CIRCA 124 CONTEMPORARY VISUAL CULTURE IN IRELAND SUMMER 2008 | ¤7.50 £5 US$12 | ISSN 0263-9475

c . ISSN 0263-9475 Contemporary visual culture in circa Ireland

______2 Editor Subscriptions Peter FitzGerald For our subscription rates please see bookmark, or visit Administration/ Advertising www.recirca.com where you can Barbara Knezevic subscribe online. ______Board Circa is concerned with visual Graham Gosling (Chair), Tara culture. We welcome comment, Byrne, Mark Garry, Georgina proposals and written Jackson, Darragh Hogan, Isabel contributions. Please contact Nolan, John Nolan, Hugh the editor for more details, Mulholland, Brian Redmond or consult our website www.recirca.com Opinions ______expressed in this magazine Contributing editors are those of the authors, not Brian Kennedy, Luke Gibbons necessarily those of the Board. ______Circa is an equal-opportunities Assistants employer. Copyright © Circa Amanda Dyson, Astrid Lucas, 2008 Seanán Oliver Manfred Kerr ______Contacts Designed/produced by Circa Peter Maybury 43 / 44 Temple Bar www.softsleeper.com Dublin 2 Ireland Printed by W & G Baird Ltd, tel / fax (+353 1) 679 7388 Belfast [email protected] www.recirca.com Printed on 115gsm + 250gsm Arctic the Matt ______c ______

______CIRCA 124 SUMMER 2008

3 Editorial 22 | Update 25 | Features 26 | Reviews 60 | Project 107 |

(front cover) Bea McMahon The last sandwich stand on earth (detail) 2007 watercolour and granulatedsugar on paper 26 x 32.5 cm courtesy the artist

22 Editorialc c . Peter FitzGerald shorthand, grand theory of sci-fi, the form sci-fi takes among some artists in Ireland is excitingly short-circuited; as Chris Fite-Wassilak outlines in his article here, these artists engage in a disturbing sci-fi of the present; no need for a future identity, the present one is odd enough!

As the Wall came tumbling down in 1989, the then chancellor of West Germany, Helmut Kohl, turned two state identities into one with what was probably undue haste. I liked the old East Berlin. When crossing to it via Checkpoint Charlie, the border officer told us that our visas were not valid, and that we would have to go to Alexanderplatz to change them before he could let us through; having disburdened himself of this officialese, he then let us through, probably as the only way of In the animated film Madagascar, four New York zoo reconciling himself with the fact that Alexanderplatz was animals wash up on an unfamiliar tropical shore. One of in East Berlin. A bit like the border officer, East Germany 23 them, Alex the lion, is about to undergo a major identity seems to have been a (pretty grim) place where things crisis in the absence of his normal supply of sirloin steak. worked somewhat, most of the time, with only the fallibility In Dublin, a ‘dead zoo’, the Natural History Museum, of the system to keep it human. Meanwhile, West Berlin is currently washing up on the unfamiliar shore of its own was a draw for youth from across West Germany, future. It’s a museum for which many in Ireland have great as residents were exempt from military service. Now there’s fondness, among them many an aspiring artist. Why? two halves of a city whose identity has been through In her article here, Sherra Murphy mentions one display the mill! In art terms, since ‘the Wall’, we had been hearing in particular, the badgers; its arrangement is more or less how Berlin was ‘the new New York’; now it seems, that of the ‘perfect’ family, human or mammal. Part of our based on David Ulrichs’ trilogy of articles in this issue, fondness for the museum, the zoo, or Madagascar, that Berlin is very much itself, on a grand scale, New York flows from such anthropomorphism, as we project our or no New York. And it’s a pleasure, along the way, to get own concerns onto other critters. But for all its apparent insight into the work of Aleana Egan. Victorian stasis, the Natural History Museum has transformed itself repeatedly since its inception, allowing Finally, a bugbear of many an artist: the curator. some aspects of its identity to match our own, as a society ‘Star’ curators have often sometimes earnt themselves and as a state. a bad name by allowing their vision – their identity – to dominate, forcing the work of exhibited artists into a Facing the future, the identity of the Dead Zoo is in background limbo. In this issue, Peter Murray performs danger, or so it would seem, even though that identity an in-depth analysis of the curator of this year’s ev+a, has never been fixed. Identity is tricky at the best of times, Hou Hanru. It seems Hou’s identity – his origins and and it is something artists negotiate incessantly; artists are preferences – has impacted positively. It is sometimes often acutely uncomfortable about their identities, perhaps said of society and politics in Ireland that we are more at no time more so than when a show of their work is Boston than Berlin; it seems this year’s ev+a has made about to open. Identity can be deliberately blurred, though, Limerick a bit more Bladerunner than, well, Madagascar. sometimes as a strategic move to contest the sway of identity as the thing of most value, the ‘brand’ of the artist; What else? There’s Andy Parson’s project, which tricks and sometimes because two or more minds are more with the individual and the sublime: more identity issues creative than one. In this issue Isobel Harbison and as Caspar David Friedrich’s wanderer gains a hoodie. Ilaria Gianni look at two specific examples of artistic And there’s more, lots more – enjoy! identity-blurring, those of ‘Claire Fontaine’ and of Nina Canell and Robin Watkins.

One of identity’s sneakiest tricks is its instability, while the word itself seems to hold the promise of fundamental stability. And one of the ironic tricks of science fiction is to use temporal change – a jump to the future – to scrutinise our current identities; radical change allows a sort of essentialism to emerge, as we are invited to see what is left over from our ‘old’ behaviour. If that is a sort of c . Update ticker

Former Director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Orchard Gallery and the City Arts Centre, and current Director of Interface, Declan McGonagle is to be the next Director of the National College of Art and Design, Dublin • Caoimhín Corrigan, Arts Officer of Leitrim County Council, Curator of The Dock in Carrick on Shannon, Circa gratefully and formerly closely involved with Visualise in Carlow, is to be the Republic's next Venice Biennale Commissioner acknowledges the • The Arts Council/ An Chomhairle Ealaíon and The Arts Council of Northern Ireland have announced the desire to support of its cooperate more closely; the most interesting potential change comes in an intention of “harmonising support for Major Supporters, artists.” • At ev+a, Curator Hou Hanru has divided the ¤10,000 prize pot equally, to each of five artists: Alan Partners and Bulfin, Mark Clare, Sarah Hurl, Mairéad McClean and David O'Kane; the John Hunt Residency Award went to Friends. Ruth LeGear; the winners of the Belltable Solo/ Joint To find out more Exhibition Award for 2008 are Angela Darby and Robert Peters • The Oonagh Young Gallery has opened at 1 about the Circa James Joyce Street (formerly Corporation Street), Liberty Corner, Dublin 1 • Painter Eoin MacLochlainn has taken Friends Scheme, this year’s Golden Fleece award, worth up to ¤20,000; merit prizes went to Sharon Lindsay Ferguson, Sylvia please visit Hemmingway and Bob Johnston • This year’s AIB prize, worth ¤20,000, has been won by Jackie Nickerson; the www.recirca.com/ shortlisted artists and their nominating venues were: Joy friends Gerrard – Millennium Court Arts Centre; Eoin McHugh – Temple Bar Gallery and Studios; Jackie Nickerson – Gallery of Photography; Margaret O'Brien – Droichead Arts Centre • Temple Bar, Dublin, has a new art gallery: a Guinness heir has set out his stall in Eustace Street – the Sebastian Guinness Gallery • Belfast-born, Glasgow- residing Cathy Wilkes has been shortlisted for this year’s Turner Prize; Wilkes is a Fine Art graduate of the University of Ulster, the fourth such to be shortlisted for the Prize • Isabel Nolan has won the inaugural Louis O’Sullivan Award, valued at ¤5,000, at Art 08 • The winners of the National Sculpture Factory temporary- art commissions are Cork-based artists Eli Caamaño and Sorcha O’Brien, Chicago-based Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, and Dublin-based Séamus Nolan.

Errata In the review of Alan Phelan’s show at mother’s tankstation in Circa 123, the following mistakes should be noted: The Ralph Gifford photographs were taken during World War I, not II. The planet-destroying star was in Star wars. And the glue used in Pig protester was Evacon-R. c . Features 26 Berlin: 3 angles David Ulrichs (The Berlin gallery scene 28 The 5th Berlin Biennial 31 Artist Profile: Aleana Egan 34 ) | Inner space: Science fiction and Irish art Chris Fite-Wassilak 36 | They’re not going to change it, are they? The Museum of Natural History Dublin as material culture Sherra Murphy 42 | The glue and the wedge: The cases of Claire Fontaine and Canell and Watkins Isobel Harbison and Ilaria Gianni 48 | Hou Hanru: Art, ev+a and the global bazaar Peter Murray 54 |

(background)

Nina Canell c . Morasko circle, 2007 20 litres of water, bucket, mist-machine, acrylic, snare stand, silicone, hydrophone, lantern, portable PA system dimensions variable courtesy the artist

c . David Ulrichs David Ulrichs is an independent art critic and curator living in Berlin; he is the Germany correspondent for La p i z (Spain), art (Belgium) and Circa (Ireland).

Johnen Galerie, Berlin inside: Martin Creed Work No. 360, 2004 photo Sebastian Schobbert 28 courtesy Johnen Galerie Berlin: 3 angles Lindenhaus (gallery house in Lindenstrasse) © Marcus Schneide The Berlin Gallery Scene (or: New In Brunnenstrasse another gallery area has grown. Feeding off the flow of visitors of Auguststrasse, it can York, New York!) in many ways be seen as the enfant terrible of the street ...... that was so central to the 4th Berlin Biennial in 2006. Unlike New York, Berlin does not have one main gallery Now the street is awash with young galleries and artist-run area; it has at least six! In fact, the entire city is initiatives showing a mixture of emerging talents. But it has wonderfully infested with contemporary art spaces. also attracted more established ‘foreign’ galleries, such as Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, art galleries Galerie Goff+Rosenthal which, with its move in late 2006, flooded into East Berlin. The first area to be taken over by was one of the first New York galleries to open a space in the unstoppable flood of new galleries was the jumble of Berlin. Following the latest trends has become vital in such streets in the vicinity of Auguststrasse, a pre-war Jewish a dynamic art scene. Thus, even some Berlin galleries quarter right in the heart of what with the turn of the have decided to branch out into Brunnenstrasse, many of millennium became the in-crowd concourse, Berlin-Mitte. whom –like Galerie Barbara Thumm, recently – have opened temporary project spaces in the street. With all the ‘to-ing and fro-ing’ it is not always easy to keep track of the whereabouts of certain galleries. A perfect example of this is Invaliden1, an artist-run gallery on Brunnenstrasse 29 named after its former location on Invalidenstrasse.

...... Area I: Auguststrasse + Brunnenstrasse Area II: Zimmerstrasse + Kochstrasse

...... Auguststrasse is the birthplace of the career of Jonathan With an agglomeration of so many gallerists, characters Meese who, since his first exhibition Die Räuber (1998), generally renowned for having big egos, Auguststrasse was formed, marketed and sold (out!) by Contemporary gradually became too small. Thus, while Contemporary Fine Arts. The street houses many galleries as well as Fine Arts has moved into new premises owned by the the KW – Institute for Contemporary Art, which has ex-curator-turned-collector Heiner Bastian opposite been involved in all the Berlin Biennials to date. Galerie Berlin’s Museum Island, Galerie Arndt & Partner moved Eigen+Art, which played an entrepreneurial role in defining into a new space in Zimmerstrasse. In fact, the house at and promoting what has become known as the Leipziger Zimmerstrasse 88–91, which used to lie in the no-man’s School, is one of the street’s highlights. Auguststrasse land separating East from West Berlin, quickly turned into also has a number of courtyards, a phenomenon for which a cluster of a dozen contemporary art galleries. It includes Berlin has become well known. The Sophie-Gips Höfe, a mix of high-profile galleries, such as Galerie Max Hetzler owned by the collectors Erika und Rolf Hoffmann, clusters and Klosterfelde, and younger galleries such as Galerie together numerous galleries, including Galerie Alexander Jette Rudolph and Galerie Upstairs (actually run by the Ochs, who almost single-handedly brought Chinese art to brother of Heiner Bastian). It also houses the seminal Berlin. But the courtyard also contains the ‘lived in’ private daadgalerie, the space used by the German Academic collection of the Hoffmanns, which besides including works Exchange Service (DAAD), which dispenses stipends, by emerging contemporary artists, boasts a worthwhile inviting foreign artists to live, work and exhibit in Berlin. selection of more established artists such as Lucio Fontana and Frank Stella. For many years the premises Not far from Zimmerstrasse lies Kochstrasse, the street were dominated by Contemporary Fine Arts, often cited running past the legendary Checkpoint Charlie, which as Berlin’s most established contemporary art gallery, attracts busloads of visitors daily. It also contains a gallery which recently moved into their new space perched on cluster that, with Galerie Crone (moved to Berlin from the river Spree. Rather inconspicuously, in a side street, Hamburg), Galerie Julius Werner (son of the famous Wohnmaschine stands as a testimony to the fact that gallerist Michael Werner), Galerie Jablonka (moved from cross-Atlantic collaborations are possible and can be Cologne to Berlin), Galerie Isabella Czarnowska and successful. Parallel to Auguststrasse runs Linienstrasse, Galerie Klara Wallner, has firmly established itself within whose highlights include, the recently opened Bereznitsky the Berlin art scene. The nonprofit art-space El Sourdog Galerie, focusing on contemporary Russian art and c/o Hex is also situated in this area. Its exhibition cycle is a Berlin, a cultural centre of photography. homage to work created between the 1950s and 1990s. It recently showed Claes Oldenburg’s The Store...... Area III: Lindenstrasse + Charlottenstrasse Area IV, V + VI: Jannowitzbrücke, Heidestrasse + Savignyplatz ...... Last year Claes Nordenhake bought a huge building on What was announced as a new emerging gallery area Lindenstrasse and commissioned the Berlin architects near Jannowitzbrücke a few years ago seems to be Gonzalez & Haase to transform it into a gallery house. shrinking. With Galerie Max Hetzler’s move to Zimmerstrasse The house is neatly divided, with the more established and Galerie Carlier/ Gebauer’s recent exit, only Susanne galleries on the lower floors and the younger ones near Vielmetter Berlin Projects, Galerie Mehdi Chouakri and the top. Due to the high percentage of foreign galleries, Galerie Johnen seem to be left to carry the torch of each gallery has its own focus and thus its own audience. Berlin’s most easterly gallery area. Surrounded by the Openings are held in unison, with the less established harsh Communist architecture, the galleries are located hoping to profit from the ‘trickle down effect’. The eight on the ground floor of a high-rise residential flat, under a galleries to date include Konrad Fischer’s second gallery bridge of the city’s S-Bahn and in warehouses along the in Germany, Galerie Opdahl (Norway), Galerie Podnar river Spree. A short distance downstream, out on a limb, (Slovenia) and of course Galerie Nordenhake, who moved Javier Peres has invested one million euro to get Peres 30 here from Zimmerstrasse. It also includes the recently Projects Berlin, the European spin-off of the hugely established centre for the promotion of East European art successful Peres Projects Los Angeles, up and running. Galerie ZAK/ Branicka, and will soon house the private While exhibitions at its LA branch seem to be causing collection of Hendrik Bernison, which focuses on works quite a stir, the Berlin premises are perhaps too pompous produced in the early twentieth century and includes many for the ‘understatement’ Berlin scene. important works by Hans Bellmer. One of the most recent events within the Berlin gallery A few streets further on, in Charlottenstrasse, a new scene is the development in Heidestrasse, near the gallery area is establishing itself. Recently, Aurel Scheibler city’s new central station. Here the Berlin branch of the opened ScheiblerMitte, a second space situated in an Christie’s-owned gallery chain Haunch of Venison opened old factory warehouse behind a Lidl store. He apparently last autumn and, apart from receiving copious amounts stumbled across the building haphazardly and now both of bad press, attracted five other galleries to settle in its Galerie Barbara Thumm and Galerie Carlier/ Gebauer shadow. Recently, Galerie Edition Block, under the are set to open galleries in the same area. The new direction of art-scene veteran René Block, opened its cluster will undoubtedly receive a lot of attention in the doors. Block was the co-ordinator of the Artists-in-Berlin coming months. Programme of the DAAD – a post now held by Friedrich Meschede – and was curator at the Kunsthalle Basel, which is now under the direction of Adam Szymczyk. In addition, a new gallery complex, led by Kristian Jarmuschek, with an estimated sixteen galleries, has just opened behind Berlin’s most contemporary art museum, the Hamburger Bahnhof.

Old West Berlin has no real answer to the fact that most galleries have moved eastwards. Obviously the big art dealers, such as Dieter Brusberg and Wolfgang Werner and the auction house Villa Grisebach, which still proudly overlooks Fasanenstrasse, will not be enough to lure the young and dynamic art audience to the monthly openings in the area. Indeed, the area around Savignyplatz is badly in need of rejuvenation.

The Berlin gallery scene is probably the most dynamic in the world. Comparisons with New York are justified. And, if you listen closely you can hear gallerists worldwide sing in an off-key: Start spreadin' the news, I'm leaving today / I want to be a part of it: Ber-lin, Ber-lin! [opposite] Lindenhaus (gallery house When things cast no shadow: in Lindenstrasse) The 5th Berlin Biennial © Marcus Schneide April – June 2008 ......

The 5th Berlin Biennial, bearing the mysterious title When things cast no shadow, boasts over twenty locations. While four of them, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, the Neue Nationalgalerie, the Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum and the Schinkel Pavillon, will be in use for the entire duration of biennial, the others will be used as part of the night programme, entitled Mes nuits sont plus belles que vos jours. While the biennial’s catchy title is apparently coined by the curators, the underlying concept is dangerously reminiscent of the idea behind the lyrics of a similarly titled hit single, penned by Britpop legends 31 Oasis. In addition, the mysteriously vague selection criteria employed by the curators have never been unveiled. The general response has been: “We did not select the works, we selected the artists.” Whether this is their graceless way of admitting that they have issued into the world a jumble of bastardised objects, or whether it is an ‘easy’ answer to criticisms levelled at their choice, it is blatantly obvious that any visual-art exhibition exhibits artworks and not artists. If it’s biographies you want, you can go to the nearest library!

In the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, a total of six floors show the works of twenty-three artists. The main hall, which two years ago was home to Thomas Schütte's The Capacity of men (2005) and Michael Schmidt's Ein-Heit (1989 – ) is taken over by Ahmet Ögüt’s site-specific Ground control (2007/ 2008). This edition, consisting of 400 square metres of black asphalt, despite its conceptual simplicity involves the viewer more than any other work in the building. The viscosity of the black tar, along with its unmistakable and obtrusive smell, has suffused the space to multi-sensorially affect the mood of the viewer via her senses. Sneakily, the clingy surface slows our steps and our thoughts; our movement becomes more purposeful and our mind comes to rest. We stop. Ground control sticks to us like slime and eventually, like some ethereal drag, makes movement impossible. Yet we plough on, carrying the smell and stickiness home.

On the first floor, Katerinaˇ SedᡠOver and over (2008) documents how the unequal distribution of wealth, due to the flourishing of capitalism in her hometown Lísenˇ (Czech Republic), encourages neighbours to erect ever higher fences to demarcate their property. Instead of the ‘higher and higher’, ‘bigger and bigger’ or ‘richer and richer’ ideology of capitalism, the artist proposes a subversive ‘over and over’ obviously driven by a naïve nostalgia and an irrational longing for the return of a communist solidarity. Ahmet Ögüt Ground control, 2007/2008 installation shot, 5th Berlin Biennial, at KW Institute for Contemporary Art asphalt, 400 sqm courtesy the artist/ RODEO, Istanbul © 5th Berlin Biennial/ Uwe Walter, 2008

36 Her solution tries to encourage the residents to climb ‘red salute’, the symbol stands for solidarity, strength and over the wall – an action which the viewer can attempt defiance. Ultimately, its empty call will be all that unites the at Sedá’sˇ installation in the Skulpturenpark, which artists within. undoubtedly refers to the bridge built between Communism and Capitalism by those who climbed over The area of the Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum is a centrally the Berlin Wall. Yet Over and over is a complete failure: situated piece of former no-man’s land, consisting in sixty instead of animating us to climb over, it threatens to vacant plots of real estate: a huge gap, a zone. Overgrown collapse; all irony intended, it should have been entitled with weeds and defined by two-metre-high, galvanized ‘pushover’. fences, the derelict space has been under artist control since mid-2006. Most of the artists who have worked on Found-footage is at the origin of Tris Vonna-Michell’s this site also have work either in the KW, or in the Neue Studio A (2008), which occupies the entire top floor of Nationalgalerie, reminding us of last year’s documenta, the former margarine factory. Generally, the type of where the omnipresence of certain artists hijacked the science fiction written in 1980s and 1990s takes place entire exhibition. In contrast, the dozen almost-sculptural at the beginning of the new millennium. Now that we have works on display here leave no lasting impression on the reached this projected future, we can compare it with visitor’s mind. As indiscernibles in the high grass, they what was envisaged. This is the underlying thought of rarely pop up from the thicket, surprising us only when our 33 the project that started with a video of RoboCop (1987) gaze crosses them accidentally. found in a thrift shop in Southend (England). The artist’s interest in the trouvaille spurned him to visit Detroit, the In fact, Susan Hiller’s sound installation, What every setting of the sci-fi classic, and collect visual material of gardener knows (2003), is entirely hidden deep within a the city today, which he used to visually juxtapose both mound of rubble, and sadly many of this year’s frustrated realities. Rather unscientifically, Studio A investigates visitors will never get to hear the sparse notes inspired by the accuracy of our visions of the future, which, albeit the binary system of Mendelian genetics. Even Pedro unintentionally, points to the fact that fewer such futuristic Barateiro’s large grey bus-stop replica, part of the visions exist today. installation entitled The Naked city (2008) melts into its surroundings. Like traces of minefields, the three hundred Of all of Berlin’s splendid art venues, the curators of this pits dug into the grass by Killian Ruthemann transport the year’s biennial chose the one that is notoriously one of viewer to faraway lands, rather than initiate any interest the most difficult for contemporary art to conquer: the top in the history of the site. From a distance, Aleana Egan’s floor of the Neue Nationalgalerie. Few contemporary work is imperceptible; it dissolves before our very eyes artists work on the sheer size and scale to make any into the higgledy-piggledy fencing surrounding the plot. impact in the space which, with its 360º window and Yet as we approach it our gaze is drawn upwards. dwarfing industrially high ceiling, makes the biennial We want to follow the lines and become their trajectory. presentation look like a few bits and bobs scattered in We want to be whisked away from this dreadful place: the atrium of a five-star hotel. Each work presents itself, “Beam me up, Scotty!” or better presents the artist and her biography (!), making it more reminiscent of something like a boothless art fair As a neat little annex to the Crown Prince Palace, than of a mindfully curated exhibition. the Schinkel Pavillon was reconstructed in 1969. Like the Neue Nationalgalerie, its façade is made up of glass, Despite, or perhaps precisely because of its apparent flooding the space with copious amounts of light. It will playfulness, Paola Pivi’s If you like it, thank you. If you house five different exhibitions curated by artists over the don’t like it, I am sorry. Enjoy anyway. (2007) is a course of the biennial. Just as much as the format is not half-decent attempt to dissemble the harsh grid that novel, so the pairings throw up no surprises: the younger constitutes this rather special space. If, following Georges generation of artists has chosen artists that have influenced Bataille, an excremental value can be ascribed to jewels, their work. then the Italian artist’s irregular grid, covered in plastic rhinestones, can only be interpreted as a defecatory act The curators of the 5th Berlin Biennial must be congratulated upon the work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Yet the on the completion of an enormous logistical feat and the rhinestones are not real gems, and thus Pivi’s work lacks mammoth task of organizing the biennial. They have given sufficient impetus to make it a truly powerful statement. us a biennial that can very well be described – to cite Hortensia Völckers of the biennial’s advisory board – Outside the museum, the outline of Piotr Uklanski’s as “intelligent and poetic.” Sadly, these attributes do not clenched fist, entitled Untitled (fist) (2008), towers over make it a good biennial. visitors and is defyingly etched into the dark-grey Berlin sky towers over the visitors. Often referred to as Artist Profile: Aleana Egan lasting thoughts and ideas from material that is immediately consumable. Thus, it is important for me that my work is interview in Berlin, 1 April 2008 not easily ‘consumed’...... While the entire planet has been infested with ‘Irish pubs’, DU There is always more communicated than what is said contemporary Irish art rarely even makes it across the or seen. Already the medium of communication influences Irish Sea. Aleana Egan (b 1979) is an emerging Irish artist the message. who studied painting at the Glasgow School of Art and AE Yes. This ‘space in between’ is difficult to define. I don’t is represented by Mary Mary (Glasgow). She was set out with certain ‘messages’ for each of my works to discovered for the 5th Berlin Biennial at Art Basel 07 by convey. I aspire to an open communication between artwork Adam Szymczyk, who included a sample of her work in and viewer. this year’s Berlin Biennial. In addition, Egan presents her latest work at the Kunsthalle Basel in an exhibition entitled ...... We sat down where we had sat before between 20 April DU There is little that is immediate about your work. and 8 June 2008. While installing her works for the You demand that the viewer spends an amount of time th with each work that goes beyond the gracious 'nod' 34 5 Berlin Biennial, the artist gave this interview. given by the passer-by signifying that the work has been ...... understood. David Ulrichs Are you superstitious? AE I feel that in certain pieces there is immediacy in the Aleana Egan Oh, I see, because today is April Fool’s process and I would hope that some of that emotion and Day. No, I wouldn’t say I am very superstitious. drive which is felt through the making finds its way out of the work when it is finished and being shown. I would ...... never demand anything from a viewer. I think that in the DU Much of your work is abstract. What inspires you? same ways that making art can be a developmental AE I am inspired on different levels by everything including process so can looking and appreciating it. There is what the idea of inspiration itself, the notion of identity and what Joseph Albers calls “discrepancy between physical fact it means to influence someone or something. Some and psychic effect” in visual perception and I don't think places and interactions that have inspired me recently one can quantify or measure this. have been 1930s and 1940s apartment buildings in Nice, France; wrought-iron gates in suburban Dublin; ...... the Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum in Kreuzberg; swimming DU Since your work is very private, do you think it is in the Irish Sea and in Berlin’s swimming pools; asking my important for the viewer to know your biography. mother questions about the past and her profession, AE I don’t think that biography is vital for the reading of psychotherapy, and; asking my father questions about the my work. However, when I am interested in an artist’s past and building materials and construction solutions. work my connection with the artist is deepened by research into their work and life. Generally speaking, ...... I think it is a natural human instinct to want to know more DU Which artists influence your work? about the present and past of the person whose work AE I find this a hard question to answer, as this is a very rouses your interest. long and ever-changing list. Some artists and thinkers whom I have been interested in recently include Agnes ...... Martin, Iris Murdoch, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, and James DU Although the dimensions of your works vary, they tend Benning. But there are others! to be of a human scale and although they are abstract, they remind us of figures...... AE Well, none of the lines I use are purposefully made to DU Your work is, in a certain sense, untimely. It is not resemble the human form. Sometimes I think that the relief easily recognizable as contemporary, and although it pieces I make can appear to have a certain gesture or contains strong formal references to artists such as pose. When I use the word ‘pose’ it makes me think about Robert Morris or Robert Smithson, your work, especially both objects and people. your relief pieces, cannot be sublated into a particular strand of Modernism or Minimalism. This makes your work ...... difficult to consume. DU Do you follow a specific work method or production AE I don’t consciously set out to make formal references process? to other artists’ work. When I have made direct reference, AE I don't tend to follow a specific work method I have done so in the title of my works and not in the throughout my practice but there are certain production physical piece. Personally, I don’t tend to derive a lot of processes that I work with. The relief pieces which I have Aleana Egan Grey luminous light from the sea (a structure for readings) 2008 installation shot, 5th Berlin Biennial, at Skulpturenpark Berlin-Zentrum steel, metal paint 274 x 162 x 3 cm courtesy the artist/ Mary Mary, Glasgow/ Galerie Sandra Bürgel, Berlin © 5th Berlin Biennial/ Uwe Walter, 2008

