CIRCA 123 CONTEMPORARY VISUAL CULTURE IN IRELAND SPRING 2008 | ¤7.50 £5 US$12 | ISSN 0263-9475

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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

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[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. but evokes a knowledge Headquarters and research, exchange and The transparent cube of the unforeseen, of Drawing Offices. Not to experimentation in the [functioned] as a steam- premonition.” For more be renovated until after contemporary visual arts sauna.” on the Open, see the the Annual Exhibition, field.” Situated in the heart Editorial and Fergal the venue should prove an of Berlin, it offers the At the same awards Gaynor’s review in this enormously atmospheric opportunity for artists to ceremony, the new issue. Meanwhile the location. Duffy has also exhibit, but as well to take Highlanes Gallery in Open’s current nemesis, secured a number of up a temporary residency. Drogheda took the prize John Kelly, has had a international artists’ work The gallery will open to the for ‘Best Arts Building’. monumental sculpture of for the venue, among them public at the beginning of his installed in Werribee Anselm Kiefer, whose March 2008. Applications Park, Victoria, Australia, output is probably for use of the two as one of the finalists in particularly suited to the residential studios were the Helen Lampriere new RUA surroundings; being accepted up to 25 National Sculpture Award. local artists are also to February. More information be invited to respond to at ardbiaberlin.com the building. You can read a description of Duffy’s plans for the RUA at recirca.com/arti- cles/2008/texts/rua.shtml Changes at Circa We are very sorry to lose Jennie McGinn, our advertisng/ PR person, from the Circa office, but very grateful to her for all her contributions to the magazine. Barbara Knezevic, Circa’s administrator, will be adding Jennie’s role to her own.

Heaven or hell? Be our Friend? Buy! Sell! Critical winner 29 For artists, the most We need friends (who It’s finally there, up and The winner of our critical- important formative doesn’t?). Circa is in the running: the Circa online writing competition for experience they have is process of setting up a shop. Its primary function is undergraduates in Ireland probably that which they Friends Scheme. It will to sell books and catalogues is Gemma Carroll, a gain in art college (though allow those who join both produced by the main art third-year Arts student at of course not all artists to benefit in various ways spaces in Ireland. It functions UCC majoring in History have studied at third level). and to support the Circa ‘Amazon’-fashion: the shop of Art and English. At Circa we are currently undertaking. For more takes the orders online, The winning text will be conducting a survey of information, please ring us the spaces do the ‘fulfilment’ published shortly on art and art-related or visit recirca.com/friends bit. Surf over to recirca.com. Many thanks departments around recirca.com/shop to have a to all those who took part. Ireland, both from the look. If you would like your There was no winner for point of view of students catalogue included in the writers from second level. (recirca.com/poll/2008/art store – whether you are _colleges2.shtml) and of an artist or representing a their lecturers or tutors (at public or private art space – recirca.com/poll/2008/tea please let us know. chers.shtml). Please surf over and lend your opinion; the results will be published in later issues of this magazine. c . Features 30 Letter from Karachi Amra Ali 32 | Act without words Unique act, an exhibition of nonfigurative painting at Dublin City Gallery the Hugh Lane Eimear McKeith 34 | What form must we take? Jessica Foley 42 | Selective memories, collective histories Declan Long 50 | Daphne Wright: The body and its death cast Laura Mansfield 66 |

(background) Seamus Harahan Valley of Jehosephat/Version – in your mind, 2007 DVD still, two channel video/

sound, duration 10:22

courtesy the artist c . c . Amra Ali

32

Letter from Karachi Any word from Pakistan would probably have your The buses are seen to be the owners’ pride, as visible by mind spontaneously relating to words like ‘turmoil’ and the throne-like façade made of steel and decorated with ‘disaster’, not to mention ‘terrorism’. The story of Karachi, tinsel, chamakpatti and colored lights around its windows. Pakistan’s biggest and bustling port city, with a The inside is usually a bright red with gaudy curtains, and fourteen-million and growing population, is not otherwise. filmi (from the popular Punjabi, Pashto and Urdu films) Yes, we have seen more than our fair share of violence, music blaring. This is the authentic color of Karachi’s both ethnic and political. From a sleepy seaside to a congested roads. The popular iconography of the streets mega cosmopolitan city, Karachi remains the economic has been absorbed by Pakistani artists who have been hub of the country. Despite sporadic phases of strife working and selling work in the art galleries, though it is and violence, it continues to draw Pakistanis from all more visible in shows that have traveled abroad, possibly the four provinces in search of jobs and a brighter due to its exotic appeal. A senior painter, Nahid Raza from economic future. Karachi, has recently turned to this popular iconography after almost three decades of painting the female form. Breeze from the Arabian Sea provides relief from the A younger sculptor and artist who works in mixed media, fumes of buses, trucks, rickshaws and private cars as Adeela Suleman, also based in Karachi, started experi- well as from the privately owned diesel and natural gas menting some years ago, with kitsch, such as brightly power generators that provide electricity to many homes. colored utensils used in roadside tea shops, usually run by 33 Residents have been forced to invest in these noisy Pathans. Her material for 3D works has now incorporated machines in the face of continued power failures and metal strainers used in drainage in bathrooms, and com- perpetual blackouts throughout the year. There are a mon objects such a car mufflers and gear shifts. The end multitude of other problems that come with being a result is often the most compelling objects that bridge ‘developing’ country; a city that is in a continued state of the gap between the local and the global. Its conceptual being dug up, with haphazard planning that gives it a face framework reflects the influence of Western Art education of shabbiness. With refugees from Afghanistan and that is part of Pakistan’s colonial legacy. elsewhere converging in this city, it has had to bear the brunt of the Kalishnikov culture, initiated by the US You may be able to locate the works of Raza and Suleman funding of arms to the Afghanis to fight the Soviets in in the commercial galleries, most of which are located in the ’80s. A heavier price is being paid by Karachites the more affluent Clifton and Defence Society Areas. now, due to a consistent flow of arms coming in, The VM Gallery, on the ‘other’ side of the bridge, now a constant part of everyday life, having caused an continues to play an important role in promoting the work irreversible change in its social fabric. of aspiring young artists, fresh graduates and work of more experimental nature. Most other galleries are run Under this rubble, however, there are enough stories of commercially, which means that art shown there is usually inspiration and harmony, and also of beauty that give what the majority of buyers want: decorative and Karachi its true color and hope for the future. For one, traditional painting. Karachi-based printmaker and painter the decorated trucks and buses on its roads are a visual Mehr Afroze recently displayed her painted series, treat. The truck adda (truck station) is located in old Trajectories of our times. These are a compelling dialogue Karachi, near Kaemari. Here are truck artists whose on the fractured nature of our society. These are trying traditional use of beaten silver tin, carved with intricate times for Karachi, with growing unease as the election designs, is called Chamakpatti. Passed in apprenticeship date nears in February, and more unrest is anticipated. from father to son, the truck artists have developed complex iconography that combines symbolism with popular themes. Often, there are repeated images of Amra Ali is an art critic Adeela Suleman based in Karachi; she is peacocks and roses, combined with arabesques in Helmet 6, 2007 a Founding Editor of psychedelic colors. During the turbulent ’90s we saw aluminium cooking pot, steel tiffin Nukta Art, a bi-annual box, enamel painting; inside the repeated image of a half-woman half-horse, perhaps publication on art from padded with cloth and foam with symbolizing the Burraq (the horse that flew the Holy Pakistan; she contributes staraps Prophet to the seven skies) flying over Karachi. It was as regulary to Gallery and Helmet 2, 2004 if this image was seen by these artists as keeping an eye Dawn and is a guest aluminium funnel, steel drain over the burning city. Urdu text, having the same script columnist for The News. covers, steel motorcycle handel as Arabic, usually accompanies these images and is an cover,cycle decoration; inside padded with cloth and foam with integral part of the visual discourse. staps

The yellow transport buses, like the trucks, are adorned Helmet 3, 2004 aluminium cooking pot, aluminium similarly. These buses are commonly referred to as the jar, steel spoons; inside padded ‘yellow devils’, due to the speeding that is linked to them. with cloth and foam with straps all courtesy the artist c . Eimear McKeith

Act without words 34 Unique act, an exhibition of nonfigurative painting at Dublin City Gallery the Hugh Lane

Seán Shanahan Crow, 2004 oil on MDF 240 x 210 x 5 cm courtesy/ collection Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane The way of the sage is to act Times have changed, but not to compete.Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, And we’ve often rewound sixth century BC the clock… But now, God knows, Anything goes.Cole Porter, Anything Goes, 1934

in the 1950s, the Greenbergian grand narrative was later 35 challenged with the emergence of Pop and conceptual art and as artistic media and processes proliferated and diversified throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Painting was thus viewed as losing its place at the pinnacle of art history and, for many, lost its relevance and purpose. But claims of the death of painting, or notions that it no longer has significance, are themselves rooted in Greenberg’s theories. As Arthur C Danto notes in After the end of art, the very idea that painting had come to an end actually subscribes to a Greenbergian viewpoint, even as it rejects it: So often has the death of painting been proclaimed that The power of Greenberg’s vision is nowhere the very notion of its demise has become something of a better testified to than through the radical cliché, an unfulfilled fallacy that re-emerges periodically critiques of painting itself which began to with much sound and fury. Paul Delaroche, upon seeing develop in the 1980s. Ironically, these critiques a daguerreotype in 1839, famously pronounced that were more or less based on the Greenbergian “from today painting is dead.” In 1920, Kazimir Malevich account, though advanced by critics for whom wrote that “painting was done for long ago”; Ad Reinhardt Greenberg was anathema. They took it for claimed he was “just making the last paintings anyone granted that the production of pure painting could make”; Douglas Crimp, when discussing the work was the goal of history, that it had been of Daniel Buren in 1981, wrote that “painting’s terminal reached, and hence that there was nothing left condition finally seemed impossible to ignore.”1 for painting to do.2 Conversely, much has been said of a resurgence in painting in recent years. It should be noted, though, that Danto instead ascribes to the belief that we are now living Charles Saatchi’s Triumph of painting series of exhibitions, in a post-historical or “post-narrative” world, in which the for example, is essentially misplaced in its proclamation very question of the ‘relevance’ of painting is in itself that painting has somehow survived a sustained attack: irrelevant. So while painting may have lost its claims for painting to ‘triumph’, there must be something for it to to greatness in the Greenbergian context of the grand overcome, something for it to battle against. narrative, this has also liberated abstraction from its historical burden. Instead, there is an ‘anything goes’ Nonfigurative painting in particular has long been tied up freedom for artists, who can pick and choose an approach with notions of the death of painting, largely due to its to their practice and for whom painting has become position in Clement Greenberg’s formalist narrative of simply one of many forms of expression. While it must modernism, which saw abstract painting – specifically be admitted that with this comes a potential void of abstract expressionism and later colour-field abstraction – significance, a fear that nothing has value if everything is as the inevitable culmination in the development of art possible, it also means that art has, in a sense, become through history. While his theories exerted great influence democratised. This freedom is not particular to abstract painting, but is for Scully there is also Cézanne and Caravaggio; for Thursz paradigmatic of contemporary art in general in a ‘post- there is Rembrandt; for Morales there is Piero della historical’ age. The practice of art becomes instead a Francesca and El Greco; for Shanahan there is Delacroix. question of individual impetus, a personal drive to create by whatever means necessary. As Danto notes: Unique act does not argue for or against a particular form of art. It does not proclaim the survival or revival of [Robert] Ryman’s work takes on a very different modernist abstraction, nor does it lament its demise. meaning depending upon whether one sees it as Rather, according to curator and Hugh Lane director the last stage of the modernist narrative, which Barbara Dawson, it is an open-ended “celebration” of after all had painting as its standard-bearer, or the individualised practices of five contemporary painters as one of the forms painting began to take in who have chosen to work in abstraction. the post-narrative era when its peers were not paintings of other sorts, but performances, Each has independently, and deliberately, decided to installations, photographs, earthworks, airports, use limited means of expression, adopting a condensed videos, fibreworks, and conceptual structures of vocabulary for their artistic explorations. Yet each practice every stripe and order. There is, one might say, is also highly distinctive, addressing different concerns 36 an immense menu of artistic choices, and an and with divergent results, thus demonstrating that artist can choose as many of these as he or she abstract painting continues to offer new avenues of cares to.3 discovery. None of these artists is part of a movement or affiliated with each other in any way. Indeed, this is It is in this context that Unique act at Dublin City Gallery a diverse, one could almost say ‘arbitrary’, choice of the Hugh Lane could be considered. This group exhibition painters. But, in a sense, it is the very arbitrariness of features five contemporary nonfigurative painters – Sean the selection, and the curatorial openness this suggests, Scully, Frederic Matys Thursz, Carmengloria Morales, that is the crux of the exhibition. These are individual Seán Shanahan and Ruth Root. All but Thursz, who died painters, working freely and independently in pursuit of in 1992, are living and working today. The initial motivation their own, self-imposed ‘unique’ goals. for the show is the gallery’s centenary celebrations, for which a series of exhibitions are taking place throughout What is evident from the practices of these five artists, the year that look both backwards and forwards – then, is that painting is not in competition with other reflecting upon the Gallery’s collections and its past, media; nor is there a conflict between the merits of while at the same time engaging with contemporary figurative versus abstract painting. Rather, I would argue, practice and current critical debates. Unique act, working in abstraction is a deeply personal activity for then, was inspired by one of the gallery’s most significant them, but not in an autobiographical or egoistic sense. acquisitions in recent years: Sean Scully’s donation of Free as they are from participating in a movement or in eight major paintings. Considering Scully is one of the some grand narrative, their explorations in abstract world’s leading abstract painters, it seemed timely to host painting are individual, personal and often detached from an exhibition that explored contemporary nonfigurative the mainstream. Yet while they have sometimes worked painting. against the tide of fashion, their work is very much connected with their experiences and with contemporary Thursz, a generation older than Scully, could be seen as life – it is part of, indeed a product of, today’s world. a bridging point between modernism and the other artists As Scully has said: “Everything we do, no matter how in this exhibition, and between American and European universal, has its feet planted on its own time and its approaches. Morales, through the use of tondos and own place.”4 diptychs, engages with modernist abstraction while reinventing classical forms that are steeped in history. The process is thus fundamental to their practice – Shanahan and Root, meanwhile, are a generation younger the daily work, the continuous exploration, the journey and, coming from a post-conceptual background, take the towards an elusive end point. Engagement with the dialogue with abstraction to a new level through their use medium – with issues of colour, form, surface and support of nontraditional materials such as MDF and aluminium – and the drive to push abstraction down new avenues of and through their overt engagement with space. expression are crucial aspects of this work. The title of None of the artists are simply formalist in their approach; the exhibition, Unique act, articulates the individuality of they absorb influences from the world of art, the world each artist, but also underscores the importance of the around them and their personal experiences. Interestingly act of painting and everything surrounding it. Central to too, they engage with and are inspired by both modernist this is the work in the studio where, for example, Shanahan abstraction and the ‘grand masters’ of art history: while mixes his paints and Morales stretches her canvases. Rothko looms large as an influence among these artists, (above) Carmengloria Morales Diptych S 00-8-1, 2000-03 metallic and dry pigments, acrylic on canvas courtesy Grossetti Arte Contemporanea, Milan/ The Hugh Lane

(below) Sean Scully Figure in grey 2004 oil on canvas 299.7 x 256.5 cm courtesy/ collection Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane

33 David Carrier, in his accompanying catalogue essay, occurred in the paintings were for the most part internal, argues that abstract painting has replaced religious art as precipitated by process, steady but not extravagant. icons for a secular age – that the viewer can obtain a His ongoing dialogue with paint was sufficient.”7 sense of meaning through contemplation of such ‘unique’ works. I would argue, rather, that it is the artists who have For Irish-born Sean Scully (b 1945), the process is also embarked upon an individual search for meaning and of crucial importance. Taught in London but based mainly fulfilment through the practice of painting. This can of in New York since the mid-1970s, Scully is well aware of course be said of any artist working in any medium. These the fact that he, like Thursz, has spent his career working artists, though, have adopted abstraction as opposed to independently: “I find myself historically in the position of any other art form out of some personal, inner necessity – an individualist,” he says.8 He too took inspiration from as the best way with which they believe they can express both European and American modernism: Mondrian and their concerns. I quote Scully again: “Often I long to return Matisse are touchstones, and Rothko again is a significant to figuration…But right now my need to paint everything influence. Indeed, Scully sees himself as continuing the rather than something or one thing makes it impossible.”5 tradition of heroic, monumental abstraction.

Frederic Matys Thursz was an artist whose life, as Lilly He, like Thursz, is a self-confessed romantic, and he too 38 Wei notes in her catalogue essay, revolved around his aims for the transcendental and the spiritual in his studio. There, he worked steadfastly and with great single- painting. But Scully’s work is also grounded in reality – mindedness in his pursuit of pure painting. As fashions in felt experience, in emotion, in contemporary life, in a developed and changed throughout his forty-year career, form of storytelling that expresses a universal shared Thursz continued on his own path, often in obscurity, experience. New York city life, the dynamics of until his death in 1992 at the age of 62. relationships, and the visual expression of that which cannot otherwise be articulated – this is the subject of his Born in Morocco in 1930, Thursz emigrated with his family art. Rather than submitting to formalism, Scully’s works to New York in 1941 at the age of eleven. He studied art are teeming with associative, suggestive elements that in New York and, in the late 1950s, went to Paris on a provoke a deeply personal response. “I’m not making mere Fulbright scholarship. Thus he was exposed to both paintings. I want them to be more than that,” he has said. abstract expressionism in New York, and to the post-war “I want them to be humanistically expressive.”9 School of Paris and the ‘art informel’ movement. While he was influenced by the likes of Henri Michaux, Chaïm The lack of geometric perfection in the lines, the building Soutine, Nicolas de Staël and Jean Fautrier, Rothko up of paint wet-on-wet, the seeping through of layers of played a decisive role in his development – for Thursz, colour – all this underscores the process of creating the Rothko’s canvases were “the essence of paint as works while also adding to their ‘humanistically expressive’ meaning.”6 Diverse influences such as the light in Chartres power. And although Scully has since the mid-1970s cathedral, Rembrandt’s Jewish bride and Grünewald’s used a relatively limited formal vocabulary – that of vertical Isenheim altarpiece also infused his work. And, in addition and horizontal stripes and blocks – within this he has to such art-historical reference points, his personal history continued to develop new means of expression. The stripes – in particular his experience as a Jew and the loss of are, in a sense, like musical notes, from which endless family members in the Holocaust – frequently emerged as compositions can be derived. For him also, structure, a theme. rhythm and relationships of colour and form are of great importance, and lead to endless variations on a theme. Thursz is often classed as a monochrome painter, although such a description is misleading. For while Scully’s practice is an ever-evolving search for he is interested in colour, light and surface, his oeuvre is enlightenment, a deeply spiritual quest. This is particularly primarily an investigation of the physicality of paint and evident in his recent Wall of light series, which has been a romantic search for transcendence in art. Thursz described by David Carrier as “visual utopias.” In these painstakingly built up hundreds of layers of paint to create works, figure and ground, visual hierarchy and internal a translucent, enigmatic, sensual prism of colour. At once tensions are abandoned in favour of an ‘all-overness’ in transparent and impenetrable, these works often took which verticals and horizontals become equal, harmonious several years to complete. Indeed, some paintings – even elements that express the inexpressible.10 These works those finished in the 1980s – are still not completely dry. underscore his belief that “to paint abstractly is to paint Thus the process of creating the work is made physical pure feeling and to try and set the spirit free in a totally in its manifestation. As Wei says: “Paint was his muse, direct way.”11 both his subject and object, and the changes that (above) Frederic Matys Thursz Prisma psalmodia I. (ottava elegia judaica V), 1990 Prisma psalmodia I. (ottava elegia judaica V), 1991 oil on canvas/ burlapdiptych, each panel 206 x 68.8 x 4.5 cm Estate F.M. Thursz; courtesy Galerie Lelong, Zurich/ The Hugh Lane

(below) Ruth Ruth Untitled, 2005 enamel on aluminium 150 x 137 cm courtesy GALERIE NIKOLAUS RUZICSKA, SALZBURG/ The Hugh Lane 39 internal need: “I have a picture that I want to see, a wordless need that I want to visualise…I want to see what I feel, I want to make it present, manifest it.”18

His works are a contained distillation of means, material, colour and form, the result of concentrated attention Carmengloria Morales (b 1942) has also been and deep consideration. But rather than being reductive, decidedly independent and single-minded in her practice. they are in fact expansive and suggestive. They are both Her approach too can be seen in terms of a quest: geometric and intuitive, simple and complex, still and she has said that her practice involves “a journey in search dynamic. Like Thursz, he often gives his works evocative of what you do not know, though you know it is there.”12 titles; also echoing Thursz, he dislikes the designation of Originally from Chile, she moved to Milan in the 1950s monochrome artist. But unlike Thursz, or indeed Scully, and then to Rome in 1960. It was seeing a Rothko he does not aim to achieve transcendental art; rather, exhibition in 1963 that was to prove decisive in her as Gavin Morrison argues in the catalogue, his works are development – both in assimilating and rejecting aspects always approaching, but never quite reaching, balance, of his work. “I liked the elemental structure of the painting, finality, resolution. “There’s nothing definitive or final about 40 classical and centred. However… unconsciously I was the finished painting. I’m not interested in making definitive looking for something else, for a less sublime reality, more paintings that are ‘relevant’. I want my painting to be frontal and earthbound.”13 undogmatic and non-conclusive,” Shanahan says.19

