Circa 122 Contemporary Visual Culture in Ireland Winter 2007 | ¤7.50 £5 Us$12 | Issn 0263-9475 04> 9 770263 947008

CIRCA 122 CONTEMPORARY VISUAL CULTURE IN IRELAND WINTER 2007 | ¤7.50 £5 US$12 | ISSN 0263-9475 04> 9 770263 947008

22 Editorialc c . Peter FitzGerald Place – you can’t live without it. selection of Gormley, but clearly Laura Gannon. Here, it would seem It was Honoré Daumier who gave us there was some disgruntlement at first, site is everything, but the catchphrase Il faut être de son among the invited artists about the Gannon’s work has managed to temps [you have to be of your time], role they were being asked to fill. slew site over time, making, in a way, and it is a sentiment few interesting The more organic process which time become the site of her contemporary artists would argue Tipton describes in relation to a response to Gray’s initial endeavour. with. But place is not the same, and project by Louise Walsh may not And anyone who knows James it manifests itself in current practice yield an international, ‘signature’ Coleman’s work will also know how in a few different ways. sculpture, but it may be better for extremely careful he is with his the soul. installations, how his control of the Take site-specificity. Those artists artwork very often extends beyond it who engage with this notion Place and site can be big or small, to the environment in which it takes sometimes seem like the shock and the current issue carries a place. In his article in this issue, troops of art. Conversely, those who ‘Letter from St Louis’ by Sydney Chris Clarke explores this aspect of sovereignly ignore the space within Norton. I was attracted to commis- Coleman’s work: the extent to which which their work operates can, sioning a text on St Louis for two the meaning of two particular pieces depending on your ethos or your reasons. The first was personal: by Coleman is embedded in location. 23 mood, seem detached and maybe I lived there for a while as a kid, and spoilt. I don’t know where I would the city still evokes some random Place is often mentioned in relation locate Garrett Phelan’s work on memories. For instance, they liked to writers on art; for example, most the site-specificity continuum, as he to say, “If you don’t like the weather, articles in Circa will carry a sentence manages in many of his works to just wait a minute.” It was a state- somewhere identifying the writer and both respect and assault his ment utterly out of character with the her or his location and occupation. environment in equal measure. place – in summer you could stand Such information is sometimes a His gargantuan text-and-image piece and stare at the spanking blue sky useful ‘way in’ to the writer’s text – on the glass surfaces of the Dublin for a month without a single cloud through place and profession the Civic Offices – possibly the largest drifting by, and in winter you might writer becomes less disembodied, artwork ever made in Ireland – is a be able to do something similar, more human, but also more distanced case in point. There is an awful lot though the temperature had dropped from any impossible objectivity. going on in Phelan’s work, and we by 60 degrees centigrade in the What may not be apparent is that are lucky to have Graham Parker’s meantime. Then there were the drills. around half of Circa’s writers have essay in this issue to guide us My memory is that around once a trained as artists, a statistic that is through some of it. month sirens would go off and we probably true of most art magazines. would be marched out of school and What effect does this fact have on Very much of Phelan’s output is around the corner. I think this was their writing, and what effect does site-specific, but what of Anthony supposed to be a nuclear-attack their writing have on their art-making, Gormley’s? He has recently been exercise; we would stare the sky and if they do still make art? In this issue selected to install a large sculpture hope that at least a tornado would we carry a ‘vox pop’ on the topic. It’s in the Liffey. Not everyone is happy appear. What interested me more entirely anonymous, so that writers about this and it seems that, in some about St Louis in the present context, could speak their minds and voice ways, Gormley is amongst them. though, was – given Ireland’s recent their (self-)doubts. It makes for some Gemma Tipton writes here about economic development – its boom- fascinating reading.1 the functions and onuses being put to-bust history; St Louis managed to on such public art, and about artists’ lose around half its population last Lastly, postcards are a great site for dissatisfaction with their frequent century, as its economy foundered. art. There’s a brief article here on ‘sticking plaster’ role. Much, much How does art fare against that a Circa postcard competition; our too often, it seems, art and artists background? Here, Norton offers us thanks to all who participated. are called for only at the ‘oops! silly an insight. us, we were so busy with money What else? Lots – enjoy! matters, sure didn’t we totally forget Place is also very important in the 1 It is likely that many of the writers in the vox about the prettification art’ stage. work of three other artists consid- pop were not too pushed either way about It is of course unlikely that the Dublin ered in this issue. In an interview anonymity; nonetheless, the results would Docklands Development Authority by Vincent Honoré, we look at an probably have been different if everyone was named. The vox pop’s coordinator was forgot about the art, rather than there iconic, very site-specific work of art, paid for putting together the piece, but being a much more complicated the house E.1027 by Eileen Gray, writers could not be; instead, Circa has scenario behind the eventual as seen through the lens of artist donated ¤250 to charity. 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 toc [email protected] or to our postal address. (f) Please state the course you are following and where.