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been making with card, paint and deco-fill follow an element in my work and sometimes helps the piece idiosyncratic logic that I came to through experimentation without much modification. Other times I must experiment in the studio. The works in metal are reliant on an outside and tweak with the gravity itself. In the relief pieces workshop and machinery. This different working colour is as important as the card, tape and deco-fill I use. experience and the interactions which come about also The form of a piece can dictate the colour used. feed into the work. I use notebooks and sketchbooks a lot to record observations, thoughts, and drawings. I like to ...... refer back to old ones regularly, a kind of slightly neurotic DU What is the perfect reaction to your work? 'refreshing' of thoughts and facts. AE I don't know that such a thing exists! And I don’t try to elicit a specific reaction. I would be happy that people ...... see the work and it makes them think about something. DU Recently you have been taking your sketchbook with you to the cinema. The fact that you were unable to see ...... what you were doing would possibly increase the level DU Finally, tell me about your works in the Berlin Biennial. th of automatism in the work. Is that what you are after? How did the curators of the 5 Berlin Biennial discover AE I didn’t plan to make the notes or the drawings before you? I went to see the films. Afterwards, however, I valued the AE The works I am showing in the Biennial are entitled drawings and developed sculptural works from them. This ended casually in the water (2008) and grey luminous recording of things quickly and in ‘real-time’ is an integral light from the sea (a structure for readings) (2008). and a fluid element of my practice. An ongoing series of The first is a site-specific hanging sculpture I made in text-works and photographs, entitled Personal style and response to the space of Mies Van der Rohe’s Neue Personal architecture include the action of noting the Nationalgalerie. The second piece is a sculpture that exterior appearance of people who stop me in my tracks. forms part of an evening of readings that I have organized It is important to me to keep these as lists and to stay which is included in the night programme of the Biennial. faithful to the original note taken. An example of a recent It developed from spending time in the park and was personal-style text is: Man 60s, navy mac, navy shoulder influenced by architectural features from the surrounding bag, grey/ silver thick cords, grey/brown shoes, brown/ environment mixed with ones from Dún Laoghaire and grey buttons, tanned face, silk scarf burgundy /cream that coastal locale. I see this structure as a kind of green design. metaphorical vestibule in which to ‘house’ these readings and the various permutations that will come about through ...... the varied texts and people. Since 2005, I have worked DU What is the role of gravity in your work? with Mary Mary Gallery (Glasgow), which has helped me AE I work with painting and sculpture as a physical increase my visibility, giving me opportunities to show my interaction with material: gravity has become an important work in different countries. c . Chris Fite-Wassilak Chris Fite-Wassilak is a writer, freelance critic, and occasional curator. www.growgnome.com

Inner space: Science fiction and 36 Irish art [opposite] Karl Burke Untitled (shore) courtesy the artist concluded their ‘Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art’, inspired by an idea in Thierry De Duve’s Kant after Duchamp, in which an alien anthropologist comes to Earth to create an inventory of “all that is called art by humans.” On one level, these larger exhibitions are consciously using the paradigm of science fiction to approach the general public’s bafflement with contemporary art that is increasingly self-involved and self-referential, but they do ...... so with the grandiose sweep of the space opera. There is a set of artists currently working in Ireland, however, We begin a journey whose work takes an opposite tack. Artists such as David ...... Beattie, Karl Burke, Nina Canell, and Bea McMahon are “Just as a screw drives a vessel through the water, producing works that use deliberately familiar, lo-fi materials or as a propeller drives a plane through the air, so this that might not outwardly look like sci-fi but, while sustaining 37 ‘ether-propeller’ drives a car through the ether.” This is the genre’s willing alienation as a means of exploring the the matter-of-fact explanation of the flying craft of the unknown, they create a science fiction of the present. protagonist of Charles R Tanner’s short story, ‘The flight of the Mercury’ from editor Hugo Gernsback’s ‘scientifiction’ journal Wonder stories. With the machine, he makes a ...... journey to Mars, making visual contact with a ‘globe-like’ A brief history of the future being before simply returning to Earth. “Anti-climax, what?” the happy-go-lucky explorer concludes. “No princess ...... rescued, no rebellion quelled, not even the usual guide to Science fiction has, of course, always been about the give an explanation of the wonders I saw. I feel no end a present. Future developments and other worlds are proxies bally fool.”1 through which to explore, question, and critique the present from which the story comes. It’s pointless to try and pin Unusually for its time, featuring at the height of the down a single definition of the genre, as it has always ‘Golden Age’ of America’s science-fiction pulps in 1930, shared much with writing on science, fantasy, as well as Tanner’s story details a seemingly pointless journey that, ‘normal’ fiction, but it is more revealing to explore some of as the explorer himself points out, fulfills none of the the ways in which the term has been used. Some point to standard expectations of an otherwordly adventure. Swift’s Gulliver’s travels (1726) as one of the earlier Tellingly, it gestures not only towards the more existential narratives that could be termed ‘science fiction’, though tales in the coming science fiction of writers like Isaac the phrase itself wasn’t used until 1851. With the rise of Asimov and Stanislaw Lem, but, in its almost pedestrian pulp magazines in the early twentieth century in America, ecounter with the strange, harks even further to modern the genre reached a wide readership, one of the most uses and developments of the genre – such as within influential publishers being electronics enthusiast Hugo contemporary art, where science fiction has lately become Gernsback. Through his titles Amazing stories, and later increasingly visible. Established artists like Philippe Wonder stories, Gernsback promoted his version of sci-fi, Parreno and Angela Bulloch have for a while openly “a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and framed their work within the hyperbole and slick materials prophetic vision.”2 In stories featured in his magazine, of futuristic visions, like Bulloch’s recent Munich show, entreprenurial individuals would construct elaborately The Space that time forgot. In Ireland early last year, described gadgets, that would transport them on to some the Project published their collaborative pulp sci-fi novel heroic adventure. Philip, shortly following the All Hawaiian entrées/ lunar reggae show at IMMA, whose catalogue included blurred For Gernsback, though, the point was to teach his audience texts from science-fiction writers Kurt Vonnegut and Cory about the possibilities of science; his editorial letters often Doctorow. Gerard Byrne’s restaged 1963 conversation of boasted of some new machine he invented, while the science-fiction authors 1984 and beyond (2005) featured stories almost inevitably involved homemade science as part of his exhibition at the Irish Pavillion in Venice later leading to the discovery of new worlds. His vision carried in the year. on into the more technical so-called ‘hard’ sci-fi of writers like Arthur C Clarke, though with the rise of monster Large-scale institutional exhibitions have also caught on: fiction and the overproduction of Hollywood sci-fi films in in Pittsburgh, this year’s Carnegie International takes as its the ’50s, popular sci-fi was defined more by gaudy aliens theme ‘Is there life on Mars?’ London’s Barbican recently that remained pulp adventure stories at heart. But while the space opera of Buck Rogers raged in the ...... ’60s, writers like Philip K Dick, William S Burroughs, and Journey into inner space J G Ballard, to name only the more prominent, had begun to create darker, dystopian sci-fi, emphasizing psychological ...... effects and personal phenomena in their visions of the At the Priory in Kells, two adjacent trees grow close to future. “If writers are to describe the advanced techniques the thick, grey wall. For the duration of Sculpture at Kells of the Space Age,” wrote Burroughs, “they must invent last year, the space between each tree and the wall was writing techniques equally advanced in order to properly filled with a striped tower of red, green, blue and yellow 3 deal with them.” It is this that Robert Smithson seems to made of Lego bricks. David Beattie’s sculptural intervention be gesturing towards in his 1966 image and text essay Lines (2007) colourfully traced the contours of the ‘Quasi-infinities and the waning of space’, where he uses negative space, like a brief opening to some alternate, 4 “ultramundane margins” to describe an art based on the pixelated reality. A three-dimensional drawing with whose science of physics rather than the dominant art based on childish building blocks we are familiar, its cast us back an organic science of biology and the body. In ‘Entropy further to the elemental make up of colour and light. and the new monuments, another essay from the same The work blends a lyrical romanticism with basic physics, year, he identified the techniques found in the work of and while its rainbow draws in the eye it asks of the viewer 38 Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt and Dan Flavin as something an awareness of their own contours and connections. akin to this. Smithson aligns their sculpture under the banner of science fiction, claiming “these artists face the Interestingly, the art practice of both Beattie and Bea possibility of other dimensions, with a new kind of sight.”5 McMahon share a strong connection with the Gernsback model of sci-fi. Like the classic sci-fi of the ’20s and ’30s, These days, perhaps in a similar fate to the housebroken their work shows a marked, in some cases direct, application effect of the institutionalisation of Minimalism, the provenance of science, combined with a desire to demonstrate its of science fiction has been stretched and subsumed. It’s potential. Beattie’s Futureworld exhibition at the Mermaid not only in the architectural visions inspired by Metropolis Arts Centre in March was like walking directly into a (1927), Things to come (1936; it included Laszlo Moholy- laboratory of one of the self-styled inventors of Amazing Nagy on its special-effects team), or even Star trek that stories. Small gadgets whirred and hummed all around we can find all around us now. The jargon and analogies you; made from a plastic plate with a small electric fan, of complex scientific theories are part of our everyday Hoverplate (2008) whirled and pirouetted just above the colloquialisms, thanks to the ‘space-time continuum’ of wooden floor. His machines seemed to test their own Back to the future (1985) and Bill and Ted’s excellent materiality, working endlessly towards unknown reasons. adventure (1989). Science fiction uses technology as a Or rather, it was the viewer’s experience of this ongoing medium to force an epistemological distance between the movement that might hold the discovery, and it is clear world of the work and that of the reader/ viewer, to allow this open curiosity drives the work. In an interview with us to approach the world of the narrative as a foreign place, Beattie which Mark Garry carried out for his curation of a different planet, time, or species. But we are overly Sculpture at Kells, Beattie stated, “[experimental learning] accustomed to this sense of weirdness; as Cyberpunk is perhaps the primary reason for working in the manner author Bruce Sterling wrote in 2005 in a discussion of I do. By its very nature, scientific experimentation is a 6 Parreno’s work, “In our epoch, Mars finally became banal.” process that seeks to gain greater understanding through its engagement with material.”7 Beattie’s work encourages, The new paradigm of sci-fi responds by resolutely turning wanting viewers to understand the processes behind the Other World of the narrative into our own, present the technology that surrounds them, prompting them to world, into our selves. In this light, the work of Smithson, actively know their environment. in his combined interests of sci-fi and geology, seems far more prescient than, say, the post-apocalyptic scrap heaps of Jean Tinguely. The new sci-fi holds a certain distance, but is not otherwordly; discarding the metaphors of space travel, alien races, and visions of the future, it re-enounters materials and re-positions the experience and possibility of the current situation before us. 39

[top left] David Beattie Hoverplate, 2008 installation shot, Mermaid Arts Centre; motor, plate, aluminium rod, electric wire dimensions variable courtesy the artist

[top right] Nina Canell Heat sculpture, 2007 neon, wires, branch courtesy the artist/ mother's tankstation

[below] Bea McMahon The last sandwich stand on earth, 2007 watercolour and granulated sugar on paper 26 x32.5 cm courtesy the artist In McMahon’s video States of wonder (2006), a white Simultaneously retroactive and futuristic, Canell’s light pulses in the middle of a blue screen, while the installations feel like they could be a museum of Folk subtitles scrutinize the physical construction of an image. Art within Sterling’s Mechanist/ Shaper universe, “I was wondering about a single piece of light in real life, intrepid transmutations that fuse the rhythms of biology when it is still in outside space. I mean, before it is and technology.8 absorbed by my eye and I construct a picture which I see.” In the conception of the piece, an equation calculating a Two further artists whose work distinctively creates an quantum particle’s rotation was applied to the revolving experience of this science fiction are Karl Burke and figure of Diana Prince transforming into Wonder Woman, Dennis McNulty. Burke’s Wooden drawings (2006 – revealed in the video as the seeming source of the white ongoing) have been carried out in places like Union light. The elusive attempt to understand how we see, Forest, Co Sligo, Kells Priory, and Common Place, to separate the atomic construction of the image from our simply placing uniform planks of wood within the chosen ongoing apperception, is demonstrated with a poignant environment. Without any fixing or moorings, the ‘drawings’ humor as the words, “I understand. I remember the feeling of are a temporary insertion, sometimes simply leaning having understood,” appear below the image of a spinning against a tree or the wall, but with the suggestion of some Lynda Carter. McMahon’s methodology draws on her hidden order, like a diminutive crop circle. His 2006 40 background in Maths and Physics, creatively testing its sound installation in Gallery for One, Union woods, limits and suggesting new sciences in her combinations. in part inspired by the opening sequence of Donnie Darko One drawing imagines what food might be left for The last (2001), involved two simultaneous but distinct sound sandwich bar in the world (2007); inside the display case sources, on speakers and headphones, each with their sit several tall stacks of white bread sandwiches, above own temporal and dramatic associations, to create a sonic them the sign “Mushroom and Sugar Sandwiches”; narrative. Similarly, in his exhibition framework/ rupture, its understated, mundane vision of an apocalypse sinks in McNulty used sound, sculpture, and photography to slowly. Both Beattie’s and McMahon’s work is a creative create co-existing experiences of space and time. As in exposition of science. Unlike the enterprising adventurers the show’s title, every work featured a two-part name and mad professors of earlier science fiction, however, divided by a slash, immediately creating a double existence. their science doesn’t seek to colonize other planets or While a mesmerizing, constant tone echoed throughout impose change upon humanity. It is, instead, an open-ended the main space, in one part of the sculpture Three exploration that includes the viewer in its process of soundtracks/ architectural space (2008), a more rhythmic, inquiry, leaving aside the utilitarian abuses of science to ambulatory tune draws you down the image of a hallway foreground its personal, experiential qualities. inside the Central Bank, Dublin. Though focusing on the concrete fact of Sam Stephenson’s Dame Street Nina Canell shared a similar scientific input in her show construction, McNulty suggests the experience of earlier in the year, Slight heat of the eyelid, explicitly architecture itself as a form of time travel. Both artists informing viewers, “the first endogenous circadian oscillation use a disarmingly simple approach to create a heightened was observed in the 1700s by the French scientist spatial awareness of your immediate surroundings, Jean-Jacques d’Ortous de Mairan [1678–1771], who while simultaneously suggesting a parallel existence. noticed that 24-hour patterns in the movements of the Their careful pacing and use of sound might find its own leaves (of the plant Mimosa pudica) continued even when parallel moment in a scene from Andrei Tarkovsky’s the plants were isolated from external stimuli.” Her delicate downtempo sci-fi masterpiece Stalker (1979), in which constructions hark, like Beattie’s work, back to the days the eponymous stalker and his two travel companions of amateur radio and home electronics, but seem to have board a train cart that leads into the off-limits area known taken on their own, autonomous organic existence, to have as the Zone. The stalker is paid to accompany people into adapted and created a new circadian rhythm. Recent the Zone, an ambiguous, surreal wilderness created by works with neon, such as Heat sculpture (2007) use the a meteor strike in which time and space are experienced almost imperceptible fluctuations of neon light, poetically differently. As they journey on the cart, the rhythm of the entwined with a twig, volcanic rocks, bone, an antler. tracks veers into its own ambient soundtrack, and the film Rather than an introspective, formal experimentation, shifts from the black and white of their everyday world to her work suggests a different combination of experience colour. When they arrive, the Zone outwardly appears no and imagination: working not to open the systems of different, though the shift to colour brings the world of the science to us but to suggest new, hybrid realities. Zone recognizably closer to that of the viewer. In Schismatrix (1985) and several short stories, Bruce Sterling imagined a posthuman society, divided into Shapers, who use genetics to organically manipulate the human body, and Mechanists, who instead use cybernetics and technology to modify their anatomy...... 1 Charles R Tanner, ‘The flight of the Mercury’, in Wonder Towards a new psychology stories, Volume 2, number 2, July 1930, pp 117–122 ...... 2 Hugo Gernsback, quoted in Mike Ashley, The Time The classic narratives of science fiction begin with machines, Liverpool University scientifically oriented predictions to project into another Press, 2000, pp 49–50 time or place. It is from that distance that it attempts to 3 William S Burroughs, quoted by Michael Moorcock in make the strange and the fantastic knowable, mundane. New worlds number 142, The jolly explorer of the Flight of the Mercury describes quoted in Mike Ashley, what he sees on Mars through his own terrestrial Transformations, Liverpool University Press, 2005, p 239 understanding, such as the ‘globe-like’ alien, or another 4 Robert Smithson, ‘Quasi- plant he finds is simply called ‘cactus-like’. His encounters infinities and the waning of are not scientifically useful, but rather a more existential space’, in Robert Smithson: the collected writings, ed Jack journey. The artists I mention here share a similar Flam, University of California approach, an open-ended experience that does not lead Press, 1996, p 34 to any definite findings but rather a self-exploration. 5 Robert Smithson, ‘Entropy and 41 But their work does not escape to Mars; their creations the new monuments’, in op cit, p 23 spiral deeper into our own immediate environment. 6 Bruce Sterling, ‘The Boy from Their work inverts prophesies of the future – it could even Paris’, press release for the be said they share an amnesia of the future, and indeed Philippe Parreno solo exhibition The Boy from Mars, compared to the sleek predictions of most science fiction, Frederich Petzel Gallery, April their approach might even seem retrograde, antiquarian, – May 2005 and purposeless. They share a minimal, makeshift aesthetic, 7 David Beattie, interview with Mark Garry published in the one that feels intuitive and personal, that focuses solely Sculpture at Kells booklet on the present. These artists are not simply making the accompanying the exhibition, mundane fantastic, but in their laconic gesture are 2007 8 Perhaps another contributor collapsing the difference between the everyday and the to this futuristic folk institution, outlandish to suggest other ‘normals’, parallel mundanities. in contrast to Canell’s cyborg leanings, would be Irish- Imagine stepping through a mirror, to another world. based Italian artist Cecilia Bullo, who creates seemingly The other world, however, bears no discernable difference organic sculptural mutations, to the world from which you came. But the act of your giving inanimate objects new journey, the shift in space, creates in you a heightened lives, like curious aborted awareness, a sensitivity to yourself and your environment. experiments from H G Well’s Island of Dr Moreau (1896). There are small, intimate changes in this new place, 9 The phrase for which the objects re-imagined, and like the journey into Tarkovsky’s article is named owes its title Zone, the familiar is made dangerously and vividly to several sources; J G Ballard used the term to alive. Experiencing the work of these artists is a journey describe his brand of science into inner space,9 setting out a new way for seeing the fiction (in the essay ‘Time, possible realities of the present. memory, and inner space’, first appearing in The Woman journalist, 1963, currently reprinted in the 2008 Harper Perennial edition of his 1962 novel The Drowned world); Warhol’s 1966 dual-screen quadruple portrait of Edie Sedgwick, Outer and inner space; and, of course, the 1987 film directed by Joe Dante. c . Sherra Murphy The ‘Irish badgers’ case at the Natural History Museum courtesy Natural History Museum

They’re not going to change it,

42 are they? The Museum of Natural History Dublin as material culture In July 2007, the dramatic collapse of a section of a nine- cataloguing, labelling and storing the collection according teenth-century limestone staircase in a restricted rear area to sound taxonomic principles. Haddon’s advice appears of the Natural History Museum Dublin forced the closure to have been implemented just in time for everything to be of the building, which has been unavailable to the public thrown into disarray in 1922, when Leinster House was since. It appears that the Museum will remain closed appropriated for use by the new government, causing until at least 2010, due to a significant programme of problems of storage and space which continued far into examination, repair and refurbishment, making this an ideal the future. moment to reflect on the Museum as an aspect of Irish culture.1 The issue of change is at the heart of casual Events in the outside world also took their toll on the conversation about the Museum and its future – the ‘Dead Museum; archival sources indicate a marked slowdown Zoo’ inspires strong loyalties as a unique component of in activity during World War I, and certainly in the national patrimony. The idea that this Museum will emerge turbulent years following as Ireland divided, and was itself from its refurbishment fundamentally changed is distressing reformulated as a changed entity. The period of genteel to those who love it the way it is. At the time of writing, fixity we now associate with the Museum appears to have the Natural History Museum is preparing to undergo its begun in 1922, as the new state was struggling to establish most significant set of changes in over 100 years; not itself and the Natural History Museum was simply not a since the Dublin Science and Art Museums Act of 1877 priority. Dáil debates on the National Museums refer to the 43 has it been the subject of such an intensive level of state of neglect into which the Museums overall had fallen, official attention. with natural history cited in particular:

A set of truisms has grown up around the Natural History In the department of natural history things seem to Museum Dublin over the 150 years it has resided in its be worse. As far as I can make out, there has been current quarters, centring around the notion that the no keeper since 1924 and there has been no assistant Museum is an eternal evocation of Victorian science and keeper since 1921. … I think that the Dáil owes its priorities, providing us with an intact view of the past, something to the Museum. We could not have come into being, I think, if we had not acted the cuckoo unchanged since its establishment. However, when the 5 Royal Dublin Society opened the doors of its new Natural and crept into the Museum nest. History Museum in 1857, the ground floor was unfinished and the inaugural exhibition on the first floor comprised Records of Dáil debates on the topic since largely reflect a of plants, crustaceans, molluscs, fossils, birds, butterflies history of underfunding and indifference, which appears to and ethnographic materials from the South Sea Islands.2 be finally at an end as planning for renovations commences. Entered through Royal Dublin Society headquarters at Regarding issues of change, the Natural History Museum Leinster House, the Museum was accessed through a takes on interesting dimensions when considered as long curved corridor connecting the buildings. Clearly, material culture. Seen as an object in a broad sense, this is not the Museum we see today. Issues of change its uses over its lifetime reflect changing circumstances surrounded the Museum in its early years, as some of its and priorities. As a repository for knowledge and culture, basic purposes and needs were unmet from the start. the Museum and its collections have been employed to The building remained unfinished for many years; an article varying purposes over time. The architecture, specimens, from the Irish Times in 1862 laments: letters and images associated with the Museum evince a rich system of exploration and communication which The beautiful new Museum of Natural History – seek to locate Ireland within wider debates and events, erected partly by Government and partly by while defining and cataloguing the island’s natural subscription of the members of the [Royal Dublin] resources. These goals were addressed as much through Society – has been almost in a state of abeyance for visual means as language, with representations playing some years, for want of funds to complete the internal a substantive role in the Museum’s objectives. The ways arrangements, and to classify and place in cases the 3 that the organisation has been conceived and used over magnificent collection now in possession of the Society. time gives it dimension and meaning in both the cultural and social senses. In 1877 a major set of changes took place as Parliament forged an agreement with the RDS to transfer the collections to state control, and the Museum became part of a national museums framework under direct funding control from London. Organising and classifying the collections had still not been addressed by 1884, when Alfred Cort Haddon,4 working in an advisory capacity, wrote an eight-page set of recommendations for finally In 1857, it was a venue for serious amateurs to establish reporting sightings, imparting information from the margins their reputations, share their findings and exhibit the to the centre. The most famous and well documented specimens they had collected. With the Museum as its example is Richard Barrington’s network of lighthouse nexus, a network of knowledge and communication keepers, who sent him the wings and legs of birds killed developed, its membership defined by class and social when they struck the lights; this long-term study provided parameters; the core participants were overwhelmingly valuable information on migration patterns for Irish from Ascendancy backgrounds and unionist in their coastlines. Similar activities take place on a smaller scale politics.6 Dilettantes from the same set of networks also as well, with members of the public communicating with contributed, sending back items for the collection from the Museum for all sorts of reasons. A sampling of the travels abroad or from military service, generally in the correspondence for 1900 alone indicates the range colonies. While the primary contributors to the Museum of exchanges. were a self–selected group, they extended their work into the broader culture by way of public talks and travelling Mr Hynes writes, offering two live otters and asking what education programmes, as well as opening the Museum to the Museum would pay. Lord Lismore’s estate, upon his the public. These activities seem to have been severely death, seeks to sell two fine mounted tigers. The Church curtailed after 1922, with the Museum lapsing into relative of Ireland Training College and the Queen’s College 44 stasis through underfunding, perhaps due as much to its Galway both express thanks for loans of specimens from social and political makeup as to the strains on the new the collections for their science programmes. Mr Wyler state’s resources. offers an egg which, when opened, had another entirely intact egg within – he says: “It is a Curiosity and not to be The 1990s saw a resurgence in the popularity of the found Everyday.” Lady Longford seeks the identity of the Natural History Museum, as it became apparent that the unusual insects she’s found, sending them along for good decades of neglect had an unexpected benefit. Around measure. A farmer offers a four-legged duckling, two legs the world, the modernisation of natural history museums of which the farm cat has regrettably eaten. Mr Orr, had largely erased their origins, and the intact cabinet formerly a lecturer in architecture at the RDS drawing museum became an endangered species – Dublin school and now living in Northumberland, seeks an possessed one by default. Its uses since have shifted identification for an unusual stone he’s found, his letter accordingly, and it has become, as is often repeated, accompanied by a gorgeous little drawing. The Museum ‘a museum of a museum.’ As such, it attracts visitors by itself is in contact with the Imperial Institute in London, the score each day, and is heavily used as a venue for seeking specimens from the colonies to fill gaps in the education, regularly teeming with schoolchildren. Because collections.7 Despite early perceptions of exclusivity, its original priorities, to the modern eye, seem odd or even the Museum has long been the authority of first instance perverse, it has become attractive to artists who fall prey for any and all queries to do with the natural world, a trend to its eccentric charms, and it has been used in this that continues today. This ongoing tradition of use means regard by established practitioners such as Dorothy Cross that a strong proprietary sense pervades public attitudes and Karl Grimes, as well as drawing and design students to this Museum. from second- and third-level programmes. Science is still an active concern, as UCD’s partnership programme in Aspects of the Natural History Museum reflect other collections-based biology utilises the collections for conditions, sometimes unwittingly mirroring larger cultural learning, contributing to ongoing issues of organisation assumptions. The Irish mammals on the ground floor and preservation. provide an interesting case in point. Natural history museums in general were founded to amass the diversity The notion of public participation, though not an overt goal of life, as completely as possible, in one place for education of its founders, has been a strong influence in the Museum’s and study. The accepted style of mounting the animals for history. While the men of science in the Victorian era had these aims was largely utilitarian, so that all aspects of a rationale and set of networks for using the Museum as form, size and colouring could be studied and compared venue for research and exchange among themselves, with other specimens. Each specimen, while rendered as some of the more interesting aspects of the Museum lifelike as possible, was meant to stand as an objective revolve around its uses by the general public. There is a visual representation of the species at large. The taxidermists sense of ‘interactivity’ in the ways that members of the with whom the Museum worked, such as the Williams public correspond with it as the scientific establishment of family of Dame Street or Rowland Ward of London, record, and the archives are full of letters which indicate a also mounted specimens for private display in homes or sense of the complex roles it has filled through the years. public spaces such as clubs and pubs. The styles of Nineteenth-century science was heavily reliant on far-flung mounting for domestic display exhibited a more vernacular networks of amateurs, as they became eyes and ears of visual language, employing anthropomorphic overtones or the scientific establishment, collecting specimens and referring to prevailing notions of aesthetic beauty. 49 It is interesting to note, therefore, that a significant number now largely lamented as a diminishment of the island’s of cases in the collection of Irish mammals go against the natural diversity. general grain of accepted scientific practise in the day. ‘Family’ groupings with anthropomorphic overtones are According to records in newspapers, photographs and clearly visible, with the animals demonstrating the archives, the collection over the years has changed, characteristics of cohesive nuclear families. The bulk of moved, grown and shrunk; the building itself has been these cases date from 1910 to 1913, so were apparently unfinished, finished, appropriated, curtailed and linked by an internal rationale. The Irish badgers, for example, resurrected. We have changed radically in the ways that are ensconced in a beautiful, spacious case, arranged as we think about the natural world, the ways that we use though occupying their native habitat and representing the Museum, and the city itself has changed utterly. parent animals and their young. The baby badgers play What then, in the case of this refurbishment, constitutes and tumble over the prone form of their indulgent mother, authenticity? The vagaries of the Museum’s history make a scene reminiscent of Greuze’s sentimental print this a complex issue, and it seems that the intact Victorian The Beloved mother of 1769. Inside the den/ home, institution we know and love may be more mythological the female/ mother keeps order, cares for and trains the than we prefer to imagine. Roland Barthes’s assertion that babies; outside the den, the male/ father keeps watch, myth is pure matter plus ideology is more than apt here – 46 assuming an attitude of protection and fierce paternal the fixed matter of the collections has shifted through care. The visual language of domestic taxidermy intended several kinds of meaning by virtue of the ideologies for private consumption blurs here into scientific through which it has been framed. That the state is finally representation. This blending of popular narratives with willing to give this Museum its due can only be seen as the priorities of natural history would not have been lost progress, as the building and its contents are in serious on the Museum visitors, and serves to naturalise the need of conservation and attention. Presently, the staff prevailing domestic arrangements of the day by describing have already begun cleaning the specimens and cases them through scientific means.8 The sudden appearance en masse, an impossibility in an open, working museum. of this set of conventions into a scientific context, during a To really have ‘a museum of a museum’, provisions for period of social and political unrest, is evocative and begs visitors must be improved, accessibility issues tackled deeper analysis than is possible here. and necessary renovations undertaken. Once again, a change in the overall nature of the state signals a “The significance of a collected object does not inhere change in this institution; Tiger Ireland may preserve and in the specimen itself, but is socially and theoretically cherish this intact bit of the Lion’s Ireland. When the constructed. … A given specimen functions differently process is complete, the rare Victorian gem should be in in a biodiversity exhibit than it does in a taxonomy exhibit.”9 perfect nick for the first time in its history. To this may be added that specimens also function according to systems of local and national reference, Acknowledgements: Thanks are due, as always, to as ways of remembering, or as manifestations of social Nigel Monaghan, Keeper of the Natural History Division networks and ways of seeing the world. The collection of the National Museum of Ireland, for his generosity may be argued to have a ‘social life’ in the material culture and indulgence (not to mention his encyclopaedic sense, in that the specimens and the structures they knowledge) during the research process. inhabit have been used in various ways to formulate and articulate various ways of seeing or understanding. Those modes are diverse; the collections variously represent a point of view on the structure of the natural world, may be used to represent colonial power relationships, or to evoke a sense of the past for subsequent generations. The changes in the way specimens are conceptualised reflect changes of priority in other arenas – the tiger, for instance, has been seen in a number of ways: as a token representative of its species, as an illustration of imperial attitudes to colonial populations and more recently as an invocation of the reckless pursuits which have pushed the cats to the edge of extinction. The changes in public attitudes toward the issue of extinction itself have changed the way we see the contents of the Museum; the disappearance of predators such as wolves and golden eagles from the island was once lauded as an accomplishment, and is 1 Since the time of writing, it has been announced that the Seanad may move into the ground floor of the Natural History Museum for a year, due to the necessity for renovations in parts of Leinster House. The government are again ‘playing the cuckoo’; the past history of its appropriation of Museum spaces gives cause for concern. Leinster House itself once housed exhibition spaces. The curved corridor connecting the buildings, a now- demolished annexe and Leinster Lawn have all been ‘temporarily’ occupied by the central government, with the promise of return or recompense. Should this plan go ahead, it may be some considerable time before the public again has access to the Natural History Museum. 2 C E O’Riordan, The Natural History Sherra Murphy is an [previous spread] 47 Museum Dublin, The National Museum assistant lecturer in Visual [right] of Ireland, nd p 21 Culture at the Institute of Natural History Museum ground 3 Irish Times, 24 September 1862 floor, 1914 Art, Design and Technology 4 Haddon spent time in Dublin as a courtesy Natural History working zoologist before departing in Dún Laoghaire; she is Museum for the Torres Straits to commence currently pursuing a PhD research in what would later be on the Natural History [left] established as the field of ethnography, Museum Dublin at the Installation of the ground floor which he was influential in pioneering. UCD School of History of the Natural History Museum 5 Ernest Henry Alton, Dáil Éireann - and Archives. Dublin in 1884 Volume 29, 17 April 1929. In courtesy Natural History Committee on Finance. Vote 49, Museum Science and Art. (NB – Professor Alton was Provost of Trinity College.) [above] 6 In fact, in April of 1864, a Select Installation of the first floor of Committee of the House of Commons the Natural History Museum launched an inquiry into allegations Dublin in 2007 of sectarianism in the scientific courtesy Natural History institutions of Dublin, widely covered Museum in period newspapers. John Wilson Foster treats the divided character of Irish natural history in an essay entitled ‘Nature and the nation in the 19th century’ in his edited volume Nature in Ireland: a scientific and cultural history. 7 All examples taken from original internal correspondence files for the year 1900, held in the archives of the Natural History Museum Dublin 8 This is deeply ironic, in that, according to keeper Nigel Monaghan, the badgers were probably pests on a farm that were exterminated and brought in as a group for mounting and display. 9 Stephen Asma, Stuffed animals and pickled heads: the culture of Natural History museums, Oxford University Press, 2003 p XIII c . Isobel Harbison and Ilaria Gianni

The glue and the wedge: The cases of Claire Fontaine and Canell and Watkins 48

By creating work with another artist and then releasing it into the world, the individual must contribute creatively to an unidentified degree and then renounce any claims to individual authorship of that particular work. From its inception, the artwork that is produced by a collaborative practice is removed from any one particular identity; it is rather the product of a creative consensus. This consensual process may well be a challenging one, even more so where it is forced to operate in competitive Western societies and within a global art market that does not trade works on their merits alone but also on the history, practice and identity of their individual creators. [opposite] sense, Watkins as artist and musician. Canell and Claire Fontaine Watkins’ works are often built in layers, be they sculptural, Instructions for the sharing of private property, 2006 literary, chemical, or musical, each one distracting from digital video, colour and sound, 45'23" the last. Created from quite diverse materials, the different courtesy the artists works seem initially uneasy but when experienced first- hand appeal to both the imagination and intuition of the viewer. Score for two lungs (2008), recently installed at Artists working collaboratively do not necessarily have any the ICA London, comprises a freestanding electric radiator greater level of critical engagement than artists who work alongside a wall, into which it is plugged. Above the independently; to claim so would be inaccurate and radiator a blank A4 page is delicately taped and as the moreover unjust. Our own research looks at the very heat rises in the darkened windowless room the page lifts mechanism by which artists work together; we are trying and falls gently, responding to the viewers’ movements but to better understand how named or unnamed individuals also playing with its surrounding works, from the dangling may or may not operate together, and furthermore we wish maracas in Canell's A meditation on mineral and bats to develop new interpretations of the notion of community. (2007) to the repetitive actions of the old man in their The title of this article and broader collaborative research collaborative video work Digging a hole (2008). project emerged during an earlier interview with artists 49 Nina Jan Beier and Marie Jan Lund who have been working As well as differing in method and approach, Canell and collaboratively since 2003.1 Asked about their individual Watkins’ identity is revealed openly both collectively roles when creating works together, Jan Lund responded, and as individuals, whereas Claire Fontaine’s component “by both being the glue, and the wedge.” Through examining identities remain completely guarded. As if in reverse, the relationship between two (or more) people working Canell and Watkins’ work might be interpreted as quite collaboratively, whose continuous joint enquiry, critical mystical, intending to appeal to the collective imagination, exchanges, conflicts and negotiations inform an autonomous and engagement with it relies to some degree on one’s body of work, we believe the collaborative reveals itself to intuition. Claire Fontaine’s work is explicit in its discontent be an interesting and complex social mechanism, perhaps with contemporary political systems and its conceits are analogous to any social group which undergoes inevitable both structural and symbolic, sourcing from the viewer’s processes of fracture and repair. knowledge and political experiences. To these very different practices, three of the same questions were To expand on our initial enquiry, we asked two asked, followed by a further set of questions, which was collaborations with very different practices a number of tailored to their initial responses and different practices. questions. The first is ‘Claire Fontaine’, a Paris-based collective formed in 2004 that takes its name from a ...... popular brand of school notebooks, claiming to be IH+IG Does a collaborative have the capacity to conceal “a ready-made artist.” Claire Fontaine creates installations, those that create it? assembled objects, video- and text-based pieces...... The materials used within their work – found objects, Claire Fontaine A co-operation is never a way to hide images, or words – make explicit reference to the State, but a way to expose something even more secret than highlighting its various shortcomings by revealing related what is usually brought to the surface by solitary work. paradoxes such as State security (In god they trust, What a collaboration always installs is an economy of 2005), national identity (Passe-partout, 2006), or economic excess; excess of production, excess of visibility, excess categorization (The True artist, 2004). Claire Fontaine’s of desire. As soon as people unite their forces they find practice might be interpreted as at attempt to rupture or themselves not only stronger but in possession of more disarm contemporary political or rhetorical devices or, options, more ideas, basically they create a space of as their Untitled (Clichy Sous Bois, Nov. 2005), 2006, possibility where before there was only a desert. This claims, “Fight Fire With Fire.” process requires courage and sometimes a change of habits, a new arrangement of everyday life. It demands The second collaboration is Nina Canell (Växjö, 1979) that a path be cleared for the unpredictable and that the and Robin Watkins (Stockholm, 1980), who are long-term whole Constitution be re-examined rather than assimilated collaborators and whose practice is, for the purposes of through its various institutions. This whole process is this particular enquiry, very different to that of Claire more than as a mere accumulation of several individual Fontaine. Canell and Watkins together create film (Sea energies; it’s a complete method of work and life and to chant, 2006), music, live performances and events a certain extent a form of resistance to something. So in (Luftkluster/ Luftfluks, 2006), sculptural happenings and Claire Fontaine’s case, avoiding personal names does installations, although both also maintain individual not mean that we want to hide them but that we want to practices, Canell as artist and sculptor in the broadest fully explore the complexity of this device. Canell and Watkins One can argue that whenever an ...... authorship is claimed, singular or collaborative, a certain IH+IG What are the chances of rupture within the level of concealment is involved (whether conscious or collaborative and is this a concept that informs your unconscious). As pointed out by Focault, authorship is practice together? somehow a means of creating classifications within ...... discourse or practice and not necessarily a means of CF Well, the old-fashioned avant-gardes very much discussing the evolving nature of a creative enquiry. fetishised this concept of rupture, expulsion, breaking up. Just as multiple individuals can obscure their numbers by It was a little event – I suppose – a territorial action to walking in each others footsteps, the fixity of authorship affirm the leader’s power and to get the gregarious bunch can often dissolve the complexity of collective reactions of others to follow his choice, or else leave. It was often and all that they entail. On the other hand, it is perhaps justified by political reasons supposed to disguise the more interesting to remove the word ‘concealment’ from moral ones or even the personal and affective ones. any smoke-screen connotations and talk about how a No, this concept doesn’t inform anything. The argument, collaborative can be a means of creating, in our case, a third the discussion, the conflict are interesting things, I would subject which emerges from the space between us. say essential, but the rupture is just the end of something, sometimes that is obviously necessary but it is not an idea 50 ...... that informs us. IH+IG Is the act of working in a collaborative a political reaction to the individual competition in society today? C + W Collaborative ‘rupture’ is a necessary ingredient ...... in a successful collaboration. In fact the diversity of our CF I don’t know really. I think forming gangs, mafias, experiences, observations, memories and personal oddities collectives, networks, bands of people is a way to survive become even more valuable in a collaborative relationship in the hostile capitalist system and then eventually a way than within a singular artistic model. Intervals of rupture to become a pressure group, in order to transform these thus inform the practice in the sense that it identifies particular conditions. In the collective, competitiveness is gaps where there is a possibility for something new to suspended on a personal level but it doesn’t seem to me come forth. that it’s abolished or contested purely by this mode of operating. It has always been a habit of the Elite to ...... cooperate and support each other and that helps them to keep their power position extremely steady. Proletarians, Claire Fontaine on the other hand, are powerless because they are not ...... organized and because they keep being separated by force. It is considerably more difficult to be united by poverty IH+IG Claire Fontaine is, in its collaborative structure, than by wealth. It seems to me that protecting friendship a form of resistance, but can you elaborate on the subject is the only possible opposition to the total deconstruction of your resistance? of life or living that this contemporary phase of capitalism might impose on us. CF I don’t know exactly who resists what and I definitely cannot speak for the others, especially on these matters. C + W Politically speaking, breaking with the idea of the The mechanisms of contemporary capitalism are deeply solitary artist might not seem particularly radical. We have intrusive and suppressive and directly connected to our intentionally created a slight confusion about the nature of desires. So paradoxically the subjectivity we use to resist our collaborative efforts, which may appear irrational or is already partly colonized by the enemy and this fact – bewildering. For us, collaboration happens as a need to which has been true also for other struggles – renders all materialise something quite unspeakable which occurs the avant-garde arsenal of defence, the frontal opposition, between us. As such our work is the consequence of purity and moral reaction against the corruption of society, something which is explicitly personal yet at odds with the utterly unusable. That’s where the ‘bricolage’ begins: current spirit of prevailing individualism. finding comrades, discussing priorities, refuting some things and sharing others. In this way, Claire Fontaine perhaps resembles a guerrilla group.

IH+IG You have confirmed that your practice could be [opposite] defined neo-conceptual, your media and approach similar Claire Fontaine to the artists of the 1960s and 1970s. How close is your maquette for AMERIKA, 2007 K.font, neon, cabling and practice to theirs? transformers, c. 80 x 12 cm courtesy the artists 51

[Claire Fontaine] The distance is there. They are male, symbolic value of the object, and to a certain extent, they work alone, they refer to another landscape, another the actual object itself. But of course we do use a visual society. The ones that are the most present in the work language, perhaps an aesthetic of expropriation. – like Nauman – manifest their ‘influence’ in a very explicit way, we go through their toolbox and we use what is ...... needed, what works, it’s always a desperate need for IH+IG In your work you use language in an intimate something or somebody and never a simple choice like yet overtly political way, denouncing hypocrisy and the one that one would make in a bookshop or a contradiction. Do you see language as a communicative supermarket. We feel it vital to say somethings before tool and concentrated form of resistance? being suffocated by silence and to say that with a medium ...... other than language. What we say changes with time and CF Language is a space of sharing, it’s the paradigm of so do our media. something potentially common to anyone and it should be the political space reserved to reciprocate understanding...... One of the perverse effects of democracy it is that words IH+IG Used or abandoned objects, names or brands are have been progressively emptied so that every time we increasingly being used by contemporary artists, instilling write we try to instil a sense of doubt about its usage. in them a new ‘creative force’. What attracts you to these? Language is what facilitates the political within each and ...... all of us, and this is a wonderful idea that comes from CF We don’t consider ourselves thrift store hunters in Foucault. But also with Claire Fontaine we have abandoned terms of materials or references. We need what we use our mother tongue [French] in our text-based works, and in fact are not particularly charmed by antiques, so we operate soley through translation. This restricts salvage or vintage things. Like any other artist we try to our spontaneity, and communication is always an effort. extract what meaning is still within the mass of the object Just as art is a form of expression, language is a form of otherwise removed by capitalism, but we are not after any communication, and both are necessary for us in terms specific surrealist magic. I think we try to focus on the of resistance...... Canell and Watkins IH+IG Music is often used as a device to unite or rupture ...... communities and often defines (however effectively) people’s social identities. In your practice together, IH+IG Can you elaborate on this capacity of how the music seems like a mechanism for uniting people, providing collaboration might manage to avoid or escape classification a shared experience incommunicable either visually or and instead manage to carry ‘creative enquiry’? verbally. It music a passageway to the ‘third space’ that ...... you mentioned before, the opium for your audience? C + W Whether it’s actually possible or not to escape ...... classification, the nature of a collaboration does clearly C + W Music is part of a natural need to not stay put, provide a less straightforward way of ‘constructing’ to keep poking, to move into new situations and engage authorship. Perhaps one has to accept it as inevitable and with other audiences. Music is, as you say, an effective embrace it by finding ways of shifting attention towards collective tool and we do have an affinity for its capability the work rather than the individual(s). To refract authorship to project poetics. It facilitates a space in which individual through a prism of diverse activities and pseudonyms is elements can co-exist without necessarily physically meeting, a way for us to attempt to engage with, and in some and we try to work with how it can be conceptually and 52 ways relieve pressure from, the monochromatic nature of melodically quilted. Furthermore, we enjoy how music authorship. It’s about focusing on what happens in the provides us with alternative raw material for sculptural studio and in this case particularly through the discursive work, although we generally use it to accompany singing. relationship between two human beings. We try to let We have made around 120 minutes of strumming and making come out of living, with sustained dialogue and humming which kind of became a flexible trilogy (2004 improvisation, using the opportunities that we have for –2007) released in three LP editions. We treat this as a critical exchange and to keep the main focus on our mutual hybrid space in many ways, where prototypes or finished creative enquiry as a natural way of pursuing a practice. works move into new territories, not as documentation, but rather as new arrangements. The ideas worked out ...... musically thus might spark returns to the broader practice IH+IG You are creating a collaborative installation in and can at any moment provide a portal to new formations. the ICA, London, in May, whereas before you have created mainly film works, music editions and live performances ...... and events. Was this development a conscious decision IH+IG Is it difficult to travel back to your solo practices within the collaborative or one that occurred quite naturally? after creating work together, or is it an accumulative and ...... positive learning experience? C + W Again, the nature of our collaborative practice is ...... driven by an evolving working process, drawing on C + W We never really travel anywhere without each moments of mutual insights, ideas or conflicts. As such other, both literally and laterally. We do move in and out of it is not a consciously planned occurrence but rather work with overlaps and this keeps our perception alert and compelled by sudden needs to produce a common work. perspective unsuspecting, mostly without major arguments. The installation for the ICA originated from a collaborative film work entitled Digging a hole (2008), which then became the backbone of this show, set amongst a series of other sculptural interludes, sometimes also breaking with the collaborative format [sculptures by Canell]. We like to keep it open. Christian Wolff talks about every second of a composition as being one angle which provides a glimpse of the total sound structure, and in a way this is somewhat related to how we see exhibitions; as fragments of a larger, ongoing practice.