For Morales, the “structure of painting” is central.14 A strong tensional balance is established between the It is perhaps for this reason that she has adopted the simplicity and banality of the means and the intensity of diptych and tondo formats and, more recently, rectangular the paintings’ experiential qualities. On a mundane, works curved at the top like altarpieces. These forms draw mass-produced support of MDF, he creates a single layer attention to the support itself, to the objectness of the of intense colour. This smooth, precise, opaque surface has painting. They also initiate a dialogue with the art of the been applied using a rubber wiper, thus suppressing any past, but are here stripped of all content. In the diptychs, overt expression of the ‘hand’ of the artist. The tensional the left-hand canvas is painted; the one to the right is balance is intensified further by bevelling the edges of the left blank. This has a decentring effect for the viewer, MDF so that the painting seems to float from the wall, yet there is also a sense of balance in their juxtaposition: and by leaving unpainted strips at the margins which the painting is accompanied – and completed – by its disrupt the ‘purity’ of the painted surface by underscoring absence. The process of painting thus comes to the fore, the workaday material of the support and highlighting the and the time and energy spent in the creation of the work process of creation. is underlined. Its history is foregrounded, as Morales has said: “In one painting you can find 1,000 paintings.”15 Recently Shanahan has made works for specific architectural locations, which emphasise the paintings’ Giovanni Maria Accame argues in the catalogue that relationship both with the space itself and with the other Morales’ work encapsulates both action and thought, works in the space. Indeed, he has described his both gestural and conceptual approaches. Morales paintings as “fugue-like” – each work complements and moved from monochromatism in her early work to a relates to the others, as though part of a contrapuntal gestural, layered approach, for which she adopted a composition within space. standardised brush size. Thus the physical process is evident in the application of the paint, with her movements New York-based Ruth Root’s (b 1967) works also engage revealed in the controlled, tight, overlapping brushstrokes, directly with the spaces in which they are displayed. applied at right angles to each other. The size of the For her, the gallery wall is in a sense part of her work. canvases themselves often relates to her bodily presence, corresponding as they do to the span of her arms. I came to a more ‘really abstract’ abstraction, And, like Thursz, work in the studio is central to her by emptying my paintings out. Then sort of practice. As Accame notes, she “is the kind of artist filling them back up. I think I started thinking whose work is closely bound up with a way of being.”16 about all the elements that make a painting a painting; negative and positive space, For Irish-born Seán Shanahan (b 1960), who is based background and foreground relationships. in Italy as well, painting is also “a way of living, it is not I started to isolate the object in the foreground mere dialogue with the visible, but distils emotional and then just took out the background, experience.”17 Shanahan’s works defy conclusiveness, defy made the white gallery wall the space that interpretation. They are the manifestation of an inarticulate, would function as a background.20 Root plays with traditional figure/ ground relationships Unique act runs at Dublin 1 Cited by Arthur C Danto in to create works that contain no relief. While previous City Gallery the Hugh Lane After the end of art: from 12 March to 25 May. contemporary art and the works featured anthropomorphic details such as eyes or pale of history, Princeton: Many thanks to Barbara cigarettes, these are absent in her more recent paintings. Princeton University Press, Dawson, Michael Dempsey, Rather than use canvas, she has chosen aluminium as 1997, p 138; and by Jonathan Georgina Jackson and Gilmore in The Life of a style: a support for the enamel paint of her compositions; Dairne O’Sullivan of Dublin beginnings and endings in thus, like Shanahan, she rejects traditional materials, City Gallery the Hugh Lane the narrative history of art, choosing instead a support that is mass-produced and for their assistance in my Ithaca: Cornell University preparation for this article. Press, 2000, p 134 wholly contemporary. She also eschews the traditional 2 Danto, op cit, p 137 rectangular format of painting, creating irregularly shaped 3 Ibid, p 170 forms with curved edges that could almost be described 2 David Carrier, Sean Scully, London: Thames and Hudson, as flat sculptures. Her works comprise geometric squares, 2004, p 66 rectangles and oblongs that abut each other to create 5 Ibid, p 202 dynamic internal interactions of colour, line and shape. 6 Frederic Matys Thursz, Any potential severity in the geometric shapes and ‘Fragments of a torn envelope, a diary’, Frederic straight lines is set in counterpoint to the alternately soft Matys Thursz, Galerie Lelong and rich shades of colour. Like Scully’s work of the exhibition catalogue, 1991, 41 1980s, they evoke the dynamism of contemporary urban p 23 7 Quote from Lilly Wei, ‘Light is life, but at the same time they reference such artists as the envelope’, Unique act Mondrian, Ellsworth Kelly, Richard Tuttle, Blinky Palermo catalogue; unpublished at and Thomas Nozkowski. While playing with the legacy of time of going to press 8 Carrier, op cit, p 211 hard-edged abstraction, her works also evoke nineteenth- 9 Ibid, p 107 century cut-outs, contemporary signage, advertising and 10 Ibid, p 193 graphic design. 11 Ibid, p 30 12 Quoted by Frederico Sardella in Carmengloria Morales, Frederic Matys Thursz, Sean Scully, Carmengloria Galleria Peccolo exhibition Morales, Seán Shanahan, and Ruth Root each work catalogue, 2006, p 14 independently, rigorously and steadfastly in nonfigurative 13 In an interview with Giovanni Maria Accame, Morales, painting. An analysis of the practices of these five artists Bergamo: Galleria Fumagalli, reveals certain points of contact and divergence in their 1994 approaches and concerns. But what emerges most 14 Quoted by Frederico Sardella forcefully from such a discussion is the fact that they all in Carmengloria Morales, p 32 15 In an interview with Giovanni possess a unique form of expression. Each practice, Maria Accame, Morales defined in its own terms, achieves its own validation and 16 Quote from Giovanni Maria legitimacy. The fact that they work in such different ways Accame, ‘Carmengloria Morales: painting as concept and produce such distinctive paintings reflects both the and action’, Unique act inclusive freedom of choice within contemporary art, catalogue; unpublished at and the continued vitality of abstract painting, where time of going to press 17 Radu Luino, ‘The plain sense endless discoveries can be achieved through deliberately of things’, Seán Shanahan: limited means – discoveries that are personal, individual, Eclissi, Villa Pomini, exhibition and freed from notions of historical progress. catalogue, 2002 18 Quoted by Jens Peter Koerver, ‘Seeing the Times have changed. These artists act alone. They act, paintings’, Seán Shanahan: but they do not compete. Vidar, Dublin: Dublin City Gallery the Hugh Lane, exhibition catalogue, 2002 19 In an interview with Aidan Dunne, ‘The difficult art of simplification’, The Irish Times, 27 September, 2002 20 Quote from David Carrier, ‘A wave of the future: five abstract painters’, Unique act catalogue; unpublished at time of going to press

Eimear McKeith writes on visual art for the Sunday Tribune. c . Jessica Foley

42 What form must we take?

Sarah Browne and Gareth Kennedy Episode 306, Dallas, Belfast 2006 DVD still courtesy the artists They should neither do a mean action, nor be It is better to do nothing than to contribute clever at acting a mean or otherwise disgraceful to the invention of formal ways of rendering part on the stage for fear of catching the visible that which Empire already recognises infection in real life. For have you not noticed as existent. how dramatic and similar representations, if Alain Badiou, Fifteen theses on contemporary art indulgence in them is prolonged into adult life, establishes habits of physical poise, intonation, and thought which become second nature? Plato, The Republic, education: the first stage

the meaning of form, from my art college education. 43 It was as if ‘everybody knows’ what form is!1 Of course, it is a dangerous thing to take anything for granted, perhaps especially language. The language and categories of any institution help to set one on a path, a linear progression. To question that linearity, to question the name, the definition, offers perhaps an alternative approach Issues of representation, and the form which representation that is neither progressive nor regressive – but different. takes, are always pressed into the skin of any artistic A path that intersects, that in a way transverses discourse. practice, or any practice, in fact, which engages in a kind of communication or expression. For a definition of Transversal, not trend ‘representation’, look to the Oxford English dictionary: Susan Kelly, an artist and researcher based in London, “The action of placing a fact, etc., before another or others tackles the concept of the ‘transversal’. Originated by the by means of discourse; a statement or account, esp. one psychoanalyst Felix Guattari, this was a practice that intended to convey a particular view or impression of a explored processes of transference between analyst and matter in order to influence opinion or action.” Similarly, analysed. Stepping back into the dictionary for a moment, for a definition of ‘form’, look to the Chambers twentieth and keeping in mind Bataille’s words “A dictionary begins century dictionary (for variety, of course): “External when it no longer gives the meaning of words, but their appearance of a clearly defined area, as distinguished tasks,”2 to ‘transverse’ is translated as: “to set crosswise, from colour or material…something that determines to cross, to thwart, to reverse, to transform,” or “to turn shape…a mode in which something appears,” and then from prose into verse,” in other words to shift from one under the specific heading of ‘Fine Arts’: “The organisation, form to another, or to lay down across forms. Kelly placement, or relationship of basic elements as lines and identifies the ‘transversal’ with practices that focus on colours in a painting, or volumes and voids in a sculpture, experimentation rather than on representation, a focus on so as to produce a coherent image, the formal structure of means rather than a particular end. a work of Art.” I see. The transversal was used by Guattari as a conceptual I recall from my early days in art college the issue of form tool whose function it was to open up “closed logics arising. It rustled quietly amongst such other seemingly and hierarchies and to experiment with relations of innocuous categories as line, tone, shape, texture, etc, interdependency in order to produce new assemblages though it never seemed quite to fit in. For what made up and alliances.”3 The transversal is a ‘clog’ in the works, the greater part of the academic year, one was required a kind of sabotage on the institution, on accepted to draw ‘analytically’, to respond to, and to express, etc, organisational strategies, a de-territorialisation of the the object through the aforementioned categories (line, discipline, a kind of fluid and positive anarchy. Practices tone, shape, etc)…and yet, this particular art student was that engage in a kind of transversal activity do not quite confounded as to what exactly was meant by form? necessarily become allied with each other, for that would I would ask my tutors “What does form mean?” and they be to reconstitute a uniform organisation, or as Guattari would scoff, “What-does-form-mean!?” (You are required, called it a “deathly organisational reproduction.”4 dear reader, to change the tone accordingly; I trust you Key concerns for Kelly regarding transversal practices will do so.) And so I would emerge none the wiser, as to include the issue of visibility, definition, and alliance. How can an art practice, or other practices often tagged states, set up under the same basic principles as any as art practices, be vigilantly against the institution, other. They have enacted a repetition, and in so doing challenging accepted and unquestioned discourses, have differentiated themselves somewhat from what and yet avoid a limiting definition such as ‘anti-institutional’? would be considered a traditional state, an action that is Kelly asks, “What are the strategies and dynamics not quite parody, not quite pastiche. The summit of involved in working across situations, institutions and micro-nations, both a performance-art event and a political discourses without becoming identified with them, or event in its own right, draws attention to the fact that our subsumed by them?” Transversal practices, Kelly decides, world as we know it, both politically and aesthetically, can only retain that critical relation to ‘Empire’ by remaining is shaped by the limits we place upon it, and our world as “doggedly eye-proof.”5 But how does one retain this individuals is shaped and contained by our understanding dogged and eye-proof agenda? How does one of these limiting forms. continuously remain vigilant to one’s definitions, one’s characteristics, one’s limitations? What kind of form must Kelly describes the transversal as that which does not one take to achieve this hyper-vigilance? How can one separate the how from the why of collective activities. be engaged in an activity that seeks to challenge a status She challenges the separation of art as an autonomous quo, or to confront a stagnation of language, without state: “By effectively resorting to a modernist notion of art 44 becoming limited as art practice that appears to take a as a separate autonomous sphere, with an inherently ‘relational’ form? As it turns out, the transversal “is not transformative capacity, a discourse of relational art elides a form into which one steps, but is rather continuously the relationship between art and the political.”8 Kelly is constituted through events, acts of alliance and temporary keen not to promote art for art’s sake, but instead to organisation.”6 In effect, the transversal is very much engage in an interrogation of accepted and comfortable dependant upon social interaction, not in a utopian definitions of art practice and its ‘place’ within the wider sense, but in a way that is cognisant of the conflicts, world, in other words to remain ‘doggedly eye-proof’. disagreements and tensions of operating within a social sphere, and in a way that allows for those difficulties to Kelly contests the widely accepted term ‘relational art’, become apparent or at least palpable. arguing “not only do a whole range of activities get mysteriously named art, but their political ‘effects’ are Kelly’s work at Amorph 03! articulated this ambition to reduced to a list of romantic assumptions of art’s engage in debate and contest, an experiment in social transformative capacities.”9 As opposed to limiting practice interaction around issues of state, autonomy and inevitably within a discourse or category, Kelly makes an argument democracy. As well as contributing to the catalogue for ‘consistency’. “I would argue that for practices writings based around the event Amorph 03!, Kelly operating transversally, it is important not to solidify into staged what could be called a performance piece, entitled such recognisable forms, but to attempt instead to render LOBBY. ‘Formally’, this was essentially a little green tent, themselves in a particular consistency.”10 This consistency with the letters LOBBY stencilled onto its exterior, which implies fluidity, a constant and measured flow and output attached itself onto the embassies of the micro-states, – where form is not clearly definable, where there is an a portable docking lobby. (The 7th Amorph! performance issue of invisibility, and yet at the same time one cannot art biennale hosted the first ‘Summit of micro-nations’, deny that something is happening, in ebbs and flows. including such autonomous states as Sealand, State in The transversal, to reiterate, is paradoxical – it follows a Time, and Ladonia.) ‘logic of refusal’ in that it resists visibility, or taking on recognisable forms. Kelly’s LOBBY operated as a kind of ‘ante-chamber’, a lobby, essentially, with the ability to lobby. The tent The question of form is in evolution – from the modernist became a space of questioning, negotiation and rigors of Greenbergian dictates, to a fluvial form, discussion, and a place to make petitions for particular constituting itself through consistency rather than interests and needs. LOBBY became a simulation of uniformity. A kind of chameleon practice is evident within stately activity, and yet at the same time set itself Irish art practice and beyond – a kind of adoptive mimetic apart from that definition as a mobile and temporary practice which would no doubt send ripples through interlocutive device. Plato’s blood. However, I would contest, this practice is not simple mimicry – it is not an echo of one truth or In both her writings on the symposium, and her actions another – it is a repetition, but through repetition, within it, Kelly emphasises a play with language – “shape a differentiation. ‘Trying-on-forms’ is an evolving practice, is both a verb and a noun.”7 A lobby is both a space and a mimetic repetition, an attempt to re-engage with the an action. The micro-nations in question may appear, to already said, the ‘everybody knows’, and in such a way to the outside world, as mere fantasy, delusion, play-acting, stave off a benign acceptance of representation, forms of but actually these micro-nations operate as autonomous truth and of reality. Sarah Browne and Gareth Kennedy Episode 306, Dallas, Belfast 2006 DVD still courtesy the artists

45 Plato abhorred? are intrinsically linked. This work hits upon several themes Recent work by artists Sarah Browne and Gareth at once: the nature of the spectator and their relation to the Kennedy engages in this practice of ‘trying-on-forms’. art work – in this case many people were involved in the It is a kind of game-playing between fact and fiction, truth creation of the work; the nature of cultural spectatorship, and un-truth. Nietzsche describes truth as “A moveable be it through TV or the gallery; the nature of language and host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: dominant discourse, and our questioning of that language; in short, a sum of human relations which have been the nature of form and how choice of form becomes a poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred and methodology, and integral to the artists work. Other aspects embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a of Browne and Kennedy’s work, which embraces a kind of people to be fixed, canonical and binding.”11 split-personality of form, are evident from the recent Current trends – past prospects. It is uncertain whether Browne and Kennedy’s most recent works were gathered the artefacts therein were found or purpose-built. The jingle together in a show called Current trends – past prospects for the Gulf Oil Company based in Bantry Bay, entitled at Pallas Projects, placed side by side as if fragments of ‘Bringing home the oil’, seems too absurd to be true, some inarticulate manifesto. The show itself is not in revealing a vast chasm between the tolerated stereotypes question here, rather it is the works themselves and how of the time (1969) and those of today, and yet the use of 46 they might connect with a reappraisal of form within the TV screen and subtitles begs the viewer to sing along contemporary art practice. Browne and Kennedy’s work and join the merry contentment of the oil workers as they seems to be cognisant of this “moveable host of sing their jingle ‘seven dwarfs’ style. Again, the juxtaposition metaphors” as they dissect a script from hit TV show of incongruous elements helps to disintegrate any hope of Dallas in order to create a kind of simulacrum of the a coherent agenda, but rather reflects, mimics or reiterates everyday economics which permeates mass-media the disjointed nature of contemporary culture, both within images, nostalgic recollections of days (and TV mainstream media and less inclusive art circles. programmes) gone by, and present-day conceptions of value, prosperity, culture and society. Episode 306: Dallas, The forms utilised within Browne and Kennedy’s work Belfast is effectively a series of three re-enactments of may be identifiable by their methods – by appropriating a clip from a Dallas episode, filmed in 1987. The TV show the script, the script itself becomes the subject of scrutiny of the ’80s, the artists write, “served to promote a lifestyle – and it is in this way that the artists challenge the of conspicuous consumption, and serve as a balm spectator to read and translate, rather than to only accept following the American recession and oil crises of the and enjoy. Browne and Kennedy’s work indicates an ’70s.”12 The fragment of script adopted from the Dallas intimate engagement with a question of form, whereby episode uncomfortably resonates within the context of ‘inhabiting’ pre-existing forms (such as the TV script) ‘New Ireland’ – with talk of globalisation, car production, becomes an exercise in gaining alternative perspectives, oil and a dominant language of ‘power’. Whether clever and shedding light in corners long since abandoned. selection or serendipity, the identification of this tiny For Browne, this engagement with form becomes fragment of script reveals a language bound up in power something like “trying on someone else’s clothes.”14 relations dominated by the value of oil; “Like it or not JR, there are no more borders, there are no more countries… The transversal practices which Kelly describes “often There is just one world, there’s just one country, there’s work across and through different fields, starting out not just one language. That language is power.” As the artists from given spaces for negotiation and approved ways of themselves contest, “This dialogue uncannily prefigures doing things, but through simultaneous invention of 15 the contemporary language of globalisation and forces actions and procedures.” These are practices that remain of global capitalism – a world of multinationals and a actively suspended and mobile in their relationship to de-nationalised industry.”13 The set for the re-enactment established and accepted fields of knowledge and was situated in a wasteland in the Titanic Quarter of systems of power. These practices simultaneously adopt Belfast, provided by the spaceshuttle project, and undermine accepted ways of thinking and behaving “six projects of urban creativity and social interaction” not simply by mimesis, but through a kind of parody. (www.spaceshuttle.org.uk). By utilising the script, Linda Hutcheon describes this action as “A redefinition of the artists draw attention to the use of language, which, parody as repetition with critical distance that allows ironic 16 when left untouched in its original context of the Dallas signalling of difference at the very heart of similarity.” episode, might not have demonstrated so clearly the baldness of the language used by dominant institutions. By removing the script from its context and reiterating the words, a certain awkwardness is revealed – there is no postproduction involved, the presentation is amateur – and that is the required effect. The form and the message was bunched a ball of paper. The stage was set. When the audience were seated, the two artists presenting, McCann and Sex, entered the centre and took up the empty chairs. The performance began. What took place was a bizarre and telling mimesis of the nature of developing artistic practice within an institution. McCann spoke in rhyme through the megaphone thus:

On the MFA programme, We have three crits a week, Where three students present, Artists Browne and Kennedy utilised a tiny fragment of And others help with critique, script from a 1980s TV show, mimicking, through actors, The maps and the drawings, the language, the tone and the attitude of the oil rich The bumps and the dawnings, characters. This mimesis stretches, however, into a A place where ideas might meet. present-day consciousness of energy crisis and a struggle 47 for economic stability. Dominant discourse is by its very As the work was collaborative, between a performance nature invisible. The mimesis within Episode 306: artist/ sculptor (McCann) and a printmaker (Sex), Dallas, Belfast bleeds into a kind of parody which is a common language needed to be adopted and this both humorous and unnerving, pointed enough to force a meeting point was found through the use of rhyme. reconsideration of the impact of the casual language of At different points, each actor asked a member of the dominant popular media. The script in a sense is both a audience to pull the ball of paper from beneath their chair, literal tool (a method of control and form for a production) unravel it, and read aloud its inscription. Invariably a and a metaphor for the powerful effects of language question, the stationary actor would have to respond to through discourse, be it popular or academic. The use of the audience member’s recitation. Meanwhile, an usher script, in a way, suggests a struggle to work from within moved through the audience handing out small brown a given form in a way that will both mimic and suspend it, envelopes, in which was stowed the fingerprint of an allowing for some critical distance to open up. audience member on one side, and on the other, the fingerprint of McCann, with a print in text, ‘its all about Doctor, Doctor, I feel like an art student! you’, by Sex. The actors recite a continuation of the rhyme A recent occasion at NCAD, specifically the Fine Art through the megaphone: Faculty Postgraduate Symposium hosted at the beginning of December, revealed an active and occupied frustration, Acquiring new knowledge is our challenge, among certain postgraduates, with an imposed discourse Unfamiliar ground is uneasy, of university academia. Many postgraduate students Decisions, chances and twists, (a.k.a. artists) were asked to ‘present’ a synopsis of their Involves many risks, work. One particular ‘presentation’, attended by the author, So lets take it one risk at a time. attempted to reach beyond a formulaic university-style- power-pointed-podium-presentation by setting up an The pace changes again with a cry, “Will the real Dave encounter between audience and artist (the symposium Layde please stand up!”: the audience is unexpectedly was based around the idea of audience and was entitled treated to a rendition of a rap, written by Mr Layde, In sight of the audience). For this particular presentation, McCann and Sex, performed by Dave Layde; it goes a given by Sinéad McCann and Naomi Sex, the audience little something like this: found themselves queuing outside the auditorium in single file, one person at a time admitted. Anticipation mounted In this time of cultural control, people talk and upon reaching the doorway one was faced with to me about being stuck in a hole, an ink tray and a small, not quite square, piece of paper. Spending time negotiating and gathering Under the guidance of an usher the audience member information, was asked to press a digit into the ink tray and then print Navigating areas of regeneration… said digit onto the small piece of paper. The piece of paper was then inserted into an envelope as the audience And the chorus goes: member moved to find a seat. The seats were arranged around a nucleus, like a diagonal cross, four blocks Inside these walls, Inside these walls, presenters around an open centre. In the centre there were two present and audiences listen, chairs and a megaphone. Underneath each chair in the Outside these walls, outside these walls, fact is auditorium, dangling inelegantly from a piece of tape, fact and fiction is fiction… 48 The impact of a white man in a suit performing in a genre The concept of the transversal is that which challenges of ‘black urban rap’ was close to comic, but not quite. what ‘Empire’ sees as existent, and not existent, and Had the whole performance been a part of an NCAD that which seeks not to simply simulate the dominant talent show, they surely would have won; people would discourse like a fashion, but instead to put it through have laughed heartily and enjoyed the absurdity of it. a repetition, a differentiation. This kind of challenge is Everyone, including the audience, was playing a role – evident in the works of the artists discussed here – an artist, playing at being an academic, playing at being though by no means do these examples exhaustively an artist. (I believe its called ‘dramatic irony’). Rhyme is underpin a transversal practice. a most basic and effective method of learning by rote, of committing to memory, and of keeping in line. The question of form, which so perplexed and baffled The utilisation of rhyme was not simply a gelling tool for this author during those early years of art education, two artists with very disparate practices to work together, has become a larger question of how we engage with but it proved to be a powerful parody of and metaphor institutional and empirical forms, of government, of for the scripted and formulaic agenda set by academic academia, of popular media, etc. The artist might find that art institutions. The audience certainly seemed pleasantly their ‘role’ within society is bleeding into many other roles surprised by the performance, and one audience member – the artist-hybrid – engaged in a transversal practice, ventured to ask the artists afterwards whether they had a practice of trying-on-forms that might somehow lead to a not been afraid that the whole thing would fall flat on its clearer navigation of the straits of ‘civilisation’, and face, considering the context of the symposium. continue to engage critically with dominant discourse. The artists’ reply was that they had of course considered the possibility of ‘failure’ but it had not deterred them, as to execute the exercise in itself was the main requirement. Trying-on-forms.17

This was an exercise which was pulled together within a very short space of time, a temporary organisation, yet it ventured outside of traditional parameters, it set a challenge to the audience to read, to be a part of an exercise, to engage in a way that was a little less passive – the artists performed their role as academic artists, but did it in such a way that acknowledged the paradoxes and dichotomies they face as part of an art institution. Inside the walls of the institution the artist disintegrates traditional truth/fiction boundaries. However, it is outside the walls of the institution that the artist faces the greater challenge – finding an audience, utilising and adopting forms to challenge that audience, and engaging in a meaningful, productive and evolving dialogue with that audience, whatever their demographic. 1 Gilles Deleuze writes of representation thus: “… Everybody knows, no one can (below) (above) deny, is the form of repre- Susan Kelly Sinéad McCann and Naomi Sex sentation and the discourse Lobby, 2003 from It’s all about you, 2007 of the representative.” A installation shot, Amorph 03 courtesy the artists statement such as ‘everybody courtesy the artist knows’ becomes the form of the representation, and thus it becomes part of that discourse. Deleuze, Difference and repetition, 1994, p 165 2 Georges Bataille, Visions of excess: selected writings 1927–1939, ed Alan Stoekl, University of Minnesota Press, 1985, p 31 3 Susan Kelly, ‘The transversal and the invisible: how do you really make a work of art that is not a work of art?’, www.republicart.net 49 4 ibid 5 ibid 6 ibid 7 Susan Kelly, ‘Amorph 03!’, www.muu.fi/amorph03/texts /kelly_text1.html 8 Susan Kelly, ‘The transversal and the invisible: how do you really make a work of art that is not a work of art?’, www.republicart.net 9 ibid 10 ibid 11 Frederic Nietzsche, in Gilles Deleuze, Difference and repetition, 1994, p 171 12 Sarah Browne and Gareth Kennedy in Space shuttle, ed Peter Mutschler, Paragon Studios, Belfast, 2007, pp 16-22 (available online at www.spaceshuttle.org.uk/ publications.htm); see also their project in Circa 120, summer 2007. 13 ibid 14 From an e-mail conversation with the artist. 15 Susan Kelly, ‘The transversal and the invisible: how do you really make a work of art that is not a work of art?’, www.republicart.net 16 Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of postmodernism: history, theory, fiction, Routledge, 1988, p 26 17 Please visit www.recirca.com/backissues /c123/podcast to download podcasts of the performance and a remix, and to see some related text and visuals.