Closing date 31 January 2008

Circa 43 / 44 Temple Bar Dublin 2 Ireland tel / fax (+353 1) 679 7388 [email protected]

What's up with the IAAA? c . Update In June the shortlist was published for the Irish American Arts Awards, which are in fact visual- arts awards. There is supposed to be $30,000 up for grabs, and the shortlisted artists are Noel Brennan (Dublin), Mark Garry (Dublin), Lee Welch (Dublin), Cecily Brennan (Dublin), Conor McFeeley (Derry), and Corban Walker (New York). The winners were to be announced in September. But now it seems that Seán Hillen selected to build Omagh Bomb memorial People on the move 25 Dublin-based, Newry-born artist Seán Hillen, along with the results will be given Toby Dennett has moved Desmond Fitzgerald Architects, has been chosen as “in early 2008 to coincide from his post of Director winner of the competition to build the Omagh Bomb with the announcement of Visual Artists Ireland memorial, for their 'reflected light' design. The memorial of an exciting new devel- to become Head of the should be finished by next August's tenth anniversary of opment.” Not necessarily Artists’ Support the bomb. A key part of the winning design consists of a lot of use to those Programme at the Arts employing a mirror in the memorial park which will "track shortlisted… Council/ An Chomhairle the sun, and pour a constant beam of sunlight onto 31 Ealaíon. Meanwhile, small mirrors." These mirrors will be arranged to carry the Rita Duffy new president Noel Kelly, who has been light onto a cut-glass crystal heart sculpture, housed of RUA Curator at Temple Bar inside a pillar of glass, at the bomb site which is nearly Rita Duffy, well known Gallery and Studios, is to always in the shade. "It will sparkle and glitter with chronicler in paint of the take up Dennett's position the light. It will be a beautiful and remarkable sight. tougher side of Irish society, at VAI. Both could be said The approach to the art work is that it should attempt the Troubles included, to have had a considerable, to express simply, uninhibitedly and vividly the huge is the new President of positive impact in their outpouring of compassion for the victims," according to the Royal Ulster Academy previous posts. the design submission. in Belfast. The last issue of Circa featured a profile VISUAL moves a little closer of her work along with In the initial stages, it was billed as the biggest space for that of Daniel García. contemporary art in Ireland – quite a coup for a smallish There is talk that the town like Carlow. It is not clear if that original claim now RUA may set up its own stands, but VISUAL still promises to be a major player, premises, perhaps along if all goes well (the idea was going round that Carlow the lines of the RHA in Local Authorities were trying to offload the programming Dublin (or indeed the RA of VISUAL onto IMMA, but that surely can’t be right…) in London), but for the Carlow Local Authorities have now finalised the contractor moment it can perhaps be and architectual firm that will construct VISUAL on the considered the 'anchor grounds of Saint Patrick’s College. VISUAL will contain tenant' of the Ormeau the National Centre for Contemporary Art and the George Baths Gallery in Belfast. Bernard Shaw Theatre. Terry Pawson Architects – an Indeed, there was much architectural company based in London – and Rohncon debate last year about Ltd contractors will oversee the construction of VISUAL, the possibility of the RUA consisting of four principal gallery spaces as well as a running the Ormeau performing-arts theatre. Total area is 3,130m2, and total Baths Gallery, following cost is put at almost €12 million – both figures from its sudden closure earlier 2005. VISUAL is due to open in early 2009. in 2006; there was a groundswell of opinion at that time against the idea. c . Features 26 Artist-writers, writer-artists: An anonymous vox pop Anonymous 28 | Space, time, and a house by the sea Vincent Honoré 34 | James Coleman: Absent works Chris Clarke 39 | “2, 3, 4…” Garrett Phelan Graham Parker 42 | Who makes place? Architecture and public sculpture (whose job is it anyway?) Gemma Tipton 49 | Postcards from everywhere 54 | Letter from St Louis Sydney Norton 56 | (background) Garrett Phelan God only knows (detail), 2005 installation shot

