Circa 123 Contemporary Visual Culture in Ireland Spring 2008 | ¤7.50 £5 Us$12 | Issn 0263-9475
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CIRCA 123 CONTEMPORARY VISUAL CULTURE IN IRELAND SPRING 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 www.recirca.com where you can Barbara Knezevic subscribe online. Advertising/ PR/ Marketing Circa is concerned with visual Jennie McGinn culture. We welcome comment, ____________________________ proposals and written Board contributions. Please contact Graham Gosling (Chair), Tara the editor for more details, Byrne, Mark Garry, Georgina or consult our website Jackson, Darragh Hogan, Isabel www.recirca.com Opinions Nolan, John Nolan, Hugh expressed in this magazine Mulholland, Brian Redmond are those of the authors, not necessarily those of the Board. ____________________________ Circa is an equal-opportunities Contributing editors employer. Copyright © Circa Brian Kennedy, Luke Gibbons 2008 ____________________________ Assistants ____________________________ Laura McGovern, Astrid Lucas, Contacts Anika Menden Circa 43 / 44 Temple Bar ____________________________ Dublin 2 Legal advice Ireland Justin Lennon, JJ Lennon tel / fax (+353 1) 679 7388 Solicitors. 01 667 6364 [email protected] [email protected] www.recirca.com ____________________________ ____________________________ Designed/produced by Peter Maybury www.softsleeper.com Printed by W & G Baird Ltd, Belfast ____________________________ Printed on 115gsm + 250gsm Arctic the Volume c ____________________________ ____________________________ CIRCA 123 SPRING 2008 3 Editorial 26 | Update 28 | Features 30 | Reviews 70 | (front cover) Daphne Wright Lamb, 2006 marble dust and resin courtesy the artist/ Frith Street Gallery Heaven? Hell? Please contribute to our online survey of the art-college experience in Ireland. students: recirca.com/poll/2008/art_colleges2.shtml lecturers/ tutors: recirca.com/poll/2008/teachers.shtml c . Graphic design by Peter Maybury [email protected] + 353 1 853 0150 c . Peter FitzGerald Death. If you start an editorial with ‘death’, does anyone read any further, or are they gone? I’ll forge on, if only for my own benefit. Death is one of those fixed things: no getting round it, though you spend most of your life looking in the other direction. Art, in contrast, has precious few fixed things; there seems to be nowhere that a person can drive a stake into the ground and say, “That’s at least one thing settled, now where will I whack in the next one?” Maybe it is this fixedness of death that lends 26 Editorial Daphne Wright’s recent marble-like sculptures of animal corpses their hold on us: not only are they ethereally beautiful, but they touch – finally! – on something immutable in art as in life: the end of living, at the scale of the individual. In this issue, Laura Mansfield looks at Wright’s sculptures and the meanings we find in them. But there is another point in the issue where ‘death’ lurks in the background, namely in Eimear McKeith’s article on the forthcoming painting show at the Hugh Lane in Dublin. We’ve heard the phrase ‘the death of painting’ so often now that, like any phrase repeated ad nauseam, we c can no longer locate its meaning. If there was a death involved, it was deserves to be among art-makers. in their entirety? Kelly’s guesstimate rather somewhere else, at the point Why? There is no one answer, is that the selectors had 19 seconds where Clement Greenberg and fans but there are some pointers, as Paul available to them per artwork. In his sank a large stake into the sand, O’Brien lays out in his article in this review here, Fergal Gaynor has his attempting to declare high-modernist issue. ‘Engaged’ art around green own comments on the controversy. painting the endpoint of painting’s issues, it seems, must run a gauntlet It’s worth making a few points purpose. Fixed points like that just of unpalatable challenges; not least now, though. First, although the don’t survive in art theory or practice; of these are the distrust among artists Crawford has been singled out, in attempting to kill something off, and others of ‘instrumentalised’ art, the open-selection method is very they signal their own demise. In the the uneasy match between green widespread; open submissions are article here, the paintings described politics and the individualistic also a very good thing, in principle may hark back in form to the socialism that seems to be favoured and at least for some artists, as they high-modernist tradition, but the by most artists, and the unsettling allow emerging artists who wish to underlying motives appear much history of the linkage of art and exhibit a chance to do just that, more personal and humble. nature, particularly where it leaked in a