Jessica Foley is a writer and artist, currently lecturing in Visual Art Education at M.I.C. Limerick. c . Declan Long Declan Long is a lecturer at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin.

50 Selective memories, collective histories (opposite) towards engagement with broadly occult themes – as Willie Doherty Lars Bang Larsen has written, “many artists have recently Ghost story, 2007 DVD stills been turning to the unseen as a means of short-circuiting duration: 12 minutes looped the spectacle, searching out occult gaps in modernity to installation: one 16:9 video evoke an acute sense of historical space.”2 Though Larsen projector, one DVD player, one stereo amplifer, is careful to distinguish between the straightforward use two speakers, on DVD of spectral tropes and more thoroughgoing engagements (colour, sound) projected to with occultist practices (the former being solely concerned, a size of 1.3m x 2.3m onto wall of self-enclosed space he argues, with the nonsubstantial quality of images, courtesy Kerlin Gallery while the latter guides us “towards the embodied notion of affect”), the interest in the ‘unseen’ along with ‘historical space’ seems like a useful combination here, insofar as Doherty’s film is evidently concerned with ‘seeing’ and 1. History in the making ‘remembering’ together. For in part, Ghost story is evidently “I retraced my footsteps along paths and streets that a reflection on the subjective view versus the ‘official’ I thought I had forgotten…”1 Journeying alone, or record (the narrator drawing repeatedly on memories of apparently alone, through marginal or derelict stretches of media imagery), the sense of a frustrated individual effort 51 the city, the anguished narrator of Willie Doherty’s recent to gain a total picture, a comprehensive account, being film Ghost story finds himself compelled to travel in time instensified by repeated, protracted use of steadicam

as well as space. Wandering along the unpopulated, footage: the camera propelling us forwards within the

ˆ unpatrolled perimeter of the city, moving through desolate filmic space, while also imprisoning us for extended ˆ urban and suburban zones that seem emptied out of periods within one fixed view. The result, as Slavoj Zizek obvious status or significance, he returns to places that has found in contemplating Robert Montgomery’s 1947 he, and the world, have long since left behind (prompting noir experiment The Lady in the lake (in which all events question after question: why have these pathways been are seen ‘through the eyes’ of detective Philip Marlowe) forgotten? what once happened here? what has is an effect of paranoia: “the field of what is seen is prompted this anxious return?) and in choosing these continually menaced by the unseen.”3 But, of course, neglected routes – both spatial and temporal – he is the particular type of ‘field’ envisioned by Doherty also confronted by strange spectral ‘presences’, shadowy seems vital to the questions about historical consciousness revenants that stir in him disturbing memories of public – or unconsciousness – posed in Ghost story. We find terror and tragedy. Despite their ostensible emptiness, ourselves gazing at scruffy, dilapidated spaces, looking at the more-or-less abandoned terrains temporarily occupied length across cracking, crumbling ground and along in Ghost story are in this way psychologically charged unmanaged, overgrown pathways – places that are unmis- (occasioning confusion between what is real and what takably, materially there but that are resolutely unreadable may be imagined), but they are also the source of strange in relation to the fragments of historical narrative that are historical reverberations. Within the self-consciously recounted on this journey. We can never quite be clear Gothic frame of this film, these ‘nothing’ places give a as to the exact significance of these locations, and just as sense of a powerful, long-repressed something. They are we think we may have grasped at least a confirmed local invested with uncertain, uncanny ‘potential’: “I wondered context (therefore adding a reassuring level of meaning about what had happened to the pain and terror that to these landscape images), the narrator’s ‘memories’ had taken place there,” our tormented narrator tells us, begin to stray and we hear unexpected references to “had it been absorbed or filtered into the ground or was it present-day global conflict – allowing for an unlikely move possible for others to sense it as I did?” from unapproved roads on the edge of Derry to the hell- house of Abu Ghraib. These fraught perambulations through forgotten places present, then, a problem about place and haunting that is Ghost story may therefore offer an oblique, cautious also a problem about history, or about the representation subversion of conventions of historical representation, of history. The idea of haunted space surely troubles any the film both locking us in (to a point of view, to a way of clear understanding of chronology (ghosts seem to exist in seeing) and locking us out, resisting our efforts to assemble several time periods at once, and in none), so testing the a meaningful narrative from the various physical traces and usually resilient modern idea of history as “one damn thing fragments of memory that are gathered. In establishing a after another” (to borrow Arnold Toynbee’s famously narrative frame and form (a ghost story4) only to ulimately reductive catchphrase). In this way, the Gothic manner of disavow it, this film might well be seen to play against Doherty’s reflection on location and ‘aftermath’ (for this is standard means of organizing the elements that constitute in strong measure a work of post-Troubles anxiety) what Hayden White has termed the “historical field.”5 connects with a wider tendency in contemporary art In his influential work Metahistory, White outlined the Unmistakably, Graham is right to recognise this ambition importance of narrative and poetic devices in shaping as crucial to the art of Northern Ireland during this decade the “explanatory strategies” of historians, noting, for – a substantial body of work testing the conditions of instance, how a temporally arranged “chronicle” becomes history-making just as it also seeks to query conventions transformed into a more complex “story” through use of and expectations of art-making in a context of aftermath such literary mechanisms as inaugural and terminating and regeneration. Yet some care should be taken in motifs – as such, he proposes, “invention … plays a part in connecting these archival proclivities too particularly to the historian’s operations.” The historian creates “hierarchies the specifics of a ‘new’ Northern Ireland situation, most of significance” and strives for “formal coherence,” White obviously since “an archival impulse,” as it has been suggests, and in this regard, the obstructive effects and termed by Hal Foster, is often seen as one of the general, opaque elements of an artwork such as Ghost story – defining tendencies of international art in our present era7 the resistance towards drawing conclusions, the refusal (and indeed an essential avatar of this phenomenon is, of narrative consolations – seem to combine as an Foster suggests, the Dublin-based artist Gerard Byrne, intriguingly disruptive, ambiguous kind of historiography, whose films and photographs ambivalently address the the film seeming uncertain about the implications of construction of “the present tense through the ages”8). accessing painful memories, while being implicitly critical This widely-found version of ‘archive fever’ is understood 52 about certain forms of remembering. by Foster as “a notion of artistic practice as an idiosyncratic probing into particular figures, objects, Parallels can undoubtedly be drawn between these ideas and events in modern art, philosophy, and history.”9 It is, and other strong currents in contemporary art. Indeed in he proposes, about making “historical information, often the context of contemplating representations of history lost or displaced, physically present.” At the same time, and histories of representation in the changing (and in nevertheless, the informal archives that are drawn on by some respects unchanging) Northern Ireland, there are artists as diverse in their interests as Tacita Dean, Sam numerous works, many of which bear Doherty’s direct Durant and Thomas Hirschhorn, are not merely presented influence, that struggle with anxieties of remembering as arrangements of the pure, unrefined ‘facts’ of history; and forgetting, testing means of recording or seeking rather these archives are variously ‘produced’ as part evidence, investigating archives and exploring the of resolutely indeterminate, enigmatic, and creatively ‘potentiality’ of testimony. We might cite here, for instance, anti-monumental art processes – so underscoring the diverse forms of urban detective work that are “the nature of all archival materials as found yet constructed, employed in the practices of Miriam de Búrca, Ursula factual yet fictive, public yet private.” In these practices, Burke, John Duncan, Seamus Harahan, Daniel Jewesbury, the representation of the past remains up for negotiation: Eoghan McTigue and Aisling O’Beirn: each of these history is mystery. Recently, the art historian Mark Godfrey artists following overlooked historical pathways in the city, has also highlighted manifestations of this general differently considering the capacity of art to maintain a phenomenon, identifying versions of what he labels critical relation to dominant regimes of remembrance. “The Artist as Historian”10 – assessing a pervasive effort In a stimulating discussion of what he has termed on the part of contemporary artists to imaginatively revisit (after Derrida) an “archive fever” in recent photography specific moments, to explore the lacunae in historical in Northern Ireland, Colin Graham praises a range of narratives and to study and critique the forms of productively self-reflexive documentary projects representation through which the past is made ‘present’ (including series by Duncan, Burke and Jewesbury) that, to us. A key exemplar of this paradigm is understood to he proposes, “offer a deeply ethical way of seeing a be the film-maker Matthew Buckingham, whose “address specific historical place.”6 These are modes of visualising to history” (as another advocate Stuart Comer has written) and archiving that work against an ‘official’ archival “seeks to problematise the ‘amnesia of the present’,” ideology, straining to somehow “take account of the full engaging “influential figures whose historical position has weight of memory which the archive seeks to lighten.” always remained unresolved, if not uncertain.”11 There is, undoubtedly, much at stake here. As Graham Buckingham’s haunted narratives demonstrate, for Godfrey says, “to point to, or even test out, the fragile post- and others, the possibilities offered by today’s art in consociational consensus would be to remember a future contending with the contingency of historical knowledge. that is now consigned to history”; and yet, recent These denaturalizing forms of storytelling and “deep-time photography concerned with the changing landsape of cartography”12 will often detail “the way in which … events Northern Ireland’s cities will often strive to fill “the archival have formerly been narrated or indeed ignored in received frame with subjects that undermine the archive’s capacity historical writing”; and yet, through this retracing, there to hold the past, or by ironising and questioning the may also be ‘reshaping’: our everyday understanding archive itself.” of the relationship between past and present, fact and fiction, even time and space, becoming, perhaps, momentarily reconfigured. John Duncan from Boom town 2002 colour photograph courtesy the artist

As such, work in this ‘historical field’, may connect us Reminiscent of the fictions of Jorge Luís Borges, newly and intimately to specific places or to discrete the Atlas Group files … attempt to address the moments in the past, but potentially it will additionally limits of what is thinkable At the same time as allow us to discover new correspondences, to create they open up possibilities for new ways of new constellations. writing histories, they also intimate that sense of the absurd, the futile, or the impossible, which 2. A Protest Against Forgetting ultimately haunts the logic of the archive.14 A question asked by Lebanon’s feverish archivists the Atlas Group, has increasing importance: “How do we approach facts not in their crude facticity but through the As a character says in Translations, Brian Friel’s powerful complicated mediations by which facts acquire their drama about landscape and memory in colonial Ireland, 15 immediacy?”13 Among their tentative answers has been to “remembering everything is a form of madness.” reject the reductive distinction between fiction and And indeed, if there is self-conscious madness (should nonfiction, developing and presenting archival resources such a condition be thought possible) in the methods of relating to the history of the Lebanese Civil War (their the Atlas Group, we might well find that their work is unyielding, unavoidable focus) that are in one sense self- contextualized locally by the type of “historiographical 16 consciously unreliable but that are in other ways somehow mania” that has also long-defined debates on the history capable of doing “justice to the rich and complex stories of conflict in Ireland. Their archival interventions implicitly that circulate widely and capture our attention and belief.” propose, of course, a productive form of ‘instability’ Characterizing the ‘historical documents’ they make and, if we may turn again to circumstances in the North available as “hysterical symptoms” (“based not on any one of Ireland (seeing cultural practices there within an person’s actual memories but on cultural fantasies erected expanded historical field), we might argue that there are from the material of collective memories”), their processes corresponding forms of high anxiety: much recent work play on a kind of mania (akin, perhaps, to the paranoia in this region actively inciting multiple, often subtle, identified by ?i?ek) that may result from the drive to see types of ‘derangement’ around official arrangements everything, to remember all; a point picked up on in a for remembering. survey of archival practices by the art historian and curator Charles Merewether: A recently initiated series of exhibitions at the Golden Gallery’s programme regularly until twelve individual Thread Gallery in Belfast, Collective histories of Northern exhibitions have been staged. This is, without doubt, Irish art might, perhaps, been seen as displaying a mammoth undertaking and, in many respects, a bizarre interesting varieties of these ‘hysterical symptoms’. one for an institution of this scale and type – Richards Though in most respects a very conventional proposition – choosing to eschew wholehearted commitment to the staging a series of historical surveys of art from a emergent and the international (the type of programming particular geographical area, covering a well-defined time we might most obviously expect from a contemporary period – there is something curiously excessive and in art gallery, the majority of which, certainly in Dublin, many ways intriguingly eccentric about this project. are ultimately governed by the hegemony of what’s hot) Conceived of by Golden Thread’s director Peter Richards privileging instead an ongoing, potentially enervating – an artist who has for several years explored through process of examining and re-examining local conditions, performance and photography, the complex relation of going over and over the details of an historical period that, representation and monument-making to ‘lived’ history – more generally, this society is being fervently urged to this series of shows sets out to “form a significant histori- leave behind. From one perspective, therefore, these cal archive of Northern Irish art from 1945 to the present,” dozen exhibitions might be understood as the result of a providing “much-needed historical context” but doing so painfully parochial vision, an approach that demonstrates 54 in a way that acknowledges “that there are many versions unseemly and perverse inward-and-backward-looking of history.”17 This series, Richards says, “embraces the tendencies, willfully resisting the assumed strategic overlapping and sometimes contradictory versions of superiority and prestige of international positioning, history”18 and as such it is set up to be lastingly at odds in a manner that might be easily, haughtily dismissed with itself, defined by internal dispute. Beginning in 2005 (“get with the programme, Belfast!”). Yet precisely owing with Post-war – post-Troubles, curated by S B Kennedy to its apparent perversity (its odd, I-prefer-not-to approach and Brian McAvera, the Collective histories have to the contemporary artworld), the Collective histories continued with exhibitions entitled Icons of the North series might also be valued as a stubborn, unorthodox (again with McAvera at the curatorial helm), Art and the form of remembering, a curatorial risk and experiment that disembodied eye (curated by Liam Kelly) and The Double gambles on the possibilities for public debate that may image (curated by Dougal McKenzie), each taking emerge through this long-term commitment to re-making different elements of Northern Irish art since the 1960s history. (And in this regard we might compare how Hans as their theme.19 Again, much of this may seem numbingly Ulrich Obrist has framed his ongoing series of interviews straightforward, overly familiar, even mundane in its need with curatorial pioneers as a “protest against forgetting” – to cover terrain that has been too long traveled – and I am a slogan he borrows from the Marxist historian Eric reminded in reflecting on the opening stages of this Hobsbawn, whose work has perennially struggled against project of good arguments made by Daniel Jewesbury for the way “our society is geared to make us forget.”22) an “end of the history of Northern Irish art,” his wish being to highlight how this concept has become “far more To think favourably of this series as an experiment, problematic than it has been customarily portrayed.”20 we may wish, nevertheless, to see some evidence of A meaningful examination of art in the North today, experimentation. In other words, we might hope that Jewesbury says, “must inevitably exceed the historiography Richards’s invitation to other, specialist curators to stage not just of Northern Irish art but of Northern Ireland itself – a survey or study of elements of art in Northern Ireland the ‘busted flush’ that yet frames a moribund, binaristic since (at least) the 1960s, might allow for the presentation political culture.” He is right to argue that an excess of of new or unexpected perspectives, in new or unexpected art and writing arising out of the Troubles involved “over- forms. Four exhibitions in, the results are (inevitably) simplistic responses,” serving up “reiterated banalities of mixed. McAvera and Kennedy’s Post-war – pre-Troubles the media,” failing to “exceed the two traditions model”; worked well enough as a scene-setting exercise, offering and he is right too that the better work “moved beyond a chronological kick-off point that understandably such understandings”; for these reasons “it may no longer establishes place as the central, dominant subject matter be meaningful to talk about Northern Irish art at all, of art in Ireland and Northern Ireland. In the accompanying at least not in the same way.” But to what extent, then, publication (all the exhibitions are supported by a small, do these new ‘collective histories’ amount to ‘the same well-produced catalogue in the same style), the two way’? And if an ‘end of the history of Northern Irish art’ is curators converse about the history of this period in terms desirable, what, we might well ask, is the hoped-for ‘end’ that give a strong sense of still-relevant tensions – of this history of art – what, in other words, is its goal? most especially the relation of local concerns to broader, (As the psychoanalyst Adam Philips writes, “memories international influences and contexts – and there is a always have a future in mind.”21) laudable, curmudgeonly directness in Kennedy’s assessment of the artists under review (“I don’t think any Perhaps a useful point of information here concerns the of them survives when compared to the British and scale of Richards’s scheme. Collective histories is set to European artists of the period”23). run for several more years, punctuating the Golden Thread Miriam de Búrca Sleeping giant 2007 DVD still courtesy the artist

55 But, however attractively conversational and historically is thinkable” (to borrow again from Merewether’s comments ‘open’ the attitude expressed here, there is a niggling on the archive). Liam Kelly’s episode in the Collective sense of missed opportunity: the thought persists that histories series seemed, on the other hand, considerably the opening ‘statement’ in this series might, perhaps, less ready to re-assess previously articulated positions as have offered a more awkward or oblique take, more fully part of the Golden Thread’s gamble to re-address, under urging a re-orienting of the history rather than a mere changed conditions, specific historical periods and already revisiting. Certainly, there is a challenge to settled thinking historicized practices. Frustratingly, given the engaging, implicit in the way that this exhibition (and its sequel) troubling artworks selected by Kelly for Art and the shifted many prized works (and their audience) away from disembodied eye (including compelling pieces by Willie museums and collections, offering them up for fresh Doherty, Philip Napier and Locky Morris), there seemed appraisal in a new context – and there is a potential little or no sense that Kelly’s own curatorial and critical critical spark too in the encounter with works which have position might require any kind of ‘troubling’. Taking been rarely, if ever, exhibited. But are there further, surveillance as his guiding theme, Kelly grouped together undeveloped ways for the view from the present to complex works dating from the early 1980s to the present become still more dizzyingly blurred with past perspectives? day – but despite passing acknowledgements of “post 9-11 While Kennedy is clear that “one must look at art through paranoia” and of how more local “dramas” may have been 56 the eyes of the period that formed it,” perhaps a comment “played out”27 (and despite, since the first IRA ceasefire, from another era, on the radical engagement with literary almost a decade and a half of political wrangling and history, may offer an alternative approach: “it is not a social change in Northern Ireland, despite increasingly question of representing works of literature in the context rapid and pervasive normalization of surveillance systems of their time, but to bring to representation, in the time in cities internationally, despite the proliferation of other, they were produced, the time which recognizes them – suddenly essential and seductive, technologies that now that is, our time.”24 shape our ideas of ‘public’ and ‘private’ across the globe), nothing much that is proposed here amends or extends Introducing Icons of the North, McAvera is carefully the ideas represented in Kelly’s 1996 book Thinking long, self-conscious about the tricky business of constructing and indeed some elements of the text were featured in a history, paying close attention to the difficulties of the earlier publication. As Colin Graham and Daniel historical positioning, reflecting on multiple methodologies Jewesbury have both convincingly argued, the urban gaze and proposing an assortment of feasible topics: we could of much recent art from the North can be characterized list all artists who produced work locally during the period (in part, I would suggest) by alertness to intriguing points of the Troubles, he suggests; we might catalogue every of discontinuity with earlier forms or anxious contemplation exhibition (an option, incidentally, taken up by the artist of changing political arrangements and altering social Una Walker as part of her recent project Surveiller25); formations. Within Kelly’s schema, however, both older we might investigate the art of the photojournalist or and more recent works become equally amenable to celebrate the worldviews of cartoonists; or, going further well-rehearsed riffs on post-coloniality and panoptic power beyond disciplinary boundaries, we could choose to – whatever you say, it seems, say nothing new… represent the wider, more overtly propagandistic, ‘visual culture’ of the North. Nevertheless, he concludes (with a Is it too glib, then, to suggest that it was Kelly’s exhibition, bathetic flourish), “there is no time for all of that.”26 Instead, rather than Dougal McKenzie’s, that deserved the title the historical urgency lies in registering the contribution of The Double image? ‘Replication’ certainly becomes an ‘socio-political’ art during these wretched, devastating years: inadvertent (and inconsequential) point of connection we are urged to take another detailed look at “a number between these otherwise fundamentally dissimilar of the artists who bore witness to what happened in one curatorial contributions, but it is worth noting how McKenzie, of the most turbulent periods of Irish History and who in alluding to the changing image culture that shapes were largely ignored by critics, collectors and collecting modes of artistic representation today, admitted to being agencies at that time.” In many respects, there is little to “open to W J T Mitchell’s accusation that the framing of disagree with here – and much to admire. ‘Socio-political’ our culture in terms of spectacle and surveillance is so is a capacious category for McAvera and his selections commonplace that it ceases to be original”28 – a caveat and supporting comments demonstrate the harrowing that resonates retrospectively through the Collective difficulty of ‘bearing witness’. Icons of the North, as this histories. The decision to concentrate on the enduring title implies, springs from a desire to belatedly honour conversation between photography and painting in “the slow, dangerous process of discovery” entered into contemporary art made McKenzie’s exhibition modestly by many artists, crucially stressing the possibility that unpredictable as a next step in this series, the potentially exists only today in seeing the extent of such contributions restrictive art-historical focus on medium-specific – if we are still squarely within a familiar frame of “art and (or medium-related) questions in fact granting McKenzie the the Troubles,” McAvera is certainly seeking to use the means to create an expanded context for contemplating vantage-point of the present to “address the limits of what the art of Northern Ireland; his exhibition determinedly Seamus Harahan Samurai 2006 DVD still, single-channel video/ sound, duration 3:40 courtesy the artist

