found it difficult to do have been proud of, but we were young the struggle to find a way to live with through the city; and in most of our both at the same time. – relatively – and in true Debordian it and bypass it. All of our installations recent installations, it’s the fixed It has been so interesting to discover traditions, we rarely thought about the are about some shift in normal future. camera in the exhibition space, be how real scientific research is done. 56 LANDMARK 57

They work with incredible patience, CLEARY & CONNOLLY any way influence the choice of location immersion in nature. I am really content to add a comma to a sentence I suppose I have been thinking that of your home, but a certain amount interested in this tension and viewers’ that has been composed by a collective is so interesting that ribbon and of pragmatism does lead to a more experience of context. effort over decades. I am sure it is that one-off housing developments in ordered environment. At the same CLEARY & CONNOLLY patience that makes this a scientific and rural environments now challenge time, the French pragmatic spirit is The Lock-in-a-Box is certainly packaged: not an artistic age. On the other hand, our development patterns, not from very repressive with regard to creativity. the OPW built us a beautiful crate that once we got to know some of them, aesthetic perspectives, but with more We would never have got to do a project we suspended in the long gallery at we were surprised to see how much basic challenges such as waste, water, like On Sight in France, quite simply Farmleigh, with all the mirrors and frustration that slow development transport, energy, etc., and this is so because we hadn’t ever done it before, screen set up inside, and four pairs causes them, and how much they relevant to towns in Mayo and places so they couldn’t be 100 per cent sure of lenses on the four sides of the admired the free flow of ideas that art such as Castlebar. I think a comparison that it would work. box inviting spectators to experience can liberate. When we first planned on between French and Irish towns of INTERVIEWER our binocular experiment with working with ideas that had come from similar scale can be very telling with Lough Lannagh. It’s a very different At the time of the launch of your Patrick Cavanagh’s work, we had our regard to your question. French towns experience to what is offered to people artworks at Landmark programme you doubts that a professor from Harvard really do huddle around; as you’re walking around the lake. For one also had a major exhibition curated directing a perception laboratory for the driving through the countryside you thing, there is no real lake to look by Vincent O’Shea, Hall of Mirrors at CNRS would be interested in working can see them on the horizon, the up at. In Castlebar, it’s the moment Farmleigh in Dublin. There was a work with little known artists like ourselves. houses gathered like a herd of animals they take their eyes away from the titled Lough in a Box which has viewing But when we called him, he came over almost. At home you almost don’t see lenses and look at the world in front points on four sides. It is a suspended to see us the very next day! a town arrive, it sneaks up on you with of them that most people told us the packing crate into which the viewer just one house, then a couple more, or installation ‘wrecks your head’ (which INTERVIEWER peers at the panorama of the lake. In maybe an estate, and then they’re all I now understand is a compliment in Having worked in a range of public this context, with its mode of display, on top of you. I think this is because the West). The box is a sort of foldable contexts – Paris, London and Dublin, the viewer is as a voyeur of nature, in fact we are an utterly unpragmatic travel kit of the On Sight project, with but also in Irish towns and cities which it seems to me is commoditised people, and so the imaginary notion of no view of the real lake to look up such as Tallaght, Limerick, Tralee and packaged. A similar film is installed the home, that sense of independence, at, more like the stereoscopes you and Castlebar – and as you’re both in the park; here, the four filmic of spreading out and having space would have found in Victorian living architects, I wanted to ask about vignettes literally mirror the position around you is so much more important rooms with photographic views of your thoughts about the future and of the camera. And in this context the than the practical issues of drain Niagara Falls, except that the two video conditions of the Irish town for its films work as layering, which disrupts lengths. I love this way of being; clearly, scenes challenge the eyes to make citizens and users. the senses and provides a heightened of course, drain lengths shouldn’t in a converging stereo image from their 58 LANDMARK 59