1 Ilaria Gianni and Isobel Isobel Harbison is an Harbison, ‘The glue and the independent curator and wedge; interview with Nina Jan writer based in London. Beier and Marie Jan Lund’, Arte e Critica: 54, April – June 2008 Ilaria Gianni is an independent curator and writer based between London and Rome. [above] [below] Nina Canell and Robin Watkins Nina Canell and Robin Watkins 53 Digging a hole Luftkluster/ Luftfluks 2008 2006 16mm film transferred to HD live performance at Pallas (2'18"), electric megaphone, Studios stand, cable courtesy the artists/ mother’s courtesy the artist/ mother’s tankstation tankstation c . Peter Murray Peter Murray is Director of the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork.

+ 54 Hou Hanru: Art, ev a and the global bazaar The title of this year’s ev+a, “Too early for vacation,” museums take it for granted that they and their staff was inspired by the busy schedule of its curator, are ‘a real event in life’, with a mission to contribute to San Francisco-based Hou Hanru. Having curated over society, on many levels. But essentially, Hou has a point: fifty exhibitions, including touring shows such as Cities “The structure can be modified because of momentum” on the move, Hou admits to finding little time in his career and in Limerick, this momentum does appear, although not to take a break. However, clearly he enjoyed curating perhaps as much as he would have wished. ev+a, describing Ireland as an “exotic, idyllic and even somehow spiritual destination for vacation” and Limerick Hou’s critique of the hidden hierarchies of display is perhaps as a “remote” city situated in the Mid-West of the country. best revealed in Limerick’s Hunt Museum. The atmosphere While for most Irish people, the notion of Limerick as at the Hunt, historic, muted and discreet, is entirely apt remote may be a novelty, Hou’s description of it as “one of for Of the departure and arrival, a series of small ceramic the most desired places” on the tourist map will certainly sculptures by Ni Haifeng, the display of which spills over please Fáilte Ireland. into the nearby former Motor Tax Office. Born in China, Haifeng now lives in the Netherlands. At first glance, The exhibition that Hou has curated however, has wider his blue-glazed ceramics blend perfectly with the museum’s horizons. One aspect of his curatorial approach is a display of historic objects, but on closer examination, search for meaning, not just in art itself, but also in the they turn out to be miniature models of vacuum cleaners, 55 way it is presented and viewed. While Hou’s comments cleaning-liquid bottles, mobile phones and other everyday on Limerick may seem idealized, with a gentle, deft touch objects. This installation, nondemonstrative and subtle, he has brought cities to life in unexpected ways. In 2007, successfully questions long-established conventions of as curator of the Istanbul Biennale, Hou utilised textile historic art-museum displays. Also in the Hunt Museum, markets, liner terminals and other everyday buildings as Mias gallúnach (soap dishes), a display of elegant white places to exhibit art; this creative approach he has repeated rectangular soap dishes by Catherina Hearne, underscores in Ireland. He describes his approach as follows: again the highly artificial world of such displays. Hou’s resistance to museums stems more from his questioning It is important to ask questions about art in general, the politics implicit in their displays: “We should transform to see how it is deconstructed, modified, in terms of the institution in terms of display,” he stated at the opening its relationship with the world. Events such as ev+a of ev+a. and biennales are necessary. A biennale is more like a box; you fill it up with things and then you close the That transformation is less evident at the Limerick City lid. Whereas here [in Limerick] we are trying to Gallery of Art, where ev+a 2008 fits comfortably within the break the box, and rebuild the relationship between old Carnegie Library building, and its handsome new the inside and the outside. The obsession is with extension. What Hou does do, however, is to use the 1 breaking the box. different possibilities offered by the building to good advantage, in an exhibition that contains virtually no weak Another aspect of Hou’s curating is inspired by a critique points. A thread of everyday life runs through the exhibition: of art museums and the ideologies within which they flourish. Maeve McElligott’s Newspaper spread, with pages by the However, that said, it must be admitted he has spent a artist reprinted in editions of the Limerick Post, effectively good deal of time over the years working with museums transcends the barriers of the museum walls, while and visual-arts institutions, such as the Vienna Secession Martina Cleary’s photographs The Wind have a genuinely Gallery, PS1, the Louisiana Museum in Denmark, Kiasma zany and humourous quality, an aspect of art to which in Helsinki and the Hayward Gallery in London. But it is Hou is particularly responsive, and that appears also in clear Hou is uncomfortable with static collections: he Jennifor Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla’s video There is characterises museums as operating in a world of their more than one way to skin a sheep, a work also shown own creation, oblivious to the pressures and concerns of last year at the Istanbul Biennale. Downstairs, the video society. In place of their cool, controlled atmosphere, installations include Sarah Hurl’s prize-winning Dark Hou prefers the ebb and flow of the market place, the roots. This black-and-white work, filmed in the style of energy of the street, the colourful ephemera of the bazaar. an early Nosferatu movie, with a dark secret in the attic, Along with Han Ulrich Obrist, he curated an exhibition of is imaginative, entertaining and compelling. Asian art at the Vienna Secession Gallery, when that venerable institution was celebrating its centenary in 1997. During the exhibition, Hou also rented out the gallery space for weddings, transforming, as he put it, the exhibition [opposite] Sarah Hurl into “a real event in life.” But in defense of museums, Dark roots it should be pointed out that renting museum spaces for video projection social events has been normal for decades, and nowadays Limerick City Gallery of Art courtesy ev+a Also downstairs, Extraterritorial spaces, a series of diluted tears, creates a magical effect, while Shahzia photographs by Fiona Hackett, documents the rooms Sikander’s Pursuit curve is a digital animation, with a used by embassies and diplomatic missions. Haegue soundtrack composed by David Abir. One of the few artists Yang’s Holiday for tomorrow, an installation consisting of to have succeeding in uniting aesthetics traditionally screens, blinds, platform, and a video projection, also considered ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’, Sikander has based concerns itself with domestic spaces, albeit on a more Pursuit curve on a complex mathematical function. Issues modest scale. This theme continues in Ian Kiaer’s Endless of international relations between territories are implied in house project: Limerick, while in Public address, the people’s Fantasia (Empty flag), a spectacular installation by wall, Angela Derby and Robert Peters’ installation of Moroccan-born, and French resident, Latifa Echakhch, banners and posters, the public arena of art is addressed. that consists of bare black flagpoles radiating outwards (Derby and Peters also made a work celebrating people’s from the walls of the gallery. birthdays, in the Vienna Secession exhibition.) The concept of ‘home’ reappears in Ailbhe Greaney’s Here and there And from the central hub of the City Gallery of Art, photographs, where the artist documents her life and that the exhibition itself radiates outwards, encompassing of her family, both in New York and in Galway, while sites and buildings across the city. The thread of domesticity Adrian Paci’s video Centro di permanenza temporanea, reappears in Taro Shinoda’s Telephone line (moon), 56 made during the Milan-based artist’s residency at New a work comprising a large circular dais, with pillows and Langton Arts, San Francisco, is based on the camps in cushions. The work is installed in a bare concrete space, Italy where immigrants are temporarily housed while the in Cathedral Place. The idea, that the viewer lies back and government decides on their legal status. enjoys watching video projections on the ceiling, was, however, perhaps conceived for a warmer environment As Hou is partly based in San Francisco, teaching at the than a March day in Ireland. Another installation with Institute of Arts, there is a strong influence of that city’s domestic references – in this case flyswatters – is A Room contemporary art scene in this year’s ev+a. However, full of domestic bliss, by James Hayes, at the A. Brooks as a curator born and educated in China, Hou is also very Properties office on Henry Street. While conventional familiar with contemporary art from Asia. He remains in exhibition spaces, such as those at the Art Gallery, and at touch with what is happening in cities such as Tokyo, City Hall, are central to the exhibition, Hou has a clear Hanoi and Shanghai: preference for also using everyday spaces, such as offices, business premises and commercial units. This The most exciting activities are not the things model of curatorial practice was evident also during his happening in the museums, but the things happening curating the 2007 Istanbul Biennale, where, rather than on the street. But the street itself is changing, utilizing Byzantine churches and Roman temples, because of the new economic growth. Asian cities are Hou chose instead to focus on 1950s modernist office being expanded at a rate that is incredible. The artists and factory buildings. These concrete-framed buildings, have to break down the boundaries, because they examples of which can be found throughout the world, have to deal with rapidly changing realities. They have can be read as being more democratic and less loaded to collaborate with architects and others concerned with cultural references than elaborate classical buildings. with urban realities. There is also a possibility to look at art not from a museological way, but from the Hou seems less comfortable using sacred spaces – viewpoint of real life. Shahzia Sikander’s video projection Dissonance to detour in Limerick’s St Mary’s Cathedral is an exception – but he Upstairs in the Limerick City Gallery, an installation by does not hesitate to take advantage of King John’s Castle, Tsuyoshi Ozawa, The Carpet from the sky, documents the medieval architecture of which provides an eloquent the artist’s visit to Tibet’s sacred Mt Kailash, where she context for Malachi Farrell’s Bomb holiday and Seamus collected discarded plastic rubbish, and then commissioned Farrell’s Neo ruin/ sign of times. Mark Clare’s lookout a firm in China to recycle the waste into polyester fibre to tower, Splendid isolation, also looks very much at home in make a carpet. The installation also includes a mound of this context. Elements of ev+a can also to be found on the futons, that visitors are invited to climb. Tsuyoshi also streets of the city. John Reardon’s Fire – painted plywood joins with two artists, Chen Shaoxiong from China, and flames leaping from the upper windows of Merriman Gimhongsok from Korea, in an artists’ collective called House – are characteristic of the curatorial approach: the Xijing Men. Their installation Do you know Xijing? the works in ev+a alert, excite, and intrigue. Hou clearly documents a Quixotic search for an Asian utopian city likes artists who get to the point, and make artwork that that does not exist. The responses they receive to the exists easily in the present. He has both a sense of question are varied, and often humourous. Also in the City humour, and a deft curatorial touch. Gallery, in a darkened room, Ruth LeGear’s Tear drops in wonderscape, a projection through phials containing Humour and theatricals abound in the Belltable Arts However, investing of belief in the power of environment Centre, the foyer of which lends itself to video installations. to condition art can imply that art itself is weak, and In Comic battle, by Common Culture (David Campbell, secondary to a grander scheme of things. When Hou Mark Durden and Ian Brown), three monitors are set invited artists to participate in the Vienna Secession, side by side. On each, a man talks into a microphone. their work was shown in conditions more approximating The three men, one sporting a strikingly unfashionable a department store than an art gallery. In such cases, moustache, talk nonstop, but after a while it becomes the voice of the curator can become predominant. In Nuits evident that they are being filmed, on three separate blanches in Paris, Hou had over one hundred videos cameras, in the same room. This is a quietly subversive projected simultaneously on a wall one hundred and fifty and captivating work, albeit one that lost out somewhat metres long. The one hundred short videos were selected to the frantic family antics depicted in Alan Bulfin’s video, from over seven hundred entries. He spoke of those who Killing Hur. This short film, as funny as it is disturbing, had submitted videos – both amateur and professional was shot using just a mobile phone and won Bulfin a artist, with no distinction being made in the presenting of prize. In the former Motor Tax Office, an air of barely the work – being proud of their work being shown in this suppressed hysteria pervades David O’Kane’s Babble, way. One wonders how artists, who spend much of their a video in which three actors, playing respectively Flann time preparing the presentation of their work, would react O’Brien, Franz Kafka and Jorge Luís Borges, discuss their to having their artwork displayed in this way. 57 approach to art and life, with mutual comprehension a difficult goal, as all three speak only in their own native In the commercial flux of the entrepot bazaar, market language. Drawing on diverse sources such as Tom forces rule, without restraint, and without social conscience. Stoppard’s Travesties, and Gerard Byrne’s dramatisation In describing his work at the Vienna Secession, Hou says: of vintage Playboy interviews, this work by O’Kane is both cheerfully irreverent and beautifully and seriously realized. The classic way is to combine architecture, art, and films, so we did all that. … The centre was empty, Hou holds that the models of curatorial practice he has the urban analogy is that the cities start from an created for events such as the Istanbul Biennale, the empty centre. Then we have a very busy area, where Vienna Secession, or ev+a, are a radical departure from the artists’ work is displayed, like an urban situation what has gone before, but this is not easy to substantiate. in the street. Everyone has to be mingled with the His model of practice draws heavily on the Modernist others. This was a gesture to challenge the autonomous role of the artist as a romantic hero figure. canon of the early twentieth century, where utilitarian buildings gradually replaced Beaux Arts architecture, Hou describes Asian cities as “tropes,” presumably where ‘everyman’ was assigned a central position in meaning that they serve as metaphors for future cities. cultural debates, and where it was envisaged that art He clearly prefers the market street, full of noise, chatter, would merge with society. This philosophy is reflected in colour and visual excitement, to the repetitive robotic Hou’s preference for having artists make work on site, music and heavily controlled environment of the shopping and his interest in creating ‘villages’ of artists, rather than mall. However, it can be argued that by adopting this expending budgets on transporting works across the approach, by focusing on an apparent chaos of street globe, divorced from their cultural roots. Modernist theory markets and people living in a state of constant saw the world of art becoming one with the everyday improvisation, he offers a Romantic view of Asia not world, with the work of art as normal and integral a part radically different from the exotic impressions offered by of life as a spanner or a sweeping brush. The Vienna nineteenth century Orientalist painters. An instance of this Secession Gallery was founded in the late nineteenth exoticisation is the recreation by Surasi Kusolwong of an century, to promote Modernist arts and crafts. In the mid oxygen bar of Bangkok – a real necessity for survival in twentieth century, Joseph Beuys invested the theory with that heavily polluted city – as an art statement within the new life, while Michael Craig-Martin and others have Corderia at the last Venice Biennale. (In 2005, Surasi refined and re-invented it in the present day. The curatorial Kusolwong was commissioned by the National Sculpture model offered by Hou has its roots in the late nineteenth Factory, Cork, to do BangCork, a street market transformed century, when the Arts and Crafts Movement hailed those into an art event, as part of Cork Caucus, a free-ranging who made creative and unique objects, rather than forum for discussion, events, artworks and critical dialogue anonymous mass-produced consumer items. His curating that represents perhaps the closest manifestation in is an act of resistance to the globalization of consumer Ireland of this approach to curating, and it is no coincidence society, hence his interest in having artists engage with a that a collaborator with Hou, Charles Esche, along with local environment, and in showing artwork within spaces Annie Fletcher, was closely involved with the Cork Caucus.) that speak of the everyday world, rather than a heavily conditioned ‘art’ environment. In the exhibition Cities on the move, shown at several Perhaps the most unconventional works in ev+a – venues, including PS1, street scenes of Tokyo, Shanghai unconventional in the sense that they are painted with and Hanoi were presented as visions of the future. acrylic paint on stretched canvases – are two large But this referencing of streets and markets, of the busy ‘fragmented’ paintings, Incompletable writings I & II, chaotic lives of rapidly growing cities of Asia, can also by Chen Wenbo, exhibited in City Hall. One depicts a been seen as retaining aspects of the Victorian view of keyboard, the other a wastepaper basket. They give a the world at its core. Chaotic market places are portrayed flavour of the large-scale ambitious painting that is being as an unchanging standard, whereas in fact they are part produced in vast quantities in China today. In the same of a commercial vortex, pulling together tens of thousands gallery, UFO Series, an accomplished essay in photo- of participants, and allowing some to filter through to montage by Allan de Souza, also depicts a fractured, increasing wealth, power and success, while obliging or mirrored, world. A colleague of Hou’s at the San others to remain eating at the noodle stand. Francisco Institute of Art, de Souza has spent many years documenting sites of alleged alien encounters. As well In Hou’s world, those ordinary dreams of success are as fractured and dislocated worlds, Hou is clearly fond seen as an unattainable utopian ideal. He is interested of assemblages of wood, brick and other basic building in the aesthetic of the everyday, of the noise, colour and materials, works that speak of immediate human needs, 58 confusion, that characterise street markets the world and again suggest a domestic environment. Suspended over. In Bangkok, Hou was able to utilise half-finished in the corner of City Hall, Broken Icarus by Terry Markey skyscrapers for Cities on the move, but the economic is a nest-like sculpture of timber planks. More timber, downturn that led to these buildings being available stacked and teetering on the edge of collapse, can be passed quickly enough. It can be argued that in these found in the Motor Tax Office, in Constructed action by exhibitions Hou gives a partial view of ‘real’ life, while his the same artist. work with Rem Koolhaus, for instance, looks increasingly dubious, as that architect advances grand dreams of 10% of a glass montain (Szklana Góra), a timber framework creating sprawling metropolises such as the proposed designed by Henna-Riikka Halonen and assembled by Waterfront City in Dubai. Hou calls for the designing of Polish workers resident in Limerick, also looks at housing. new cities in the most rational way, but he acknowledges A homage to Constructivism, this sculpture takes a that such super-designs often end up surrounded by sideways look at the Irish obsession with trophy houses, shantytowns. He even advocates the building of massive and the use of migrant labour to construct idealised new structures without essential services such as water, dwellings. Halonen is alert to the irony that the new Irish access and power; a recipe for a certain type of dystopia utopia, with its heavy carbon footprint, is being assembled if ever there was one. For Hou, however, “slum spaces by workers obliged to leave their own homeland, itself are the most interesting spaces,” a view shared by many once a Utopian social experiment. The title refers to a imaginative architects, only a very small number of whom, Polish folk tale, while an accompanying video shows the it has to be admitted, themselves live in slums. workers making the piece. Yang Jiechang’s Eurasia is installed in the unassuming spaces of the Tax Office, as is Aideen Doran’s Invisible cities, complete with tiny model landscapes on vinyl records, rotating on a variety of turntables. For the most part these are works that concentrate on models and forms of society, rather than personal and individual identity.

1 All quotes in this essay are [opposite] taken from a talk given by Ruth Le Gear Hou on Saturday 8 March Tear drops in wonderscape 2008; the talk, Hou Hanru installation shot, ev+a in conversation with Annie courtesy ev+a Fletcher, in Limerick, was part of the National Sculpture Factory's lecture programme. Sex, gender and intimate autobiography do not feature and art galleries. A proto-Socialist philosophy, an awareness much in ev+a 2008. In reacting against the politics of of the basic needs of humanity, and an openness to the the body and of identity, a central motivating force in future are characteristics of Hou’s approach. However, contemporary art in the 1990s, Hou draws closer to early the clarity of this identity-lite approach is blurred somewhat Modernist theory, that idealised vision of society where art when Hou states “We need art because we need was held to have universal values, inimical to the notion of difference,” thus begging the question, what does difference local or individual identity. In Hou’s Vienna Secession define, if not identity? In working with architects such as exhibition, the artist’s date and place of birth was recorded Rem Koolhaus, who maps out grandiose Utopian projects on the labels, but not their nationality. In ev+a, only the title in the Gulf region, Hou again makes explicit the connections of the work, artist’s name and year of work is recorded. with Modernists such as El Lissitsky, Corbusier, and One reason for this is to protect artists, particularly those Vladimir Tatlin, thereby referencing the great Socialist from Asia, from being singled out in commentaries that movements of the early twentieth century. This seems apt define art principally in relation to its place of origin. in the Irish city that in 1919 was home to the short-lived Perhaps unbeknownst to Hou, the one-page press release ‘Limerick Soviet’, and now welcomes a curator, born in does give the nationalities of the artists, in brackets, after China during Mao Tse Tung’s cultural revolutions, who is their names, in a notation familiar from many biennales and helping to define the shape, content and meaning of exhibitions. Hou’s strategy of eschewing nationality does contemporary art across the globe. 59 allow a glossing over of the reality that some of the most outstanding contemporary Asian artists are in fact resident in Berlin, Paris, New York or Los Angeles, having been drawn to these cities by opportunities for advancement, not least the advancement offered by those cities’ museums Reviews

Belfast Two places Niall de Buitléar Karen Normoyle-Haugh 64 | Brendan c . Jamison IN-BETWEEN: New work and JCB BUCKET series Slavka Sverakova 60 85 | James Merrigan… could we talk before and after…(part 1): Pascale Steven Erasure David Hughes 104 | Carrick-on-Shannon Clea van der Grijn Moment(ous) Maurice O’Connell 88 | Cork Seán Lynch: Joseph Beuys (still a discussion) John Kelly 90 | An incomplete survey of artist-run spaces in Cork Fergal Gaynor 100 | Dublin Colin Darke The Capital paintings Tim Stott 62 | Lightwave Paul O’Brien 70 | Defining space Eimear McKeith 73 | Séamus Nolan Phoenix Park / Demesne Gemma Tipton 76 | Glasgow Brian Connolly History lesson Michelle Browne 68 | Glasgow International Festival 2008 Susan Thomson 82 | Limerick Two places Niall de Buitléar Karen Normoyle- Haugh 66 | ev +a Jessica Foley 94 | Montreal Re-enactments Judith Wilkinson 80 | New York Katie Holten: Uprooted Tim Maul 92 | Portadown Brendan Jamison IN-BETWEEN: New work and JCB BUCKET series Slavka Sverakova 85 | Ronnie Hughes: Manifest Slavka Sverakova 98 |

(background) Anna Hill Aurora installation shot,

Science Gallery

courtesy fizzythinking c .

c . Tim Stott Temple Bar Gallery and January – February Studios 2008 Dublin

62 Colin Darke The Capital paintings The Capital paintings are the The lamination of the pieces in Asked to bear witness once again second part of a project, following Capital was said to illustrate the to the commodity-status of the art on from Capital (2005), where Darke alienation of the worker (in this case, object, we are provided with an transcribed the entire text from the the artist) from the products of outdated critique that pays little three-volume English translation of labour but also to render this product attention to how capitalism reproduces Marx’s Das Kapital onto selected inaccessible to exchange. Leaving to itself through the reproduction not everyday ephemera, which were then one side the uneasiness that one of objects but of self-regulating individually laminated and displayed might feel about the privileges of subjects, affects, cognitive processes, en masse. In The Capital paintings, artistic labour being taken as and language, with the artist, Darke has taken these same analogous to alienated labour in conventionally understood, as an ephemera and rendered them in oil general, the laminated object, secure exemplary subject of these processes paint. In both parts, Darke has in its glossy outer layer, serves less of immaterial labour, as Maurizio sought to demystify those processes as illustration than as fetish, Lazzarato and others have described whereby the invisible hand of the transforming a revolutionary analysis it. Faced with the commodification Market gradually underwrites the into an extended artist’s signature. of the very potential to produce, stuff of the everyday: the first time, It is perhaps not so odd, then, that it seems all that might save the making visible this ideological Darke has chosen to return to dignity of Darke’s four years of labour 63 inscription by overwriting Marx’s painting as to a fetishist’s dream. is for it to have been a complete critique and by mimicking processes Whether or not facture is evident in waste of time. of reification through the lamination the Capital paintings, or whether or of each recovered item; the second, not one ‘slips’ from one work to by withdrawing ephemera from another without being able to survey Tim Stott is a lecturer at the National College of Art and everyday circulation, making them the whole display at once, is neither Design, Dublin, and the Dublin unique, precious, rarefying their here nor there. Fetishists aside, it is Institute of Technology. banality, as the condition of their an impoverished and infantilised entrance into another sphere of viewer that is offered these fort-da [opposite] circulation, that of the art gallery/ games for adults. Colin Darke market. The Captial paintings, 2008 And whilst we play such games, the installation shot One could read this patient Temple Bar Gallery and Studios; rewriting as a disclosure of ideology’s ease with which surplus value has courtesy TBG&S naturalisation, its constitutive already been extracted is exemplified disavowals, and the methods by in the fate of the Capital paintings, which each object, no matter how all of which are for sale. One wonders, insignificant it may seem, no matter then, given the impasse that Darke’s how quickly it might pass through work reaches as it returns to the our hands, impresses itself upon us market as the ultimate arbiter of and slowly effects the accrual of a value, just where he might direct his certain stance upon the world, commitment to Marxism. One might a certain way of binding us to an ward off the suspicion of Communist economic and cultural landscape. -chic and the sophisticated disavowals Darke’s is a further attempt, then, of a generation of artists who cut to trust the power of the written their teeth on the arse-end of the word over and against the binding ’80s. One might give Darke the and blinding evidence of the image. benefit of the doubt and not suggest that a scattering of Marx serves here But one could also read here the only to spice up what would otherwise staging of a familiar double-act be a rather insipid dish. But one whereby a particular method of cannot escape the feeling that Darke Marxist critique and its object are has accomplished at best a shown to be as inextricable as writing demystification of the obvious and and the page upon which it is written. at worst has returned the familiar as The question one must ask oneself if new, re-entering the commerce of from the start is whether this act can novelty that he set out to question still put on a good show or simply rather than achieving the far more rehearses past glories. difficult and politically urgent task of a return of the new. c . Niall de Buitléar Ormeau Baths Gallery January – March 2008 Karen Normoyle-Haugh Belfast University of Limerick Limerick