Dublin Civic Offices

(see article, p 42) c .

c . Anonymous

28 ARTIST-WRITERS, WRITER-ARTISTS: AN ANONYMOUS VOX POP

This anonymous vox pop is a survey of a number of practitioners who move between artmaking and writing. Some of the questions asked of the contributors included – What are the positive and negative aspects of doubling as an artist and critic? How has writing affected your art(making) career? Are artmaking and writing/ criticism equal in importance for your practice, or do they jostle for priority? Do you feel it is a problematic critical position? Do you feel artists make better critics? What are the benefits, and/ or pitfalls of writing about your peers’/ friends’ artwork? Do you write ‘bad’ reviews – why or why not? Is there an overlap of personal and professional interests? What are the broader implications, for artmaking, and for criticism?

This tactic of anonymity was employed for a number of reasons, partly in order to see what artists are interested in contributing to this debate when there is none of the cachet of critical visibility on offer. Of course, this cynicism is tempered with the hope that such a response could enable a freer discussion than what is typical – the possibility to speak of doubt, errors of judgement, fear of failure, mistakes and misgivings. This happens too rarely.

A number of contributors maintained that anonymity was not an issue for them, or even explicitly wished to be named. However, the premise of total anonymity was maintained, as it seemed unfair to present anonymous contributors as if they withheld their identities. This aspect of the vox pop may merely seem cowardly: there is admittedly a certain naïvety in the impulse towards some kind of ‘pure’ critical discourse. Hopefully the piece can function as a discrete experiment, the beginning of an enquiry that can continue, with names attached, afterwards. ______

I write about art because I want to understand the art I am not sure if my contribution to this vox pop will yield that I have seen. That’s where the link with my own many new insights about the dilemma of the Artist-Writer art-making comes: if I understand why I like what I like, or Writer-Artist, because I stopped making art a long I can use it in my art. time ago. Nevertheless, I have to acknowledge a direct connection between my current activities as a writer and It seems likely to me that good writing and good art flow researcher and my earlier practice as an artist. During my from the same inner concern. That concern is possibly a (fairly brief) career as an exhibiting artist, I developed need to create something worthwhile. projects with very specific audiences and sites in mind, and I was particularly interested in the ways in which Social relations do impact on criticism. I don’t know reception is structured by the context of exhibition or which is better or worse: to feel a responsibility towards through reference to art-historical discourse or popular an artist you do know, or to feel none towards an artist culture. These ideas often surface in my writing, and in you don’t know. In either case, if the inner satisfaction some of my earlier reviews I tended to prioritise analysis isn’t there, it’s time to do something else. of the staging and mediation of shows over discussion of individual works. This was definitely an extension of 29 my interest as an artist in processes and structures of reception. More recently, I have moved away from this approach and I often actively resist evaluating exhibitions through reference to published curatorial statements or press releases.