57 seeking “alternative picturings of histories.” If there was history and place. In the many shows that lie ahead an excessively metronomic rhythm to the staging of the (among which will be histories of performance, of artists’ painting-photography interplay in the gallery, the diverse collectives, of art beyond the gallery), let us hope that practices from the last decade represented here (from the ways will be found to further press at the limits of what topographical delirium of Mark Greevy and Darren Murray’s can be seen or thought or said in relation to the paintings, to the psycho-social intensities of photographs problematic category of ‘Northern Irish Art’ – however by Susan MacWilliam or Hannah Starkey) still made wearing this long look back may yet seem. As Renée possible the desired exploration of “our fascination with Green has remarked in a reflection on the artist’s the simple power of an image,” while the multiplicity of engagement with archives, there may be feelings “of visions simultaneously sent “the eye in several opposite wonder, but also fatigue, attention deficit” in the attempt directions,” providing viewers with “alternative ‘image to come to terms with “more than is comprehensible” interface’ experiences.” Such aspirations and approaches – but it is at “locations of limit and even fatigue where it seem properly in the spirit of the broader Golden Thread may be necessary to search. What impossibility is faced project, signalling doubts and difficulties about our beyond the more superficial fatigue?”29 experience of the image-world in a way that might productively inform our broader debates on art practice, 58 1 Text from Ghost story (2007), Benjamin Buchloh, and 14Charles Merewether, Curating subjects, London: by Willie Doherty. First shown Rosalind Krauss, London: ‘Introduction: art and the Open Editions, 2007, p 149 as part of Northern Ireland’s Thames & Hudson, 2004. archive’, in Merewether ed., 23S B Kennedy in conversation exhibition at the 52nd Venice 8 See Gerard Byrne, On the London/ Massachusetts: with Brian McAvera in Post- Biennale. present tense through the Whitechapel /MIT Press, war – pre-Troubles, Belfast: 2 Lars Bang Larsen, ‘The other ages, ed. by Sarah Pierce 2006, p 17 Golden Thread Gallery, 2006

side’, Frieze, Issue 106, April and Claire Coombes with 15Brian Friel, Translations, 24Walter Benjamin, ‘Literary ˆ 2007 ˆ texts by Mark Godfrey, Lytle London: Faber and Faber, history and the study of 3 Slavoj Zizek, Looking awry, Shaw and Catherine Wood, 1983 literature’ [1931] from an introduction to Jacques Cologne/ London: Walther 16See Edna Longley, ‘Northern Selected writings Volume 2 Lacan through popular König/ Lisson Gallery, 2007. Irish poetry and the end of 1927-34, translated by culture, Massachusetts: 9 ‘Archive fever’ is also the title history’ in Poetry and Rodney Livingstone and MIT Press/ October Books, given by Okwui Enwezor to posterity, Newcastle: Bloodaxe others, ed. Michael W 1991, p 42 his survey of “uses of the Books, 2000, p 286. I have Jennings, Howard Eiland, 4 We might note the recurring document in contemporary found many of the points and Gary Smith, Boston: importance of the word art,” presented at the raised in this essay extremely Harvard University Press, ‘story’ to Doherty’s practice: International Centre for helpful in attempting to 1999, p 464 for instance, his 2007 Photography in New York, assess the relation between 25Una Walker, Surveiller, exhibition at the Städtische January to May 2008. Among cultural practices and the Golden Thread Gallery, Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Enwezor’s interests here is construction of history in Belfast, 2004 and Static, Kunstbau, Munich, was how “artistic uses of the contemporary Ireland. Liverpool, 2005. For this entitled Stories; while Same archive suggest not only a 17Peter Richards, from the project, Walker “spent old story was the title of an serious interest in the nature foreword to Post-war – 128 days, approximately exhibition shown in 1999 at of the archival form as found pre-Troubles, Belfast: Golden 1,280 hours, producing an firstsite, Colchester and in in photography and film, Thread Gallery, 2006 inventory of art exhibitions 1997 at Matt’s Gallery, but the larger relationship of 18Peter Richards, from the in Belfast from March 1968 London. art to historical reflections foreword to Icons of the to March 2001.” See 5 Hayden White, Metahistory: on the past.” See exhibition North, Belfast: Golden http://www.static- the historical imagination in information at Thread Gallery, 2006 ops.org/projects.htm#3 nineteenth-century Europe, http://www.icp.org/ 19The ideas on Collective 26Brian McAvera, 'Introduction' Baltimore: John Hopkins 10Mark Godfrey, ‘The artist as histories developed here will to Icons of the North, University Press, p 5. historian’, October 120, be less concerned with the Belfast: Golden Thread All further references to this Spring 2007 particular artworks featured Gallery, 2006. All further edition. 11Stuart Comer, ‘Backward in individual exhibitions than references to this edition. 6 Colin Graham, ‘Every glances’, in the accompanying with the broad curatorial 27Liam Kelly, 'Introduction' passer-by a culprit? Archive publication for Matthew agenda of the project and to Art and the disembodied fever, photography and the Buckingham: play the story, with the specific positions eye, Belfast: Golden Thread peace in Belfast’, Third Text, curated by Mark Godfrey, adopted by invited curators. Gallery, 2007. All further Vol.19, Issue 5 (September Camden Arts Centre, London, 20Daniel Jewesbury, ‘I wouldn’t references to this edition. 2005). April – June, 2007 have started from here, or, 28Dougal McKenzie, 7 Hal Foster ‘An archival 12Melissa Gronlund, ‘Story the end of the history of 'Introduction' to The Double impulse’, first published in telling’ [on Matthew Northern Irish art’, Third image, Belfast: Golden Thread October 110 (Autumn 2004) Buckingham], Frieze, Issue Text, Vol. 19, Issue 5, Gallery, 2007. All further and subsequently included in 106, April 2007 September, 2005, p 525 references to this edition. Foster’s collection Design 13The Atlas Group, ‘Let’s be 21Adam Philips, ‘The forgetting 29Renée Green, 'Survival: and crime: essays and other honest, the rain helped’, museum’, in Side effects, ruminations on archival diatribes, London: Verso, excerpt included in London: Hamish Hamilton, lacunae', in Charles 2002. A shorter discussion of The Archive, ed. Charles 2006, p 131 Merewether ed., The Archive, this theme also features as Merewether, London/ 22Eric Hobsbawn speaking in London/ Massachusetts: the concluding entry in the Massachusetts: Whitechapel/ an interview with David Whitechapel/ MIT Press, monumental art historical MIT Press, 2006, p 179. Frost; quoted in Hans Ulrich 2006, p 49 survey Art since 1900, edited All further references to Obrist, ‘A protest against by Foster, Yve Alain Bois, this edition. forgetting’, in Paul O’Neil ed., c . Paul O’Brien

Art, politics, 59 environment

If the dominant political issue in the twentieth century was construct heaven on earth has given way to the necessity the conflict between market and state, there is little doubt to fend off an ecological hell. The notion of a society of that this has been supplanted in the twenty-first century by freedom and self-fulfillment, where work has been environmental issues, most notably that of global warming. relegated to a necessary minimum, has been lost sight of While the ecological critique is nascent compared to the by virtually everyone. Meanwhile, under the threat of previously mainstream analyses in terms of class and Islamic extremism – partially sparked off by the West’s society, there is no lack of continuity between the two insatiable greed for oil to feed an unsustainable economy critical paradigms. Some former questions on the radical and the growth imperatives of industrial capitalism – political agenda remain: issues about ‘being’ versus ‘having’; ‘democratic’ states are in the process of ratchetting up globalisation, the creation of false needs, the growth high-tech surveillance of the minutiae of the lives of their economy, the control and patenting of natural resources, citizenry, to a level undreamed of by Hitler or Stalin. and exploitation in developing countries are to the fore, at least in activist circles. In Ireland, the downside of economic success has involved environmental problems such as large-scale However, it would seem that the collapse of the Soviet pollution of air and water, traffic gridlock, and the Union has, for the foreseeable future, derailed the state widespread erosion of a previously pristine rural socialist project. Social democracy, likewise, holds little environment through uncontrolled housing development. appeal while core countries of the EU with strong social- (Pretty pictures of unspoiled Irish landscapes sell for democratic traditions like France and Germany remain in inflated prices to a society which profits econmically from the economic doldrums, and even the Nordic countries the spoiling of the same landscape. Landscape painting are under pressure to ‘liberalise’ their economies. (On the may function as an engagement with the environment, but far Left, adherents still hold out hope for a libertarian it can also operate as a substitute to compensate for its socialism, whether of the statist or anarchist variety.) disappearance – in something like the way mass culture is held to be simultaneously an escape from capitalist ‘Americanised’ EU states like Ireland and the UK flourish values and a reinforcement of them.) Economic growth (at least economically if not socially or environmentally). has come at a price: when people who live too close to There is, and has been, little debate between Greens and the countryside to appreciate it get rich, the result is the old-style Leftists as to what a desirable society should death of the countryside. The greasy-till brigade thrives as look like, incorporating both ecological and social ideals. much today as it did a century ago, the difference being This is partly a result of the collapse of the utopian vision that it now has more money and political clout. These are in the latter part of the twentieth century under the pressure substantive political issues just as much as, for example, of a potential environmental nightmare: the desire to the state of public health and education. However, in the insanity of a society of compulsive over- simulation-theory, the historical emphasis on an working, even Greens justify saving the planet on the autonomous aesthetic divorced from ethics, the fostering grounds that it may provide additional jobs. The relationship of an inward-looking subjectivity in art education, and a between Green priorities and economic and social issues pervasive, posturing irony that has largely paralysed the art has been largely untheorised. There has been an unspoken world. (There is also, it has to be admitted, the ghost of assumption among Green activists – at least those who Nazism, which historically appealed to nature and nature’s have gone down the parliamentary road – that capitalism laws as a counterpoint to modern liberal ‘decadence’ – can be tamed by (eg) the promotion of ethical investment, nature is not a wholly innocent concept.) the redefinition of economic success, local production for local needs, economic democracy, de-monopolisation, Attempts have been made to ground an environmental eco-taxes, environmental policing, changes to company ethic in eco-feminism: the patriarchal oppression of law to incorporate social and environmental priorities, and women has been seen as being inextricably linked to the (the big idea) a guaranteed basic income for all citizens. ideology of dominating nature, epitomised in the writings While many of these notions may be worthy or workable of Francis Bacon and ultimately rooted in the Biblical (or even both), they lack the punch of the traditional Leftist teaching of God-given dominion over the earth.6 From this mantra of “smash capitalism.” However, historically the perspective, the science/ religion division beloved of 60 alternatives to capitalism have been demonstrably worse Richard Dawkins et al falls flat – the modern scientific than capitalism itself, whether in socio-economic or perspective, with its subject/ object, mind/ nature environmental terms, and the prevalent radical, reified dichotomy and its imperative to manipulate and control concept of capitalism as an irredeemable brute entity may nature, is seen as being itself rooted in religious notions itself have helped to perpetuate the negative effects of of dominion and a transcendent deity beyond nature.7 capitalism. The decision by the Irish Greens to go into (From this perspective there is indeed a causative coalition with the populist Fianna Fáil party and the connection between religion and science, but that is no neo-liberal Progressive Democrats displayed something compliment to either.) This is part of a larger trend in which had been obvious to the Greens themselves for ecological thought that questions or rejects the dualities of some years: there is no necessary overlap between Green subject/ object, mind/ nature, spirit/ matter, male/ female, politics on the one hand and socialism or social democracy in favour of a relational, ecological, holistic, ‘total field’ on the other, any more than between Green politics and model whereby humanity is seen as embedded in the (one side or the other in) Irish civil-war politics. world rather than as separate and distinct.8 Key literary/ philosophical references in this area include Spinoza, In tandem with the under-development of Green theory Rousseau, Goethe, Thoreau, Whitehead and Heidegger.9 in the social and economic spheres,1 the environment has, until very recently, been marginalised in the realm As an alternative, the ecological philosopher Arne Naess of cultural theory.2 This is despite the prominence of promotes self-realisation, in the larger, quasi-Buddhist environmental issues in mainstream (and art) cinema, sense of an expanded self, which in his terms mandates for example films such as Soylent Green, The Emerald humans to live ecologically. Naess also promotes forest, Blade runner, The Matrix, eXistenZ, Waterworld, biospherical or bio-centric egalitarianism.10 But what The Day after tomorrow, An Inconvenient truth. Dominant happens when there is a clash between human priorities fields of enquiry like sociology have repressed environmental on the one hand, and the priorities of nature on the other? issues in favour of social ones. Ted Benton describes Do my rights supersede those of the AIDs virus for the discipline of sociology as “naturephobic,” involving example? If both animals and vegetables feel pain, what is an entrenched dualism between “society” and “nature.”3 the justification for being a vegetarian? Kate Soper There is also the influence of constructionism, with the postulates a hierarchy of natural values, expressed in theoretical disappearance of the distinction between terms of complexity, sentience, beauty, etc.11 Ecological nature on the one hand, and discourses about nature ethics seems to be intimately linked to aesthetics, at least on the other, and a connected denial of human nature.4 from this perspective. In Benton’s terms, “If nature were a discursive, or cultural construct, ecological problems would be an ontological Suzi Gablik in The Reenchantment of art argues against impossibility.”5 After all, in order to be concerned about the aesthetic autonomy and the late-modernist ideology of the environment you have to believe that there is something ‘purposelessness’ of art, in favour of an art that is social identifiable beyond discourse to be saved (or destroyed). and purposeful, replacing nihilism with an ethic of care Adding to this marginalisation has been the theoretical and favouring a ‘reconstructive’ postmodern practice over preoccupation with identity politics and the concomitant decontruction, a practice based on the notion of intercon- suspicion of ‘essentialism’, the philosophical prevalence nectedness rather than Cartesian dualism, egocentricity of relativism over realism, the influence of Baudrillard’s and domination.12 Gablik writes: 57

(above) Holly Asaa Ratbridge 2004 installation shot industrial tubing and welded frame courtesy the artist

(below) Cathy Fitzgerald Local project revisited 2006 film still courtesy the artist I believe that what we will see in the next few There can be a destructive element to the aesthetic, years is a new paradigm based on the notion of exemplified in Walter Benjamin’s famous remark that participation, in which art will begin to redefine mankind’s “self-alienation has reached such a degree itself in terms of social relatedness and that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic ecological healing, so that artists will gravitate pleasure of the first order.”22 The Nazis notoriously toward different activities, attitudes and roles employed elements of the sublime (an aesthetic founded than those that operated under the aesthetics on awe and danger) in their seduction of the populace of modernism.13 through mass rallies, hymn-singing and light shows in the sky. To rely on aesthetics as a basis for the defence of the Gablik lauds the work of artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles environment may be useful, but it is not enough and it may with the New York sanitation department (eg, a city be deceptive – a polluted lake or sky may have beautiful garbage truck covered with mirrors so onlookers could colours. Conversely, there is a pervasive suspicion of see who was responsible for the garbage) contrasting this didacticism in art, a suspicion that may be persuasive in (favourably) with the radical autonomy characteristic of some ways: art is conventionally supposed to raise Richard Serra’s Tilted arc, removed from its site in New questions rather than to provide the right answers. (The York after much protest and controversy.14 Similarly, she key question, though, is whether we have time for that.) 62 praises the environmental work of James Turrell, aimed at Contemporary art that directly raises environmental issues a sense of reintegration with the cosmos.15 In contrast, has its roots partly in the practice of Joseph Beuys. the interventionist art of Michael Heizer uses nature as Influenced by alchemy and Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposo- a source of raw material for making art.16 As Gablik phy, Beuys attempted through his art to reinstate a sense comments, “Being an ‘earth’ artist does not automatically of enchantment, sacredness, involvement, as an alternative imply ecological consciousness.”17 Dominique Mazeaud’s to the alienation of industrial capitalism. Other roots are in project of (repetitively and ritualistically) cleaning up a land art or earth art, for example the work of Nancy Holt, river, on the other hand, has a ‘spiritual’ and symbolic James Pearce or James Turrell.23 rather than merely utilitarian aspect which, for Gablik, 18 characterises it as art. Contemporary environmental art might be, tentatively and broadly, categorised under three headings: Promethean, The crucial issue is the relationship between aesthetic, critical and integrative. Promethean environmental art moral, environmental and political concerns. Emily Brady includes the (often macho, American) work that uses defends what she terms a moderate version of aesthetic nature as a raw material and focuses on the spectacular autonomism: aesthetic and moral values are distinct, but and the sublime, sometimes without any evident desire to may interact. Aesthetic experience – while disinterested – heal the humanity/ nature split. Examples include Walter provides a foothold for a moral perspective of nature, but de Maria’s Lightning field (a work focused on attracting it can give us a better sense of engagement, appreciation lightning strikes), Robert Smithson’s Spiral jetty, the earth and respect.19 In contrast, the ‘relational’ perspective works of Dennis Oppenheim, or Michael Heizer’s defended by Gablik and others tends to ignore the issues excavations in the desert. Andrew Rogers’ spectacular, of philosophical aesthetics, in its assumption that abstract ‘geoglyphs’ might also fall into this category. ‘engaged’ artistic practice has an ecological/ political justification of its own. In this it is not far from a Brechtian Critical environmental art is art whose goal is to raise aesthetic of ‘engagement’, the caveat being that the awareness about environmental issues, for example environment is politically foregrounded instead of – polluted air with its results in acid rain and ozone or as well as – the social. Such an aesthetic stands in depletion, the threat of global warming, chemical and contrast to (Adorno-influenced) notions that give more nuclear contamination, genetic engineering and attempts weight to the aesthetic dimension of art over direct at genetic monopolisation, deforestation, waste, and the 20 political engagement. threat to biodiversity. How effective this may be insofar as it is confined to the rarefied art world is a relevant It would certainly be a mistake to assume a necessary question, but it may conceivably percolate into the larger overlap between aesthetic, moral and politically realm of popular culture and popular consciousness. ‘progressive’ issues (whether environmental or otherwise). Artist Hans Haacke has been influential in this area, Some important art works are seriously problematic in in particular with his 1972 Rhinewater purification plant, moral and political terms (eg, the music of Wagner or the which raised the issue of the deterioration of the water films of Leni Riefenstahl, both of which were influential in quality in the Rhine river. the rise of Nazism).21 Other works (eg the interventionist earth art of Robert Smithson or Michael Heizer) may be aesthetically impressive but environmentally questionable. simulacrum thereof, it might also be regarded as critical as well as integrative.) Alan Sonfist’s Time landscape was a reconstruction of a primeval forest in a site in Manhattan (this might also be seen as having an implicitly critical dimension, as a commentary on the concrete world that The work of Helen and Newton Harrison commented surrounded it – it has possibly helped to spark off a scathingly on the negative impact of agri-business on programme of urban greening in Manhattan). A similar the eco-systems of North California. Cornelia Hesse- impetus – the conservation of nature threatened by Honneger’s pictures of deformed creatures reference agri-business – informs the work of artist Herman de the negative effects of the nuclear industry, while – more Vries. Patricia Johanson operates in the interface of art, shockingly – Paul Fusco photographically documents architecture and ecology, and Susan Liebovitz Steinman the devasting effects, in terms of human deformity, of the has worked on transforming derelict sites. Lynne Hull Chernobyl disaster. Peter Fend’s work critiques the creates environments for animals threatened by human nuclear industry and highlights alternative, non-polluting development. In last year’s Documenta in Kassel, Jorge methods of energy production. (Nuclear power is some- Mario Jauregui’s project of urbanising the Favelas of Rio times presented by the establishment as the only viable de Janeiro represented a defence of communal values in alternative to global warming, a dichotomy that downplays contrast to the imposed structures of traditional urban 63 the possibilities of alternative energy, and obscures the planning.27 (Jochen Gerz has done some work reminiscent crucial – though politically sensitive – issue of global of this in Dublin’s Ballymun, with his project to plant over-population with its pressures on the environment.) resident-sponsored trees in the area, sparked off by Joseph Beuys’ seminal project for planting oaks in Kassel In last year’s Skulptur Projekte in Münster, Germany, in 1982.) Artists working in the area of recycling might Tue Greenfort mounted a tank on the side of the city’s also be included in this category, for example Rosalie recreational lake that aimed a continuous jet of water into Gascoigne, Patrice Stellest and Erwin Timmers. the lake, in an effort to highlight the pollution of water by the EU-subsidized meat industry – an issue apparently There is also a more ‘neutral’ area in the interface so locally sensitive that it cannot even be named.24 Ann T between art and the environment, for example the work Rosenthal also intervenes in her art to foreground issues of George Gessert that explores issues on the interface of of water pollution, as well as the negative effects of the art, plant-breeding, genetics and aesthetics; Mark Dion, nuclear industry. Yto Barrada’s photographic work, on whose art practice has engaged with the history of display at the recent Venice Biennale, refers to the naturalists and naturalism in the US; and Meg Webster, disappearance of native plant life in Morocco, under the who makes minimal art with natural materials, sometimes pressure of modernisation and mass tourism.25 At the indistinguishable from landscape gardens. At one extreme 2007 Documenta in Kassel, critical environmentalism was environmental art engages directly with the earth and with represented by Ines Doujak’s thought-provoking and crucial scientific and political issues, asking questions that conceptually complex defence of biodiversity26 – an issue would otherwise be unasked by scientists and politicians; that also informs the work of artist Brandon Ballengee, at the other end it becomes difficult to distinguish from with its reference to biotechnology and genetic engineering. gardening. Again, the issue of political effectiveness comes to the fore, allied with the question of whether Integrative environmental art is a practice whose goal, environmental art in general functions as more than a or effect, is seen as healing rather than merely diagnosis. sticking plaster on the surface of a ravaged environment. The focus of healing is either nature itself, or the But it may be that this work operates more-or-less perceived split between humanity and environment. effectively on the broader social consciousness in ways This ranges from the ephemeral, photographically that may be difficult to trace.28 documented rearrangement of natural objects as in the work of Andy Goldsworthy, to the geo-surveillance In Ireland, artists working in the area of interface of art activities of the group Ocean Earth, the nature walks of and the environment include painter Barrie Cooke, whose Richard Long, Chris Drury and Hamish Fulton, Chris paintings have reflected on issues of pollution both in Drury’s magical ‘wave chamber’ on the Kielder Reservoir Ireland and New Zealand; Andrew Folan, whose work on in Northumberland, the ‘revival field’ of Mel Chin which occasion makes oblique reference to genetic engineering; attempted to heal ecological damage, and the high-tech Holly Asaa, with her amusing construction of facilities for ‘immersive’ work of virtual-reality artist Char Davies. urban wildlife in Dublin (including a wildlife playground); Davies’ keynote work Osmose offered the user the Cathy Fitzgerald, with her work in the area of re-afforestation; opportunity to commune with nature, if only virtually. and a number of artists active in the Leitrim/ Roscommon (To the extent that this raises issues about the potential area including Carol Ann Connolly, Gareth Kennedy, Alice disappearance of nature and its replacement by a Lyons, Christine Mackey, and Anna MacLeod. Connolly has worked with the reconstruction of discarded 1 See, however, Coming to Ashgate, 2002, pp 115–124 objects and debris; Kennedy’s work comments on the terms with nature, ed Leo 20For discussions around these Panitch, Colin Leys et al, issues see Ernst Bloch et al, effects of economic growth on the rural landscape; London: Socialist Register/ Aesthetics and politics, trans. Lyons involves poetry in her commentary on the ongoing Merlin Press, 2007 editor Ronald Taylor, London: suburbanisation of the Irish rural environment; Mackey’s 2 See, however, Val Plumwood, NLB, 1977. Environmental culture: the 21See Mary Devereaux, ‘Beauty work is concerned with land-reclamation and the global ecological crisis of reason, and evil: the case of Leni economy of seed banks; and MacLeod developed a London, Routledge, 2002; Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the sculptural work (catching drinkable rain water) creatively Verena Andermatt Conley, will’, in Levinson, Jerrold (ed) Ecopolitics: the environment Aesthetics and ethics: essays positing alternatives to the pollution of water deriving from in poststructuralist thought, on the intersection, rural housing development.29 Referring to the work of the London: Routledge, 1997; Cambridge: Cambridge preceding five artists, artist-in-residence Alfredo Jaar remarks Mary Mellor, Feminism and University Press, 1998 ecology, Polity, 1997, etc. 22Walter Benjamin, ‘The work of that: “The same countryside that has been immortalized in 3 Ted Benton, ‘Why are art in the age of mechanical the writings of W B Yeats, and captured on canvas by his sociologists naturephobes?’ reproduction’, in Iluminations: brother Jack B Yeats, a landscape which they described in José López and Gary essays and reflections, ed as the ‘land of heart’s desire’ is being destroyed in front Potter, After postmodernism: and introduction Hannah an introduction to critical Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn, 30 of our own eyes, without mercy, without shame.” realism, New York: Athlone, New York: Schocken, 1967, 64 Commending the “aesthetic resistance” of these artists, 2007, p 133 p 242 Jaar writes: “Within a society and an art world where 4 ibid, p 134 23See my article ‘Art and 5 ibid, p 145 ecology: a new orthodoxy’, commodification is dominant, their challenge is to propose 6 Carolyn Merchant, The Death Circa, No. 60, Nov/ Dec an alternative in… aesthetic terms but also in ethical ones, of nature: women, ecology 1991, pp 18 – 25. Some in other words, to create great works of art that are socially and the scientific revolution, National College of Art and 31 San Francisco: Harper and Design graduation theses relevant.” In the Irish context, mention should also be made Row, 1990 have been helpful in of Binboat by Northern Irish artists Patrick Bloomer and 7 See Lynn White, ‘The historical foregrounding developments Nicholas Keogh, a boat made out of discarded materials roots of our ecologic crisis’, in this burgeoning area, Science, 155, 1967, p 1205. in particular Holly Asaa, which featured in the 2005 Venice Biennale. 8 See, for example, Gregory Grass grows from the middle: Bateson, Mind and nature: creatively solving our Lucy Lippard defines artists as “phoenixes arising not from a necessary unity, Great ecological problems (NCAD, the ashes of their own aspirations but from the ashes of Britain, Fontana, 1980; 2006); Tara de Las Casas, 32 Fritjof Capra, The Hidden Eco-art (NCAD, 2003); Cathy an obsolete definition of the artist.” Art and the aesthetic connections: a science for Fitzgerald, Science and the are two of the most difficult words to define in the English sustainable living, London: eclipse of the Earth; Kate language, and attempts to do so can provide much Harper/ Collins, 2003; Minnock, A New paradigm in harmless fun. However, efforts to defend a purist notion Warwick Fox, Toward a art (NCAD, 2003); Charlotte transpersonal ecology: Swann, Eco-culture (NCAD, of the aesthetic, and the doctrine of art for art’s sake with developing new foundations 2002) and Frances Tottenham, its concominant distancing of art from any useful purpose for environmentalism, New Ecology and art and the and indeed – crucially – from nature itself, ring increasingly York: State University of New environmental crisis (NCAD, York, 1995, etc. 1995). Not for the first time, hollow in an era when nature is under attack. Even in the 9 See Fifty key thinkers on students have been to the era of modernism, there have always been politically the environment, ed Joy A. forefront in highlighting the ‘engaged’ artists: Picasso, Brecht, Heartfield, Orwell, Palmer, London: Routledge, issues that are of crucial 2001 importance. Mayakovsky, Tatlin, Rodchenko, Eisenstein, Godard come 10Arne Naess, Ecology, com- 24Tue Greenfort, ‘Tue to mind. Now, engagement is in the service of the earth munity and lifestyle, trans. Greenfort: Diffuse Einträge’, itself rather than oppressed humanity (or in some cases and ed David Rothenberg, in Sculpture projects Cambridge: Cambridge Münster 07, ed Brigitte of both). And of course, if nature goes down the drain, University Press, 1989 Franzen et al, Köln: Koenig, then everyone, both rich and poor, goes with it. Attempts 11Kate Soper, What is nature? 2007, p 117 to defend aesthetic autonomy (over engagement with Oxford: Blackwell, 1995, p 257 25Think with the senses, feel 12Suzi Gablik, with the mind: art in the the grim realities of environmental disaster) have their – The Reenchantment of art, present tense: 52. no doubt sincere – adherents. But in an era threatened London: Thames and Hudson, Esposizione internazionale by ecological apocalypse there is an argument that 2002, pp 3, 7, 11, 22, 60, 62 d’arte, Venice: Fondazione everything possible, including art itself, should be 13 ibid, p 27 La Biennale de Venezia/ 14 ibid, pp 59–75 Marsilio, 2007, p 26 harnessed to help stave off disaster, or at least mitigate it 15 ibid, pp 82–83 26Susanne Jaeger, ‘Ines to the greatest possible extent. If the planet goes, then art 16 ibid, p 140 Doujak: Siegesgärten’, – and art theory – goes with it. The idea of aesthetic 17 ibid, p 141 Documenta Kassel 16/ 06- 18 ibid, p 143 23/ 09 2007, ed Isabella autonomy may evoke the genial image of Oscar Wilde, 19 Emily Brady, ‘Aesthetics, Marte, Köln: Taschen, 2007 but in the era of global warming it may also conjure up the ethics and the natural 27Luise Reitstaetter, ‘Jorge ghost of Nero.33 environment’, Environment Mario Jauregui’, Documenta and the arts: perspectives on Kassel, p 264 environmental aesthetics, ed Arnold Berleant, Aldershot: 28For material on some of the foregoing artists see Sue Spaid, Ecovention: current art to transform ecologies, Cincinnatti, Ohio, Greenmuseum.org/ The Contemporary Arts Center/ ecoartspace, 2002; Images of Earth and spirit: a resurgence art anthology, ed John Lane and Satish Kumar, Devon, Green Books, 2003. Other international artists who have worked in the area of interface between art and the natural environment include Ibon Aranberri, Betty Beaumont, Ashley Bickerton, Bob Bingham, Jackie Brookner, Tim Collins, Betsy Damon, John Davis, Agnes Cathy Fitzgerald Denes, Georg Dietzler, Ian Local project revisited 65 Hamilton Finlay, Reiko Goto, 2006 David Hansen, Lynne Hull, installation shot, The Dock Sanja Ivekovic, Alfredo Jaar, courtesy the artist Giles Kent, Laurie Lundquist, Gordon Matta-Clark, Ana Mendieta, Stephen Moore, Patrick Nagatani, Beverly Naidus, David Nash, Michael Paha, William Peers, Aviva Rahmani, Martha Rosler, Vincent Shine, Buster Simpson, James Ursell, John Wolseley, Shai Zakai and many more. 29Draft: works in progress (project coordinated by Alfredo Jaar), Leitrim/ Roscommon: Trade 07, 2007 30Alfredo Jaar, ‘Landscape = capital’, Draft, p 14 31ibid, p 14 32Lucy Lippard, ‘Beyond the beauty strip’, in Land art: a cultural ecology handbook 33Thanks to Holly Asaa and Conor Walton for critical comments on this article.