Two places:

64 Belfast (Limerick)

[below] [below] Barbara Freeman and Paul Jürgen Simpson and Eoin Wilson Brazil SHRDLU: FOR BELFAST AND Hanging gardens (in memory FOR LIMERICK of John O'Donoghue) installation shot installation shot Ormeau Baths Gallery Ormeau Baths Gallery courtesy the artists courtesy the artists

[above] Anthony Kelly and David Stalling Ghost signals installation shot Ormeau Baths Gallery courtesy the artists

[left] Slavek Kwi 2 PLACES_1 TIME=INTER_CHRONOLIT [=PARADOX] installation shot Ormeau Baths Gallery courtesy the artist Two places is a collaborative, original context. The typical visitor to encouraged to create sound by interdisciplinary exhibition occurring the exihibtion is likely to be unaware touching it. The plate in Belfast is simultaneously at the Ormeau Baths of the conceptual link of the ‘portal’ linked to a plate in Limerick, with a Gallery, Belfast, and the University of pieces, and so Kwi's work appears slightly delayed sound feed. Sounds Limerick campus. The show includes as a general contribution to a group made by the audience and the painters, composers, sound artists show rather than a specific engage- atmospheric sounds at either location and others, with the use of sound ment with the curatorial proposition are filtered through the plate at the providing the common link between other location. their work. The artists have been Keiran Ferris’ installation takes as asked to respond to the two sites and its starting point the ubiquitous but Between two plates is not so much ‘the space between’. They employ unnoticed presence of utility boxes site-specific as site-sensitive in the a range of approaches with varied in all modern cities. Given their choice of a location between exhibition amounts of success. ubiquity, they seem an odd choice spaces; it is in a passageway as of subject matter for an exhibition direct reference to the artists’ interest Painter Barbara Freeman and Paul where the artists have been asked in internodal activity.3 Wilson of SARC have collaborated to respond to two specific places. on SHRDLU/ BELFAST.1 The main The installation consists of a Jürgen Simpson and Eoin Brazil 65 visual element of the installation is a projection showing a series of have collaboratively produced perspex cube with internal diagonal pulsing dots on the textured surface Hanging garden. The piece, more elements. The structure is etched with of a utility box, these dots mapping than any other in the show, creates angular lines drawn from the patterns the position of various utility boxes an environment in which the audience of the distinctive tiles at the entrance in Belfast. There is also a series of is immersed; it is a simulation of to the gallery. The sculpture’s graphic paintings depicting these garden in which sixteen speakers transparency and the layering of boxes, works which seem out of represent insects or other small lines encourages the audience to place as the only explicitly figurative animals which react to each other and walk around the piece and their pieces in a show that primarily deals to the movements of the audience. movements trigger various minimalist with abstract sound and imagery. The piece responds directly to the sounds which complement the visual The sound element is a live feed architecture of the gallery, in this side of the project. The installation from a Limerick Street. case the overhead metal grid which also includes a series of painterly is the most distinctive feature of the digital works by Freeman. The Limerick part of Ferris’ project mezzanine space at OBG. involves the siting of a utility box The videos in Anthony Kelly and containing a sound piece on the Overall the exhibition is varied in David Stalling’s Ghost signals also street for the public to encounter by terms of the quality of the works on have a painterly feel. Kelly, like chance. This seems an approach show and their engagement with the Freeman, also works as a painter. which more successfully addresses context of the exhibition. It is at its The installation consists mainly of the artist’s interest in these items of most rewarding, as in SHRDLU/ video and sound recorded in Belfast ‘street furniture’. The installation at BELFAST and Hanging garden, and Limerick as well as during the OBG, however, does little more than when the work responds to the artists’ travels between these places. state the obvious. architectural space while engaging This material has been manipulated the viewer with a range of abstract, by the artists to take on new, Gráinne Mulvey’s Parallel light sits suggestive possibilities. abstract form. uncomfortably within the exhibition in a cramped space temporarily Slavek Kwi conceptually links the constructed for the purpose. 1 “SHRDLU is a program for understanding natural language, written by Terry Two places through the placement The installation is cluttered with far Winograd at the M.I.T. Artificial of identical ‘portals’ in each of the too many elements and fails to Intelligence Laboratory in 1968–70. locations. These ‘portals’ are respond tangibly to the location. SHRDLU carried on a simple dialogue (via teletype) with a user, about a small foil-covered boxes linked only by world of objects (the BLOCKS world) imagination. The foil of the ‘portal’ Michael Alcorn and Pedro Rebelo shown on an early display screen” – at OBG resonates with the present a collaborative work entitled http://hci.stanford.edu/~winograd/ Between two plates. The work shrdlu/ vibrations of a sound recording of 2 Cicadas are a type of insect found in dolphins. Kwi also contributes a appears as a sheet of rusted scrap temperate and tropical climates and piece for headphones composed steel mounted on the wall, resembling often confused with locusts. 3 2 a Richard Serra sculpture in its ‘Internodal activity’ refers to what from recordings of cicadas. Kwi is happens in the space between nodes interested in the abstract qualities of appearance as well as its title. on a network these sounds divorced from their The steel is tactile and the viewer is c . Karen Normoyle-Haugh Ormeau Baths Gallery January – March 2008 Niall de Buitléar Belfast University of Limerick Limerick

Two places:

66 (Belfast) Limerick

[below] Slavek Kwi 2 PLACES_1 TIME=INTER_CHRONOLIT [=PARADOX] installation shot University of Limerick courtesy the artist

[below] Pedro Rebelo Michael Alcorn Between two plates (detail) courtesy the artists

[below] Barbara Freeman and Paul Wilson SHRDLU: FOR BELFAST AND FOR LIMERICK installation shot University of Limerick courtesy the artists

[right] Anthony Kelly and David Stalling Ghost signals installation shot University of Limerick courtesy the artists The concept of sound art first this work, as the blend of natural to the sounds. Hanging gardens emerged when Futurist Russolo put and ambient sound transmitted is consists of sixteen speakers, each forward his Art of noises in 1913. affected by how the visitor moves one generating its own sound in As many as 30,000 noises were within the space. response to the sounds around it. created from everyday sounds and Sensors pick up movement within played on noise instruments at The technicality of the projects had the space and this affects the level Futurist performance events. an alienating effect. The text panels and rate of the sound both in The Futurist ‘noisician’ was revived relaying information to the public Limerick and Belfast through the use by John Cage in the 1940s using were confusing, using technical of an internet connection. The eerie unconventional means to create language that was exclusive and tinkling and croaking sounds are music. A notable work is 4,33, mystifying. In Slavek Kwi’s work, interspersed with sounds reminiscent where a musician sat at a piano for 2Places_1Time=Inter_Chronolit of chirping crickets. Again the work 4 minutes, 33 seconds silently moving [=Paradox], even the title is enigmatic had to compete with a noisy his arms. Cage’s gestural music made (the work itself was so mysterious environment. Undoubtedly the idea the viewer aware of the ambient I couldn’t even find it). In sound art behind using the campus was that sounds and that silence does not the importance should be on sound students would, unawares, happily exist. Two places is a shy exhibition and in the case of this exhibition the stumble upon the sound artworks. 67 of sound art based on the premise emphasis is on generating sound It would unsettle them, disturb them, of existing in two places simultane- through interaction. However, in give them an experience of sound art. ously. Curated by Sean McCrum, some cases the sound was barely However noble the idea, the reality the exhibition utilises the divergent audible or absent altogether. Pedro was far from ideal. spaces of the Ormeau Baths Gallery Rebelo and Michael Alcorn’s sound in Belfast and the university campus in piece, Between two places, was Two places, in its Limerick site, was Limerick. The various artists involved hidden underneath a dark stairs let down by a lack of organisation in the seven sound-art projects behind an elevator. Consisting of and access to information, with aimed to redefine each space and a rusted metal plate, visitors were maps and leaflets only available a allow for interaction between the invited to touch the plate; these week before its close. It was also spaces. The sprawling University of vibrations were recorded via micro- stunted by its lack of vision and Limerick campus presented different phones and played back through scope. One of the main advantages challenges and limitations to the speakers. However, no matter how afforded by the university campus is gallery space. However, it also much I touched the plate, no sound the vast amount of space; however, offered different opportunities and emerged. Listening to the sound the projects were largely located in audiences to the artists. samples on the CD that accompanied dark, cramped and remote spaces. the catalogue, some of the sounds Works such as Parallel light, SHRD- Many of the works are technically had an interesting mixture of natural LU and Between two places would complex, using light, imagery as and artificial sounds, which at times have greatly benefited from more open well as sound triggered by visitor had an eerie or disturbing effect. and accessible spaces. Competing interaction and sometimes by It’s a pity that these sounds were against a cacophony of sounds in a interaction with the work in Belfast. largely unheard amidst the bustle of busy and noisy campus with traffic, Ghost signals by Anthony Kelly and the campus. Another example of too students rushing to lectures, mobile David Stalling is reminiscent of a much subtlety is Urban drones by phones and ipods, this exhibition Nam June Paik installation with its Kieran Ferris. His street cabinet, was not disruptive or bold enough raw, exposed speakers, wiring and which emits sounds recorded from to hold attention or silence the other monitors. The computer images the Belfast work, is located by a busy sounds. While Two places may and eerie sounds in this work are roadside in the campus. Passing by transcend spatial boundaries, transmitted randomly from the work this cabinet on numerous occasions, unfortunately it ultimately fails to in Belfast, while Gráinne Mulvey’s although unaware of its existence break any boundaries with regard to Parallel light uses lighting in as an artwork, the sounds seemed audience interaction or awareness. connection with various music nothing out of the ordinary, indeed it samples, which is triggered by the sounded just like a drain. visitor’s interaction and physical Niall de Buitléar is an artist currently based position within the space. SHRDLU Perhaps the most successful work in Berlin. is a work by Barbra Freeman and in this exhibition is Hanging gardens Paul Wilson consisting of four digital by Jürgen Simpson and Eoin Brazil. Karen Normoyle-Haugh prints and a clear perspex box Occupying the hallway upon entering is an art historian and engraved with geometric patterns. a campus building, it provides ample visual-arts writer. Architecture and space are vital to space for the viewer to sit and listen c . Michelle Browne The National review of February 2008 live art Glasgow Michelle Browne is an artist based in Dublin.

68 Brian Connolly History lesson

Brian Connolly History lesson, 2008 performance/ installation shot courtesy the artist My father spends a lot of time in other and smaller elements contribute but another subjective interpretation. the garden. It is his form of retreat, to a future whole. Here we can see These questions are equally valid of a quiet space where he can mull how the current power-sharing Connolly's work. As the viewer things over, as he gently watches it to agreement in Northern Ireland has watches from the sidelines, unable to grow. I was reminded of this when I been reached, not through one grand enter the space fully, one becomes entered Brian Connolly's 'install-action' gesture, but through the gradual aware of not being able to experience at the National review of live art in changes and developments in the the work in its entirety. This restriction Glasgow. At the ostentatious spectacle political situation there. We are further mimicked our inability to fully under- that is the National review, a live-art prompted to consider the relationship stand or represent history, showing festival hosting over forty international of these events to the world political the artificiality of its construction and performances over four days, stage. The map/ world is suspended, interpretation. Furthermore, on the Connolly's work was the opposite: connected and perhaps in some way last day, when the viewer was finally a quiet, unassuming journey. dependent on them.1 permitted to enter the installation space, it was impossible to fully grasp History lesson took place in a Stepping outside of this space, a Connolly's construction. The jars greenhouse in the Hidden Garden at smörgåsbord of performances and hung in clusters and the string Tramway, an internationally acclaimed talks were taking place in Tramway, seemed to come from all directions. 69 venue for contemporary visual and which prompted the viewer to then It was impossible to tell which images performing art. The Hidden Garden, consider History lesson in the context were paired, what relationships the which was designed as a place of of live art and the array of work on artist was trying to make and why. peace in this hub of activity, provided offer in the main building. André Stitt One was only ever able to experience Connolly with the tranquil setting in led Trace Displaced, a group of a part of the work; the whole which to create this performative artists from Wales who performed remained elusive. installation. The greenhouse was for three hours, on three days of the blacked out and ultraviolet light was festival, in the vast main exhibition Speaking of previous work, used to highlight an intricate web space. Phil Babot, who performed Connolly has said, “I tend to show of string that was woven by an as part of this group, gave a talk the opposition as being a reality in anonymous figure. Dressed in black considering the role of shamanism in that there are two polarities and I'm and thus obscured by the artificial relation to live-art practice. Here he trying to show the similarities light, Connolly slowly and quietly spoke of the role of ritual and symbolic between the polarities.”2 In History worked through the space, suspending actions in performance. Babot lesson, as images of Ian Paisley and jars from two large plants. Candles in stresed the cathartic nature of such Martin McGuinness hang side by the jars illuminated images of figures performance, seeing it as a cleansing side, as they now have worked side and scenes from Northern Ireland’s or purging of emotion. Looking at by side in Stormont, these similarities history, while the string passed through Connolly, one cannot help but relate become more apparent. As Marylin holes in a world map which was these ideas to his work. Connolly Arsem of Displaced Action (an suspended in the centre of the space. seemed to be working through his American performance collective Connolly also attached stones to the past, purging it, in order to confront taking part in the National review of string, creating further tension in the the future. Similarly, the trance-inducing live art) said, “The act of performance piece. Intermittently, he would sit with repetition of his actions created a is a way of thinking about how we his back to the viewer, reading the meditative space for the viewer to experience the world,” and Connolly's history of the plantations of Ulster. consider this trajectory. work has given us the opportunity to do just that. Watching his actions, one felt that Trace Displaced also posed questions this was a private moment for the around the role of documentation of 1 Similarly, it is interesting also to note that performer, an action that we could live-art practices. Throughout their the National review of live art is much more only view from a cordoned-off area performances, Dr Heike Roms than national, presenting work by many at the entrance. The viewer remained attempted to document their actions prominent international artists working in the field. There is an interconnectedness at the edge looking in as the artist through different media. With written and interdependence between these artists, seemed to take a journey through texts, Polaroid photos, video and creating an important platform to present the history of Northern Ireland. drawings, she questioned the ability to live work to their peers. Recently Áine Philips has been nominated to select work The duration of the performance capture the essence of a performance. from Ireland to present at NRLA, which will (eight hours a day for three days) As each minute went by, it took increase opportunities for artists working seemed to allude to time passing longer to write than to watch, video in live art from Ireland to present to an international audience. through slow incremental changes. destroyed the experiential, visceral 2 Fiach Mac Conghail (ed), Overview, Dublin As with history, events build on each quality of the work, and drawing was Project Press, 1996, p 43 c . Paul O’Brien Science Gallery February 2008 Dublin

70 Lightwave

Anna Hill Aurora installation shot, Science Gallery courtesy fizzythinking Science and art have been uneasy science. Consequently, Green-minded The gallery opened with a show bedfellows down the centuries. individuals tend to take an ambivalent entitled Lightwave, a name which In an etymological sense, science view of science: on the one hand immediately raised a central question refers to knowing, while art has endorsing the ‘pure’ scientific in the history of physics – does light connotations of making. Science as research that conveniently upholds consist of particles or waves? The discipline/ disciplines only emerged their own political outlook (for example show, which attracted overwhelming from philosophy in recent centuries. in regard to global warming) and on public interest to the extent that its In the writings of Plato, philosophy was the other often condemning the planned opening times were extended firmly to the fore and art relegated to technological application of science during the month of February, the sidelines. While philosophy for (eg genetic engineering, nuclear included an interactive installation Plato could get a direct take on the power) as being fatally contaminated (Light drops) by Elke Harris where beautiful, the good and the true by capital. There is something like you could take a shower of light (the world of forms outside of the an implicit distinction here between rather than water, and The constricting ‘cave’ of sensory ‘pure’ science (good) and ‘applied’ Heliosphere by Anna Hill and Peter imprisonment), artists could only science (bad). (However, that Gallagher. The latter apparently imitate (mimesis) a world that was distinction itself may be hopelessly allowed you to see three dimensional itself a poor imitation of the ideal. simplistic – major discoveries of video footage of the surface of the 71 practical use can grow out of sun, though I didn’t quite get it – Indeed, to make matters worse, high-end mind games devoid of any it involved a lot of bemused peering the Greek term techne did not immediately obvious application.) with 3D glasses at a large solar clearly distinguish between art and image, wondering if you were seeing other forms of ‘making’. (Modern Historically, connections between what you were supposed to see. derivatives of the term include science and art have been complex Kids and adults of all ages were ‘technology’ and ‘technique’.) Artists and varied, ranging from the role of having a lot of fun with Light tracer for many centuries were not clearly artists as illustrators of scientific (by Karl Willis), which allowed distinguishable from artisans or textbooks, through the spirited participants to write and draw with craftspersons – it is only in relatively endorsement of modern science and light, while ‘light therapy’ was recent times that artists have technology by the Futurists, to the available in The Daylight Lounge to ascended to the semi-divine stature contemporary ‘bio art’ of practitioners counter the negative emotional of Michelangelo or Damien Hirst. like Eduardo Kac. The ‘immersive’ effects of February in Dublin. You Concomitant with the ascendancy (virtual reality) artist Char Davies had to queue up to view Dmitry of artists from the ranks of ordinary uses advanced computer technology Gelfand and Evelina Domnitch’s workers or craftspersons concerned to explore levels of consciousness wonderful Camera lucida (viewed in with technique, technology itself and experience, while James Turrell total darkness, ultrasound waves achieved a new status as applied utilises light itself for similar purposes. moving through a fluid cause science, to the extent that the Art practitioners from Jean Tinguely emissions of light) but I’d seen it teaching of technology has in recent to Mark Pauline (Survival Research before at Ars Electronica in Austria times often found it easier to obtain Laboratories) have explored the so I didn’t. (Apparently it makes government funding than the teaching potential of technology (machinery) some scientifically controversial of art. as art practice, sometimes in references to fusion.) Other spectacularly destructive ways. installations included Anna Hill’s In the philosophy of Heidegger, There is no received ‘take’ on science Aurora, based on the Northern there is an ongoing anxiety about (or technology) by artists – responses Lights, Willie Williams’ aesthetic the ‘technologisation’ of thought and range through the whole spectrum transformations of everyday objects life in general. Weberian anxieties from enthusiastic endorsement to through light entitled Lumia domestica, about bureaucracy (life as machine) rejection. There has though – and Benjamin Gaulon’s De Pong and Marx-influenced concepts of despite the kinds of examples just Game III, which allows users to play alienation and ‘reification’ plug into cited – been a large-scale, general a version of the computer game similar concerns. These anxieties disconnect between the two worlds Pong against a building. A more have inevitably filtered into the of science and art. It is in this context straightforward science exhibit was life-world inhabited by artists. that TCD’s new Science Gallery, Beau Lotto’s Bee matrix, wherein Contemporary anxieties about which sets out to explore the bumblebees were shown learning to science tend to focus on its applied, relationship between science and respond to shades of light and dark. technological aspects (genetic art/ aesthetics, is an intriguing and engineering, nuclear power, etc) welcome development. rather than on ‘blue skies’ or pure (The Lightwave show for obvious sell-out presentation entitled ‘Rock scientist bent on taking over the reasons took place during the hours concert visuals: from showbiz to world on the other. If it assists in of darkness, which at times made it shopping malls’ by artist Willie highlighting ethical and environmental hard to read some of the explanatory Williams, who has worked with U2, issues around science and its role material on the wall.) REM and David Bowie among in society, it will be even better. (At others. Other presentations focused the time of writing, future exhibitions Associated events included Lightwave on visual perception, the relationship are planned which will focus on on the streets with artist Eric between creativity and business, pharmaceuticals and biofuels.) Staller’s Lightmobile (a Volkswagen and light simulation in video games Beetle covered with computerised (presented by Steven Collins, lights), which toured Dublin’s streets co-founder of Havok). There was even during the show, and Bubbleheads, a fashion show (entitled Lightwear) a bicycle for four riders with the organised by Irish fashion designer head of each rider appearing to be Ciaran Sweeney and with an input a bubble of light. In Grand Canal by staff and students from the Paul O’Brien Square in Dublin’s Docklands, an National College of Art and Design, ([email protected]) teaches 8272 installation entitled The Hive by showcasing wearable technologies. at the National College of digital artists KMA (Kit Monkman and Art and Design, Dublin. Tom Wexler) offered an impressive The Science Gallery is a great idea interactive experience combining and a real contribution to Dublin’s light patterns on the ground and the cultural smörgåsbord, particularly if it music of Philip Glass. A series of helps to break down the stereotypes talks and discussions accompanied (real or imaginary) of the attic-bound the Lightwave show, including a artist on the one hand, and the mad Elke Harras Lightdrops installation shot, Science Gallery courtesy fizzythinking c . Eimear McKeith Original Print Gallery February – March 2008 Dublin Eimear McKeith writes on visual art for the Sunday Tribune