Although I engage in various forms of writing, such as journal articles, book chapters and catalogue essays, exhibition reviews serve a particular purpose within my research. The experience of writing about a show is qualitatively different from simply seeing it; the act of writing requires me to develop and articulate my own position in relation to specific works or currents within art practice or curatorial discourse. For this reason, I only review exhibitions that explore ideas or include works that intersect with my research. Equally, however, I have no problem with writing a negative review once I have established that point of connection.

The originator of this vox pop survey seems to assume that there is a status to be gained from writing and publishing. My view is that few people who write regularly are motivated by a desire for status, even though they enjoy privileged access to press information about exhibitions or occasional insights into the production process. For me, writing a review is a way of articulating and remembering my own experience of an exhibition; the real privilege lies in sharing this experience with others, in the hope of eliciting some kind of response. ______step into publication: I don’t know whether it was the provinciality of my home-city or a sense of distance Well I guess the most positive aspect [of doubling as and exclusivity that seemed to emanate from national artist and critic] would be that engaging with and writing art-critical publishing, but it took quite a while and a about other artists and artistic activities encourages one change of perspective before I became comfortable with to become more rigorous in terms of critically appraising regularly submitting work to art magazines. one’s personal practice. The most apparent negative of When I analyse my dual practice I like to think that there this multitasking (I also curate) is that it becomes is no hierarchy among the two disciplines, that what I do confusing as to what aspect of you you prioritize and it moves from one to the other, or combines the two, can lead one to give less time to one’s art practice. according to a further principle. Ideally what I hope to It is a great way to make contacts with mechanisms of practise is a form of ‘thinking’, a concept I have brought the artistic community you may not otherwise come into over from Martin Heidegger, and which I use, probably contact with and to look at the concerns of other artists. crudely, to explain to myself my shifting between media Art-making would have prominence and in the past the and modes. I have brought in the philosophical dimension other aspects have jostled for priority, but I have taken to a great extent because I feel that this is treacherous on less writing commissions as a consequence. Yes, territory, requiring critical attention; that employment 30 I actually do [think artists make better critics] (but not without hierarchy of various media is not only closely necessarily better writers). I feel they have a better related to the discourse of spectacle, but that talk of the understanding of the process and conceptual frame- interdisciplinary very often proves to be a euphemistic or works of artists, and I feel this insight aids a writer in ‘positive’ branding of straitened circumstances. If a terms of appraising a work from a critical perspective. manager begins to mention ‘multitasking’ or ‘flexibility’, Well the pitfalls [of writing about peers’/ friends’ artwork] it general means that an abrupt change or extension of are obvious, in that one opens oneself up to the possibility duties is about to be imposed, with little or no considera- of causing offence to a friend or peer. The benefits are tion for the situation of the employee, or their conception more difficult to distinguish, but I suppose the main thing of their role or place. An artist who embraces their new would be that it encourages a system where honesty hybrid role as artist-writer (not to mention artist- prevails, and this can only lead to more open and candid administrator, artist-businessman, etc) is often someone discourses within the artistic community. who is adapting to alien circumstances, who reaches I mainly write catalogue essays and one very rarely around for a theoretical prop that makes it easier to grin gets asked to write a catalogue essay by an artist who and bear it. recognizes that you don’t feel their work is of value. I have only ever written one predominantly negative Which is not to discount the hybrid practitioner: it is review. It would not be something I would actively seek simply a matter of recognizing the Janus-faced character to do, and I hope that I write constructively about the of the multidisciplinary. The conceptual possibilities positive and negative aspects that one observes in a opened up by modernist experiment in combining the piece of work. Fundamentally yes, there is an overlap of different media, and their philosophical parallels in the professional and personal interests. likes of Heidegger or Wittgenstein, is offset by the socio- historical occasion of the opening of these possibilities, an awareness that a loss of the independence, criticality or definition of the distinct disciplines is more in tune with ______current economic and cultural conditions.