Paul O’Brien ([email protected]) is a lecturer at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. c . Laura Mansfield

66 Daphne Wright The body and its death cast (opposite) The beauty of the material sculpture does not diminish Daphne Wright the death of the animal but serves to depict the body Swan, 2007 marble dust and resin silenced, and commemorated. The cast retains the courtesy the artist/ Frith Street memory of the viserality of the dead corpse, the muscle Gallery and bone. There is a readable weight to the casts reminding the viewer of the physical weight of the body. The fall of the Swan’s wing, the hanging body of the fox. The imprint of the physical body, the body that is heavy, transient and on the edge of decay is frozen in its cast, made solid as marble and placed on display. There is no mess, no decomposition and no emotional attachment. Wright uses the cast as a means to transform the physical animal corpse into a sculptural object, shifting the temporal life of the body into a concrete and tangible composition. A body’s symbolic function does not depend on its standing for one thing …for the most The mess of the corpse is transformed into a cleansed 67 important properties of bodies, especially dead and classicised form. The new object presents a ones, is their ambiguity, multivocality or movement away from the physicality of death, from the polysemy. Remains are concrete yet protean: flesh of the body, from the relative wildness of the animal they do not have a single meaning but are open to the safety of the object. to many different readings.1 “We expect to have a visceral reaction when encountering a life cast of a dead animal, Placed lying on a plinth, resting on the floor or hanging from but the work does not permit us that reaction the gallery wall Daphne Wrights series of animal bodies because the material and the lack of colour lure the viewer into close contemplation. Immediately we have leached the death out of the animals”3 recognise the work as sculpture in line with the aesthetic creating a series of removes. language of classical sculpture: the Grecian myths, winged victories, and decorative facades. However, The dead body is neither hidden from our gaze nor our familiarity with the sculpture and its mode of display present in its raw materiality. We are given an image of becomes fractured the moment we recognise we are death displaced. The cast combines the impression of viewing the dead body, the cast animal corpse; its poise the animal with the absence of its body. The residue of and form a little broken, the flesh silenced before the the original advances and retreats in the mind of the onset of decomposition. viewer. The memory of the potential life of the body slips Wright plays with our knowledge of sculpture, our in and out of our experience of the sculpture. We do not familiarity and security with the marble white body, engage directly with the death of the animal, but rather, an object we have encountered previously throughout by a series of removes, we read the life of the body that the history of art. The aesthetic language of sculpture resonates from the cast before us. is combined with our familiarity of the animal body The process is akin to that of the death mask. Traditionally from wildlife, children’s books, and museum displays. death masks were taken of the great, the good and the However, Wright shifts our expected visual by fore- criminal to preserve their final physical presence. They grounding an immediate image of the animal’s death. stood as an effigy of the deceased, a trophy of humanity, The corpse is hidden in contemporary society; we rarely a relic of the body. come face to face with the dead or dying body. We view The death mask is part of the tradition of commemorative the dead body in film and media, the dissected corpse funerary objects and sculptural dedications; the mass in supermarkets, butcher shops, and market stalls but of objects used to decorate public gardens, parks, we seldom see the complete body. “Death has been memorials, and gravestones; the busts of intellectual dissected, cut into bits by a series of little steps”2 figures lining halls of libraries and learning institutions. and removed from our area of contact. Wright casts the animal directly representing the dead body, yet the viscerality of the corpse fades under the translucent marble of the sculptural form. The material emitting an inherent beauty, the analogy with classical sculpture placing the work in a shroud of grace. Once transferred into the realm of the object the death A writer such as Henry James uses the beauty and mask carries with it associations with the history of formality of language to mask the darker elements of his funerary furniture, classical sculpture and collecting. narrative; the continual dread that runs slightly hidden The death mask has the possibility to be owned, held, throughout his texts. In a similar vein, Wright’s use of collected, and possessed. We can own the cast and hold beauty within the death casts, the delicate rendering of the corpse. The unmanageable creature is transformed the feathers of the swan, the soft hair of the calf, the ears into the manageably inanimate trophy. The objectified of the rabbit, take the viewer away from the disturbing display of the animal body holds parallels with the trophy; truth of the corpse. the hunt and the hunted, the sport and the game. The Fox hung, the Hare stretched, both suspended from the ceiling The potential of language to slip, and reform itself to give resonating associations with the fresh hunt; the animal alternative meanings, is something akin to Wright’s work. body as meat and as trophy. She creates objects or installations where the meaning is no longer clearly defined, the work is not complete The trophy is often the taxidermied body of the killed but open for completion by the viewer’s individual animal. Killed for the purpose of pleasure, sport or interpretation. The viewer is presented with a site of souvenir. Taxidermy uses the skin of the animal in an encounter that promotes alternative discourse and ignites 68 attempt to re-create as accurately as possible the body a multitude of associations. in an animated pose. The death of the animal is denied, in favour of an artificial liveliness. Wright’s use of a death And so with the death masks displayed hung, on the mask directly captures the ephemeral body through an floor or placed on a plinth, the bodies take on a new imprint of its live flesh. The skin of the animal is not used status and a new potential for linguistic meaning. in a re-creation but traced, transferring the final life of the They are objects that we seek to question: an area where body onto a concrete and stable form. The mark of the language slips from specific meanings into a realm of skin serves as a memory of the body captured before the heightened associations and visual riches. Luring the onset of decay. viewer into contemplations of beauty, power, grace, grief and death. The sculptures resonate associations with a multitude of possible narratives and narrative encounters. The use of 1 Katherine Verdery, The Political Laura Mansfield is a narrative has been central throughout Wright’s practice. lives of dead bodies: reburial writer and critic based in In previous installation works, notably Where do broken and post socialist change, Manchester. Columbia: Columbia University hearts go?, Wright used sound recording to infuse the Press, 2000 space with private and personal narratives; the heartaches 2 Aries Phillipe lectures – of song lyrics and the stories of folklore. Recorded Western attitudes towards narrative segments alongside the sculptural installation death, Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press constructed a specific story or language within which the 1974, pp 88-9 works were read, and shifted accordingly. With the death 3 Simon Morrisey, cited in Simon cast, Wright demonstrates a movement away from a Morrisey and Penelope Curtis (eds), Profile Daphne Wright, constructed narrative reading and instead places focus Kinsale: Gandon Editions, 2006 upon the potential of the object alone to resound with 4 Penelope Curtis, ‘Spaces of narrative reference. Whereas previously we entered into the mind’, in Profile Daphne Wright, Kinsale: Gandon a narrative construct, now we encounter an object that Editions, 2006 touches upon a multitude of concerns and rests uneasily between each. Wright plays with the notion of the public arena being a site of knowledge and narrative, anecdote and argument rather then any form of physical space. The object that rests within the public domain therefore takes on, and alludes to, the whispers of the present.

The potential of narrative and the poetics of language point to Wright’s interest in literature.4 The ability of language to shape scenarios, reform memories, and retell histories resonates throughout her working practice. The layered narratives of W G Sebald and his continual reference to memory and remembering sit alongside Wright’s construct of the public domain being one of constant linguistic association. (below left) (below right) Daphne Wright Daphne Wright Fox, 2006 Lamb, 2006 marble dust and resin marble dust and resin courtesy the artist/ Frith Street courtesy the artist/ Frith Street Gallery Gallery

69 Reviews

Belfast Una Walker: Reports from an agent in the field Justin McKeown 88 | c . 70 Lorraine Burrell: Pictures from a family album Susan MacWilliam 92 | Brendan O’Neill: Ye must be bored again Slavka Sverakova 96 | Cork Crawford Open 2007 – the sleep of reason Fergal Gaynor 100 | Derry Bea McMahon and Brendan Earley: True complex Declan Sheehan 110 | Dublin Alan Phelan: Ralph Eamon Odo Barbara Charlotte Bonham-Carter 72 | Robert Bordo: Blind spot Gemma Tipton 76 | Conor McFeely: The case of the midwife toad (the unrepeatable experiment) Alan Phelan 98 | Jane Jermyn, Gerda Teljeur, Juliana Walters: Surface tension Niall de Buitléar 105 | Galway Human Resources: City of ideas Michaële Cutaya 83 | Kilnaboy Amanda Dunsmore: Mr and Mrs Krab’s Utopia Michaële Cutaya 108 | Leitrim Fionna Murray: A Real corner of the world Brian Fay 78 | Limerick Samuel Walsh: The Divine comedy Karen Normoyle-Haugh 86 | Manchester Dan Shipsides: Radical architecture Cherry Smyth 74 | Philadelphia Brian Kennedy Passage Tim Maul 90 | Portadown Mark McGreevy: A gap in the bright Slavka Sverakova 94 | Various venues Design week Linda King 80 |

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175mmi1i 50mm1 38mmi 25mm1i 15mm1i c . Charlotte Bonham-Carter mother’s tankstation September – October Dublin 2007

72 Alan Phelan Ralph Eamon Odo Barbara

Alan Phelan Pig protester, 2007 archival paper, PVA glue, aluminium mesh 46 x 57 x 34 cm courtesy the artist/ mother's tankstation on Whiddy Island during World exhibition space, offers an insightful War II. The photographer is Ralph entranceway into Phelan’s fabricated Gifford. Phelan’s sculpture is made world. A shapeshifter, Odo is a from polyurethane foam, a squidgy character who morphs into other black material that, upon objects, things, and people, decompression, will continually constantly approximating the real regain its original shape. Surely, world. The notion of the ‘shapeshifter’ there is a circuitous route between allows us to understand Phelan’s Phelan’s analysis of the Whiddy manner of working, of plucking ideas Island barracks, and the lumpy, from the discourse of the ‘real world’ creature-like sculpture on the floor and realizing them as tangible of mother’s tankstation. However, structures that have surely descended whether or not we feel impelled to from a fantasy world. In this way, follow this route is perhaps the Phelan confounds the comic with question on which the success of the politically and socially engaged. the show hinges. As a result, the viewer is forced Ralph Eamon Odo Barbara, to assert his own judgment about 73 Alan Phelan’s first solo exhibition at Other works in the exhibition have the work, as demonstrated by mother’s tankstation, is a deluge of similarly complex ‘back stories.’ Eamon often spoke in tongues, creative activity. Encompassing a Red Star Death Star, 2007, is a a piece that is simultaneously a variety of ideas, visual puns, and physical manifestation of the humorous caricature and a serious rhetorical cues, while combining planet-destroying star in star wars, political comment. an unlikely assortment of materials, ‘Odo’s ear (The forsaken), 2007, a the exhibition is so dense with reference to Odo the ‘shapeshifter;’ ‘Ralph Eamon Odo Barbara’ is a obscure meanings, convoluted sym- and Eamon often spoke in tongues, convoluted assortment of objects bolisms, and referential meanderings 2007, an homage, of sorts, to the drawn from current– and sometimes that it is easy to despair with Phelan’s late Irish politician Eamon De Valera. not so current– discourse. However, loquacious output. By any account, However, these explanations needn’t just as Phelan assuredly approaches there is a great deal of disparate supply the only, or even the best, an array of subject matter with an information in the show, which is reading of the piece. ‘Red Star unwavering intensity, so too does difficult to digest within a reasonable Death Star,’ for instance, is also a he adeptly handling a variety of viewing time. However, that being perfect formal solution to a question materials in intriguing and said, the exhibition’s tangential of composition within the mother’s experimental ways. It is this spirited, composition is an intriguing reflection tankstation space. The piece, categorical recklessness that defines of the kind of chaotic, unbridled irrespective of its planet destroying Phelan’s practice, and whether or creativity that is reflected in the capacities, takes command of a not he succeeds in enlisting the works on show. visual void within the gallery. viewer with him on his journey of The work itself is a laboriously associations through politics, Phelan’s sculptures are physical constructed, multi-faceted, three- B-movies, and art history, he interpretations of media constructions, dimensional object, made from certainly does emit an infectious historical characters and popular cocktail sticks and coloured excitement for a great many things. expressions. In the exhibition at polyester thermal film. Unfortunately, mother’s tankstation, Phelan’s however, Phelan’s dexterity with sources of inspiration range from craft materials and unique making Charlotte Bonham-Carter science fiction movies to World War processes is often overshadowed is a freelance art critic, and II documentary photographs. Often in Ralph Eamon Odo Barbara by an assistant curator at the belying a keen understanding of a taunting visual clues and demanding Irish Musuem of Modern complex topic, Phelan’s sculptures symbolisms. Art, Dublin. are superficially facile, sometimes so far removed from their original The title of the exhibition, Ralph subject matter that they do not Eamon Odo Barbara, makes no afford the viewer any indication of explicit attempt at forging links how they came to be. Ralph’s between the works on show. crawl space, 2007, for example, However, Odo’s ear (the foresaken), takes as its starting point a series of strategically positioned above eye photographs of the barracks set up level on the first wall of the main c . Cherry Smyth Castlefield Gallery October – November Manchester 2007

74

Dan Shipsides Radical

architecture Dan Shipsides uses his loved They document the negotiation of If the aim of radical architecture is experience of rock climbing as the obstacles – the sidetracking before to break aesthetics limits, retain controlling core of his visual-arts an overhang, the dodging of a cleft, functionality and win public affection, practice, allowing him to engage the assailing of the apparently Shipsides’s large sculpture, with and revivify debates around the unassailable until the eye learns how Gritstone outcrop – hanging slabs, representation and interpretation of to read the rock much as you would that abuts the mezzanine and landscape. He manages to share read an abstract image. It’s the straddles the stairway of the gallery, the rigour, discipline and passion of potential for abstraction in these achieves this. Like a hardboard his enthusiasm, even without the landscapes that excites Shipsides, sketch for a Frank Gehry build, spectator having to strap into a as if they present an ontological this bulging scaffolded reconstruction climbing harness, click into a D-lock problem to be solved, a block to of a section of the Valkyrie climb, is and scale his simulated rockface be overcome, an art-historical not finished by construction but by sculptures. He translates the climbs antecedent to be evoked and the participation, with gallery spectators into what he calls “text landscapes” triumph of reaching a new view. invited to complete its process. that celebrate the exertion and Weekly, under supervised instruction, reward of the sport with its own Thanks to clever curating, three volunteers tackle the 1946 route vocabulary: “L small fingernail nitch, earlier nineteenth- and twentieth- shown in Peter Harding’s photograph, 75 /nudge up high into 3 finger pocket century landscapes of the same supported by sandpapered footholds pull, /R foot wide lever up on L jam, peaks shown here become framed and cut-out circular fingerholds. /L hand scoop lip, /push up on feet by an altogether different rubric. To immerse themselves in to thin toothy ledge…wobble bloody In Grete Marks’ watercolour, diagrammatic mark-making through kneed onto block…to safe” (from The Roaches, 1940, on loan from rock climbing offers a dynamic, Angel’s wall). the Potteries Museum and Art progressive way to engage in spatial Gallery, the raw black maw of the adventures in which the body There’s something indivisible for cliff against the sky now appears as discovers new capacities to draw, every artist between technique and material that can used to develop to outdo its limits, to come into instinct – where learned skill meets and hone one’s own instinct rather direct contact with an indoor aspect sudden impulse until the mind and than a representation of the of an outdoor mountainous landscape body reach a peak of energy that indomitable power of nature. that, for many urbanites, is still carries into production of the work. If Wordsworth’s Growth of a poet’s experienced as remote, irrelevant Shipsides’ sculptures, videos and mind resituated the landscape as and inert. drawings, based largely on climbing Romantic imagination itself, routes, show how the challenging Shipsides’ layering presents a Cherry Smyth is a critic, co-ordination required to locate and significant, poetic method to make curator and poet. execute an ascent mimics the mental us see a vertiginous otherness and physical mapping needed to akin to creative path-finding. (opposite) make a piece of art. His interventions Thus Matlock Bath – High Tor, Dan Shipsides on photographs of famous rock a mid-nineteenth-century oil painting Gritstone outcrop – hanging slabs, 2007 climbs in The Roaches in by Ramsey Richard Reinagle, is installation shot, scaffold, wood, Staffordshire operate on many re-seen, the eye imposing a route, fittings and bark chipping successful levels. From Zigzag by selecting a foothold, singling out a 6 x 8 x 3.5m Puttrell undertaken in 1900, through crevice in a process that re-stages courtesy the artist the more elaborately authored and re-values what is landscape. Strapadictomy by John Allen in It leaves an itch to prove and 1976, to a climb called Brad Pitt embody the ‘discovered’ route itself by Jason Myres 1995/ sit start that seems dangerously close to added 2000 by Thomas Willenberg, declaring the urge to become a rock Shipsides uses an acrylic mount to climber. But I think this is what highlight the route of the climb over Shipsides is after: if you don’t take a faded reproduction of each up climbing, take up drawing. photograph. These ‘drawings’ Scratch the itch, it doesn’t matter become homages to the heroes of how. How different from Matthew rock climbing aficionados and from a Barney’s recent use of rock climbing distance appear like jagged charcoal at the Serpentine Gallery to further line drawings on a mottled ground. masculinist individuality. c . Gemma Tipton Rubicon Gallery October – November Dublin 2007

76 Robert Bordo Blind spot It takes real guts to be subtle. Bordo’s paintings are not brash, work in the context of Bordo. Hall’s In a world of screaming media, and neither are they ironic. They also In the vicinity of the yellow mountain the slick flashiness of aggressive don’t present glib sloganeering as (2007), on view at Green on Red in aesthetics, it can be easy to pass an apology for their presence, but January, holds echoes of Bordo’s by some of art’s quieter moments. they do address issues relating to Blind spot (2007), yet with a greater But that would be a mistake. As the the politics of society as much as emphasis on the whole business of average attention span is well the politics of painting. Ambush living in the face of inevitable death. documented to be decreasing, (2007) shows a swathe of night-dark Presently the recognisable has narrative headlines are ladled onto blue above a high horizon-line, below receded in Bordo’s work. It is up to creative expression with the viscous which lies a streaked foreground of us to look, and to (as with the blind thickness of cloying treacle (from ochre, hollowed with darker areas. spot) ‘make stuff up’ that may fill which we are then spoon-fed And lurking, just below the point at the space for story the paintings so meaning). So it is increasingly rare which the two meet, something else insistently imply, yet which they stop to be asked to stop, do a little work, is hinted at with little areas of red short of telling us. Motifs from earlier and think about what it is we are and white. Studying its surface, work, such as the globe of the earth, seeing. the mind seeks resolution to the shapes that might be maps, and conundrum the painting presents. more definite landscapes are absent 77 Blind spot, by Robert Bordo, Inventing ideas to fill the blind spot, here. But obvious stories or not, as the title implies, plays with the the vacuum of offered meaning, underlying it all is such beautiful nature of seeing. It requires some the colours suggest a desert night, beautiful painting that politics, concentrated looking, but generously and thoughts of Afghanistan and and the science of representation rewards the time it demands. Iraq come to mind. And with this, aside, the mind is engaged; Just as Blind spot is all about just as abstraction represented a Robert Motherwell’s dictum that looking, however, so too is it all political departure in art following “if a work is not aesthetic, it is not about painting. The ‘blind spot’ is the Second World War (witness art by definition” is invoked, and one that area of the eye (on the back of Adorno’s declaration in his 1949 is seduced. the retina) where the optic nerve is essay Cultural criticism and society, attached. There are no visual that “after Auschwitz, to write a receptors here, and so consequently poem is barbaric,” which was Gemma Tipton is a writer we cannot ‘see’ anything in that part and critic on art and extrapolated to signify the move architecture based in of our field of vision. Generally each away from representation in visual Dublin eye balances the other’s blind spot, art), Bordo’s work here suggests a but the brain also steps in, inventing different treatment of the matter. Robert Bordo visual data from the area around it, Curtain call, 2006 thus giving us a flawed, yet full, It’s not all political, however (unless oil on linen mounted on panel field. So what are Bordo’s paintings one takes up the interpretation of 81.3 x 101.6 cm courtesy Alexander and Bonin asking us to invent? politics as being about the ways in New York/ Rubicon Gallery which we inhabit the space around The traditions of abstraction us). Curtain call (2006) offers a link interrogated by Bordo’s Blind spot to earlier work, in which blurred paintings are as much political as buildings seem on the cusp of they are aesthetic. Canadian-born emerging into full-blown Maureen Bordo studied at the New York Gallace-like barns and cottages, Studio School in the Seventies but they (thankfully) don’t. Here, (he now teaches art at Cooper the colour bar between the heavier Union), and abandoned large-scale tones of the top of the painting and figuration just as it was becoming the lighter section below again fashionable. He worked instead to appears to offer a teasing glimpse of define a way of painting that a story, but pulls back again, once ignored the brash aggression of more leaving the narrative work to so much Neo-Expressionism, an the viewer. aggression which sought to counter an insecurity about the potential If Bordo has eschewed fashion, redundancy of painting with as much he nonetheless has contemporaries macho gesturing and posturing in whose work sheds light on his own. paint as possible. It is interesting to see Patrick Hall’s c . Brian Fay The Dock October – December Leitrim 2007