The Original Print Gallery’s exhibition Defining space, featuring members of the Black Church Print Studio and others, was an offshoot from an international interdisciplinary conference of the same name, which took place in late 2007 and was organised by Dr Hugh Campbell of UCD School of Architecture. 73 Defining space The conference set out to explore the various connotations of space in the arts and social sciences and, subsequent to this, the artists were invited to respond to the term ‘defining space’ for this exhibition. Campbell himself curated the show, and co-selected the works with artist Felicity Clear. ‘Defining space’, as a term, is twofold: Inviting printmakers was also an allergic to traditional etching materials, it reflects upon how architecture or interesting decision, for the very so she began exploring ‘electro-etch’ matter ‘defines’ or shapes space nature of the medium requires a techniques, experimenting with through form, but it also refers, more certain type of studio space for its alternative methods of etching using generally, to the many ways in which production. It was perhaps for this electrolysis. The installation is the word ‘space’ itself can be defined. reason that the brief stipulated that essentially one of these works in “the finished work should be derived progress: a metal sheet partially The definitions of space are so [from] and inspired by printmaking submerged in zinc oxide is being multifarious as to render the term practices.” This encouraged the gradually transformed by the electrical itself almost indefinable: space can artists to reflect upon the process of charge that constantly courses be geographic, physical, temporal, making a print, to experiment with through it, causing seaweed-like personal, spiritual, cultural, political. traditional procedures and to work in crystal fronds to attach themselves As the conference organisers noted, other media, thus exploring a space to the metal. The work is in a constant it was a key concept in twentieth- beyond the boundaries of printmaking. state of flux, its form determined by century culture, occupying a central The result is a mix of lens-based invisible forces. Accompanying it is a position in modernist theories of art, installations, sculptures and small LCD screen featuring looped, 74 architecture, literature and philosophy. collaborative pieces, as well as timelapse footage of the process: From the 1970s onwards, however, various prints. Indeed, one could it is beautiful, mesmeric, like an it has become increasingly suggest that this in itself transformed ever-changing abstract landscape. problematised and contested: no the space of the Original Print longer viewed as neutral, space has Gallery, which usually confines itself Personal space is the subject of become invested with political, racial to exhibiting traditional print formats: Margaret O’Brien’s I live in the and gender issues, just as scientific 2D, framed and hanging on walls. cracks in the wall. Her work explores discoveries and technological the cracks between internal and developments have imploded previous Naomi Sex, in collaboration with external spaces, the world of the notions of space. It was this that Mark McManus, created a sculptural psyche and the physical world. prompted the organisers to investigate installation that playfully engages Taking a pale embossed wallpaper whether, in the twenty-first century, with the physical and temporal design as a template, she used space remains a viable paradigm, space required to create a print. hundreds of pins to create a delicate or if it has “reached a point of The piece consists of a hairdryer three-dimensional pattern that is exhaustion, simultaneously banal hanging from a socket high on the both insubstantial and dramatic, and fraught.”1 wall and a bitumen can. The socket is and which shifts and changes actually fake – a print of a socket – depending on the viewer’s point of Considering such complexities, it is thus playing with our preconceptions view and the fall of light. The pins revealing to examine the individual about how interiors are defined and and the wallpaper design evoke a responses of a large group of articulated. The hairdryer and particularly feminine form of printmakers to ‘defining space’. Not bitumen are necessary tools for the domesticity – a place of enclosure, surprisingly, the exhibition gave rise printmaker, but here become the but perhaps, also, of entrapment. to a diverse collection of works and artwork itself. Accompanying them is a wide variety of interpretations, a set of headphones that produces John Graham, meanwhile, has ranging from the direct and straight- the sound of a hairdryer: another considered concepts of space on forward to the oblique and profound. playful trick, it is, in fact, the artist’s several levels in Untitled (high rise). breath on a continuous loop. In this This short, looped video is projected The exhibition as a whole proposed way, Sex reflects upon the space, onto the gallery window – creating many thought-provoking questions. tools and materials that are used to a physical space out of invisible, It is revealing that Campbell chose breathe life into her creations. intangible glass. The video itself to involve the Original Print Gallery shows precarious stacks of in particular: with its modernist interior The process of printmaking is also Styrofoam, arranged to mimic and glass wall opening out onto explored in Fiona McDonald’s high-rise buildings, tumbling down the street, the gallery itself is an stunning Ionised, a work that again and again. As a material, architectural expression of spatial explores the space between art and Styrofoam gives form to the space dissolution and openness. Crucially, science, between the personal and around objects; it is a physical also, located as it is in Temple Bar, the rational, the process and the end manifestation of negative space. it serves as a reminder of how the result. McDonald, who studied In the film, these geometric shapes area was transformed, via architecture, biological chemistry before attending are reminiscent of abstract minimalist from an urban wasteland into a tourist NCAD, discovered that she was architecture, while their original hub and so-called cultural quarter. function – as packaging – reminds is inhabited and transformed by and Lynda Devenney. us of consumerist society and the the birds, which when flying together Both Kavanagh and Wyer have proliferation of devices that fills form an ever-changing fluttering created abstracted views of today’s world. Arranged as ever- black mass. Space in nature is also architectural forms, with Wyer toppling high rises, they also draw considered in Stephen Vaughan’s focusing on disused ball alleys, thus attention to the urban manipulation intaglio screenprint, Glade, which reflecting on how spaces become of space and the representation of presents a view of the vast expanse defunct and desolate. Devenney skyscrapers as sturdy, impressive of the sky through the leaves of depicts an empty waiting area in a temples of capitalism. trees. But in counterpoint to this rundown bus station, a space of flux glimpse of the heavens, Vaughan and transit. As an example of 1960s Cora Cummins and Liam Sharkey has framed either side with a thick, brutalist architecture now threatened address similar themes, reflecting uneven, semi-rectangular black form. with demolition, it also demonstrates upon temporal, economic and In doing so, he highlights how the how a building can embody ideals geographic space in the elegiac artist frames nature by presenting that make it a physical expression of Two factories, a split-screen DVD a selective view and by manipulating an era – ideals that can become projection accompanied by a space. outmoded, even if the building itself soundtrack by Jason Oakley. continues to serve its function. 75 The timelapse footage depicts, on Framing is also considered in Yvan the left, a cement factory in Co Vansevenant’s Virtual space: this The diversity of artistic responses Louth as the sun rises and, on the purely white image achieves form in Defining space reveals that right, a sugar factory in Co Carlow through embossing. The square, definitions of space are boundless, as day descends into night. Just as four-paned window of a traditional overlapping, contradictory – the concrete factory thrives – a Irish cottage is evoked, with a proof that spatial concepts have visual manifestation of the building pattern of raised dots suggesting certainly not yet reached ‘a point boom – workmen are dismantling drops of rain on glass. Interestingly, of exhaustion’. There is always space the defunct sugar factory, a local, however, the work integrates the for another interpretation, another sustainable industry supplanted by virtual and the physical, the technical definition. economic development. and the evocative, for it is in fact created from an embossed recycled 1 Hugh Campbell and Douglas Vincent Sheridan’s Birdflux video Smith, Defining space conference circuitboard. abstract, www.definingspace.ie projection follows a flock of birds as they soar through a typical rural Irish A more overt engagement with countryside, an expanse that is space is evident in the architectural defined by trees, hedgerows and spaces depicted in prints by Annraoi fences. The space of the landscape Wyer, Ann Kavanagh, Colin Martin

[previous spread] Fiona McDonald and Nicholas Ward [e++] untitled Giclee print photo John McDonald courtesy Original Print Gallery

[right] Cora Cumming and Liam Sharkey Two factories (Music Build an original composition by Jason Oakley) DVD courtesy Original Print Gallery c . Gemma Tipton Kerlin Gallery February – March 2008 Dublin

The LAB Dublin

76 Phoenix Park | Séamus Nolan Demesne [opposite] and ‘young’ or else ‘emerging’ transposing the two, however, Phoenix Park installation shot, artists, Phoenix Park augmented the altered my relationship to both. 2008, showing Séamus Nolan: Get in the back of the fuckin’ sense of the innovative nature, and van, 2008, found cardboard; therefore clearly cutting edge value, Away from Aoife Collins’ Rebuilding Clive Murphy: Untitled (never of the gallery at the same time as hokey Dumpty, a brightly coloured gonna be alone), 2007, audio display, in which artificial flowers had kinetic drawing installation, conferring the value of their own dimensions variable; Aoife reputation on the artists involved been shredded then reconstructed Collins: Rebuiding hokey Dumpty, (Aoife Collins, Vera Klute, Eoin to cascade from an urn set on a 2007, artificial flowers taken classical plinth, and re-imagined in apart thread by thread and McHugh, Clive Murphy, Séamus reassembled, mixed media, Nolan and Sonia Shiel). This is fairly The LAB, Get in the back of the 132 x 109 x 193 cm standard stuff and, when exhibitions fuckin’ van lost its elements of courtesy Kerlin Gallery like these work as well as this one did, kitsch, and became (in my mind, they are a good example of the way at least) instead a more sinister the established art market refreshes commentary on surveillance, crime itself by a cautious filtering in of and punishment, while Caravan in the ‘new.’ a new home might well have come to speak more of freedom and 77 In Phoenix Park, Nolan’s Get in holidays than of those occupying the back of the fuckin’ van was an marginal spaces, on the move almost-life-sized model of a police because they have nowhere to stay. riot vehicle, created out of discarded Context can be, if not everything in commercial cardboard packaging. The strength of Phoenix Park lay in contemporary art, then a definite Wired for electrics, the lights came the artists’ understanding of their deciding factor in determining value; on, indicators glowed, and metal context. Exhibitions like this tend from which source, of course, flows screens covered the bales of not to work when the artists involved price. This value-creating context is coloured cardboard that stood in for are too ambivalent about the produced by location, juxtaposition, the windscreen. Hovering between commercial or institutional gallery adjacency and a little (to borrow kitsch and high seriousness, its system, or when they attempt to Hans Haacke’s memorable title) presence in Kerlin, that church-like subvert it. Such subversions generally Social Grease… But if the prestige space at the zenith of Ireland’s selling only demonstrate the unequal power of a gallery (the other artists it gallery system, implied meanings relations, and the gallery usually represents, its client list, and its connected to the relationship between emerges from any such conflicts connections with various institutions) business and the forces of law and as the dominant partner, the winner. constructs value, it can also go some order. What is protected by the Elsewhere in the exhibition, Sonia distance towards creating meaning. State is the interest of capitalism, Shiel’s paintings were simultaneously commerce, consumption. And what unsettling and yet quirkily desirable As these sorts of sets of relationships this relationship produces (in terms (as were Vera Klute’s animations – are a major theme of Séamus Nolan’s of meaningful social systems) may although I have more favourable work, which explores, as he describes just be as worthless as the packaging memories of her LAB exhibition of it “the relative value of objects and left over when the goodies have 2006, Why stop now). Meanwhile, social processes as they appear been removed. even as Eoin McHugh’s end-wall within different economies and installation more than held the contexts,” it was particularly interesting Over in The LAB, Demesne, space, the fluid grace of the drawings to see two simultaneous showings an installation originally created for that made up his wallpaper backdrop of work by this artist in entirely an exhibition at the Wexford Arts emphasised the somewhat stilted different contexts.1 Demesne, at Centre, had as its centrepiece lines of those framed drawings he The LAB on Foley Street, and another scale model of a vehicle, executed in shades of grey. At the Nolan’s contribution to Phoenix Park again constructed from discarded opposite end of the gallery, Clive at Kerlin exhibited similar work by cardboard. This time, a camper van, Murphy’s Untitled (never gonna be Nolan and yet, in each, the way the Caravan, implied ideas of ownership, alone), described as an “audio pieces opened to meanings and access, transitory lives at the kinetic drawing installation,” continued readings was entirely different. margins of social space. Of course the slightly suppressed, subtle sense the medium is not always the of humour, and the theme of the As part of an occasional series message, and the fact that these elevation of the discarded and the (periodically undertaken by most two works were both created from everyday into art that made this such galleries, both private and public) of used cardboard does not determine a satisfying show. exhibitions of the work of ‘exciting’ any similarity of meaning. Mentally Interestingly, the least successful Credited with launching the careers Gemma Tipton is a writer work in the exhibition was the one of many ‘young’, ‘exciting’ and and critic on art and that commented most closely on ‘emerging’ artists, collector (though architecture based in Dublin; she is currently capitalism and the value of art versus he is increasingly best described as a research scholar at money. Séamus Nolan’s Micky a dealer) Charles Saatchi will be GRADCAM, the Graduate Molloy’s disco ball was a work in programming his new gallery space School of Creative Arts progress, in which each facet of the in London next year with a show in and Media. mirrored disco ball will ultimately be the same vein as Phoenix Park, covered with holograms cut from but on a much larger scale. New Euro notes. Without their holograms, Britannia is where the next generation the currency becomes value-less, will be, as The Guardian puts it, but can (as with Damien Hirst’s skull, “unleashed” on the public.2 What For the love of god) the price of the The Guardian article didn’t mention, finished work become higher than the and what is of greater consequence value represented in its constituent than the names of the “fresh band” parts? The idea is interesting, and listed in the article (including Tessa 78 yet in the context of this exhibition, Farmer, Toby Ziegler and Barry the answer seems like a foregone Reigate), is the note on Saatchi’s conclusion: “yes, but only if the artist website, indicating the new gallery’s is famous enough.” partnership with auction house Phillips de Pury. This partnership So, if none of the Phoenix Park “enables the Saatchi Gallery to be artists demonstrate a desire to free of charge,” announces the refuse the market (and why should website.3 Free of charge it may be, they?), can an exhibition like this but one wonders what the long term ‘create’ success, even as it defines cost this shifting of context, and, how one looks at the work on display? with it, of power and emphasis may The shifting sites of control and extract from artists, whether they are power within the international art ‘young’, ‘exciting’ and ‘emerging’, or market imply that this is unlikely. even, perhaps, already ‘established’ Just as critics lost power since the in the art market place. heady (to some) days of Greenberg, so too are galleries losing power, as auction houses are making further inroads into the contemporary art world. With some artists now consigning works directly to auctions (and at 15% rather than 50%, there is a definite temptation, even though auction houses do not, by their natures, commit to the long-term development and support of an artist’s career), and auction houses buying contemporary galleries (Christie’s with their purchase of Haunch of Venison in 2007), value may increasingly be constructed in terms of record prices, achieved through the orchestrated theatrics of rival bidders. 1 Séamus Nolan, artist’s statement [opposite] from Synesthesia Sat (Birr, Seamus Nolan August 2007) and online at Caravan, 2007 www.birrvintageweek.com/arts discarded cardboard, to scale 2 Francesca Martin, ‘Saatchi to photo Michael Durand unleash fresh band of Young courtesy the artist/ The LAB British Artist at his new London Gallery’, The Guardian, 9 April 2008 [below] 3 www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk Aoife Collins Toothbrush orchid/ Campyloscentum 2007 artificial orchid taken apart thread by thread and reassembled, mixed media, 57 x 33 cm courtesy Kerlin Gallery

79 c . Judith Wilkinson DHC/ ART February – May 2008 Montreal

Re- enactments

80

In his introductory essay to the the past, reckoning with a prevailing Nauman, completely reconfigure exhibition Life, once more (Witte de culture of recurrence. For example, our understanding of the importance With, 2005), Sven Lütticken identifies the meticulous reconstruction of of individual artistic authorship, the potential for artistic strategies American Civil War battles by US and undermine the authenticity of of re-enactment to provoke new military enthusiasts has recently original experience in the history of readings of important historical and been examined in the quasi-realistic performance. These events also raise cultural events. He champions images of artist Robert Longo and questions concerning the reliability contemporary art’s ability “to fight the phenomenon of the Hollywood and purpose of documentation, repetition with repetition, to break remake has been interrogated in the leftover images and footage that open and activate the past.” work of Candice Breitz, Pierre Huyghe serve as a collective means to and Douglas Gordon among others. access past actions but are also Contemporary art certainly seems an undeniably valuable commercial willing to take on Lütticken’s The other strand self-reflexively commodity. challenge, as re-animated historical re-interprets the sphere of art itself, figures, revisited failed utopias and relying on the work of previous Re-enactments, the latest exhibition recontextualized archival images generations of painters, performers at DHC/ ART in Montreal, places increasingly populate exhibition and filmmakers for inspiration. itself within this broader cultural spaces. This current moment of re- The Whitechapel’s ongoing debate while offering a particular enactment in art arguably assumes exhibition series A Short history perspective on art’s current two related but distinct forms. of performance, along with Marina fascination with images and forms Abramovic’s recent restaging of of the past. One set of explorations confronts several classic pieces by Joesph popular obsessions with reconstituting Beuys, Vito Acconci and Bruce Curated by John Zeppetelli, emigration to Miami of his wife and queries elicit a notably different the show features works by Stan friends. Thrusting the storyline into response in Tribe’s sequence. Douglas, Nancy Davenport, Kerry 1980, the year of the Mariel boat Filmed in their LA home, Wollen’s Tribe, Paul Pfeiffer, Harun Farocki exodus when Fidel Castro permitted daughter Audrey appears far more and Ann Lislegaard, and focuses on thousands of Cubans to escape to assured in both her responses and media as “a source for collective Florida, Douglas also reinterprets the screen presence than her French memory.” Included here are Pfeiffer’s fragmented narrative of the original, counterparts. Through this second restaging of Michael Jackson’s playing out the events on two iteration, Tribe illustrates the infamous denial of molestation synchronized and alternating 16mm heightened image-awareness of charges recited by a chorus of 80 film loops of unequal lengths. Through children exposed to the current age children, entitled Live from Neverland this technique, the individual scenes of media spectacle. (2007), and Farocki’s multi-screen of Douglas’s portrayal recombine installation Deep play (2007), into seemingly endless permutations. DHC/ ART Foundation for in which he exposes the dynamics Despite Alea’s claim that his film Contemporary Art opened its official of live television editing in the 2006 was an indictment of the lack of gallery space in the autumn of 2007, World Cup football final. revolutionary commitment on the after sponsoring and co-producing part of his intellectual protagonist, several off-site projects, including 81 This highlighting of art’s indebtedness Douglas’s re-presentation foregrounds Canada’s celebrated contribution to to and inheritance of film and the political ambiguities of the original. last year’s Venice Biennale, David television spectacles would seem to Altmejd’s The Index. This latest place the exhibition neatly within the One of two artists in the exhibition exhibition remains faithful to the popular culture stream mentioned paying tribute to Jean Luc Godard, organization’s mandate of bringing earlier. Yet the show’s most engaging Kerry Tribe draws from the great film international media art to the city of works effectively blur the line auteur’s lesser-known television Montreal. DHC/ ART’s Reenactments between these two re-enactment work. Tribe revisits the tele-series taps into an emergent cultural camps by drawing from film sources France/ tour/ détour/ deux/ enfants phenomenon that is both present that are perched somewhere between (1978), in which an off-camera in contemporary art production the realms of popular culture and art. Godard engages French and implicit in the workings of the schoolchildren in lengthy interviews popular media. Douglas’s Inconsolable memories of a highly philosophical and probing (2005) takes as its point of nature. “Space…do you know what reference the Third Cinema classic that is? And time? You know that Memories of underdevelopment too? What about the night? Is it Judith Wilkinson is an (1968) by Cuban director Tomás space or time?” In Tribe’s Here independent curator and Gutiérrez Alea. Part of his ongoing and elsewhere (2002), British film PhD candidate at series of ‘recombinant’ film theorist Peter Wollen has replaced Goldsmiths College. projections, Douglas reshoots Alea’s Godard and it is his 11-year-old depiction of a bourgeois aspiring daughter who is the recipient of [this page and opposite] writer remaining in Cuba after the Kerry Tribe a similar line of questioning. While Here and elsewhere, 2002 Bay of Pigs invasion despite the often repeated verbatim, Godard’s video stills courtesy DHC/ ART c . Susan Thomson Various locations April 2008 Glasgow

82 Glasgow International Festival 2008 [opposite] a more rooted feel than your average tunnels that would form around these Stephen Hurrel biennale and would seem to provide towers, creating unexpected currents Beneath and beyond, 2008 seismic monitoring data taken an interesting model of a cure for of air. His parachuteless walk seems live from 100 stations around some-art world dislocation blues. to raise ethical question-marks the world translated into a around duties of care, around morality sound and video installation. Jim Lambie opens the festival at photo Alan Dimmick and art, that are not fully explored courtesy Glasgow International GOMA with Forever changes. because the worst-case scenario His trademark vinyl striped floor did not occur. Sculptural notions of I walk into the State Bar having been transforms the interior of the balance are also evoked – balance directed there from the CCA, knowing neoclassical Modern Art Museum here being a life-or-death issue. there is an exhibition on. There are into a psychedelic, jazzed-up The project refers to private and four video monitors, one high up in Renaissance cathedral. The floor public utopian dreams, hubris, flying, each corner, all playing the same looks combed, as if a giant Pop-art and it is that hubris which could very news footage of the Scottish brush has swept motions through it. easily have been visited on artist and National Gallery, a story about a The title is an optical illusion, shifting ropewalker. It is in the end the forged will and stolen paintings like the stripes themselves. His work magical realism of the project as well which have now been rightfully clearly references the languages of as this rather sinister after-image of 83 returned to the Gallery after many fashion, music, pop culture, and a man falling that are, however, years. I walk around the bar. Every while this undulating floor, which the most interesting aspects of a work table has a ‘Reserved’ sign on it. resembles also the symbol for which could itself be in danger of I keep walking. I think about absence wool, provides a striking setting, falling back into mere documentation and presence, about space that is the sculptures themselves seem a of a circus performance. kept, a Kafkaesque tale of little disappointing. Bags with extra impossibility, blockages and return… handles, a many-jacket-armed Stephen Hurrel’s Beneath and After five minutes the barwoman creature, these works do what beyond at the Tramway is a live-feed comes up to me, asks me, “Can I people like Gaultier and others have sound and video installation relaying help you?”; I tell her I am looking at done for years but with more tectonic movements from 100 the art; “No,” she says, the art is conceptual underpinning. A brick stations all around the world. Video downstairs, “the exhibition is in wall made of material bricks, with monitors show the wave patterns the bar below.” I ask about the shoes peeping out the bottom, as if and lines for different countries, ‘Reserved’ signs; they’re booked up some recycled Wicked Witch of the with any movements appearing in for lunch, the steak pie is very good. West; and a golden cube, created red. Six ruby red speakers move in Turns out the TVs are simply playing as the bottom of a door morphs into and out, seeming to sing or speak the day’s news, which I see again the top of a door, an unopenable a meditative pulsating sound. later that evening at home. door – these are more promising, This slow experience is encouraged, evocative of the magical escapist with a number of beanbags to sit on And so begins my trip to the land he seems to promise in his scattered over the floor of the Glasgow International Festival work. Cement blocks cut into the blackbox space. There is a sense of 2008. Back on my own original floor like dropped speakers or stage vigilance, a Buddhist sense that home turf, this biennale feels a little lights, for a performance that never things are always shifting, even if different from others. Most of the happens or refer perhaps to that you might not perceive them. There artists are either from Glasgow or house which falls from the sky into is noise when things move up a gear have been through the Glasgow this disorientated land. tectonically somewhere, and the School of Art. They are local, yet computer keeps reporting, Australia many also have an international Back at the CCA, Catherine Yass’s 13 events, Germany 7 events, and it stature and there are plenty of Turner High wire depicts tightrope-walker feels like Election Results, or the Prize nominees (and one winner, Didier Pasquette’s attempt to walk Eurovision Song Contest, waiting for Simon Starling, whose work wasn’t a wire constructed between two of results to come in, and you start to ready on time) on show at over forty the triptych of the Red Roads tower think too about the word ‘event’, sites across the city. The ostensible blocks, creating a potential bridge. as the piece mixes landscape with theme of the festival is ‘Public/ private’, The project seemed to exist as urban performance art. The work, however, although this seems in some ways myth or rumour before the show had also seems to evoke the manifold merely a conveniently large umbrella even opened. A third of the way along digital control systems which seem to to shelter these diverse artistic Pasquette declares it impossible, proliferate endlessly in contemporary practices. This connection to the and returns. Neither Yass nor life, thus undercutting some of location, on the other hand, results in Pasquette had fully realised the wind its gentleness. Simon Yuill’s Given to the people The video features two singers, photos, broken frames, a mannequin at the Galgael Boatyard is a a fully clad male, followed by a in the corner, some strange-looking documentary film telling the story of naked and alluring female vocalist ritualistic sticks and a bell in the the ‘Pollok Free State’, which began who simply mouths the words to ceiling. The works are all itemised life in the 1990s as a treetop protest the Polish punk song, which is on the sheet provided, which in this against the proposed M77 and grew presented as being a ‘memorial’ to case is perhaps a pity, as wondering into a series of camps, creating a the Polish woman Angelina Kluk, if those beer spots on the wall or the kind of free but barricaded zone or who was raped, murdered and carelessly arranged books on the liminal space in the middle of Pollok buried under the floorboards of a shelves are intentional art would Park. The film is shown along with Glasgow church in 2006. The piece remain even more of a mystery haunting live music from Foxface, has naturally proved controversial without it, although the artists clearly interspersed in amongst the dialogue, and seems in some ways more of an intend the whole room to be a work, changing the work from film into a example of the media having a con- and in this festival as a whole, powerful mixed-media event. Inevitably versation with itself, with the artist as Glasgow itself becomes a work. some of the more controversial middleman. The gender politics here works steal the light. Wilhelm are, to say the least, unreconstruct- 84 Sasnal’s The Other church is a case ed, but aesthetically the piece has a in point, creating a kind of dive bar in rawness which is appealing. the downstairs space of a dilapidated warehouse at The Basement, Meanwhile downstairs in the State Susan Thomson is a the blue paint peeling liberally from Bar, A. Vermin (a collaboration) have writer/ artist living in the ceiling, and wallpaper standing interspersed objects in the bar, Dublin and Glasgow. as practically another surface from including superimposed drawings the visible wallpaper behind. on the glass frames of typical pub Wilhelm Sasnal The Other church, 2008 installation shot; 16mm film and text photo Alan Dimmick courtesy Glasgow International c . Slavka Sverakova Millennium Court Arts February – March 2008 Centre Portadown

Old Museum Arts Centre February – March 2008 Belfast

Brendan Jamison 85 IN-BETWEEN: New work and JCB BUCKET series Both concurrent exhibitions address the inertia of thinking and the stifling effect of majority-led culture and custom on liberty.1 Brendan Jamison2 has preferred the liberating qualities of nontraditional materials, including sugar cubes, wax and wool, gluing, cutting and pouring them into highly finished objects ever since his early work.3