repetitions and contradictions. As for your own discipline. There are video ‘commoditised’, well, I’m just going artists who work with dance, but only to have to take offence. How dare you with dance; there are artists with accuse us of trying to sell our art! architectural backgrounds who make INTERVIEWER architectonic installations; there are There are few mid-career architects artists who specialize in participative in Ireland such as Dominic Stevens, workshops; there are artists who Tom de Paor, Gráinne Shaffrey, who are describe their work as ‘art-science’… making really interesting interventions We are often introduced into these and dialogues between the traditions milieux, and often we look (or at least and problematic of visual arts and the we feel) like dilettantes because we built world. Mayo County Manager don’t do only that. It’s not only in Peter Hynes also an architect, and France. People always ask us why has a background visual culture that we never participate in festivals like is notable in terms of the value he Ars Electronica in Linz, a massive has clearly placed in the arts. To me convention of electronic artists. But your practice shows an interest in even if they were interested in our mobility and engagement; even your partly electronic work, what would be manipulation of film could be read as the interest for us? being taking up aspects of this space too. It’s refreshing to see how much more CLEARY & CONNOLLY receptive this country is to multi- ˆOn Site Installations Certainly, when we look back on our disciplinarity. A project like On Sight last few years, we have connected would never have gotten out of the with so many other disciplines – with blocks in France. We would have dance, with computer programming, explained that we wanted to explore the Here we found Gaynor Seville, who answer ‘yes’ to the questions above, with urbanism, with education, landscape using binocular vision, and believed in the project from the very and maybe it will happen, in which with perceptive science – and to be someone on the jury would have asked, beginning and supported it all the way case we will have Mayo County Council honest, we almost see it as a problem, ‘Have you ever worked with binocular through. If we propose a similar project to thank. especially in France where, as you vision before? Have you ever worked in France next year, we will be able to know, they expect you to stick to with the landscape before?’ 60 LANDMARK 61

Anne Cleary and Denis Connolly both studied Architecture in Dublin in the 1980s, before moving to Paris in 1990. Their work combines elements of performance, documentary, experimental film, installation, writing and photography. They have developed a practice which they call ‘observer participation’, bringing the public and other collaborators into works that they call ‘entanglements’. This has led them into partnerships with musicians, dancers, writers and teachers. They have become filmmakers, writers, photographers and even computer programmers.

In 2006 they created HereThereNowThen at LCGA in Limerick using the observer participation principle. These installations travelled widely before being regrouped for an exhibition entitled Pourquoi pas Toi? in the Centre Pompidou in Paris in winter 2008. A major public commission, Moving Dublin, brought them back to Dublin in 2006.

Their research often involves collaboration with public institutions. In 2008 they took part in a cycle of conferences with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique CNRS in Paris entitled Perceptions Art-Science. In Dance Ireland in Dublin, in the Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Their work develops laterally, often evolving rapidly and taking many forms, responding to the particular and individual needs of each project and context. They believe that art should be at the service of society, and their work is a constant enquiry into ˆOn Sight, walking tour. contemporary social and cultural questions.

They were the winners of the AIB Art Prize in 2009. 63

“There is a lineage in tradition that engages me. I have an LANDMARKS | ELAINE GRIFFIN interest in objects and intense detail, and how those two things work symbiotically to go beyond the given image or Landmarks is a sculpture trail of permanent bronze artworks positioned around Lough Lannagh which have been created in response to specific histories of the area. These small-scale sculptural works reveal traces of Castlebar’s recent and impression. More often it is distant past, including a piece of linen and a muller reminiscent of Castlebar’s linen industry and a replica of the hat believed to have been worn by General Humbert the positioning, juxtaposing, when he arrived into Castlebar in 1798. presentation or context for showing the work that lifts it out of the traditional”