78 Fionna Murray A Real corner of the world (opposite) echoes and mirrors something of understatement, wry humour and Fionna Murray the next, creating an overlapping melancholy that sidesteps their way Double, 2007 acrylic and oil on canvas space for the viewer to reflect and past any grand overblown pictorial 45 x 35 cm piece things together where declarations. Stylistically some of courtesy the artist memories accumulate and meta- the works recall Hiroshi Sugito and narratives emerge. Norbert Schwantowski. Comparison to their work is useful insofar as Formally the work is painterly, it serves to illustrate a shared employing a palette of muted greys, interest in the lack of the grandiose greens, blues and ochres, populated and to privilege the provisional over Nostalgia, if we consider its by a range of simplified well dramatic pictorial heroics. etymological origins as an acute rendered images drawn from homesickness, a desire for home, fragments of urban architecture, An effective device in the exhibition is a useful meaning with which to photographs, isolated rural forests, is the placement of handwritten engage with Fionna Murray’s childlike figures, dreamy personal titles in pencil below the paintings. A Real corner of the world. objects and film stills. It is the On first viewing this text is not Murray examines the role of place, inclusion of works from film stills immediately apparent, its faint pencil 79 separation and unreliable memories that increases the focus from the lines receding against the works. of the past and how they contribute subjective to a shared sense of However, it functions as a way of to constructing our perception of memory. In Double Murray recreates formally linking the titles to the the present. While each one of a painting that was featured in the paintings and drawings. these areas is a thematic heavy-hitter background of a set in Krzysztof The sensation is one of someone Murray manages to break them Kieslowski’s 1991 film The Double trying to record their memories, down into small fragmentary life of Véronique, itself a treatise to capture them with an urgent elements that go to create a subtle, on fragmentary senses of identities. notation. This could be a contrived articulate and thoughtful show. This interplay is further extended device, yet it works in this context, in That’s me depicting a naïvely echoing the simplicity of means and Her series of small paintings and painted young girl under a street understatement that is characteristic works on paper, which hover lamp. Similarly derived from an in the work. Similarly, the placement somewhere between a conventional existing painting, in this case one of the painting Double, propped up gallery hang and an installation, shown in Cédric Klapisch’s 1996 on the mantle of the gallery fireplace, present an understated sense that exploration of place in Paris, Chacun leaning against the wall, adds to wherever you are, you are always cherche son chat, the title reads a domestic and intimate reading of longing for somewhere else. What autobiographically, yet “That’s me” is the space rather than a grand holds up the show under the weight simply what appeared as the subtitle theatrical gesture. of its own metaphysical themes is when the painting was in shot. an ambiguous, understated and In terms of programming, this frank treatment of its imagery and The shared range of reduced exhibition appeared thematically subjects. Things remain provisional, colours and the almost comic linked to other shows running small melancholic enquiries are iconography brings coherence to concurrently with A Real corner entered into, events and stimuli are disparate subjects and sources. of the world. Yvonne Cullivan’s half remembered or misremembered, For instance in the painting Town A Staggering ten million, Adrian fragmentary. Hall a small brown cloud traverses Paci’s Apparizione and Robin a mute blue-grey sky on what looks Whitmore's Dream diary all directly To establish this sense of like a collision course with a and indirectly addressed issues fragmentation an entire wall is given nondescript modernist tower block. of home, place and memory. over to a grouping of twelve small Directly beside this a larger canvas, This successfully allowed for Murray’s interrelated works on paper and The Fairy dens, appears to depart show, itself made up of fragments, canvases framed within an existing into the magical with a cluster of to be read as a part of a larger archway. Pieces titled Bracelet, bright grey and white simplified stars exploration of similar themes. Playground, Gobstoppers and arcing over what could be a mirror, Hopscotch indicate specific picture or handbag set against a personalized snapshots of recall, creamy grey-and-blue background. Brian Fay is an artist and lecturer in Fine Art at yet they work more successfully Here are two extremes in intention the Dublin Institute of when considered as fragments of and ambition, yet they are held Technology. one larger piece. Each small work together through a lyrical c . Linda King various venues around 5-11 November 2007 Ireland

80 Design Week (opposite) Desk: contents: 33 1/ 3. 08.05.06 During the 1960s, Helvetica’s Build (Michael C Place)/ Commonwealth provided a snapshot of the graphic- popularity was boosted by the All this itching design process by mapping the emergent field of corporate identity, 2006 Epson gicleé print in Corlan frame contents of a workspace through favoured by companies and 86 x 66 cm unframed text and simplified shapes. Although organisations eager to align their courtesy Original Print Gallery illuminating, it was somewhat products and services to the derivative, Cartlidge Levene having abstractions of progress and produced a similar exercise in the modernity. By the 1970s its early 1990s. However, the highlight widespread usage revealed the was Scratch, an emotive depiction ideological dichotomy that divided of the suffering and frustration of Modernism in other fields. Helvetica those living with asthma and had become – like Modernist eczema. Through layered architecture – a malleable signifier. typography and aggressive, spiky Simultaneously it became the marks, the conventional treatments typographic voice of capitalism, (salbutamol inhalers, aqueous globalisation and luxury Now in its tenth year, Design week cream) and frustrations of coping commodities (think Nestlé, Texaco, 81 launched a myriad of exhibitions, with these chronic illnesses BMW, Panasonic) and socialism, seminars, workshops, film (“I wish my eczema would just democracy and utilitarianism, screenings and award ceremonies. fuck off”) were humorously and becoming the archetype for street While its principle aim is to profile accurately revealed. signage, transport graphics the best indigenous design (New York Subway, new Dublin alongside that of international Build’s Michael C Place is an Bus identity), international politics examples, this year’s programme enthusiastic advocate of Helvetica, (United Nations) and local was notable in moving Irish design the sans serif typeface that has government (Dublin City Council). discourse beyond a focus on defined the visual landscape of the When the revolutionary Apple commodity exchange and client/ late twentieth and early twenty-first Macintosh computer was launched consumer mediation, to questioning century. Consequently, it was no in 1984 with Helvetica as part of the social and analytical role of surprise to see Build contributing to its suite of typefaces, the font’s design practitioners. the group exhibition 50: celebrating omnipresence within the visual fifty years of Helvetica at the landscape was assured.3 In a schedule of sixty events Image Now Gallery, Dublin across eight cities and towns, (5–30 November). Another touring In Celebrating fifty years, each there were noteworthy highlights exhibition, it comprised fifty 50 x designer/ company chose one in the field of graphic design, 50 cm posters by national and year in Helvetica’s lifetime to amongst which was On/ off international design companies commemorate a specific “creative (and everything in between) at and illustrators. Representation or cultural event.” Hung on either the Original Print Gallery, Dublin reflected both emerging and white walls or suspended ruby-red (2–23 November). This touring long-established practices and Perspex, the posters were an exhibition profiled a collaborative included Vaughan Oliver, eclectic mix of responses that project between the London-based Experimental Jetset (also Helvetica were generally supplemented by studio, Build, and New York indus- enthusiasts), Designers Republic brief testimonials from the authors. trial architects, Commonwealth, and indigenous talent including and comprised eight 106 x 86 cm Conor & David and Oliver Jeffers. The solutions ranged from homage typographic essays and self- – as in Spin’s portrait of Helvetica’s promotional pieces, where the This was one of many international designer Max Miedinger (1957) – content bled off and was etched events that have celebrated the to distain – Hamish Muir’s 1970 into the surrounding frames. fiftieth anniversary of the most was accompanied by the statement ubiquitous of all typefaces.1 “I don’t like Helvetica” – to blatant In 2001 after Kubrick, a scene from Renamed Helvetica (Latin for self-promotion – Established 1987 2001: a space odyssey was recast Switzerland) in 1960/ 1, the font was Cartlidge Levene’s miniaturised using contemporary technology: reflects a conscious attempt – in portfolio of “everything we have a series of line-drawn Macintosh name and form – to encapsulate ever produced using Helvetica.” laptops proclaimed “Open the pod the discourses of rationality and bay doors HAL,” a sequence that objectivity that defined the influential culminated in a solid red screen. Swiss graphic-design movement of the post-WW2 period.2 The global impact of recent Thatcher’s in/famous 1 Other commemorations include Gary Huswitt’s documentary US history and popular culture dis/appearance that year – Helvetica (2007) – which was was strongly represented: the mythology of Modernism finally shown at several events during Design week 2007 – the book Antoine+Manuel visualised Martin raised its head with reference to Helvetica: homage to a typeface Luther King’s seminal speechI Helvetica’s ‘neutrality’. It is the by Lars Müller (2002/ 2006), and the exhibition 50 years of have a dream (1963) as a childlike oft-repeated fallacy of such Helvetica at MoMA, New York utopia; Image Now commemorated comments that Erik Spiekermann (2007/ 8). 2 Helvetica was originally called the death of Curt Cobain with challenges so effectively. ‘Die Neue Haas Grotesk’ (Haas’s new san serif) after the type foundry quiet delicacy in Exit teen spirit The German typographer routinely which commissioned its design. (1994); Darren Firth juxtaposed two demonstrates that no typeface 3 In 1992, following an established pattern of copying Apple’s icons of 1973: Milton Glazer’s can ever be regarded a ‘neutral’, achievements, Microsoft famous I (heart) NY logo and the as all typographic forms are championed Arial, a version of Twin Towers, in one of several self-contained conduits of Helvetica by Robin Nicholas. references to 9/ 11; while meaning, discrete signifiers within Winkreative reproduced George the semiotic web that is visual

W Bush’s speech as president communication. In deconstructing Linda King is a lecturer in Design 82 elect in They misunderestimated his own creative processes, his History and Theory at IADT, Dún Laoghaire; in 2007 she received her me (2000). William H Walsh Commemorative PhD for an analysis of Aer Lingus’s Lecture in Dublin (10 November) graphic design and advertising Also dominant was the impact demonstrated that, like Helvetica, strategies. of technology on the human his design output is largely experience. In addition to those ubiquitous. Articulating pride in directly referencing the Apple/ the ‘invisible’ design solutions that Helvetica partnership – specifically “make life easier for the masses,” Michael Gillette’s Typesetters he profiled his corporate identity apocalypse (1984), and NB and signage systems for the Studio’s a is for Apple (1985) – German railway system and Berlin Bleed’s Xerox 914 (1959) critiqued Underground by way of example. the “unrecognised need” for multiple copying harnessed with Yet you don’t need to visit Germany the introduction of the plain-paper to appreciate Spiekermann’s photocopier; while Kim Hiorthøy influence. If you use a Nokia juxtaposed Garry Kasparov’s mobile phone you will be familiar chess defeat to an IBM computer with its bitmap screen font, Nokia with the launch of Radiohead’s Sans, which he also designed. third album in the Op Art inspired Produced in 2001, it is a potent OK Kasparov (1997). reminder of the omnipresence and broader social function of Although much of the work was graphic design. wry, humorous, or self-consciously clever, there were poignant junctures. Marc Atlan’s That same year (1991) abandoned the brief with a screen-grab of a young boy’s face overprinted with the words ‘Life Minus One’, a moving reference to his father’s death; while Luke Prowse referenced human frailty in H for (2004), a typographic portrait of David Kelly, whose suicide in 2003 led to the Hutton Inquiry.

In the caption for Alan Kitching’s Alan Kitching Robotypes ’82 – a letterpress 1982, 2007 Epson gicleé print composition referring to Mark 50 x 50 cm courtesy Image Now c . Michaële Cutaya Barons Self Storage November – December Galway 2007

Human Resources 83 City of ideas

contents suggested a dizzying realm intensely on both its location, of possibilities to the imagination as Riverside Commercial Estate in well as a potential metaphor for a Galway, and its site, a storage facility. society continually in transit whose This division between location and identity could be somehow site somehow recovered the two apprehended through its stored leading tendencies in the show: one possessions. linking up with issues of economic and urban development in the Galway The City of ideas show was the area and beyond, the other engaging second collaboration between in a more intimate relationship with Barons Self Storage and the artists the building and its use. Probably the most intriguing feature organisation Human Resources. of the City of ideas show was the The organisation was set up by Characteristic of the first trend was setting itself. Barons Self Storage is Emma Houlihan and Ben Roosevelt the symposium organized by a functioning storage facility located in 2005, while they were both Michelle Brown which was held on on the outskirts of Galway city. studying at the Burren College of the opening day. The recording of The inside space of the 100,000- Art, and sprang from their desire to this symposium was then played for square-foot two-storey warehouse create a platform for artists in the duration of the show in a cell is a tight formation of corridors lined Galway. Their first show, Interim, also containing documentation on with storage units. The irregular in November 2005, came about future urban projects. Also referring pattern of identical corridors proved from Human Resources’ interest in to the short-sightedness of the urban quite disorienting and many a visitor nongallery space1 and a chance developments in Galway was Carol was left wandering, in spite of the encounter with Barons management, Anne Connolly’s fish tank, A Song orientation map distributed at the a then newly open storage facility. for Ackua Glocksway. It was, entrance, giving the visit the feel of The Interim show developed Human however, through her presence as a treasure hunt for artworks. Resources’ concerns with political a member of Mantua Arts Project, economy around themes of transit a rural-based arts centre in Co. Apart from the cells used for the and exchange.2 Roscommon, that a certain idea of show, the rest of them were closed economic development was being and presumably occupied with The City of ideas show, while more pointedly criticised. various cardboard-boxed belongings. pursuing Human Resources’ socio- The concealed spaces and their economic interests, drew more An interesting aspect of the show turned-on second-hand radios and developing from the particular poetry was the participation of art Andrew Salomone’s Grandfather of this unlikely place. organisations engaged at different clock. Salomone’s piece was one levels with economic alternatives of the most successful works 1 “We have chosen Human through the work of founders or presented, engaging simultaneously Resources as the name of members, such as Bridget Barnhart with the specificity of the place and our organisation in order to emphasize our engagement with her DIY football for the Centre with larger socio-economic issues with problems of political of Urban Deviation, and Russell Hart through the simplest of means. economy, social space and and his Strobe lighting effect for the Salomone built an old clock out of community infrastructure. EconomicThoughtGallery. Their value cardboard, presumably from the We are interested in urban places and communities. to the show was not so much in the boxes provided by Barons Self In short, we implement art actual artworks presented but rather Storage. The clock was quite projects concerned with these through the projects and ideas that delicately manufactured, as one issues in non-gallery spaces,” http://www.human- each of these organisations perform. would expect an old clock to be, resources.ie and brought to mind the idea of Continuing to tread the line between inheritance. That it was made of 2 A good example of which was 84 art and economy was Sarah Browne’s Emma Houlihan’s project, cardboard and stood in a storage Special Offer, which consisted swing for Model for experiencing unit conjured up various suggestions: in giving away her personal economic panic/ excitement and the that of an embarrassing heirloom belongings to visitors in neon graphs figuring a Landscape exchange for their contact relegated out of sight, or possibly information so that she of desires and manias (Tulipmania an attempt at fabricating one’s own could call on them some time 1640s, South Sea bubble 1720s, inheritance out of bland recuperated in the future to follow the UK railway crash 1830s). Also materials. whereabouts of her former possessions. The project engaging with larger economic is ongoing. issues of exchange and suggesting Another work which drew from its alternatives was Katya Sanders’ pin setting further levels of complexities inscribed with If you read this, I’ll was Aideen Barry’s Metropolis of Michaële Cutaya is an artist and writer based give it to you (but then you must compulsion: installed into one of in Galway. wear it), which was distributed at the small upper cells accessible by the entrance of the building. ladder and somehow reminiscent (opposite) of an attic, Barry’s piece was an Reading row-wise: Russell Hart Mark Clare’s 22-foot-high installation of tightly stacked (EconomicThoughtGallery): surveillance tower, erected in Strobe Lighting Effect; Clodagh cardboard boxes onto which were Lavelle: Birds; Sally Timmons: the car park, and Sally Timmons’ projected four animation films The possibilities that irk me; video using a CCTV format, dealing in various way with the Andrew Salomone: Grandfather The Possibilities that irk me, were clock; Aideen Barry: Metropolis compulsive relationships that the of compulsion; Paul Timoney: both referring to problems arising individual builds up with his Untitled; Bridget Barnhart with the notion of security and environment. The films pre-existed (Centre of Urban Deviation): surveillance. Timmons, however, DIY Football; Bill Daniel: Sunset the installation; however, they took scavengers; Ben Geoghegan: introduced a poetic element in her on a particular resonance when set Reconstructed Connemara. work through the parade of unlived into a storage context, projecting Inside. Out.; Michelle Browne: lives performed and shot in the their intense individuality as a documentation room; Jennie Moran: A Place that gives you corridors of the building. The themes hypothetical content to those stored the possibility to think of of security and control were given standard boxes stacked into these something else; Anne Connolly a curious historical perspective long rows of uniform cells. (Mantua Arts Project): A Song through the ongoing project by for Ackua Glocksway; Sarah Browne: Model for experiencing Ulrika Ferm, Emergency weather, On the whole the City of ideas show economic panic/ excitement referring to the weather-forecast felt to be more than the sum of its and Landscape of desires and censorship in Ireland during WWII. parts and combined two kinds of manias (Tulipmania 1640s, South Sea Bubble 1720s, UK energy in a satisfactory way – one Railway crash 1830s); Ruby The themes of bricolage and inducing a movement outward, Wallis: Frustrations; Mark recuperation, which were already with works less concerned about Clare: Tower; image montage/ courtesy the author present in the work of the Centre resolution than by the potential they of Urban Deviation, were also opened up toward future projects developed in Sean Glover’s practice and connections; and another, of constructing compounds of more inward movement, with works 85 c . Karen Normoyle-Haugh Limerick City Gallery of November – December Art 2007

Karen Normoyle-Haugh is an art historian and visual- arts writer.

86 Samuel Walsh The Divine comedy emphasis on pattern and repetitive the objects more representational symbols in his series of paintings and actually less interesting. retain the flavour of Walsh’s abstract Walsh’s painting of Paradiso, Midway on our life's style. however, stands apart. The painting journey, I found myself consists of five parts, giving it the In dark woods, the right The lucid imagery evoked in Dante’s effect of an altarpiece. Paradiso road lost. To tellAbout Divine comedy, and the Inferno in uses cosmoligical imagery to allude those woods is hard…1 particular, proves a fertile text for to the nine spheres of heaven, Walsh’s imagination. Each of Dante’s concluding with a geometric pattern So begins Dante Alighieri’s thirty-four descriptive cantos in the of a celestial rose of pure white light. allegorical journey into the depths Inferno are vividly and graphically There is a marked transition, in terms of the eternal Inferno. Dante’s depicted by Walsh as he overloads of scale and imagery, from the small Divine comedy is regarded as one his works with motifs, figures and and separate Inferno paintings to of the great literary epic poems, symbols from the underworld. the vast, unified Paradiso. Echoing if not the greatest. The highly visual Mutliated truncated trees, illustrating Dante’s journey, Walsh descends text has provided artists with ample life abruptly cut short, attest to the into the use of earthly imagery in the inspiration down through the harsh judgement awaiting suicide Inferno works so that he can finally 87 centuries from Botticelli to Blake, victims. Dante’s description of ascend into celestial abstraction from Doré to Delacroix to Dalí. shadows like cranes becomes four in Paradiso. And now Samuel Walsh has joined flattened cranes in Walsh’s their esteemed company in his treatment. Some of this type of Samuel Walsh takes on an immense version of The Divine comedy. imagery is reminiscent of the and daring task in presenting a The series of paintings and simplified iconography of medieval series on Dante’s Commedia. drawings, exhibited in the Limerick works, adopted by Hieronymous The problem with creating works City Gallery of Art, is the fruit of Bosch in the sixteenth century. based on an epic such as this, work begun by the artist in 2002. Because of the strong motifs drawn or any written text for that matter, Walsh’s exploration of this great upon, Walsh’s paintings nod ever so is that it will inevitably always be literary text is somewhat telling of slighty to symbolist works, with the subjective. In What good are the his interest and study in the fields notable absence of the hazy arts? John Carey argues that “visual of art and philosophy. In light of this, etheriality of symbolism. However, art, in its definiteness and solidity, Dante’s Commedia is the ideal the artist often abstracts elements, cannot match the indistinctness of subject for combining both interests. a leopard is represented by spots, literature.”3 At times lucid, symbolic a lion by teeth, to prevent them and abstract, the series of works This exhibition represents a marked becoming merely illustrative. reveal that, like Francesca, Walsh change in direction for Walsh who Walsh takes advantage of the has been seduced by poetic normally works in a distinctively different qualities of paint, mixing literature; “A Galeotto, that book!… abstract style. His visual language matt-black acrylic with the glossier that day we read no further.”4 of flattened silhouettes, simplified surface quality of oil paint on shapes and bright colours has been the figurative details. Walsh uses 1 Dante Alighieri, The Inferno replaced by more figurative imagery. a framing device in the Inferno of Dante, Canto 1 (1–3) It is significant that Dante wrote his paintings to dual effect. Firstly, translated by Robert Pinsky, London, 1996 Commedia in the everyday speech the matt-black paint surrounding 2 John Freccero, ‘Foreword’, of his time, Italian, rather than in the the imagery acts as an immense in The Inferno of Dante more scholarly Latin. The poet wrote void in which the objects and figures translated by Robert Pinsky, London, 1996, p xix in a language of realism in the hope seem to float, eternally suspended 3 John Carey, What good are that everyone could understand its in death. Secondly, the black border the arts? London, 2005, message.2 Walsh similarily felt that, acts as a window or portal into the p 225 4 Dante Alighieri, The Inferno in order to embody specific ideas artist’s interpretation of Dante’s of Dante, Canto 5 (lines from the text, it was necessary to vision of the afterlife. 122–124) translated by change to a more representational Robert Pinsky, London, 1996 style that would be more easily Walsh’s paintings and drawings assimilated. However, Walsh has not based on the Purgatorio take the (opposite) completely abandoned abstraction form of the seven cornices, each Samuel Walsh alluding to one of the seven deadly 2nd cornice, 2004 and evidence of former elements is courtesy the artist prominent throughout his paintings. sins. Here the colours become Bright colours, flattened shapes, flourescent and discordant, c . Justin McKeown Golden Thread Gallery November 2007 – Belfast January 2008