The new works share a valiant loyalty to primary colours and the desire to dislodge familiar function by segueing into play. Built specifically for the MCAC gallery, Yellow spiral staircase (2008) soars upwards, touching the sloped ceiling, as if documenting Kandinsky’s description of the physical effect of yellow as “shrill” and “high treble notes.”4 Its wooden skeleton, partly transformed from hard wood to soft assembly of exactly measured lengths of wool, is decidedly an object to observe and touch and not one to climb. The ensuing relationship between the word, ie ‘staircase’, and the visible denial of reaching another space, allows reality to become continuous with imagination. The relationship between reality and crossing. Suspension of reason At OMAC, the JCB Bucket Series mental acts has been long understood allows the Dionysian principle of (2007) consisted of a gallery-floor as constituent of ‘intentionality’. spontaneous impulse briefly to display of fifteen different industrial This has been variously defined engulf the experience, it being the models made from wood, covered as “immanent objectivity” (Franz flux between concept and material, with microcrystalline and paraffin Brentano,1838–1917), as between construct and appearance, wax in one of the primary or “consciousness” (Jean-Paul between the word and the removal secondary colours. Sartre,1905–1980) and as a of a familiar function. sentient condition where an Familiar function was preserved individual’s existentiality identifies Red tunnel shifts away from the in form but denied by material. with ontological significance as other two in a number of ways. First, The colour chimed with Kandinsky’s opposed to what is merely ontic5 it is an open form; the red loops are “colour is the keyboard, the eyes (Martin Heidegger, 1889–1976). set apart, descending in size from are the hammer and the soul is the Sentience is the ability to make one end to the other. Second, an piano.”12 The installation became conscious choices including not observer’s physical participation was a jolly assembly of personages13 doing, not talking, etc.6 Jamison’s to be a constituent part. However: dancing, jumping, biting, chatting, 86 yellow sculpture engages us in the lying on the back, being pregnant, move from physical stance and design … a couple of days after the etc. Kandinsky14 pointed to the stance (mass, volume, verticality of opening at MCAC, there was an power of children to clothe internal the staircase) to the intentional accident … Four of my tunnel content into strong form. In reversal, stance7 that activates beliefs, pieces got completely destroyed … Jamison took a strong form and thinking, and crucially, the imagination. MCAC then roped off the clothed it in imagined animation. This process is intensified by scale, exhibits… Therefore, the way it is I cite Kandinsky because he faced colour, material and position in presented to the public now is squarely both the ontic presupposition not the way I had intended … space. The Apollonian faith in the of a work art and what Rubens The bridge and spiral staircase 15 necessity of order is embodied in called the “inner idea.” At present, were not created to be walked the thirty-three-piece assembly that ontology and epistemology are no over or climbed up. By employing withstands the pull of gravity. longer kept apart due to innovations hundreds of layers of wool, I in quantum physics. In philosophy, As a sculpture it depends on wanted the audience to ‘imagine’ Daniel Dennett worked out that ambivalence for a quantity of the sensation of soft wool beneath the intentional stance is a level of their feet … while denying a antithetical referents. It approximates abstraction in which we view the physical engagement with these the form of which it speaks but, behaviour of a thing in terms of works can intensify the viewer’s as Hegel put it, it remains essentially mental properties. A number of desire for interaction, heightening a question. The wool acts like cracks beliefs, thoughts and intents may be the ‘mind’s projection’, the imagined in the bark of the wood it covers, a theorist's fiction, but operationally feelings of warmth and comfort. without unveiling its existence and they are valid, throwing light on how history. The substitution of past by With the tunnel, the intention was art evokes a contingent truth that presence (ie the actual observer’s for direct audience participation. appears as a necessary one. look, gaze, perception) and by future Its form was designed for the (ie the observer’s imagined purpose body to pass through with ease. or function) could act as a wake-up Drawing inspiration from the call to a public obsessed with the tunnel and tubes of the womb, past. Thus, the work enters the accounts of tunnels in near-death public domain as a question about experiences and the sci-fi tunnels the future. to other realms, it seemed important that the viewer would The above is true for the horizontal enter it … and for a split second 8 Blue bridge (2006) more so than … all become one. On a meditative for the last of the three objects, level, that split second would be Red tunnel (2007),9 made of red the real in-between space of the loops that remind me of a pergola. tunnel, located somewhere Kandinsky10 thinks of blue as invitation between the last exhale of breath to touch, to stroke an object and and the new intake of oxygen.11 receive relief, in this case “a pure inner resonance” with an illusive safe 1 Inspired by J S Mill’s (1806 –1873) defence of liberty 2 See www.brendanjamison.com 3 Born in 1979, he completed an MFA in 2004. 4 Wassily Kandinsky, ‘The effect of colour’, 1911, in H Chipp, Theories of Modern Art, 1968, pp 153ff 5 ‘Ontic’ is the physical, factual existence; philosophy traditionally distinguishes between ontology and epistemology. 6 Eg, when I hear a tone, I [previous spread] cannot be sure that there is a [above] tone for others to hear, but I 87 In-between, 2008 am certain that I hear it. It is installation shot of an awareness of possible Red tunnel, truth, not truth. ‘Sentire’ in 212 x 450 x 600 cm, Latin means to feel; sentience Yellow spiral staircase, is well established in 265 x 160 x 160 cm, Buddhism: the first vow in and Blue Bridge, Bodhisattva reads: “Sentient 180 x 392 x 120 cm, beings are numberless, I vow wool over wood to free them.” courtesy the artist/ 7 The three terms were coined Millennium Court Arts Centre by Daniel Dennet, The Intentional stance, 1987 [below] 8 Blue bridge was created in JCB bucket series, 2008 2006 and exhibited at installation shot, Queen Draíocht Arts Centre, Street Studios Gallery; Blanchardstown. Red bridge fifteen components, (2006) was made during a microcrystalline and paraffin residency in October 2006 wax over wood and exhibited at KHOJ, courtesy the artist New Delhi. 9 Red tunnel (2006), exhibited [this page] at Draíocht Arts Centre, [above] consisted of seven Red tunnel, 2007 components; its bigger wool over wood version made from sixteen 212 x 450 x 600 cm ‘loops’ was made specifically courtesy the artist/ for MCAC in 2008. Millennium Court Arts 10 Kandinsky, op cit, p 154 Centre, Portadown 11 An e-mail from Brendan Jamison to me, 21 March [below] 2008 JCB bucket series, 2008 12 Kandinsky, op cit, pp 154-5 installation shot, Queen 13 David Smith called his steel Street Studios Gallery; sculptures painted with oil fifteen components, paint “personages” in the microcrystalline and paraffin early 1960s. wax over wood 14 Wassily Kandinsky, ‘On the courtesy the artist problem of form’, 1912, in H Chipp, Theories of modern all works Brendan Jamison Art, 1968, p 166 15 Peter Paul Rubens (1577 –1640), ‘De imitatione statuarum’; English translation in R Friedenthal (ed), Letters of great artists, 1963, p 162

Slavka Sverakova is a writer on art. c . Maurice O’Connell The Dock February – April 2008 Carrick-on-Shannon Clea van der Grijn Moment(ous) Moment(ous) is a thought-provoking The video piece itself is not part of project exploring love and the loss of the show. The stills are lifted from a child and what it is to witness and the passing days of loss. They are be part of the resulting grief. very calm and peaceful and could be from any time – a family gathering, The installation is in three a Sunday or just when someone had components. Two commanding life- a camera. These gatherings we see size photographs (of mantelpieces) are very particular and are the reveal a lifetime collection of family threads that draw together the grief moments through snapshots, notes and loss within a home. and artefacts. In the third component, a collection of video stills freeze-frame This project has taken place in the the private, domestic moments of a upheaval of losing life, in a home, family during this grief. A photograph within a family. The brokering of of a still, resting body; it is fragile, trusts and permissions has clearly and disarming. All elements are informed the criteria by which to brimming full of life but are fleeting make the work. To then establish Maurice O’Connell is 89 a Cultural Activist based by implication. a distance and allow the work to in the UK, a lecturer at reveal itself is the task at hand. University College The images invite the viewer to There is no one position from which Falmouth, and principal witness a mother’s loss of a child; to view the work; the viewer is left to guide for the Novocastrian to then witness the power that turns piece the thing together. Above all, Philosophers’ Club. the smallest moments into (as in the the project shows the power and title of the project) momentous dignity in the experiences of loss. occasions; the extraordinary and ordinary events that can command The rewards have been that this is a the lives of those as they grieve. deeply personal study of a mother’s loss and the journey she and her The two substantial mantelpieces, family take in encountering this loss. cluttered with snapshots and It is a proud and aesthetically moments that quickly stitch the life responsible show. The project of the family together, are separated consciously acknowledges the role from their domestic interior. On the of others in its production and of mantelpieces are images of friends, course in its content. smiles, celebrations and artefacts that appear to span several decades. Van der Grijn is no stranger to These two images reveal a tapestry dealing with the very raw and of the personal memory of a family, personal side of life, and this project and both contain moments from that is a logical progression of the content life that is no longer. Separately, of previous work. The choice of among a series of video stills, medium has allowed the work to the image of the resting body is engage/ confront both the artist and quite disarming as it takes a while the audience. There is no distracting for it to come into focus. The viewer footprint of the artist, which then is driven to reconsider the elements allows the content command the in this image and consequently space. Calm and carefully distanced adjacent images. The stills emphasise observations are being made and the artist’s interest in the everyday represented from amidst these and normality that surround the moments of loss. It is these mechanics of grief. We are asked to considerations and resulting consider how these ordinary decisions that make this work all moments can be extraordinary. the more personal and moving. [opposite] Clea van der Grijn Poo bear Lamda-print still from digital film 69 x 69 cm courtesy The Dock c . John Kelly National Sculpture February 2008 – Factory ongoing Cork

Seán Lynch

90 Joseph Beuys (still a discussion) Who knows what you’ll In 1964, Beuys created a CV which Lynch’s photograph, nor have they see when you see someone was titled Lebenslauf/ Werklauf changed its context. The billboard (Life course/ work course, “a self- remains a billboard on a building. else’s point of view?1 consciously fictionalised account of Its placement is at a distance to the the artist’s life, in which historical viewer’s touch and other senses so The opening quote is taken from an events mingle with metaphorical and little interaction can take place HSBC ad and seems an appropriate mythical.” Even if no fabrication took except from afar. Like the HSBC one to begin a conversation on place at the NSF and we accept ads, even if the ambiguity of the Seán Lynch’s Joseph Beuys (still a Lynch’s story, what is this billboard image can suggest different things in discussion), commissioned by Cork’s trying to communicate? Beuys’ the minds of the viewer, the billboard National Sculpture Factory (NSF). brief visit to Cork? Seán Lynch? has no historical function other than Lynch’s idea was originally exhibited The NSF? Contemporary art? to advertise and as Saatchi and at the Glucksman Gallery in late Maybe even cocaine in the same Saatchi say, “The clear purpose of 2007 in the form of an installation.2 way ‘fashion’ advertised heroin chic advertising is to sell more stuff.”5 The new piece consists of a photo- as an accessory to celebrity models. graphic billboard on the front of the It certainly advertises a glib attempt NSF with an accompanying text. 1 www.yourpointofview.com/ to associate the NSF (who have upload/scary_Print.pdf 91 If the role of the arts is to capture created posters and postcards of 2 This ‘new’ work of Lynch’s the work) and the artist with Beuys’ continues an installation first attention, communicate a message exhibited under the same and leave an emotional impression name. Lynch says, “I often think name at the Glucksman late …then it could easily be argued about the music industry and how last year in Overtake - the an old song is remixed, and it might reinterpretation of modern that advertising is very much part art, curated by René Zechlin of the arts, since this is exactly then become a hit again. I like to and Matt Packer. what effective advertising is think this is how my practice 3 Page 183, Australians and the designed to achieve…3 sometimes operates.”4 Is Beuys an arts, a report by Saatchi and Saatchi for the Australia old song that can be remixed? Council for the Arts, 2001 Lynch’s work uses an advertising Looking for a hit through association 4 Interview with Seán Lynch by model not dissimilar to that of may or may not legitimately allow Sarh Jayne Booth, National Sculpture Factory Newsletter, HSBC, whose ads play on a an individual or organisation to Issue 20, March 2008 reversal of expectation. Lynch’s text advertise their name alongside an 5 www.saatchikevin.com/ (placed well below and separate to important historical artist, for who is download/pdf/bobinsher- the billboard) informs us of the to judge? We certainly can’t rely on wood_living_in_the_attention_ economy.pdf image’s possible meaning. It tells us the Glucksman Gallery, where that a mysterious person saved Lynch’s idea was first shown, John Kelly is an artist white chalk dust from a Joseph because they are currently doing the based in Cork. Beuys lecture at the Crawford Art same thing with Damian Hirst. Gallery in 1974 and then stored it [opposite] until Lynch photographed it. It would Are Lynch’s billboard and the Seán Lynch Glucksman’s Hirst poster symbolic Joseph Beuys (still a discussion) seem to be a deliberate attempt to 2008 capture attention, for my first reaction of an artistic endgame – art and installation shot to the pile of white powder was that artists reduced to gimmicky National Sculpture Factory courtesy NSF the NSF was advertising cocaine. advertisements for contemporary-art Apparently crack cocaine is smoked organisations, where artists’ names through a pipe, so maybe an oblique become subservient to the institutional reference is being made to René brand identity and art is selected Magritte, who also painted billboards that will best assist the organisation before ‘becoming an artist’; remember to prosper and replicate? Audiences his seminal work, Ceci n’est pas are now set the difficult task of une pipe. differentiating between art and advertising when it is so intertwined Associating cocaine, even subliminally, as to be almost indivisible. Hirst is a with art may make for a hip prime example, for his work thrives combination, but why fabricate a on advertorials. Lynch’s work is a story around an historical fact and little easier. Neither the NSF nor the then make the image ambiguous? artist have changed or subverted the Maybe Lynch is mimicking Beuys. function of the medium that delivers c . Tim Maul Klemens Gasser & March – May 2008 Tanja Grunert Inc New York

Katie Holten Uprooted

92 One of the less familiar stanzas of as ‘the new photography’. From Holten has her feet in both worlds, Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man a distance, the strongest images but her exhibition at G&G suggests makes a reference to “haunted, resemble the leaves which are a willingness to follow impulse with frightened trees,” a small grove of absent from the ‘tree’ sculptures. some wondrous results. A work like which resides at Katie Holten’s Studious, but not overworked, Old news (New York tree), 2008, exhibition at Klemens Gasser & Holten renders leaves to scale, exudes the menace of those Tanja Grunert Inc in Chelsea. which in turn morphs into a map of humanoid apple trees who pelted Holten modifies her diverse practice Berlin, Paris, or Dublin – cities Dorothy and the gang on their (more later on this word) to produce bisected by rivers, as leaves are by journey to the Emerald City. Three a conventional gallery show of a central vein. Or is it the other untitled paper wall pieces, scaled drawings and sculpture. In doing way around? A city that shape-shifts to the size of Holten’s yoga mat, this, she advances her art while into an organic pattern? Incidents suggests a welcome degree of forfeiting some of the critical immunity of superimposition recall the biography – the nomadic life of the that regularly attends projects which ‘dissolve’ shot of cinema, one contemporary artist maintaining address socio-economic and image competing with another for balance by stretching, psychically environmental issues – as crucial as dominance in our ‘optical and physically. If uprooted at Gasser that art may be. unconscious’. This overlay of nature & Grunert can feel crowded and in 93 on urban topography reveals Holten need of editing, it may be due to the Holten dispenses with any comforting as something of a cosmic miniaturist. gallery’s temporary location in a role the tree may play as symbol of While trees may not be her conduit converted apartment before it all things good, opting for an odd to the spirit world, as they are for moves on and up, into a new space, mix of science illustration and the Native American people, or were for an appropriate analogy for the work grotesque. The objects situated in Celts, their leaves and spidery form of Katie Holten. the gallery’s intimate rooms are serve as sources of data on which handmade, produced from recycled fantasy can be projected. Holten’s newspaper, glue, wire, and ink. Old Cluster group manifestation at Tim Maul is an artist and critic who lives in news (ghost forest) is a row of eight Participant Inc (2006) initially puzzled New York City. shiny black, tubular trunks suspended me because I was unclear as to her from the gallery ceiling to the floor. role. Curator? Impresario? Now I get Cartoony and bleak, they are props [opposite] it – it’s ‘gardener’. Via the laptop Katie Holten from some Goth panto, a netherworld (the penultimate distribution Trees of the USA, 2006 garden co-tended by Tim Burton and implement), a seed was sown, and ink on paper Robert Gober. Next door, a set of all one had to do was await the 102 x 76 cm four smallish Globes (I – IV) are harvest, which popped up in proximity displayed in vitrines. Her production of the printer in the gallery’s office. of globes is ongoing, constructed Holten’s developing oeuvre, by modeling papier mâché over interpreted through a metaphor of balloons, something I remember cultivation, grows dense, steeped in doing as a child. One egg-blue little laborious production and multiplicity. Earth deviates noticeably from the She cannot resist providing the exhibition’s black, white, and gray gallery visitor at G&G with a free color triumvirate. Gray, that color palm-sized publication which includes between fact and fiction, suits a crude map of the installation and Holten’s globes, as it does uptown more drawings, a micro show within at The Met for another maker of a show. spectral maps, Jasper Johns. Looking like footballs that have been crushed Roberta Smith, the influential critic under a celestial heel, the dented for The New York Times, recently condition of several of the spheres made a distinction between the makes for a poignant meditation on word ‘practitioner’ and the word the fragility of our home planet. ‘artist’. The increased usage of the ‘p’ word suggests, according to The many pen and ink drawings on Smith, the establishment of a view are engaging. The artist’s skill as strategizing, ‘white collar’ elite over a cartographer elevates a ubiquitous the messier, less predictable decision medium that has been hailed locally making of those who just make art. c . Jessica Foley various locations March – May 2008 Limerick

ev 94 a +

An MP3 version of this interview and related text and images are available online at www.recirca.com/backiss ues/c124/eva.shtml

Malachi Farrell Jessica Foley is a writer and Too early for vacation, 2008, artist, currently lecturing installation shot, King John’s in Visual Art Education at Castle, with invigilator Elva MIC Limerick. Carri; courtesy the author ...... * … and it’s fleece, you don’t they’ve American accents, and This conversation took ever have a parasol that’s made loads of the tourists that come of fleece, I think this is an here are middle-aged Americans place in a Tower in King afterthought … … John’s Castle, where Malachi Farrell’s work + That’s an interesting observation + Wow, that’s kind of funny … … (laughs) … it could be … was installed in Limerick * (laughs) At least that sparks off city, as part of the ev+a * That’s what you get for spending a something … whole day with it (laughs) exhibition 2008. + I just love the way they’re sitting, ...... + Well this is the thing, right, cos, it’s so irritating you know, who spends a whole * Yeah … yeah, cos I think they are Tower Conversation excerpt 2 day with a piece of art any more, or ever? supposed to be irritating...... * Yeah, yeah it’s true, except only + I think so, I think it’s meant to provoke you, it’s just unfortunate * No, I, I’m just trying to … if you invigilators. 95 have the opportunity to review, that you have to sit here for the or whatever, I think it’s important + Yeah. whole day and … (laughs) that you, em, well, that you try a * I had to fix it this morning when * Be provoked (laughs) … yeah different way of doing it, you know, I came in … so it’s not always this sort of critical, (Sound piece: Flares, rockets, engines coming down heavy on the reader + Why, did it fall down? … belching … ) … * It had fallen off. * And kids like them, kids want to + Yeah, yeah touch them + Oh my … well I suppose that’s * … they might just actually sit with what you get for using a plastic + I bet they do, it’s quite eh, emm … a piece of art for a while (laughs) bottle … the timings and the mechanisms and see what happens … and stuff, its kind of … * I know, yeah! + Yeah. It’s very weird this piece, * Yeah, it’s on a sensor, it doesn’t go isn’t it? + It’s kind of effective enough when off unless someone’s moving … you look here, but I can see how it * Yep … cos it’s like, they’re missiles, would piss you off … + Oh right, so the sound doesn’t they’re talking about art, and, like, happen until somebody moves? I know there is connections, like if * (laughs) Yeah, just when you’re you make connections, but I just sitting here for the whole day … * Yeah. don’t know if it’s, eh, organic (Sound piece: Suppose you say that + That’s pretty cool. enough, or something … art is representational … ) * Like where you’re sitting there, it’s + Yeah … that’s a good point actually. * And all the tourists that are coming triggered from that one, so cos But then if you look at the way in they hear the word penis and you’re sitting there, when you’re they’re sitting, they are mechanical they just like run out the door. moving a tiny bit every so often, beings, as well, so maybe it is and then it keeps going off … a kind of deliberate mechanical + Oh, right connection … + So … (Sound piece: … look at that painting * Maybe … on our wall over there … ) * But when I’m sitting here during the day, if I walk out carefully + I don’t know. + So, these guys are actually enough I don’t even have to set supposed to be talking, is that them off … * Yeah, and the umbrella is really the idea? badly made … (laughs) … it really + So you try, do you try not to? bothers me, have you looked * Yeah. underneath it? * Yeah (laughs) (Sound piece: Oh my god … but it + No. doesn’t represent anything … You said + (laughs) you saw a penis in it? Well I once * It’s a plastic bottle … thought I did)

+ Oh my … * And cos they’re American as well, * They only have two recordings … flares) but, I dunno, I think it’s all + Yeah, yeah. just really disconnected from each + Yeah, it’s a bit of repetition I guess other … * So if you walk past the cathedral, … and you know … + Yeah … (Sound Piece: American Man: + Like on your way back up to Suppose you say art is representational, * (laughs) William Street … essentially, and you know, look at that painting on our wall over there, + Have you been around to all of * Yeah, yeah, and you keep going up by Jackson Pollock, and all you them, or … ? that way, like past the entrance to the Haymarket. can say is “uh huh, I think it’s a great + Ehm, I think all of them except, painting … ” there’s one down in an office + Yeah American Woman: Oh my God … (sound piece belches) of an accountant or a lawyers or * On the opposite side of the road AM: … but it doesn’t represent something … there’s a new apartment building, anything. and you’ll see there’s a Polish + Yeah, is it Brookes Properties or shop, and you’ll see there’s a 96 AW: You said you saw a penis in it … something like that? gateway, and there’s a little café on one side, it’s kind of a little AM: Well I once saw a penis in it.) * Yep, that’s the one, yeah. pedestrianised street.

...... + I don’t even know where it is + Yeah

* I think it’s up, like towards the top * And it’s on the left-hand side. Tower Conversation excerpt 1 of O’Connell Street somewhere...... + Okay + Okay * It’s in there. (Sound Piece: It doesn’t represent * Have you got the map? anything, so … + Yeah, I might check that out … + I do. You said you saw a penis in it * Yeah * You do … Well I once thought I did.) + But I can’t write about everything! + But eh … + Just going to record, it’s a new * It’s all projections of the moon … method of writing … * It’s still hard to find them. + Oh, right. * Yeah...that’s handy … + Yeah it is kind of … it is kind of hard. * I think … + I’ve decided to start recording, and see what happens … so * Yeah, yeah. + Is it good? how long have you been sitting here for? + I was wondering is, there’s one in * Yeah, it’s quite nice, yeah. Cathedral Place, but I’m not sure * Errh, I just came in at half ten, it’s where that is … + Do you have, like, a piece that you not so bad, half ten till half four, like the best? * Ahhm I only do, like, maybe one day (pause) a week + Is that Johns Square? + Ehhhmm … + Oh right … it’s strange though * It’s near Johns Square. isn’t it? Do you kind of think about * Yes, for personal reasons … it’s this a lot or … + Yeah not … it’s in City Hall (sound piece starts: Suppose you say * Eh, the first day or two I did, * Trying to describe it is another that art is representational … ) ehhhm … thing. + Yeah? + Did you come up with any kind of + Hmmm (laughs) connections? * You know the Surreal Estate? The * Right, when you’re walking up … toy houses? * Ehm, I don’t know, I really don’t, + I know Limerick well enough so … I really don’t like this one … + Yes, yeah! (sound comes on, rocket noises, *Oh, do ya? * (laughs) All my work, like, I’m in my * And then I’m interested in process just built one wall, straight across last year in art college, and all my … so I videoed the making of it, the room! (laughs) It was like they work this year and last year has and that was a projection and a were crazy, they were from about been to do with (sound piece: sound piece and stuff … four years to eight years or Oh my God … ) childhood and something, you know, so they childlike behaviour, and forms of + Great! were all kind of doing their own escapism for our generation, so * … and then I was looking at hiding thing anyway, so eventually we got when I saw that one I was like … places and … I rebuilt a stairs out a house together, eh, sort of, and then they knocked it down, and + I loved it … of cardboard as well, loads of people would hide under the everybody just did their own thing * … Wow! stairs, and there’s video with that with all the cardboard boxes and as well then … there was like little people scootin + I’m very interested in that kind around in cars they had made … of thing … + And how come you’ve chosen cardboard? + Ooah * Are you!? Cool! * … and there was a girl who’d * Eh, I think cos, cardboard boxing 97 + As well, yeah, yeah, so I don’t when you’re a kid … made a robot (sound piece think it’s, eh, a flash in the pan, interjects: Suppose you say that or anything … + Yeah! art is representational … )

* No * You’d play with boxes like toys … + Mad!

