Circa 121 Contemporary Visual Culture in Ireland Autumn 2007 | ¤7.50 £5 Us$12 | Issn 0263-9475 03> 02> 9 770263 947008
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CIRCA 121 CONTEMPORARY VISUAL CULTURE IN IRELAND AUTUMN 2007 | ¤7.50 £5 US$12 | ISSN 0263-9475 03> 02> 9 770263 947008 c . ISSN 0263-9475 Contemporary visual culture in circa Ireland ____________________________ ____________________________ 2 Editor Subscriptions Peter FitzGerald For our subscription rates please see bookmark, or visit Administration www.recirca.com where you can Barbara Knezevic subscribe online. Advertising/ PR/ Marketing Circa is concerned with visual Jennie McGinn culture. We welcome comment, ____________________________ proposals and written Board contributions. Please contact Graham Gosling (Chair), Tara the editor for more details, Byrne, Mark Garry, Georgina or consult our website Jackson, Darragh Hogan, Isabel www.recirca.com Opinions Nolan, John Nolan, Hugh expressed in this magazine Mulholland, Brian Redmond are those of the authors, not necessarily those of the Board. ____________________________ Circa is an equal-opportunities Contributing editors employer. Copyright © Circa Brian Kennedy, Luke Gibbons 2007 ____________________________ Assistants ____________________________ Laura Buckley, Catherine Contacts Barragry, Rachel Simmons Circa 43 / 44 Temple Bar ____________________________ Dublin 2 Legal advice Ireland Justin Lennon, JJ Lennon tel / fax (+353 1) 679 7388 Solicitors. 01 667 6364 [email protected] [email protected] www.recirca.com ____________________________ ____________________________ Designed/produced at Peter Maybury Studio www.softsleeper.com Printed by W & G Baird Ltd, Belfast ____________________________ Printed on 115gsm + 250gsm Arctic the Volume c ____________________________ ____________________________ CIRCA 121 AUTUMN 2007 3 Editorial 24 | Update 22 | Features 30 | Reviews 72 | Project 115 (front cover) Kevin Cosgrove Survey, 2007 oil on canvas 120 x 145 cm from National College of Art and Design Degree Show courtesy the artist national irish visual arts library circa: two critical writing competitions Calling all (a) undergraduates and (b) transition year/year twelve students! We are looking for new writers who are fascinated by contemporary art and visual culture. What do we want? Either a review of an exhibition, or an essay on any topic relating to contemporary art or visual culture. The winning texts will be published on recirca.com Details: (a) You are resident in the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland (b) You have not been published in Circa before, either online or in the magazine (c) You are writing about an art exhibition (up to 750 words) or an art- or visual-culture-related topic (up to 2000 words) (d) Closing Date: 31 January 2008 (e) Submissions to [email protected] or to our postal address. (f) Please state the course you are following and where. _____________________________c Circa 43 / 44 Temple Bar Dublin 2 Ireland tel (+353 1) 679 7388 [email protected] or [email protected] www.recirca.com 24 Editorialc c . Peter FitzGerald In this issue of Circa, Tim Stott looks at the difficulty in art of saying no! How do you beat a system in which creativity and flexibility are ‘in’, and where escape is a commodity? Stott manages to put forward a few potential solutions, if that is the right word. It would be exciting, if possibly very weird, to see them implemented. The protest theme also finds expression in the works of Rita Duffy and Daniel García, written about here by Vikki Bell. It is unlikely that either artist expected their output to change society greatly, and so their work escapes the delusional levels of no-saying of the (now well defunct) avant garde. But their work is still effective protest, when it blocks the smooth erasure of past suffering. Protest I’m pretty sure it was Nancy Reagan, Ronald’s wife, informs Loren Erdrich’s article here as well. She writes who popularised for a time the phrase “Just say no!” about Janine Antoni, Jenny Saville and Catherine Opie. It was to be the solution to kids and drugs; I’m not sure The artists have transgressed bodily boundaries – usually 25 it panned out. their own – exploiting the sense of the monstrous or uncanny to generate their own no! within the semiotics of There’s a sound tradition in art of saying no!, not to drugs gender. (specifically) but to aspects of life that artists have taken against. Perhaps the Salon des Refusés was the first But all is not negation. We carry an article by Eimear major artistic example of no-saying (artists said non! to McKeith on the Burren College of Art. Even writing its the Salon that said non! to them). It usefully illustrates name, I am aware that the College’s staff and founders the power of no!: the system (capitalism or whatever you have gradually naturalised what would on the face of it like to call it) in the end downed the rejected works with seem a bizarre or impossible undertaking: the provision of a satisfied