relatively cost-effective fashion. into totalitarian propaganda or The maths that apply to the Death also takes us to Karachi, manifested itself in the work of artists Crawford Open almost certainly 27 but there, it seems, fixed points are with more bulldozers than sense. apply just as readily to many other again few. Artists must negotiate not open submissions, and I doubt very, only the uncertainties of civil unrest, In the end, it seems, very many very much that the Crawford has but also a multifaceted culure-clash artists just don’t want to be pinned acted in bad faith. But second, as it impacts on and informs their down. For them, any framework we need explanations up-front for artistic practice. We are fortunate to within which art is made can future open submissions; in particular, have a ‘tour d’horizon’ in this issue become a straitjacket, even – to get how are the selectors going to from Amra Ali in Karachi. back to the leitmotif – a kind of allocate their time when the maths death. In this issue Jessica Foley are so stacked against them? And In times of uncertainty, anything that describes, first of all, her own third, while we’re at it, all that other can be held onto is a source of struggles with the imposed stuff needs to be made explicit in reassurance. But now that Northern requirement to find a form for her future – for example, how the entry Ireland has reached a point of art-making. This leads on to a fee is calculated, what the entry fees relative calm, it is certainty that description and discussion of go towards, and whether selectors unsettles many artists and writers. ‘transversal’ modes of art-making, are allowed to invite certain artists At stake in part is ownership of the where the form of the work, if the to submit work. The sums and the past; the wish to learn, to mark, term ‘form’ can be used meaningfully, DVDs have caught up with the old to commemorate, and not to forget leaves plenty of wriggle-room. ways; let’s be clearer about what – all these things are laudable, but goes on at open submissions. when the wish starts to narrow or A word on one of the reviews we are define what has happened or is still carrying. The Crawford Open has Meanwhile, there’s lots in the happening, it becomes problematic. generated considerable controversy following pages here. Enjoy! In this issue, Declan Long looks at this year, not least because of an art-making in Northern Ireland, in open letter circulated by artist John particular at that art, writing about Kelly. That letter is reproduced at art, and curating art, that circle http://recirca.com/articles/2007/texts around attempts to bring the past /crawfordopen.shtml, where there into the present, or attempts to root is also a link to an accompanying the art in its Northern Irish location. article that Kelly wrote for recirca.com. Probably the most Painful as the upheavals in Pakistan innovative – and amusing – or Northern Ireland are or have been, aspect of Kelly’s argument comes they may yet prove very minor in from the mathematical calculations comparison to the revenge the Earth he provides. For example, when you may wreak on us if we continue our consider that much of contemporary present course. The environment has art these days comes in the form of been clawing its way to the top of DVDs which may be of considerable political consciousness, but it is still duration, what hope do the selectors far from the burning issue it probably have of viewing all such submissions c . Update 28 RUA sails forth Ard Bia pops up in Berlin LAMA winners Crawford Open winner Only recently artist Ard Bia has earnt itself a Gareth Kennedy’s Michael Gurhy has taken Rita Duffy took over at considerable reputation in temporary project last the ¤5,000 Crawford the helm of the Royal Galway and beyond over year at The Dock, Leitrim, Open prize. According to Ulster Academy, but major the last few years. It has has been awarded the the Open’s selectors, changes are already also been unusual for its LAMA (Local Authority Frances Morris and underway. The most links to Iceland, so it’s Members Association) Enrique Juncosa, Gurhy’s significant and exciting of perhaps (perhaps not) prize for ‘Best Piece of work “beautifully addresses these is probably the something of a surprise to Art/ Sculpture’; it was the Crawford Open theme securing of a new venue find it popping up in titled Weather cube, Sleep of Reason. It is small- for the RUA Annual Berlin. Managed by Rosie and was a “transparent scale work but potent in Exhibition – the ground Lynch, the Ard Bia Gallery cube structure… sited on terms of emotion. His work floor of the old Harland is a new space with a the banks of the river in addresses youth culture and Wolf Shipyard “mission to cultivate Carrick-on-Shannon.