+ I think it’s a very, eh, relevant thing + It’s kind of like re-tapping into the * Yeah, they just took off like, it was to be exploring … imagination again … more crazy than I had expected it to be, cos I thought they’d have a * Yeah … and I think it’s coming up * Yeah bit of a laugh, but they were just more and more over the last, well, like on their own planet … I started researching it about three + Getting away from, sort of this virtual sort of … years ago and you couldn’t get + Deadly! anything on it, now there’s more * Yeah and more, like, even psychology- * I didn’t know what was going on! wise and news-wise, and + … experience It was brilliant! everything, all the kidults stuff … * Yeah, and so, and I did a workshop + That’s magic, where, where did you peterpandemonium and … for young ev+a, then, on Saturday, do it? Where was the workshop? with kids, a big group of kids, and + That’s true … sure, god help us, * In the Gallery. we’re all floundering, we don’t they were using cardboard boxes know what to do! and sheets and stuff … + Oh, up in Limerick City Gallery?

* I know, yeah yeah (laughs) + How did it go? * Yeah

+ So what are, what kind of work * … We built a house. It was manic. + That’s deadly … Wow, what’s are you making, or … ? (Sound your name by the way? + You built a house together?! piece flares up, rockets, etc) * Elva, sorry, what’s your name? * Well, we tried to build a house * Ehm, cardboard stuff … together. The first group – we had + Jessica Foley + Yeah? like two groups of kids – the first group, I showed them pictures * Jessica Foley, nice to meet you. * (laughs) Yeah, well I’m doing, like, of ev+a stuff, you know like + Elva what? em, last year I did two pieces. I constructed things rather than flat rebuilt a house, eh, from a drawing things or whatever … * Carri that my little sister did, when she was about five, of a house, and I + Yeah … ...... rebuilt the house so that you could * And they drew drawings then of go into it … with all the same hiding places or bedrooms and proportions and stuff … things, and then we tried to build + Lovely … a house, but the first group we c . Slavka Sverakova Millennium Court Arts April – May 2008 Centre Portadown

98 Ronnie Hughes Manifest Twenty-eight New England drawings clover or a kimono or Icarus or a Slow, measured and sensuous, the (gouache and pencil on paper, 2006 cut-out of a starry sky in pale grey- compositions point to expectations, and 2007) in two rows on one wall, blue, peppered with black dots, set desires and wishes as a kind of six large and four smaller acrylics on centrally in front of a yellow rectangle. secret society of subliminal belief various grounds (MDF, cotton and I find a parallel in Matisse’s concept systems, eg Acrobat, 2007.8 linen) on the other four walls were of colour: “My choice of colours Urging people to become thoughtful sensitively displayed, marred by a does not rest on any scientific theory, authentic individuals, Hughes few crooked frames. This exhibition it is based on observation, on feeling, proposes that “seeing what is there, is the third in a row of the series on the very nature of each but inaccurately, and seeing what is Beneath the painted surface, experience.”4 Enough irregularities in not there,” both are the cause of curated by Megan Johnston and the shape’s outline introduce wonder. Initial sense data do allow Steve Lally.1 asymmetry, further supported by the for incompatible interpretation, eg uneven distribution of dots. I imagine a mirage.9 It is not a subjective Hughes allows fragments of memories that fragments of memories ranging misidentification. Significantly, of residencies at the Josef and Anni from Matisse’s prints and collages to Aristotle pointed out, “What is Albers Foundation, Connecticut constellations of stars seen through impossible but can be believed (2006), and at the Vermont Studio a telescope are amongst the dynamic should be preferred to what is 99 Center (2007) to coalesce with movers for this image. Koan is the possible but unconvincing.”10 disciplined geometry, precise Japanese concept of an enigmatic, compositions (Lure, acrylic, 2007) and paradoxical question, eg what is the a double take on hues. Selected at sound of one hand clapping? It is a 1 The paintings of Mark random, a hue is given the domineering training device in Zen for abandoning McGreevy formed the first, force of necessity. Flicker (2007) logic and dualistic thought. Koan is those of Jennifer Trouton exists in red and in green versions, not accessible to rational logic, were in the second exhibition. Drawing no 55 has siblings in different 2 Metaphysics, Book 4, 1006a instead it opens to intuition and 3 Ronnie Hughes, Lines of colour schemes, a pyramid is red spontaneous insight. Dots have desire, Ormeau Baths Gallery, and yellow in one image and blue appeared in many Modernist and Belfast, 2003, p 5 and green in another. The underlying 4 Henri Matisse, Notes of a contemporary paintings, eg in painter, 1908, in H B Chipps, challenge to the Aristotelian principle Matisse’s designs for liturgical Theories of modern art, of noncontradiction2 is a proposition vestments (1953), in several early 1968, p 135 that these works of art suggest 5 Andre Salmon, ‘Anecdotal Russian constructivist paintings and history of Cubism’, 1912, situations in which what is perceived in the work of Damien Hirst. Hughes in Chipps, op cit, p 203 cannot be the case in the real world. keeps his dots in enigmatic mode 6 Eg Flin Flon, 1970 The question then is: how to 7 On how Hughes’s paintings between the universe and play. are records of types of touch construct the impossible convincingly. see www.recirca.com/ The Manifest collection forms a Not always is this painter devoted articles/2007/texts/rh.shtml constellation of paintings and drawings to hard-edge, high-key, half-empty 8 The vertical relationship of the triangles associate in my mind dependent on dynamic connections canvases governed by geometry or with Picasso’s blue-period between past experiences and trigonometry. When he is, it is more acrobats. imagination. There are memories of than Picasso’s “meditation on 9 Mirages are results of light other, older art too: Paul Klee, geometry.”5 It feels as if Frank Stella reflected by layers of air of differing temperatures. 6 Wassily Kandinsky, Henri Matisse, (1936) inspired him in the art of A photograph of a mirage Josef Albers, William Scott, Richard restless curves exchanging positions looks like what the eye ‘sees’. Gorman and many others surface as in space, to break down something 10 Poetics, XXIV, 1460a 11 A young painter standing distant links. Learning from older art that may be optically correct into next to me in front of includes a high standard of delivery, perplexing formations, eg Hypothesis, Hughes’s drawings whispered in which “a range of previously 2007. Sharpness, neatness of “He is inspirational…” unrelated phenomena coalesce to surface, clarity and economy of form forge a structure, a form, a meaning and nonrelational arrangements Slavka Sverakova is a – an enlightenment.”3 With delight I forge a quivering instability of writer on art. note that before it became a statement discernible order that both holds on [opposite] about instrumental value, the thought and breaks down. Expected closures Ronnie Hughes detailed the intrinsic value of art. and illusions are suggested before Red plexus, 2008 acrylic on linen 7 Take Koan, 2007: a large acrylic on the touch of the brush is ultimately 188 x 183 cm cotton offers a shape that evokes a denied. courtesy MCAC c . Fergal Gaynor various locations [below] Cork Adham Faramawy Time wave zero, 2008 DVD still, single channel video/ sound, duration 7:03 min courtesy of the artist/ The Black Mariah

100 An incomplete survey of artist- run spaces in Cork I was attending a colloquium on institutional organisation, perhaps seemed like the structures laid down the subject of artist-led initiatives in even a corporate ethos. At the end by artists’ groups in the late seventies Ireland in Belfast’s Catalyst this month it would seem most ‘political’ to and eighties, the Triskel (1978), Cork (5 April), when it occurred to me that dismantle the organisation, to Arts Collective (1985), the National I’d had much the same experience preserve its pure, independent Sculpture Factory (1989) and the once before, in Edinburgh Art ‘event’ character by shutting it down Backwater Studios (1990), structures College in 2003, at an affair called before it can become compromised. corresponding to an earlier, authorial, ‘Convene’, organised by the Charles Catalyst has found a successful way studio-based model, might become Esche-initiated group Protoacademy. around this: it jettisons one generation, platforms for a new wave of ‘building’, Then, as in Belfast, two characteristics who graduate more or less as geared to a new kind of art. The city’s of that hybrid, artist-led creature trained organisers, and starts all over glaring intellectual, infrastructural came to the fore: its beginning and again under the same, David Shrigley and postgraduate inadequacies its end. In Edinburgh I was most -designed logo. The politics of spurred practitioners of various kinds aware of the beginning, a sense of beginning is saved by its conscious, to action, and for once they chose necessity bringing artists (and the cyclical ending. not to leave the city. There was, like) together, the resultant generation in fact, a net immigration from Dublin of productive energy. In Belfast the What I am gradually coming to and Limerick. 2006, however, not 101 word ‘life-cycle’ seemed to recur, believe, however, is that the only removed the transient public, and the moment after intervention beginning can look after itself: there but witnessed a concerted effort by becomes sustained activity and will always be the energy of new the civic authorities to bring budgets sustained activity finds itself having generations entering shoddy and support back to 2004 levels: to think about establishment or environments. Where the real politics mere fiscal probity, it could be said, disestablishment (five years is is in the end, in that moment when that in one quick, sharp gesture apparently) seemed more to the point. a proto-public body encounters the wiped out all the promise that had current public environment. What is galvanised the cultural ground. I had formerly thought that the encountered is not a state of nature: beginning was the moment of there are reasons why all public In this hangover period in Cork politics, with individuals grouping establishments should be bureaucratic cultural life the two chief concerns together to form a kind of sub-society establishments, or commercial for the artists’ group, a public and in the absence of institutional space agents, but they are not necessarily a public space, have thrown up for their aspirations. Each new group good reasons. And the battleground some interesting configurations. must organise itself, must think is not simply a matter of it and us: The resultant structures are in many about what it represents and, in that it is a civic struggle. The public way constrained – they lack the heady free space opened up by a new sphere needs new ways of thinking freedom of the collective in the squat collectivism, may operate in defiance and organising, even if its custodians – but may be all the longer lasting of the norms of their surroundings. think it their bounden duty (the and tougher when it comes to get- But what happens when the revolution conscientious examples anyway) to ting a foothold in the public sphere. is successful, or at least, prolonged, keep such activity to atrophied and finds itself becoming a feature manageability. And the bringers of Run by artist group Not Abel, in the cultural landscape? An initial the new will be all the better The Black Mariah is a single-roomed event, the collective sense of an prepared if their predecessors exhibition space above an independent absence in the artistic environment manage to hold open some model record shop on Washington Street. of a city, produces activity in that of independent space for their It shares the first floor with Pluggd void, and often that seems to be arrival. Catalyst’s building, as well as Records’ vinyl section and there is enough – it is fresh, dynamic, and its history, work in this way. an interesting relationship between relatively unburdened by institutional ...... the two. A coffee-table book entitled constraints. But it eventually must The artist-led initiative flourished in New York noise, which featured face the fact that it is becoming the European Capital of Culture, that images of a mix of musicians, established itself, just as its expanded Cork of 2005. For a number performers and artists – Glenn participants find themselves, after of groups it was the availability of Branca, Mike Kelley and Laurie five years of working on the funding that acted as catalyst, but Anderson alongside Sonic Youth and conditions of art, wanting to work on for most others it was the promise of Suicide – was on a table where art tout court, and in need of an adult a culturally energised environment record shop meets the gallery when livelihood. Bureaucracy beckons: and possible transformation. The I visited. It could have belonged to funding and ‘partnerships’ of various public was already gathered, and it either space. kinds demand more rigid and Small as The Black Mariah is, the borrowings by describing his own Interpreting the occasional publics present exhibition and its immediate wall-hung images in terms of the and temporary spaces of festivals predecessor demonstrate its Celtic goddess Brigid. These were and performance series would require adaptability. Tim Furey kept the room extra-artistic additions, but the a separate article, so I will skip over white and filled with natural light, his resultant weakness reveal the the curation and performance of the tiny, coloured-pencil portraits adding interesting operations of the gallery: busy noise-art collective The Quiet a quiet shower of colour across one exhibitions in The Black Mariah are Club, the branchings from avant-garde wall. In stark contrast, the Egyptian, expected to include saleable works, poetry into text-based performance London-based artist Adham although there is a strict capping of and visual art of SoundEye, and Art Faramawy has blocked the windows the prices that may be demanded. Trail’s city-wide pot-pourri. and turned the room into a loud, In this way the gallery can cover its immersive boite de nuit, part private rent without entering the world of Final mention should be made of cinema, part nightclub, part occult commercialism. The economics Skart's Posted project, a highly inner sanctum. Furey’s exhibition involved is not far from the low-key successful internet-based poster was almost conceptual, the viewer turnovers of establishments like exhibition that also made an informal gradually noticing across the 157 Plugd, with their extensions into DJ appearance in a number of 102 5.5 x 5.5 cm portraits, in the four and gig culture. Moreover, the two European galleries. There was no CMYK tones, that somehow none spaces, gallery and record shop, can doubting the return in terms of of the faces were drawn from life, share a public, evident not only in participation and popular interest in that even in their quickly produced, the ethics and aesthetics of the pair, this project (which has had three stripped-down state a relationship but in the music and noise-driven incarnations so far), but there was between face and camera asserted character of opening nights. also a strong sense of the virtual itself, an elusive sense of the gallery about it, of recourse to the mediatised. Faramawy’s piece, which Looking to the rest of the city, a more internet in the absence of physical would not look out of place in a direct relationship to commercial space, a move inseparable from the major exposition, was by contrast patronage can be seen in the Dobz- institutionalisation of dislocation and overdetermined and assertive. curated contemporary art-wall of the isolation to my mind. Such spaces A projected video piece, fast-moving Crane Lane Theatre, a heaving city- turn inwards, away from the stone, and repetitive, even strobe-like by its centre venue, while the Cork Artists’ mortar, economics and politics of the end, mixed images of female dancers Collective continues to curate its street, and interesting as the growth with strange, occultic tableaux and lightbox show in Tom Barry’s pub on of the virtual geocity may be, it lacks messages, sometimes publicity-like Barrack Street. The current show of something that even the juvenile act (and perhaps a little heavy-handed), photographic images by Alex Rose, of entering public space with an sometimes cryptic and disturbing. which hint at narrative and intimacy extreme haircut simply and instantly Many of these latter texts were taken without final revelation, works well achieves. It is a matter of occupying from the apocalyptic theories on when the bar is quiet, but would or abandoning the streets. On the time of Terence McKenna, theories probably have greater amplitude in other hand, the same project echoed by the projection’s ever the pristine spaces of a conventional appears to have built up a certain faster rhythms. The whole opened gallery. The Collective often work amount of cultural capital for Skart into that unreal interior space found with the overlappings of art gatherings (not to mention Arts Council interest in kitsch cinema and explored by and conviviality, and their new and international links), which is now Kenneth Anger, and was Guesthouse building, in the historic being realized in the form of the complemented by driving guitar Shandon area, holds weekly guest- more conventional, residency-based music, two mirroring wall-hung provided lunches often followed by Plus-Minus and its return to the montages and a ‘guard’ about the screenings or performances. The physical scape, urban and rural. projector of hands making the ‘horned building was provided and renovated The Guesthouse will play host to god’ sign. In a phantasmagorical by the City Council, and it will be this project too, which points to space Faramawy proposed a interesting to see how the another characteristic of the artist- Luciferian victory in the meeting of bureaucratic binds that come with led initiative, its ‘incestuousness’: Giorgio Agamben’s and McKenna’s such gifts sit with the alternative a web of associations tends to form ‘singularities’ at the end of time. economies evident in much of the between such groups which, like the work by the Collective’s members. original coming together of creative There was a common weak point Such quibbles aside, it is an exciting individuals, is both a matter of in both shows: Furey’s larger prospect and has already hosted the hopeful growth and artistic survival. reproductions on the wall opposite his Radio On project, various seminars micro-portraits seemed superfluous, and screenings, and avant-garde and Faramawy had overloaded his poetry readings and sound-art already heavy concoction of esoteric performances. Fergal Gaynor is an independent scholar, writer, and member of art intervention group art/ not art.

103

[above] Tuesday lunch – weekly open invitation lunches at the Guesthouse courtesy the Guesthouse

[below] The Quiet Club performing at Safe house sound event at the Guesthouse courtesy the Guesthouse c . David Hughes Queen Street Studios April – May 2008 Gallery Belfast

Old Museum Arts Centre Belfast

James Merrigan… could we 104 talk before and after…(part 1) Pascale Steven Erasure The point of departure of my the gallery, mobile-phone video a red lightbulb wedged beneath reflection is the following: every footage would be grainy. This isn’t the plastic. corner in a house, every angle in a a reconstruction, although the room, every inch of secluded space in association is strong. It is more like Perhaps what this most closely which we like to hide, or withdraw an evocation or a film stage. Or the evokes is the rehearsal room. into ourselves, is a symbol of solitude skeleton of a stage set, or maybe the The unfinished surfaces, the tape for the imagination; that is to say, it is treads which would bring the actor markings on the floor that show the the germ of a room or a house. above a piece of scenery to reveal positions of chairs, the relationships Gaston Bachelard themselves. Inch ply, three-inch bolts between spaces and things, and nuts, two-by-one struts, gaffer the spaces which will be occupied 14 miles away tape. Hardly practical, hardly by objects and the spaces which a small child functional. A Health and Safety the actors can occupy. But the unable to sleep nightmare. A discarded nut lying gaffer tape sometimes duplicates plays alone randomly and redundant on a tread. the function of the nuts and bolts, in his room No, not really. Nothing is random, I its redundancy giving it an aesthetic with his toy cars. suspect, in this installation. Carefully function. The act of marking space, A chink of arranged. The treads lead nowhere the act of articulating space with 105 sunlight and aren’t functional, so what is their functional dividers, then, becomes creeps through purpose? They articulate the space the aesthetic, function becomes a gap in in the sense that they define and aesthetic, function becomes form, the curtains limit the possibilities of our traffic revelation of process becomes and causes him to finish, becomes aesthetic, is style. momentarily through the space. They offer and shiver. deny us at the same time the possibility of the height from which ...... At 2 pm we might get another view. We can The Hidden lighting only look up at the treads. There is a cigarette no ‘aesthetic’ finish to them. They It’s like a bundle of language. Is that the driver are bare, revealing nothing but their a metaphor? The elements in the momentarily own construction, their own materials, wrapped object seem like a kind of loses concentration the process of making. They reveal catalogue of the elements and after the cool decisions. The same could be said processes in the site (and this darkness of all the elements of the installation. installation is more than anything, of a tunnel They reveal decisions made and yet of course, evocative of a building the blinding sun to be made. site – a site within a building): feels warm wooden members wrapped in black The treads also lead into a corner, against his skin. polythene, ‘bleachers’. Text from video in Erasure, Pascale Steven a corner created by the butting out of a curve of brick. And beyond that Green tarpaulin covers the back of there is the corner of the room ...... the chair as it does completely James Merrigan created by the partition that marks mysterious bundles on the floor. And off the kitchen and toilet. If you were the silver gaffer tape is ubiquitous, ...... to climb to that corner what could securing everything. But, as though The Horror you imagine from that crow’s nest? rhapsodic, appearing as squiggles, doodles and arpeggios and in one In a parallel corner another place The gaffer-tape noose at the top of site simply binding together visually of execution. The gas chamber, the stairs cements the association. two ply panels actually secured by the electric chair, secure dock for Scenes of execution. Saddam bolts. It is both entirely functional the accused, perhaps. Again we can Hussain spent his last ridiculed and entirely redundant: a sign that walk around this and see how it is moments on such a gallows, such a stands for itself. made. Again it offers us a pair of makeshift jerry-built rickety wooden viewing position, either in or out, scaffold, his head hitting the ceiling; And the cable of the red lamp on the but unlike the stairs we can occupy as mine would do if I risked walking chair that makes the chair an electric them. And it wraps itself around up these treads. Walking around the chair snakes across the floor and another corner of the room and scaffold you get that sense of l enters ‘box’, connecting with yet beside it, making a triangle with its ooking behind the scenes, almost another redundant, this time hidden, back across the angle of the room, surreptitious. In the patchy light of unlit red lamp. Another corner. the pun of the electric chair itself: ...... across the space to the cartoon dog in the vehicle emerging from the Pascale Steven chasing his cartoon bone on the fireplace/ tunnel of the cardboard. hidden wallpaper covering the rear In the corners, then, we find the ...... of the sideboard. makings of new rooms, and these The Horror rooms, these houses that grow out Air has weight. But what happens of the corners, are superimposed Vuoto, empty, vacant, a void, devoid. to bodies under this barometric one upon the other so that the In the partial vacuum of this pressure? Why don’t they flatten, material of one mixes with the installation the label on the top of as bodies flatten in photographs, as material of the other. In the video the sideboard reads ‘VUOTO’. The bodies flatten after childbirth, as the text piece two events happen tag calls out VUOTO, empty, a void. small white paper cut-outs of bodies, simultaneously, the child playing with It declares its horror at emptiness. which litter the floor below the tipping toy cars, the driver emerging from What is empty? The sideboard car and caravan emerging from the the cold tunnel. Light creeping into drawers? How can we imagine horror of the empty black tunnel the child’s world and slashing into the drawers of a sideboard or the (a theatrical illusion achieved with a the driver’s eyes: causing one to cupboards beneath, to be empty? black cloth over a cut-out in the shiver and one to be warmed. 106 They have to be full if only of smells cardboard packing case), flatten? and memories and indentations, of The installation is a maze or collection motes of chalk dust, particles...... of hiding places. Hidden places, nests, within the structure which is The sideboard is covered in thick The Hidden itself a nest for hidden places. Nests white paper. The kind that you might nested in the nest of the installation Reclaimed, glazed bricks speak of line drawers with. Ripped, it sloughs within the nest of the gallery within demolition, shaving mirrors elide the off the dark wood of the sideboard the nest of the museum within the guillotine and the act of shaving, the below. You can peel it back and tear nest… Oh My God. The Horror. cut-throat razor. A tapering, bronze it off. What fear this speaks of: that The Horror. fear of the empty space in art, the chimney-breast trapezoid, actually anxiety about the first mark, the anxiety stained ply, hides a bleached-out about leaving empty space which holiday shot taped to the wall. By a leads to obsessive covering or filling reciprocal illumination, the shaving David Hughes is a writer and artist who lives near of the space. mirror casts light on the photo which is reflected in the mirror. Lisburn. Alongside the label is a doll baby made from hand-pressed soap in a Objects are covered in white paper: [previous spread] the car and trailer, the sideboard, [left] scalloped paper baking tray. A baby James Merrigan in a bath but, yes of course, no the tiny brush leaning against the … could we talk before and bathwater. The baby has not been mahogany leg of a found stool. after… (Part 1), 2008 The covering obscures, a mechanism installation shot, Queen Street thrown out: indeed the baby, that Studios Gallery blank page, reappears across the for hiding, and somehow throws photo/ courtesy the author installation alongside matches, the essential shape into relief, not distracted by details of colour and [right] pieces of coal, scrubbing brushes, Pascale Steven ropes (binding? a noose?). Again trim. Things hidden or things behind Erasure, 2008 this motif of the blank surface to be discovered. The objects installation detail, Old Museum become not things but surfaces for Arts Centre scraped at, scoured, peeled away. photo/ courtesy the author A horror indeed. But the surface of things, for images. For projection. soap? Surely the cleanest surface? They express the horror vacui of the empty canvas and the blank page. All the objects have their own energy, pushing outward, as it were, from And so does the room. The objects the corners of the room trying to fill of this installation slowly creeping the emptiness of the room. And in forward from two corners: a packing their pushing out they, as it were, case in one corner of the room and create inner space for the a blow-up of an old photograph in connections between the particles the other. Goya’s Horrors of war are to bound about, like the little China here in the dolls impaled on trees in dog dressed for a circus act barking the old photograph; Magritte is here Romantic by Andy Parsons. 107 An ongoing project based on Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer above the sea of fog.

With thanks to Tom O’Rourke at Teach Bán Nua Gallery and to JMN Design.

Caspar David Friedrich Wanderer above the sea of fog © bpk/ Hamburger Kunsthalle/ Elke Walford