I suppose I belong to the class of writer artists, as I was In practice, I have found that my experience of writing scholarly pieces and poetry before I made any art art-making has radicalised my writing, particularly my (which is to discount my splendid teenage efforts in Indian poetry; my experience of writing has made me more ink). On the other hand, it was through visual-art practice demanding as regards the thought manifesting itself in that I began to write about contemporary art. I wandered works of visual art. through conversation and a post-punk ethos into collabo- rating on art projects, then found that a discursive dimension seemed to issue naturally from this work, leading to my becoming the copywriter and last-minute apologist of the work. It was a short step from here to writing about the work of friends, and from there to converting the experience of the public exhibition and the ensuing conversations into critical texts. If there was a major obstacle to overcome in this progression it was the ______

I believe that, incidentally, writing clarifies my thinking I began to write about art as one way of breaking into the towards a vocabulary for my art practice. But that scene. I had studied art abroad and did not have many vocabulary and that practice are quite different things. contacts on returning to live in Ireland. I reckoned it would Besides, the vocabulary frequently emerges in a be a good way of getting my name around. This eventually response to another artist’s work and is not necessarily backfired somewhat as I got more writing gigs than art appropriate to my project, process or practice. On the opportunities, which was unfortunate as writing can take other hand, a thought that emerges in the presence of an up just as much time as making art. I do enjoy the parallel alien work will frequently return as a question at a point career that writing offers, not that my work differs radically in my own process. from my writing, but they are two distinct aspects within a practice. I believe that writing flexes the thinking and articulating muscles. This makes it easier to think, talk and write Sometimes I am able to promote art that I feel needs about my own work. discussing, other times I just write for money. The fun part about writing for money (not that there are ever huge I consider myself to be an artist, writer and critic. They financial rewards), is that generally it involves research into 31 are all part of the same practice: just different modes, a practice or topic I am unfamiliar with. This can make me media and moments. look closely at an artwork or artist that I might have not spent much time on, enriching my respect for them or I believe that my greatest emphasis has always been creating a fictional intellectual discourse about them on making written texts, which I consider the most instead. And yes, this can mean writing about something pleasurable activity. Thus, my art-making activities have you don’t believe in. always taken a back seat. The notion of any conflicting interests or lack of transparency I consider the best artists to be critics. However, they by writing about peers or friends is naïve. The art world may not always produce written texts. is populated by small groupings, cliques and networks. Often a good text comes from a close relationship with I consider the work of the jobbing critic or reviewer to the subject, as in the artist. Ireland has quite a small be an elucidator of work, not an arbiter of taste or contemporary art scene so it’s difficult not knowing the quality. Thus, there should be no problem in writing on artist personally, and lazy if you don’t bother tracking them anyone’s work. down. On the other hand, this means that there are rarely bad reviews. I have written some in my time, but I hope I consider myself to write bad reviews when I start they were constructively critical and not negative just for with something other than the experience I have in the sake of it. I really enjoy reading a good stinging the presence of the work. Criticism for me is trying to critique of a show or artist, but these are mainly found in understand my experience of the work and to share that foreign publications from the UK or US. understanding with a reader. The whole idea of art criticism can be quite tricky therefore. All my interests are personal; there is no distinction I prefer to use the term ‘art writing’, as I do not and would between the personal and the professional and wasn’t it not describe myself as an art critic just because I happen all supposed to be political anyway? to write about art. Art criticism is rare in Ireland, as there are very few good thinkers who actually add anything interesting or original to the international discussion about art. Tragically, a lot of good texts by Irish writers get published abroad as there is no real editorial support here for cutting-edge writing. As a result, the higher-profile critics here either write in a florid, self-indulgent style or simply repeat the popular current art language and theories as read everywhere else. Often this reads badly, as the work just cannot support the superlatives or discourse applied to it. Maybe I expect too much.