88 Una Walker Reports from an agent in the field (opposite) However, I am not a database. with history is more noticeable, Una Walker Nor am I a machine embodying one. perhaps even en vogue for there Reports from an agent in the field (details) My interpretation of this work is presently seems to be a general 2007 altogether human. It is informed by preoccupation in some avenues of courtesy Golden Thread my experiences as much as by the western art with issues of archives Gallery raw data that Walker is presenting. and archiving. More generally, And, in standing in the near-darkness beyond art, it’s fair to say that we listening to the voices reciting names, live in a time characterised by dates and places, some of which are auditing and archiving. It seems familiar and some of which are not, everybody wants to make history. I realise I lack any key to piece this Implicit in the urge to understand raw information together. In realising history is the desire to understand this I suddenly gain insight into the oneself in the present. The search to amount of time, labour, diligence and qualify history is a search to qualify Four monitors supply the only light patience Walker must have expended one’s self in the present; It is an illuminating a dim gallery space. in bringing cohesion to her research exercise in self-identity. Each monitor bears one of four only then to discard it in its presen- 89 phrases: Artist/group, Venue, Date, tation by breaking the information And so it is with Walker’s Reports Title. Four voices, each coming from into catagories of date, venue, artist from an agent in the field. On one one of the monitors, recalls one of and title without providing any level this work can be understood as these aspects of thirty-five years of means for the viewer to link it up. an exercise in art history, exploring Northern Irish art history. Every five Why would she do this? I feel my the logic of the database through its minutes or so all the monitors go mental grip upon the proverbial can application to a localised context. blank, the voices cease speaking of worms. So, in the absence of any Yet it can also be understood much and I am left alone in the darkness key, I naturally begin to consider more broadly as being indexical of for what feels like a couple of the relationship between what the currently prevalent socio-political minutes to try and make sense of information is and how it is being questions concerned with the what I have just heard. Then the presented. reconsideration of Northern Irish monitors fire up, again illuminating self-identity. In this way, Reports the gallery, and the voices begin to What first strikes me about the raw from an agent in the field is a timely speak. The information supplied by data is that it is spans 1960–1995. work, which bears witness to, but each monitor has changed. Each What is interesting about this is does not pass judgement on, events stream of data has moved clockwise that this time period encompasses of the recent past. onto a new monitor. The information the modern Troubles, yet there is no mention in either the text is circling me. 1 This quote is attributed to accompanying the exhibition or in Lev Manovich in the publicity I cannot help but feel as I write this the materiality of the exhibition itself material, although it does review that the responses invoked of anything Troubles-related. This is not identify the source of this quote. in me by Una Walker’s Reports from perhaps a good thing. The next thing an agent in the field are different than that strikes me is the intonation of Justin McKeown is an what the artist may have intended. the voices communicating the raw artist and researcher from Yet, in thinking this, my eye is drawn data. To me there is something Northern Ireland. to the quote heading the publicity mildly religious about their tonality. material introducing the work. I start to get the feeling that I am It states: “The database represents in the midst of some kind of vigil the world as a list of items, and it bearing witness to the ghosts of refuses to order this list.”1 Having history. The concept of the vigil noted this I feel a bit freer to let my seems somehow fitting. For what is mind wander in whatever direction truly evident to me is that the further it feels pulled; especially since the we in Northern Ireland move away blurb accompanying the work makes from a society characterised by no inference to a context beyond the sectarian violence the more we are source material and methodology moving into a period of remembering used by the artist. My gut says such and recounting. Northern Ireland is tact is intentional as an extension under the spell of history and has of the database logic that the artist been since its birth. Yet now, in the is employing. passing of violence, this obsession c . Tim Maul Crane Arts LLC November – December Philadelphia 2007

90 Brian Kennedy Passage (opposite) Big metaphor, romance, and heavy- actions on the very high seas, Brian Kennedy weight myth make appearances channeling both Salvador Dalí Passage 2007 in Declan Long’s essay in the (making wiggly drawings using a installation shot accompanying catalogue. These fish) and Carolee Schneeman courtesy the artist references, while viable in discussing (scribbling on the side of the boat Kennedy’s art, elude the project while suspended overboard). in the huge main gallery. Instead, Richard Serra’s MOMA retrospective a checklist of ‘installation art’ tropes had a distinct shipyard vibe; in a prevail; theatrical lighting, a sound- PBS interview he recalled a childhood track, material covering the floor, and spent on San Francisco Bay, and Brian Kennedy’s exhibition entitled the recontextualization of imported the profound influence it had on his Passage at Philadelphia’s Ice Box objects collude to produce first an tanker-scaled sculpture. (part of the Crane Building art ‘effect’ and then an ‘atmosphere’. complex) was produced in Suspended on angles from the high As a visit to any antique dealer will conjunction with Belfast’s Golden ceiling, each of the currachs cast attest, once functional objects that Thread Gallery. These two cities multiple, arched and crosshatched are promoted as artworks are not have more than a slight resemblance shadows, invoking a chilly assured that their histories, and 91 to each other. Staying with Philly, ecclesiastical environment. The sea mythic resonance, will attend their it’s a port, college town, and a salt underfoot is immediately journey into the big white room. patchwork of fierce divides; notable recognizable and quite slippery. Kennedy’s attention to authenticity, for a deep, often violent resistance Less predictably, the audio track of so critical in the assembling of the to authority. Community pride and roaring surf and rhythmic banging American boat, should have been political allegory meet in the many oars draws our attention and could exercised more fully in the main vivid murals throughout the city and stand alone as a work. event. The enlisting of the installation in ‘Fishtown’ – the locals’ name for genre, chosen perhaps to meet the the North Side district where the Accomplished often by simply challenge of occupying so large a Crane Building is located. dimming the lights, ‘atmosphere’ space, dilutes the artist’s intentions (like ‘mood’) disappoints as the and diminishes our engagement. Kennedy’s installation in the ‘Ice Box’ dominant feature conveyed from Once past the absorbing slideshow, (once a refrigerated storage space) such a laborious production. the display of the three vessels feels consists of three wooden currachs/ A gendered object after all, desultory, overly reliant on stagecraft canoes, the distribution of a great the Philadelphia currach, with its and the manifested ‘drama’. deal of sea salt, and a soundtrack elegant, rippling form is, ahem, Like Joseph Beuys (another Barney recorded presumably while out lovely to behold as it floats above touchstone), I suspect Brian rowing. One of the currachs was us. While ‘miraculous’, Kennedy’s Kennedy’s art may necessitate the built by the artist during a residency decision to elevate the boats artist’s physical presence to animate in Philadelphia in an improvised overhead places them beyond our it. Yet nothing encountered that wet garage/ workshop, while another inspection and narrows the afternoon in Philly is easily forgotten. ‘skinless’ vessel was retrieved projection of any narratives of our A personal response was to pull locally. It is unclear where the third own. The removal of the currachs’ Robert Stone’s magnificent bummer boat originated. Off the main gallery, coverings (once skin or hides, of a novel, Outerbridge reach, off a slide presentation casually now canvas) could be purely an the shelf; its protagonist, broken by documents the construction of aesthetic decision, something the physical and psychic strain of this ancient craft in suburban forensic, even a reminder of the circumnavigation, succumbs to Pennsylvania. Kennedy’s carpentry specimens dangling aloft in maritime the voices and steps off the deck skills, and those of his assistants, or natural history museums. into the deep below – another form make a strong case for the return of ‘passage’. of the handmade in this era of Space may be the final frontier, but the sea and seafaring, have Koonsian art factories. Images of Tim Maul is an artist the boat’s structural details, the made several notable appearances and critic who lives in curvature of its wooden ‘spine’, in recent contemporary art in the New York City. copper nails and billowing slats of New World. The November issue wood, deftly communicate the of W features a Matthew Barney inheritance of knowledge passed, photo-spread in the form of a as the narrator’s voice would intone, trans-Atlantic crossing. Barney, “from generation to generation.” in hero mode, performs several c . Susan MacWilliam third space gallery November 2007 – Belfast January 2008

92 Lorraine Burrell Pictures from a family album (opposite) The child’s drawing is materialised baby buggy, coats and hats and Lorraine Burrell into a spectre of itself, becoming shoes for walking. It’s a very ordinary from Pictures from a family album, 2007 real and life size and clumpy 3D. image that points us to its detail, light jet print Burrell’s son, the illustrator and to inspecting the red-stockinged 38 x 25 cm hence on some level responsible for legs and varying heights. Attention courtesy the artist this Frankensteinian presence, is drawn to the practicality of stands sheepishly and nervously organising and manoeuvring one beside the artist-mother-turned- body of people. Burrell visualises drawing. She clutches his hand and the epic in the everyday, the family smiles to the camera with inky smirk. Expedition. Like Tatsumi Orimoto’s bread-head the obscured figure adopts sinister Scenario 6 anonymity. Burrell stands behind a tree, skirt raised and exposing her underwear Scenario 3 (again); in the foreground a plastic The family, cat included, cling to clothes-peg bucket dangles on Michael the impressively tall father. the line. It’s so everyday, so nearly 93 Imagine a number of scenes: There’s a lot about scale and Readers’ Wives, but it’s not. proportion and rearranging and It could be predictable; the escape Scenario 1 placing in these works. Everyone from the domesticity of the family The bird’s nest sits heavily piercing attaches themselves to Michael as roles, but Burrell seems to engage through a pair of shabby grey and if for survival or some record-breaking in that place, finding it a place of thinning pants that have seen better feat. I’m reminded of Roy Castle creativity and production; it fuels the days. The setting is rustic and bare, and Norris McWhirter and scouts work rather than the work escaping a stone lintel fireplace lurks behind. in phone boxes. A few years ago it. Burrell seems unable to do the The image conjures a raw, hard, Burrell drew some sketches in her domestic without some element of earthy Stone Age. It calls to mind an notebook including “a coat for the play or subversion. There are hints earlier work of Burrell’s, a model of whole family” – everyone packed of Sherman and Arbus in the roles an Irish Wolfhound. A breed of dog into one coat. This was a premonition, assumed and the ordinary extremes. normally known for its magnitude is drawn before the artist had children Burrell twists, and pokes, looking shrunken to miniature, measuring to occupy her space and her world sideways and round corners. less than a foot high. Its hair is and her art. Here the ‘coat for the Her photographs are liberating Burrell’s father’s hair, gingery and whole family’ manifests in the form of and uplifting, sharing and playful, wiry, and it gives the creature that person-cladding. warming and welcoming. The family strange repulsiveness that hair can be a great place, and without abstracted from the body can. Scenario 4 sentimentality Burrell shares her The diminutive statue of this regal Venus with cabbage leaves strides everyday with us. dog focuses us on the patheticness towards the camera in show-offy, model style overly affected walk. of life in the same way as does Susan MacWilliam is an Ron Mueck’s Dead Dad. The epic Hips and arms swing. As in many of artist and lecturer based dog is made pocket sized, the wild the images, the figure is unnervingly in Belfast. creature tamed, like a colonial centrally placed, front facing and trophy, like a Victorian child’s head on. Bare flesh is pushed right treasured toy with keepsake hair. up close, exposing the pucker marks The smell of burning hair is and grips that clothes leave. unpleasant, and the dog met its The detritus of the banal and the demise in a Belfast studio fire everyday loiters in the background in 2003. kitchen. To live is to leave traces, and mops and brushes follow, Scenario 2 and cabbage leaves are good for (What do you get if you cross Leigh mastitis. Bowery with Simon in the land of chalk drawings? In the 1970s Scenario 5 children’s television programme, The family is rounded up and whatever Simon drew on his magic organised for a day out – in various chalkboard came to life.) attire – wheels of bike, wheels of c . Slavka Sverakova Millennium Court Arts December 2007 – Centre January 2008 Portadown

Mark McGreevy 94 A gap in the bright One of the earliest paintings in the dancing mood for the seven (Bright 2). A wounded face on show is also the largest, its title figurines nearby. The left wing is deformed shoulders towers in front paraphrasing Jules Verne: 20,000 more joyful, the right hand one of a white sheet (Bright 3). A yellow suckas to the bottom of the nugget. signals some danger. Whenever stain and a constellation of colours In its centre a hexagon morphing there is a squiggle, a drawing, over a black rhomboid leave part of into a cube gathers together and a blob, a change of tonality, or stark the white ground to multicoloured keeps in place all the floating definition by hue on one side of dots in an oval box (Bright 4). squares, bar two that dropped out. the central axis, there is always The box appears, counterbalancing In precisely measured distances something responding on the other a group of figures under a complex from each other and enveloped in a side. The painting works as a constellation, also in Bright 5. red hue, the squares define both the concealed, surreptitious, triptych. The title of the exhibition, A Gap in hexagon and the cube. Shredded the bright, relates to interrupting the by blue and pink-white the red area Exquisitely defined details next to series and to the role of the ground does not claim stability. It may be robust undefined areas of instinctively in each composition. a metaphor for a government and held high-key colours in all the its numerous layers. After all, the paintings in this exhibition remind me, In all exhibited paintings and collages, painting was inspired by “Captain inter alia, of Miró, Bosch, Kandinsky, the artist proclaims creatively, 95 Nemo’s ship free of government Derain, Bonnard, Vlaminck… vigorously and joyfully his intoxication ownership.” with paint, the painting process and Yo Sweden divides diagonally the older masters. His commitment to the Despite this powerful object delicacy in handling paint from an idea, once defended by Leonardo, occupying its centre, the army of brutes, spiky flowers in later on by Marcel Duchamp, of art composition follows classical Italian deadly tones, yellow, brown, green as the life of mind, is enlisted to the high-ground landscape. The whole and pink worms which strangle imaginative use of contemporary canvas is covered by a narrow blue whatever is in their way. Three large visual culture. horizontal strip at the top, read as rainbows are clearly visible, sky, and the vast yellow rectangle voluminous and fed by craters of below, read as land. Agitated forms energy. The light emanating from the Slavka Sverakova is a writer on art. frolic on the horizon. Strange flying one on the left is extraordinary as it objects, small cubes and clouds, illuminates the crater to its extinction. (opposite) exude the silent discomfort of not Similarly focused light bleaches the Mark McGreevy reaching the reachable. This is green in High 54 Ranch, allowing Untitled, Bright 3 an inventive fantasy painting the emergence of unfamiliar sea 2007 mixed media on paper nourished by cartoons, animation, creatures. Those appear in several 41.5 x 59.5 cm computer games and science fiction. other paintings: the same shape courtesy the artist/ Millennium For example, the motif of the rainbow is suspended in the pale blue water Court Arts Centre/ the third space gallery comes from a computer game, in of K’Hole and behind the tree in which the protagonist used it both Stinkin thinkin. for protection and as a weapon. The paintings on paper and mixed The painting can metamorphose media on paper reveal delicate into other things: the tip of the cube cut-outs and dynamic multicoloured lies exactly on the midpoint of the and bold compositions that are not width of the canvas, creating a afraid of beauty. powerful axis. The ensuing symmetry is not allowed to strangle the fantasy; And something else is new to me: instead it fluently shifts a little to the series Untitled, bright 1–5 make room for surprise. On each presents a move away from the side a prominent large white enigmatic environments filling the group, a white lake with two rocks canvas from edge to edge. Instead, and lower still large groups with each sheet has a dominant form on rainbows, suggest a wing of a empty ground. A multicoloured head triptych. There are differences: occupies the centre leaving the rest on the right, one rainbow turns into of the ground untouched (Bright 1). fog, or murky liquid; the one on the A head in colours of Mexican folk art left, painted in red and blue, sets a has dancing legs, and company c . Slavka Sverakova OMAC December 2007 – Belfast January 2008

96 Brendan O’Neill Ye must be bored

Brendan O'Neill again Omnipresent 2007 poster print, wood, polystyrene & paint By replacing one letter in St John’s On the left hand side wall, War is front of ‘Righteo’ instead of ‘Righteo Verse 3:7, the exhibition’s title proves the peace intensified presents, – usness’. The quote, from the that a small change alters meaning. in orange letters over dark ground passage in the Book of Proverbs, O’Neill manipulates found materials, in with white silhouettes of weaponry, 14:34, addresses moral life and this case religious posters, to explore a quote, “Be still and know that I am the limits of volition. All four pieces irony, the trope that depends on the God.” It is also translates as “Stop command the subliminal authority gap between expectations and fighting and…” The reference to its of conceptual art forged by their being. Irony entails endless reflection source, Psalm 46:10, is printed over commitment to Duchamp’s idea of and can become a disruptive force. a thin outline of a tank. The danger the power of art objects to make As a tool for finding alternatives to of war thus creeps up from the same people think about them in a ascribed meanings, it is a threat to ground where the divine presence different way. I hope that their authoritative discourse. can be. cosmic irony will mutate into the Socratic one in order to increase The display of four pieces at OMAC The opposite wall supports the that chance. evokes the spatial organisation of somewhat playful The Prophet cut a church chapel: altar at each wall, in half, which is a poster, cut in half, Slavka Sverakova is a 97 the eternal light hanging near the with circular cut outs suggesting a writer on art. archway. In parallel, O’Neill has stylised figure. Left and right halves suspended, near the arched have changed places, ‘usness’ is in entrance, a three-dimensional work, Omnipresent. The construction looks like a chemical formula or a diagram. O’Neill thought of it as a “religious molecule.” This is not as preposterous as it seems. Charles Baudelaire called imagination the “queen of all faculties.” New scientist brings examples: raindrops can generate electrical charge; eco-concrete can eat the power-station waste; astronomers can today listen to light echoes of an explosion first accounted 400 years ago by Tycho de Brahe; new techniques of observing the brain show connections between thoughts and the brain’s minute parts. O’Neill aims at layers of change evoked by his images to make us feel responsible for the consequences of the systemic failure of our culture. Why do we prefer not to choose or develop a better one?

On the far wall opposite the entrance, Blind spots presents a landscape with a citation from Galatians 3 – both obliterated by descending black spots. O’Neill manifestly does not select any of Paul’s arguments, but instead allows a landscape that promises pleasant existence to be locked behind black flying objects. It is a paradise lost, Brendan O'Neill War is peace intensified freedom of access prevented. 2007 poster print on aluminum 70 x 50 cm c . Alan Phelan Douglas Hyde Gallery December 2007 – Dublin January 2008

98 Conor McFeely The case of the midwife toad (the unrepeatable experiment) On entering this exhibition you The actual details surrounding realm or rooted in serious bookish would be forgiven for thinking you biologist Paul Kammerer and his research. While McFeely shares had walked in mid-installation, Midwife Toad experiments are a elements of the free-flowing material with the floor strewn with a variety parallel narrative that are presented play of Sarah Sze and the equally of materials, including large broken briefly but are still central in playful material narratives of Simon slabs of polystyrene and plasterboard, understanding the artist’s take on Starling, he is clearly not attempting and wall works hung close to the this scary moment in evolutionary to emulate either. ground. The gallery has of course theory. been carefully installed to look Instead what is luxuriated in are the chaotic, like many previous Conor A ten-minute bounce around Wiki fragments of this story, presented McFeely installations, and on closer related sources reveals a far more not to cause bewilderment but inspection patterns and discrete duplicitous, back-stabbing, Ridley something else. Each arrangement selections emerge that point to a or Barnam & Bailey school of of materials becomes infused with a particular kind of order or system. science. The implied credence given vague narrative that then implies the to recent reassessments given to inherent complexity of the equation. The title of the exhibition is of great Kammerer’s work also should cause A wall piece of painted poly and initial assistance, not just the some pause. His ideas and foil in the shape of a mountain is 99 ‘Midwife Toad’ (which I missed on experiments into inherited acquired subtitled with the phrase “excursion the way in) but moreover the characteristics (proven false, but this into the realm of logic and morals.” ‘unrepeatable experiment’. Certainly is also disputed) were leading Here the aspiration mountain alludes the layout looks unrepeatable or towards a validation of eugenics – to the sometimes-distorted higher improvised, with blocks of coal-tar if you can get land toads to breed goals of science, especially if one pitch spilling over into yellow in water, how long before a thinks of those healthy blond Hitler- fragments, ultra-violet strips perfect race of man could also be youth types hiking in the Alps. illuminating fluorescent painted poly, constructed? curious blobs on poles, a severed With such big ideas and total chaos foot in a large bucket, large metal This narrative as selected subject of materials, one wonders where lampshades fallen to the ground, is, however, not a great aid to between allegory and entropy does cutlery wrapped in waxy burlap, understanding the work on display, this work lie? As a twisted take on frantic handwriting animated on LCD although it certainly complicates it. research-based practice and an screens, rumbling sounds, crumpled The blobs on poles on closer ultra-formless art-making practice, paper, a video of a half naked male inspection were casts of toads, these toads certainly provide a figure lurching in bed, big photo- dispersed throughout the other challenge, offering a roomfull of graphs of corroded nails, and much fragments of walls, ceilings and arbitrary contradictions, half-truths more. There was a definite laboratory artefacts from the imaginary and visually provocative artworks. feel to the installation, albeit a mad laboratory in vivarium. These become scientist’s lair that has exploded, the focus of several material treatments – skewered on poles, Alan Phelan is an artist with the mess and chaos implying who lives in Dublin. that something had possibly gone dipped in wax, painted yellow, hidden under light fixtures, etc. terribly wrong. The overall piece (opposite) seemed to hedge toward alchemy The works do not as such present a Conor McFeely with all the deluded transformative riddle to figure out, as the selected from The Case of the Midwife pieces of the story are so fragmented Toad (the unrepeatable power that such a pseudoscience experiment), 2007 possesses but this would be wrong. that they cannot be put back together installation shot, Douglas Hyde The narrative to locate these works in any linear form. Gallery was elsewhere. courtesy Douglas Hyde Gallery Then again, who ever said that A text was provided in laminated understanding and meaning have to form by the stairs, an interesting happen in a linear fashion? What is story of a scientist who experimented interesting then is that the work on toads to challenge Darwinian defies a conventional form of evolution. There is lots more to the interpretation. There is a fusion of story but that’s all you need to know intuitive and intellectual approaches as later in the text the improvised which is a difficult balance to aspire response to the ‘selected’ subject is to. Too much of either often kills the discussed and privileged over it. work, locating it in some airy cosmic c . Fergal Gaynor Crawford Art Gallery November 2007 – Cork February 2008

Fergal Gaynor is an independent scholar, writer, and member of art intervention group art/ not art.