Elaine Griffin

ˆBronze installation based on local flora. 64 LANDMARK 65

INTERVIEWER inhabited. The work has turned out to to develop them in inappropriate ways. battle that took place in Castlebar, the I was interested to read on your website be extremely prophetic. I think there is a way to go in terms of positioning of the piece also draws some of your thoughts on recent social In general I think that the mass how these spaces are envisaged and attention to the original lake level, and economic developments, which, consumerism and capitalism which realised and there is a responsibility in and the road that ran alongside it, you say, can place us in ‘situations [or drives our current social and economic managing, preserving and maintaining before the lake level dropped from choices] that restrict, entrap and isolate model does cause a lot of damage public space. the building of a mill race. A lot of us from our deeper selves’. What are and restriction to people, while INTERVIEWER the pieces work this way, in that the your thoughts about the meaning and masquerading under a the banner of Your works in the Landmark programme piece itself illustrates something importance of public spaces in towns freedom and necessity. Often working are small in scale, little sculptures which while its position points to something such as Castlebar, and the concept of off lower common denominators and punctuate the Lough Lannagh Walking else. Conceptual considerations were the park itself? feeding off insecurities, people are Loop, making a trail. Can you talk a little balanced with choosing works and GRIFFIN fodder for the market whether they about the decisions you made about the locations that would allow for a fairly The quote you have selected relates realise it or not. In many ways we are location of the works? even distribution around the walking really seeing where this model actually loop. Again, some decisions for the directly to a body of work which I first GRIFFIN ends up, with what is happening location of work were affected by showed in 2002, entitled Arrested From the creative point of view the economically today. I think public groundwork developments on site, Development. This body of work was site itself really offered the locations spaces in towns and cities are vital so once the concept was nailed down, a commentary on how I viewed the for the sculptures. The idea behind and offer us the counter and often the these issues formed the parameters for building boom in Ireland at the time the work was to encourage connection salve to the above. In many ways our the choosing of locations. and the spiralling consumerism and engagement in the users of the access and engagement with public that the then and current capitalist civic amenity on a broader platform, INTERVIEWER space, especially green space, is, I economic structure was fuelling. so each piece was situated in its place Your practice involves a use and feel, an anchor in life. Public spaces Everyone in Ireland was being pushed very intentionally – to highlight or understanding of traditional sculptural are free and are one of the few places to buy their own home. By 2002 it draw attention to something specific materials and skills, such as casting; where we can participate freely. There was evident to me that this was out of either directly in that spot or to call you do this in glass, bronze and china. is something very essential in that for control. A lot of people didn’t get at the viewer’s attention to something Your practice is not necessarily realised the community and there appear to be the time what I was trying to say with within their line of vision from in traditional forms. Your skill as a less and less opportunities for that to this work. It depicted people trapped in standing at that location. This can maker is apparent; when we spoke you happen in general in our society. That concrete containers covered in rubble, be well understood in the example mentioned that you are very interested being said I think public spaces are restricted and contorted both physically of the replica of General Humbert’s in the process of casting. challenging to engineer and it is very and emotionally by the structure they hat. Apart from highlighting the easy to make them overly contrived or 66 LANDMARK 67

GRIFFIN INTERVIEWER for the project. In addition, because GRIFFIN I would say that often my work is The sculptures are representational there were seven different elements It would be great if the works were realised in traditional forms. There of artefacts which relate to the or works in the group, I had to make viewed as totemic, but I’m not sure is a lineage in tradition that engages archaeology, history and ecology of selections that considered the other about that. For me they are totemic and me. I have an interest in objects and the location. Can you talk about the components in the group, so that they were devised in many ways to be so. intense detail, and how those two process of researching these objects, all hung together when viewed as a To be totemic suggests some collective things work symbiotically to go beyond and in particular those you found to be collection rather than individually. In awareness or acknowledgement of the given image or impression. More complex socially or historical? some cases the individual sculptures spiritual significance, and I’m not often it is the positioning, juxtaposing, GRIFFIN work symbiotically, like the medieval sure that as a whole, the viewers will presentation or context for showing the The process of researching for shoes and the contemporary footsoles make that level of association with work that lifts it out of the ‘traditional’. this project was multifaceted and and the circular ring fort dwelling and the work, although I’m sure some of In many ways, the individual protracted. In order to research, I had the ring fort plan overview. None of them will. In so far as they represent sculptures for this project could be read to separate the individual elements the objects were particularly complex the spirit of the place they are most as traditional representations, but for or threads connected with the place, socially. In historical terms, there was definitely totemic, and really, this is me, they are more like interventions, and seek out people, material or and always is the issue in local history why these forms were selected and interrupting the course of an institutions with relevant information. of conflicting and various versions of placed as they have been – to invite ordinary and sometimes distracted These ranged from local historians, events, functions and dates, etc. For the the viewer to consider the spirit of or perfunctory walk, calling upon the wildlife rangers, librarians and production of this work I very much this place that has witnessed so many walker to be here, now. archaeologists to working with some of aimed towards the most substantiated happenings over thousands of years. I am very much a maker and making the national museums and exploring and verified examples of things, so as I’m a strong believer in conservation feeds my thinking practice. Making their collections. There was much more to offer the viewer as close to the fact and how its success hinges on that has suffered a lot over the past decades, information available and gathered and the history of the place as was deeper engagement with the land or with fine art practice focusing on the to use than what was selected in the available. the place. In many ways this links back found object and concept more heavily. end. I had to consider budget along INTERVIEWER to the first question on the importance There is a lot of meaning, engagement with what components or elements Would you agree with an observation of public spaces. I think a lot of public and ownership for me in being able to lent themselves well to a visual of these works as totemic? Are these spaces get it wrong when they don’t conceive of and produce the work right representation or outcome, as well as works reminding us of the vicissitudes offer that invitation, which often serves through to installation. There are fewer what would be accessible to the public of life? Can you talk a little about the to alienate the public. We’ve seen that a people in a position to do that these and fulfil the requirements which I had meaning of some of the objects? lot in the past with public art. days; lots of artists farm out the making set out in terms of the concept overview of work. 68 LANDMARK 69