gulp, and the rest is art history. high-standard, third-level art education cheek by jowl with Clare’s grykes and clints, weather and gentians. This issue So how do you make a no! that isn’t just some other also contains a critical round-up based on this summer’s person’s marketable stance. Think, for example of all the Degree Shows around Ireland. Time, space, availability, Che Guevarra posters, a fine example of protest turned to not to mention the odd gremlin, mean that many money. If he had struck a less photegenic pose, would we Degree Shows are under- or not represented. For this my still know his name? The ‘crisis of protest’ is a topic that apologies. However, what is here is a slice of the very exercises many artists and art-theorists. In the February exciting new art that is exiting our art colleges. 2007 issue of Art Monthly, Chris Townsend writes on protest art. The moral bankruptcy of the invasion of Iraq is Read on! an immediate goad to artists, but we have little to show for it. And, warns Townsend, we must beware lest our art “aids rather than afflicts those powers we oppose because it offers the illusion of effective free speech and the right to protest.” That is perhaps the ultimate nightmare for the creator of protest art – that that art be somehow turned to the advantage of the perceived oppressor (think Che again, and what a useful merchandising hook his image is). Perhaps aware of the trap of unwittingly playing the oppressor’s game, some artists have attempted to dream up rules of their own, to make work which is at right angles to just about everything. There are lots of examples of such art in the current issue of Visual Artists Ireland’s Printed Project, edited by Kim Levin (no. 7, 2007). There’s a humour and a franticness to a lot of the art and artists Levin has gathered, coupled with an apparent earnest desire in most instances to create something that can’t readily be commodified, at least for a while. journal of record Circa has been in continuous publication for 26 years and is the record of contemporary art in Ireland. Make sure you are included in this record by advertising here! c _____________________________ For details on advertising please contact Jennie McGinn Circa 43 / 44 Temple Bar Dublin 2 Ireland tel (+353 1) 679 7388 [email protected] www.recirca.com/adverts c . Letters other forms of art. It is artwork evolves are also one by the name of important for the writer to important ‘information’. Robert Slattery involved in be adept at discerning Unfortunately the writer the seminar, neither issues surrounding live-art could not arrive at this attending nor speaking. and project-based point as what was I think the writer was practice, as opposed to reviewed was a limited referring to Raymond object-based work, to selection of the overall Scannell. Again, all this avoid superficial project and at that, a information was and is reportage of art events/ misfactual account. available on all material projects. relating to the project. The conversation that A reviewer must be au ensues from a project like “… was actually an fait with obvious criteria Based on a true story is actress.” No. Ema related to the particular very much a part of the Thompson was not an artform, even when the life of the project. Yet this actress hired for the day. artform does not exist conversation is only valid She did pretend to be Dear Editor, within commonly when it is specific to the me, but I purposely did 27 I am writing in relation to definable boundaries – project that actually not choose an actress; the review of Based on a understanding processes happened and not to a she is a dancer and true story by Treasa specific to the relevant limited account of part choreographer, thus O’Brien in the spring artform translates into of the project, distorted coming from a different edition of Circa. The important ‘information’. by factual error, as was art discipline. An interview article had many factual Experience and engage- the case in the article in with her is available under errors, which of course ment – further to the question. seminar reactions on the leads to misrepresenta- above criteria – are website confirming these tion and misinterpretation necessary factors in Niamh Lawlor, artist details. of both the project as a reviewing a participatory www.based-on-a-true- whole and of the roles of live-art project. Based story.com (response overleaf) the partners involved. on a true story was very It also means that many much an interactive/ List of errors in Circa interesting aspects arising participatory piece of review of the project from a project are left work. Preceding the Based on a true story by unaddressed. seminar, the audience writer Treasa O'Brien were engaged via e-mail, Public clarification of forums, website and “…and is part of a wider information was very interviews screened on research project of the much tied to the both the website and artist Niamh Lawlor.” conceptual concerns of monitors on UCC This was not a research the project.