Besides all this, the plurality and blending of practices in art today has broken many of the old hierarchies, losing some expertise possibly along the way but creating new perspectives and indeed pecking orders. ______a thing of the past. Reduced to becoming investment-tip sheets in a seller’s market, local criticism and reportage My first semester at the New York School of Visual Arts dumbs down and reinvents itself through juvenilia. began in September of 1969; I was eighteen years old. Particularly annoying is Artforum’s monthly ‘Top Ten’ Every instructor that I admired wrote, primarily for the feature, where forming lists, a coping mechanism for art publications based in Manhattan – Artforum, Arts fictional record shopkeepers, replaces the decidedly less Magazine, and Art in America. Since the late ‘50s, sexy artist article or statement. I should mention that most artists attracted to art centers like New York were while I enjoy obsessive people, obsessive art pushes me deeply educated, the products of graduate programs that away – particularly stalker-type fandom. Imagine my demanded a certain amount of writing and research. discomfort at the last Whitney Biennale, which mostly Minimal and conceptual art had proved limiting in so far resembled the labyrinth bedroom of some bi-polar emo as the artist’s physical participation in the production youngster. Choosing to live on the urban margins for of their art was no longer an all-consuming job. whatever purpose is dying out; unsustainable in cities A McLuhanesque optimism also pervaded. Information, like New York and Dublin. The recent excavations of distributed through any media, could function in place of bridge-burning names from the past (Lee Lozano, the now dubiously perceived object. I observed that Jack Goldstein), while introducing many to important art, 32 artists either wrote as their art (Joseph Kosuth and the underscores the absence, and nostalgia for the genuine Art/ Language group) or contributed criticism not to pay voice. Presented in its place, a dark fantasy of the teenage their bills (which it never does) but to establish platforms prolonged; manifested through MySpace narcissism, pop of validation. Additionally, the humble gig of writing cult worship, and blue-chip art pranks. So there. reviews could allow the artist friendly access to how art was marketed and sold in what was, now quaintly, When an artist uses their position as published critic to referred to as the ‘gallery system’. In the welcomed guise choose team members or establish territory, it could of ‘critic’, a young artist could forge useful relationships make for some snarky, but thrilling reading. Harm can be with art dealers, their up-and-coming assistants, curators, done, especially in transitional moments; such as the collectors, and even the put-upon souls who painted the skewering of ‘70s Art’ by the generation of artist/ writers walls white and hauled cases of wine up musty staircases. who formed the basis of the ‘80s art boom in New York. However, a public print feud between individuals could As a younger person, I recognized the voice of the be instructive in these kissy-huggy times. A schism has obsessed; it leapt off the page. I heard it in the music developed where certain art requires critical support for its reviews of Lester Bangs, in the forgotten criticism of the advancement, while other art, the art that sells, does not. British artist James Collins, and in the writings of Robert My giving John Currin a lousy review, in any publication, Smithson (1938 – 73). While now a much beloved mythic is not going to derail that particular career or offset figure, my own admiration of Smithson began with a sales. Spanking is best done by someone with power, viewing of his greatest work, the 1972 film Spiral jetty like Roberta Smith’s simmering, New York Times slam which I saw in its original context, the Dwan Gallery, on of Annie Leibovitz’s retro at the Brooklyn Museum last an assignment from Vito Acconi’s class. Smithson, a high fall. Awesome. school graduate, was the real deal: an American oddball and visionary speedfreak romantic from the ‘Garden For good or bad, writing criticism informs the making of State’ of New Jersey. I am sure he could be obnoxious. one’s own art. Artists’ writings occasionally transcends His 1967 Artforum essay, ‘A tour of the monuments of the art itself, as in Smithson’s case. More artists should Passaic’ affected not only my art, but how I move about write, and they probably do, blogging away somewhere in the world. I miss that voice; I listen for it my readings unknown to me. Many artists stop writing when they are at the school library magazine rack where I teach, financially secure, or weary of promoting the careers of rarely hearing anything that comes close. I wonder what others; perhaps the mighty net will extend the voices of Smithson would make of the young, studied, hipsters those who would otherwise withdraw from the dialogue. who venerate him now; he so skeptical of Duchamp’s Critics who chose to produce art at some later point do ‘inauthentic’ dandyism. so at the risk of being a tolerated curiosity, except for Godard. Over-refinement of ideas already ‘out there’ Obsession, that inability to get the proper distance on remains a pitfall to those who never previously risked a subject, plays a big a role in much that is current, the experience of fucking up in public. as ‘abstraction’ may have fifty years ago. Entangled with the art market’s demand for novelty and youth, the obsessed meshes with the forever-adolescent, emerging here as a major brand in this cash-and-carry environment where the courtship of the connoisseur is ______