for the people who lived on that crannog and made and wore those shoes on this site thousands of years ago. The same would go for the reconstructed circular hazel- and-thatch house. Ultimately it’s about imagining living in that windowless smoky space, within the boundaries of the ring fort. Humbert’s hat is in stark contrast to these objects, with its opulent, decorative and foreign quality – a different snapshot in time, but from the same place. It is hoped that the objects, because they are more interventions than representations can facilitate a level of thinking that is deeper than just the notion of the mere replication of an historic object. To that end, it comes back around to the notion of being something totemic and spiritually significant.

Elaine Griffin lives and works in County Mayo. She has exhibited her work widely both in Ireland and Internationally. Her recent public commissions include works for Mayo VEC and Mayo County Council. Over the course of her career her work has been purchased and made for a number of state and private collections including Queens University, Dundalk UDC Municipal Collection,Kunstation Kleinsassen, Germany and the National Museum of Ireland. ˆBronze installation based on medieval shoe.

Really these works are markers as to intentionally selected because of their She is a skilled maker working in various media, including glass, concrete, bronze things both past and present on this resonances with the human body or and digital media. Elaine maintains a broad approach to realising artworks and site. For me, the term ‘vicissitudes’ being, as a way into the concept of is interested in practice contexts, her artworks are made in the mediums of print, carries with it a sense of loss or engaging and imagining. For example, sculpture, using glass, bronze, bone china, concrete and light, and digital media. misfortune, which is not something the medieval shoes on top of the these pieces are about. There is not a rock are of human scale. In the first Elaine lecturers at NCAD. She has been shortlisted for inclusion in the prestigious commentary on whether something instance, one can imaging wearing Coburg Glass Prize, Germany and received the Liam Walsh Award. In addition to was good or bad, or whether the past these on one’s own feet. After that and alongside her studio practice she has developed a number of projects which was better than the now. The focus initial engagement, their location have evolved from community centred engagements including work with Mayo is more on what has been or what is draws the gaze up the lake, to where Rape Crisis Centre, Mayo Women Support Services and MIA, Mayo Intercultural now, with the emphasis on calling the crannog is situated. The hope is Action. the viewer’s imagination to envisage that the follow-on thoughts will move those things. Many of the objects were towards imagining what life was like 70 LANDMARK

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Mayo County Council Arts Staff Anne McCarthy, Arts Officer Gaynor Seville, Public Art Coordinator Ann Marie McGing, Assistant Arts Officer Orlagh Heverin, Assistant Arts Officer Damien O’Connor, Disability Arts Coordinator Artists Fionnuala Hanahoe, www.fionnualahanahoe.com Jennifer Brady, www.jennifer-brady.com Tom Swift, theperformancecorporation.com Anne Cleary & Denis Connolly, www.connolly-cleary.com Rob and Matt Vale, www.robvale.co.uk Elaine Griffin, Ian Wilson, www.ianwilson.org.uk Associated Artists Aideen Barry, www.aideenbarry.com Michael Fortune, www.michaelfortune.ie Texts and Interview Sarah Searson, www.sarahsearson.com Graphic Design Eliane Pearce, http://elianepearcedesign.carbonmade.com Proofreading Parkbench Publishing Services, www.parkbenchps.com

With many thanks to the artists for their time and consideration in responding to these interviews.