100 Crawford Open 2007 – the sleep of reason

Martin Healy The Sleep of reason (i) 2006 black-and-white C-print on Dibond 135.5 x 101 cm courtesy the artist/ Rubicon Gallery/ Crawford Conversation on the topic of this as the Crawford’s permanent development, or they are not to be year’s open exhibition at Cork’s collection clearly shows), and it occupied at all. If elsewhere the Crawford Municipal Gallery, or at should certainly be responsive to notion of regeneration, or low rental least its selection process, has intelligent public debate; in fact, districts, or widespread commercial already been underway for some its exhibitions should be the visible patronage counterbalance the time now on the online version of outcome of such debate and commercialisation of property this magazine (see exchange. As major participants inevitable in an economy like www.recirca.com/articles/2007/texts in such debate local artists would, Ireland’s, in Cork, relatively small /crawfordopen.shtml). There, artist then, be expected to exert an and well-off, such reservation of John Kelly’s investigative work into influence on the life of the institution. non-commercial space is nonexistent. the exhibition’s organisation, along The call to “make art and show it with his ideas about the influence On the other hand, it is bound to yourself” is more often than not in exerted by corporate branding on be the case that a great number of Cork a call to emigration, the call of international artistic institutions artists in a city the size of Cork cities where property, for various (born of personal experience with (not to mention the Munster region, reasons, is ready to be transformed the Australian Arts Council), meet or even the southern half of the into public space at little cost. with a number of comments, eight country) will produce work which (Which is not to overlook the 101 as I write this, from both named and they feel, often though not always ‘Black Maria’, a punchy artist-run unnamed sources. One struck me justifiably, should be given public space on Washington Street, or the as being particularly relevant to this exposure of the kind offered by the Cork Artists’ Collective’s ‘Guest issue, and to the issue of the relation Crawford, but who will rarely or House’ near the North Cathedral: of art institutions to artists in general. never find a place in the institution. though I consider both cases to be This voice, critical of Kelly’s position, For one thing, truly radical movement exceptional, for various reasons, ends his or her interjection with an within the arts is difficult to and as not being indicative of a way energetic “make art and show it accommodate within institutional forward). yourself”: a practical response, but structures, no matter how open- one which, I feel, misses the point, minded, and many valuable artistic at least as far as the Crawford Open traditions and currents of development I mention all this to give a sense of goes. find themselves marginalised, the pressures on the Crawford because of fashion or the rise to Open. As far as I can make out, such It must be acknowledged that the dominance of particular modes or pressures became unexpectedly Crawford is a public institution, and styles. The artist-run exhibition space concentrated this year, and a number therefore answerable to that public. is the logical answer to this dilemma: of the exhibition’s conceptual flaws In a certain sense we own it – it is not a relinquishment of the public became apparent. In truth, for a part of an urban and regional fabric sphere, but its extension into new, show of this kind to be truly open it to which artists, critics and those refashioned corners of the city. would have to be organised along interested in art also belong and it is In Cork, however, this comes up the lines of London’s Royal Academy funded by public money. It therefore very quickly against the old bugbear Summer Exhibition, an eclectic makes complete sense that we of property. It is more or less free-for-all on a huge scale. In some should question its operation and impossible for an emerging artist, respects the Crawford retrospective stage public debate on the matter. or even a group of such artists, in 2005 came close to providing a To simply walk away from public to acquire even medium-term model for such an exhibition. In institutions and leave them to their possession of spaces suitable for contrast, the annual Open has acted own devices, tempting as this often public exhibition in the city. Not that more like a mini-biennale with a certain may be, is to relinquish the public such spaces aren’t in existence: amount of local input. This year it sphere, and this by rights is ours. the city-centre is heartbreakingly full was decided that it should scale In saying this I would like to make of empty buildings, disused floors, down, to fifteen artists, an optimum clear that I am not advocating a rooms perpetually for rent. size for the gallery spaces. This popular institution: the Crawford is The problem is that all such property emphasis on quality was enhanced certainly not obliged to reflect in Cork is designated as commercial when the Crawford achieved popular opinion or to somehow be property: the economic climate is something of a coup by acquiring as directly representative of the local still such that no-one is willing to jurists both Frances Morris, head of artistic population. However, in so far relinquish a possible source of profit, international collections at the Tate as it is a public institution, it must even if it has been sitting empty for Modern, and IMMA’s director fulfill certain urban and regional twenty years. They are to be rented Enrique Juncosa. Of course the functions (it does not exist in isolation, at commercial costs, or sold for same emphasis on quality was always likely to put a strain on any deliberation. In the meantime the to the whole affair, indeed, it was to sense of inclusivity, but what artists of Cork and the surrounding be associated with the first part of happened next more or less undid regions will have one less opportunity Goya’s title only, with dull repetition, all claims to ‘openness’. Influenced for public display this year, a genuine and somnolence. Near Andrew perhaps by the knowledge that ev+a problem that goes beyond the Vickery’s hypnotic theatre of bland was again to keep the number of its responsibilities of Cork’s municipal mnemonic images, pouring out an participant artists down this year, gallery. It is a matter of the general easy-listening strings version of and doubtless by the promise of a civic condition of Cork City. Stand by your man, Paul McAree’s fee being offered to the successful paintings, in Luc Tuymans greys, entrants, 750 artists submitted work of an empty television studio and to the Crawford, more than twice So much for the selection process, an enigmatic hand holding a wire, the usual number. Given the busy what of the exhibition itself? I don’t shaved monotonous photographs lifestyles of the jurists there could be think it constitutes a showcase for down to even thinner claims to no question of demanding extra contemporary art, even of attention. The refusal of stimulus examination time; it had doubtless contemporary Irish art: although and stress on multiplication without been difficult enough to find a day there are quite a number of familiar progress was continued in David 102 on which both were free for a names here – Abigail O’Brien, Martin Theobald’s consciously tedious protracted period in the first place. Healy, Andrew Vickery, Amanda animation, shot from the perspective So, over a period of eight hours Dunsmore, etc – the standard of of a car stuck in traffic. the works (up to three per artist) of work is not remarkable. Rather it Sam Plagerson’s soft-edged twist 750 artists, prepared as Powerpoint feels like a showcase for a on Sigmund Freud’s urge to collect presentations, were viewed, and representative collection of emerging totemic objects – Plagerson makes fifteen artists emerged. In such contemporary artists who have a collection of Freud toby-jugs circumstances it was never possible attained a level of international with tacky female nudes as handles that unknown work would find its exposure (which is to overlook the and displays it in a thrift-shop-like way through the selection process: wild-card, and this year’s prize- environment – again employed considering the necessary speed winner, Michael Gurhy, a recent repetitive forms and sleepy oblique of viewing, only work already Crawford College of Art graduate thinking. Round and round in recognised by the jurists as being who works in London). The exhibition circles, to “tiny, socially meaningless of established quality was ever likely does not attempt to win the viewer purpose” as they described it to be considered. These, naturally, over to the possibilities of recent art, themselves, the invited artists Mai turned out to be invited artists and but prefers instead to present a Yamashita and Naoto Kobayashi in artists from the jurists’ sphere of cross-section of interesting artists their video piece Infinity, gradually experience. Just as naturally the bound together by a loose thematic wore an infinity symbol into the grass 735 remaining artists, who had paid thread. This thread, of course, is of a public park. Even Tom Molloy’s an entrance fee and prepared their ‘the Sleep of Reason’. impressively large and delicate work for examination, could feel watercolour Fall mesmerised the eye aggrieved at having entered an My initial reaction was that the with its multiplication of the same ‘Open’ that ended up blind to exhibition in no way responded to small, rotated skeleton motif. Viewing anything without presence in Dublin this theme, set by the Crawford in the exhibition began to have the same or London. advance. The phrase itself has effect on the brain as negotiating the obvious enough connotations: aisles of a supermarket. So, the ball is in the Crawford’s Goya’s print for the Los Caprichos court. Circumstances have revealed series; the ideals of the Enlightenment I do not intend this as a criticism. the inherent flaws in the old ‘Open’ meeting with entrenched, obscurantist Whether the jurists were fully aware set-up; reform of some kind is clearly traditions; the inherent sense of of this immanent theme among the unavoidable. On the other hand it threat of the phrase’s second half – artworks, that of a kind of waking should try to conserve the strengths ‘gives birth to monsters’. While the sleep, of the hypnotic, the half-state of previous Opens – their capacity, affairs of the world outside furnished just short of full conscious for instance, to give a regional stage innumerable examples of ‘monsters’ awareness, it was certainly there, to relative unknowns who then go (the USA, for instance, advocating and went beyond a matter of on to national and international the use of torture, a striking example thematics. It occurred to me that exposure (Linda Quinlan being a of the collapse of eighteenth-century even the aesthetics were somnolent, good example). The next incarnation benign reason), the exhibition, for the and that this might cast some light of the exhibition is not due till 2009, most part, seemed surprisingly quiet on the works, in so far as they might so there’s plenty of time for proper and unconcerned. If there was a tone be representative of a certain strain [right] Crawford Open 2007 installation shot, lower gallery, with work (left to right) by Sam Plagerson, Paul McAree, Martin Healy, Yvanna Greene courtesy Crawford Art Gallery

[below] Amanda Dunsmore Portrait, Martin McGuinness 2005 – on-going installation shot, Crawford Open 2007 courtesy Crawford Art Gallery

93 in contemporary art-making. unconsciousness. Somewhere in obvious stimulation, by toning down A number of pieces involved an between they grow like animate colour, refusing the pleasures of accumulation of waste, discarded stones, following a sub-logic mimetic realism, celebrating blandness objects or packaging, and the between algebra and biology. and tedium. The artist and his or her associated statements pointed to preferred viewer were then granted an obvious ecological parallel: Which brings me to Hannah a sense of knowingness within the Maggie Madden’s expanding Arendt’s The Human condition, mass consumerist environment, collection of consumer packaging a text in which the relation of an exclusivity that nevertheless made (formally familiar, the piece didn’t consumerism to sleep is theorised. no claim to higher ideals or outside really reward attention to its details), It is her contention that consumerism models, a stance that is hardly likely Fumiko Kobayashi’s human nest is a form of emancipated serfdom to rock the status quo, and may in of junk-shop items and Yvanna (if not slavery), but one which fact be exactly where the status quo Greene’s interesting play on flat maintains the basic parameters of would like the artist to be. negative and sculptural positive experience of that way of human life. (highly formal templates and It is a life governed by biological I need to qualify this in many cases. cluttered products in the same necessity, but with a buffer of Yvanna Greene’s constructions were 104 frame), all seemed to ‘comment’ on machinery between full dependence nostalgic for formalist purity, which the generation, almost independent on nature – its hardship and seemed to be promised by the of us, of mass detritus in the messier vicissitudes. As such it proceeds growing austerity of the templates world outside the gallery, like as a kind of sleep, a constant stripped of their products. Fumiko throwbacks to the world of Victorian listening to the demands of the Kobayashi brought back something naturalist art, when artworks carried body, a consciousness that fails to of the surrealist collector in her messages like labels attached to look beyond immediate stimuli. It has attitude to the objects – these were their representative skill or aesthetic two clear weaknesses as a mode of quirky, intimate things to which clung effect. What this ‘multiplication of managing the masses, which is what something of an irreducible interiority. forms’ reminded me of was the it is, apart from its obvious degrading Aesthetics, or retinal stimulation, small-scale surrealist painter Yves of human potential. Because nature seemed legitimate as long as they Tanguy’s similar representations of is removed there is a danger that were kept to a dark register, the half-animate objects, somehow nature’s natural stimulation of the gothic stimulus of fear being exploited becoming plural and organically body is also removed – there is a by Tom Molloy. Consumption spreading across bare landscapes. tendency towards lethargy and becomes authentic in the face of Of course Tanguy’s pieces still apathy that has to be counteracted death. I found Martin Healy’s occupied, albeit perversely, the by artificial stimulation. It is also photographs of hunting birds of prey, perspectival space of naturalism; all-consuming – it uses up everything emblematic and mysterious in their the pieces in the Crawford had it comes into contact with, and once ornate hoods, to have deeper, come in the wake of Minimalism’s kept in check by the limitations of baroque resonances – these were abolition of the framed or the human body it is now, as its probably the highlights of the show. delineated artwork. They grew into technological extension evolves, And outside of all my talk of circumambient space as if that threatening to wear out the planet. somnolence were Abigail O’Brien’s space were already contaminated by To return to the exhibition, the inflating tank; Lorraine Walsh’s their values, as if to show that they interest inherent in the multiplying dreamy but concentrated Puccini- were natural to this environment of forms and repetitive rhythms of the scored animation; Michael Gurhy’s significance. What the resemblance Sleep of reason’s aesthetics seems rapid-fire video-pieces; Michelle to Tanguy’s work (and for that matter to me to issue from the inter- Deignan’s well-crafted tripartite the continuation of the aesthetics of connection of sleep and the wearing study of the psychology of the urban repetition from the other works in down of objects in the experience emigrant, which grew on me the more the exhibition) suggested was that of consumerism. I viewed it, and Amanda Dunsmore’s the representation of the growth of portrait of Martin McGuinness – detritus was in some way bound up Looking at the individual pieces unless you start reading things into with the aesthetics of somnolence. from this perspective I was struck the tight-mouthed politician’s fighting Tanguy’s scapes are deliberately chiefly by the remarkable political with tiredness under the artist’s poised on the edge of sleep, his indifference of most of them. Once interrogating gaze. forms are the forms of daily life the experience of consumerism was divested of their recognisability, reflected, it was sufficient that the but still not fully absorbed into artists distance themselves from its the somatic indivisibility of internal workings by removing all c . Niall de Buitléar Broadstone XL December 2007 – Dublin January 2008

Jane Jermyn, Gerda 105 Teljeur, Juliana Walters Surface tension (previous page) encourage the viewer to spend time Spaltung involves an element of Surface tension, 2007/ 08 with the work, shifting between drawing which provides a link to installation shot at Broadstone XL with focusing on particular areas and Teljeur’s work. The elasticised cord Gerda Teljeur surveying the whole. They are which the woman stretches forms Big drawings, 2006/ 07, abstract but suggest fantasy a striking linear element, especially pen and ink on paper; Juliana Walters landscapes into which the viewer when reflected in the split-screen Spaltung , 2006/ 07, DVD still; is drawn. Process is foregrounded: mirrored effect which the artist has Juliana Walters, it is impossible to view them used. A sculptural rope ladder Practiced distance, 2006/ 07, DVD still; without imaging the sheer effort installed opposite the video Juliana Walters and time that has gone into the work constitutes a further element of Unpracticed distance, 2007, and indeed the artist’s physical drawing in space. dressmaker's elastic courtesy Wexford Arts Centre movement across such large sheets of paper. The video work relies too much on the use of gimmicky effects. I have Juliana Walters shows two videos often seen the mirror effect used and a sculptural piece which, in video work as an easy trick to 106 although they are presented within produce more complex, visually the same exhibition space as the striking imagery from any simple other works, effectively operated as piece of video footage. This effect, an installation. Time obviously is an coupled with the strategy of creating aspect of all video work (something a fairytale atmosphere through the we are all too often made painfully forest setting and a strikingly dressed, aware of) but here this is especially struggling female protagonist gives of concern due to the repetition of the work a somewhat clichéd feel. the apparently purposeless actions of the female figure, who appears in Ceramicist Jane Jermyn exhibits the main video. The young woman a series of works titled Pod forms. drags an elastic cord as she moves These round vessels are beautifully Surface tension, is an exhibition repeatedly down a forest path. textured and are fine examples of of work in ceramic, sculpture, The cord is attached to one or two craftsmanship. Jermyn draws her drawing and video by three artists. points off camera. Each time the inspiration from forms and texture in The exhibition was curated by cord snaps the process is repeated, nature. Her work variously suggests Wexford Arts Centre and has been but with an extra figure added by moss and lichen, rocks, seed pods, selected for the Arts Council / the use of post-production effects. gourds, bark, and tree trunks. An Chomhairle Ealaíon’s ‘Touring The video is well constructed and The forms have an elemental quality. Experiment’. Wexford Arts Centre succeeds in holding your attention Illustrated in the catalogue and have recently programmed an for quite some time despite the featured in the show at the Wexford exciting and challenging series of repetition. Arts Centre were her Standing exhibitions recently, including forms. The standing and pod forms Mary-Ruth Walsh’s Still life, The work has a dream-like can be seen as respectively male seconds: the imperfect art work1 atmosphere which is appropriate and female. A Freudian interpretation and Seamus Nolan’s Demesne as a as it deals with the psychological of these as phallic and womb part of the Emerging Artists Award. splitting of the self. Spaltung, symbols could provide a link to This exhibition continues that trend. the title of the work, is a Walters’ work. psychoanalytical term meaning The spidery, elegant lines of Gerda ‘splitting’. It is a key idea in the work Teljeur’s drawings are reminiscent of psychologist Melanie Klein, of maps. The lines in these Large a follower of Freud. The presence drawings overlap in varying densities of doubles (or quadruples perhaps) to give a range of tones across the also gives the scene a sense of work. In some areas more ink is the what Freud called the Uncanny. visible than paper. The scale and Parallels could also be drawn layered feel gives the work an between the mirrored symmetry immersive quality. The drawings of the work and ink-blot use in psychoanalysis. Jermyn’s presentation is the least Surface tension is a very well impressive aspect in the show. curated project and a key aspect The work suffers from a display of its success is the level of that would not look out of place involvement the artists have been in a suburban shopping centre. encouraged to have in the realisation The pieces were close together of the exhibition. There is a sense of on a platform with a frosted glass cooperation if not quite collaboration or Perspex top and lit from below. between everyone involved. The work was close to the wall. In addition to the exhibition, there This allowed the objects to be was a panel discussion dealing with viewed from only one side and issues raised by the touring of the encouraged a linear, left-to-right project. There is also a catalogue reading which was unappealing which features work from this and detracted from their sculptural exhibition, previous work by the form. A smaller selection of Jermyn’s artists, and a number of essays. pieces and a more considered Surface tension is a challenging 1 See review by Gemma Tipton placement of them throughout the and engaging exhibition which in Circa 122, winter 2007 107 space would have added to the certainly deserves the opportunity 2 Cliodhna Shaffrey, excerpts overall cohesion of the show and afforded by the Touring Experiment from Surface tension exhibition catalogue, 2007, as encouraged the viewer to spend to reach a broader audience quoted in the press release more time with each piece. throughout the country.

Teljeur’s drawings were placed Niall de Buitléar is an artist. throughout the gallery, helping to give the exhibition a sense of fluidity and coherence. In a way, the drawings provide a link between the ceramic work and video in more than just their physical placement. Teljeur’s work finds common ground with Jermyrn’s ceramics in their organic abstraction and texture while sharing a sense of time, fantasy and linearity with Walter’s work.

The exhibition at Broadstone XL is the second stage of the Touring Experiment, which began at the Wexford Arts Centre. The accompanying text tells us that, “At Broadstone Studios there is a desire to add new work – to respond to the gallery space, to reconsider elements of the show.”2 This second version of the show is different to its previous incarnation most obviously in Jermyn’s decision to focus on the Pod forms rather than showing her Standing forms, which were included in the show in Wexford. The artists will be involved in reconfiguring the exhibition for each of the spaces the exhibition will tour to. c . Michaële Cutaya X-PO January – February Kilnaboy 2008

Michaële Cutaya is an artist and writer based in Galway.

108 Amanda Dunsmore Mr and Mrs Krab’s Utopia

Views of Amanda Dunsmore video installation, Mr and Mrs Krab’s Utopia, in Kilnaboy X-PO; courtesy of the artist Amanda Dunsmore’s latest video The visuals accompanying their Fiona Woods, identified the key installation, Mr and Mrs Krab’s words are composed of a series of goals of the project as establishing Utopia, was presented in a cottage one-minute shots, which Dunsmore a dialogue “between artists and the in the midst of the Burren which, describes as loosely related to the rural communities”3 and, confronting up to 2002, had been Kilnaboy Post details taken in by her drifting the lack of public space, “to develop Office. The two main rooms of the consciousness during the interviews. contexts for the presentation of art building were renovated in 2007 We follow successively shots of a in the rural environment.”4 by Deirdre O’Mahony for the X-PO door opening onto a garden path, local exchange project, to become a misty country road, raindrops on Therefore one of the key issues for a space for contemporary art and leaves, horses grazing in a field, rain Dunsmore was how to reach the community activities. beating on a window pane, the sun desired audience. After having aban- playing in the branches, pheasant doned the idea of using podcasting, Dunsmore’s work was installed in passing by or smoke coming out of in the face of the limited broadband what used to be the office’s public a chimney. availability in the area, she turned room. The original shelves retained toward the idea of using post-office some of their content and the counter No signs here of the most recent, spaces, thus coinciding with Deirdre was recreated as a setting for the maybe less savoury, developments O’Mahony’s own endeavours at 109 video monitor, thus preserving some that have altered the Irish countryside. re-creating a community place in of the functional look of the place. Mostly shots of nature or of a well the old Kilnaboy Post Office. integrated architecture, the images The installation is predominately an seems to respond to the imaginary Whether institutionally or artist-led, audio piece, as underscored by the Ireland that the Krabs have reconsti- a number of art projects have of modest size of the monitor screen. tuted for themselves, exhibiting their late attempted to engage with the The sound track is the edited Utopia and maybe partaking of it. rapidly changing rural environment, recording of interviews by the artist effectively raising the issue of of a Dutch couple who came to live Mr and Mrs Krab’s Utopia video the part the artist is to play in in Co Clare about ten years ago, installation is consistent with re-inventing rural communities within Mr and Mrs Krab.1 Dunsmore’s previous works, a changing socio-economic context. pursuing her interest in the oral Encouragingly, the opening of Mr Complementing each other’s expression of an individual’s memory, and Mrs Krab’s Utopia, on a wintry sentences as in a two-part score, best exemplified by her work with Saturday afternoon, was attended Mr and Mrs Krab first talk of their Billy Hull in Billy’s museum and by individuals from both the art world impressions upon arriving in Ireland Strikers narrative. It is also inscribed and the local community and it did on holidays and how it changed their within a very specific socio-political conjure a congenial atmosphere. life; how it came to be their dream context.2 place and led to their permanent 1 “The participants of a series of installation in the country. Then The contextualisation of her work interviews were asked ‘Why did they talk of the changes they have has always been a key issue in they relocate to start a new life, in Ireland. Were they looking for witnessed happening around them Dunsmore’s approach. Whether it a kind of Utopia?’” and how these changes relate to was the tense situation of the Maze http://www.lit.ie/Sculpture/ what they knew back in Holland. prison, where she was artist in asite/VIDEO/utopia.htm residence, or Weimar in Germany, 2 “I am interested in art as a means of archiving and In a press release, Dunsmore stated where she tracked down traces of documenting places or events that she was “looking for an outside the political changes through the of historical social/ political and informed opinion on social discarded street signs of ex-East significance.” issues found in contemporary rural http://www.lit.ie/sculpture/ Germany for Plan, her work has lecturers/amanda.htm Ireland,” hence her interest in the continually drawn its energy from its 3 “Relating to the complex, rural Krabs’ experience. They offered location. Having lived now in County context is central to this project; a layered view of Ireland, through public art is understood as both Clare for a number of years, it is only a process of research and a their idealised outlook as an fitting that this new situation has mode of dialoguing between antidote to their previous life, and come into her art. artists, rural communities and an appreciation of socio-economic the wider cultural discourse.” http://www.shiftingground.net/ issues that they were able to Mr and Mrs Krab’s Utopia was www.shiftingground.net02_ compare with what they had known. commissioned by Clare County projects_ruralvernacular.htm Council as part of the Rural 4 http://www.shiftingground.net/ vernacular project. The curator, collective.htm c . Declan Sheehan Void January – February Derry 2008

110 Bea McMahon and

Brendan Earley Bea McMahon The invisible state and In the visible state 2008 True complex installation shot, Void courtesy Void Walking though True Complex at ‘Legacy’ can be understood as developers taking over, and a Void, I was struck with the thought referring to something handed down general sense of loss of birthright, that the two works (one by Bea from a previous generation, and also of land, of control. McMahon, one by Brendan Earley) as an allusion that this thing being in adjacent galleries shared much handed down is outdated or And beyond this shared sensibility, quantities > – being expanded I sensed (or projected; no matter and unfolded: like a 3-D Both Alphaville and Bea McMahon’s which) echoes of another work, schematic (an exploded diagram) work in Void are tales of lives and by one of the last modernists: gone awry. A schematic functioning thoughts within an arena existing Alphaville, Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 only aberrantly – beyond its own under the hegemony of the ideology dystopian nouvelle-vague future noir: constraints yet still within the of control: and further, beyond this, the étrange aventure of detective strict directions of its inherent such ideology of control is made Lemmy Caution, the naïf Natasha, functionality… inevitable within what is a hegemony 111 and computer brain Alpha 60 of logic, and even of logicism. ruling his eponymous realm with < Silence. Logic. Security. McMahon’s background of perfect logic. Prudence. > mathematical study prior to her art practice opens clear routes to the Brendan Earley has been examining Bea McMahon’s work in Void was idea of logicism: a school of thought legacies of modernism throughout made in part of a two-channel in the philosophy of mathematics several exhibitions over the last years projection, titled The invisible state which puts forth the theory that (especially see Towards a large and In the visible state. mathematics is an extension of white building at Temple Bar, 2006). logic and therefore some or all In Void, Earley made reference once building design is visible only finance but simply the natural elsewhere. Earley's two modest ambition of any organisation to plan Alphaville posits a unnerving fabled sketches of the Wittgenstein all its actions.> society under the hegemony of designed house are minor partners control – and of a logicism which in his major installation of a The invisible state features has scaled up to the degree of a room-sized structure made up of fragmentary scenes shot by the whole society being dominated by multiple levels, corners, sides, artist, an atmospheric architectural perfect logic. And its equally bases and tops of seemingly eternal study featuring a blend of apparent unnerving that in McMahon’s ongoing and self-sustaining flat-pack archival footage and contemporary invented worlds, such hegemony construction. surveillance-style footage. The study of control, and the hegemony of is of a site wherein architectural such logicism, seems innate, their words. > TWO. We forget that we must first know what PLUS is.> In the visible state features All quotes < > are translated atmospheric footage of an iconic extracts from Alphaville. semi-babbling cloth-capped Irish male, in a rural setting, mumbling fragments about land being taken, Brendan Earley from True complex 2008 installation shot, Void courtesy Void

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