I have at various points found my dual practice as both an artist and writer to be very fraught. In general though, I do enjoy the writing, and it definitely supports my practical work in an interesting, if often elliptical way. It tends to rotate in cycles, where one aspect of my practice goes quiet (usually because of in-depth and tricky research that’s not ready to be articulated) and the other takes its public turn.

In terms of career, writing definitely affords an artist a critical voice, and gives a particular kind of visibility. (Art opportunities have come to me through writing, which I find interesting, and surprising.) This wasn’t a motivation for me in beginning to write, but it does now make me more aware of how my art practice is refracted through 33 the writing that I do.

Being a writer as well as an artist has also taught me some things about the machinations of Irish art publishing that I consider valuable. I increasingly appreciate the importance of what gets written – I’ve noticed how Circa recently changed its tagline from ‘contemporary visual culture in Ireland’ to ‘journal of record’. The latter is maybe a more accurate indication of its significance. Often, more people will experience artwork through print reproduction (catalogues, reviews) than actually experience exhibitions. I didn’t really appreciate the seriousness of what it is to be a writer, and the sense of permanence attached to published work, until I’d written a couple of pieces that I really regretted.

In general I prefer to write about ideas, trends and structures, and not particular artists or works. I took a hiatus from writing reviews for a number of reasons; partly I was starting to become more known as a writer than as an artist, and that bothered me. I was getting tired of acquaintances expecting me to write reviews as unpaid favours, and more that what was expected was some kind of positive publicity, not actual critique.

Also, I found I didn’t have much to say about a lot of the work I was being asked to review. There has to be more to a review than a handful of references, sprinkle of quotations and infuriatingly tidy ending. This format reassures artist and writer/ critic of their mutual cleverness but is not necessarily the most interesting or useful way to respond to a work. I hate it when writing just ‘explains away’ the work, or provides a critical bolster that it’s not really worthy of. The writing has to do something else, something different. I don’t believe it’s a form that exists only for acts of ‘decoding’ (I should point out that these are criticisms of my own writing as much as anyone else’s). It’s a formula that I’ve found difficult to escape, though I will try again. c . Vincent Honoré Laura Gannon A house in Cap-Martin, 2007 installation shot Whitechapel Project Space courtesy the artist

34 Space, time, and a house by the sea Irish-born artist Laura Gannon recently showed her I was curious to find out what happened to the house, latest video installation, a two-screen film work, at the and while visiting Cap-Martin in 2001, I tried to get Whitechapel Project Space, London. A House in access to the house. It was closed to the public. I often Cap-Martin (2007) was shot in the seminal modernist thought about the house subsequently and on a return house, E.1027, designed by Eileen Gray in 1929 and visit to the area in 2005, I started to research how I could built in the south of France. The house quickly became gain access to the property and find out about the ownership a myth, both for its historical artistic importance and its of the house. My films are set in site-specific architectural long story of ownership claims, vandalism and even locations; a particular space can have a gestation time murder, until it was bought in 1999 by the French of three to four years in my mind before the work begins. government and fenced off. The non-narrative and I like giving the idea time to develop and seeing if it evocative film plays with dualities, temporalities and survives over the course of a few years. In this case the memories, making time its main setting, and turning space that I had not even entered, but had just seen space into a time investigation. through the front gate, had firmly lodged in my mind. I was interested in the house’s abandonment, the fact that its The following conversation took place in London in ownership was debated at international governmental September 2007. level, yet it was in a state of in-between. In 2001, while there was a commitment to restore the building, the funds 35 Vincent Honoré: The set in A House in Cap-Martin has were not yet in place. a particular history. This monument of modern architecture, was designed by Eileen Gray in 1926 but, as the title The neglected condition of the building clashed with the of your work states (the title refuses to name the house), iconic image of a white house which remains intact in an you are not illustrating this history (and its multiple often-reproduced black-and-white photograph. The house, stories). On the contrary, you keep a certain distance built into a cliff, sitting still, high over a shimmering from the myth, from the house as a monument: you treat Mediterranean sea, is preserved in print complete with it as a habitat and in doing so you adopt a different angle striped awnings over the windows and a lifebuoy attached from that of other filmmakers interested in Modernist to the gable wall, suggesting a play on a moored ship. architecture (Daria Martin or Ursula Mayer). At the same These accessories are long gone, leaving a skeleton time, and opposite to what Pierre Huyghe did with Le framework in their wake. In the film, I chose to work Corbusier in This not a time for dreaming, you avoid the against the myth of the image and focus on the current anecdote, be it your personal relationship to the house or condition of the house before restoration begins. the numerous legends surrounding it. How did you come across this building and why did you choose this particular In my work I am interested in slippage, the things that distanced point of view? happen to buildings and people that are failures, or out of synch with expectations. How time and memory often Laura Gannon: Growing up in Ireland, I was always aware rewrite histories and how, through the layers, the original of Eileen Gray and the iconic photographs of E.1027. In a story is overwritten. E.1027 is perched above the country not renowned for producing many international Mediterranean, overlooking Monaco, and is only accessible architects in the early twentieth century, E.1027 occupied by a public footpath, the location virtually unchanged a unique place in cultural history, as a house designed by since Gray discovered the site in the 1920s. The house’s an Irishwoman that addressed the modern movement. Its neglect and uninhabited state seemed out of synch neglected state was occasionally referred to in cultural with the location which suggests glamour, leisure and texts. Despite an ongoing campaign in the 1980s by various sensuality. architects, the Irish government refused to purchase the house on behalf of the Irish state. The house itself is accessed through a small gate, and a path leading down to the entrance is suggestive On October 25, 1999, the town of Roquebrune Cap- of a stage setting, a place of mixed histories and Martin and the French government – through a national unfinished business. agency, Conservatoire du Littoral – bought the villa. It is currently being restored with a planned opening in 2009. The title for the work, A House in Cap-Martin, refers to In 2000 the National Museum of Ireland purchased a how, when Le Corbusier published the murals he had collection of Eileen Gray’s furniture; some of the pieces painted in the house in his Oeuvre complète (1946) and were designed specifically for E.1027. This purchase in L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui (1948), Eileen Gray’s house was considered to go some distance in reinstating the is referred to as “a house in Cap-Martin” – her name is reputation of Eileen Gray. not even mentioned.1 Did this house have a particular resonance with your The original concept of the film was to create a fictional creation as a female Irish artist? The house is now a ruin, revisit by Gray to the house. I wanted to have a character and you’re documenting this decay, the enduring history representing the older Gray revisiting the grounds of the of violence and violation permeating the work of Eileen house but never crossing the threshold to the interior. Gray, starting with the murals by Le Corbusier who – without her permission – decided to paint the walls of As the visit didn’t take place in reality, I wanted to use the house and even appropriated the ownership of this the fictional performance to ‘enter’ into the history of the work. This house is the subject of some feminist house. As there is an extensive amount of architectural approach: how did you react to these? theory written about Le Corbusier’s murals in the house and Grays’s response, calling them vandalism. I wanted While I am documenting the decay of the building I am to create an opening in an already heavily mediated story. also interested in Gray’s concepts for the house and the The story itself has become a myth, as there is little ‘ghost’ of this ideal in its original state. For many modernist written by the protagonists. architects the interior was of less relevance than the façade. Gray built E.1027 from the inside out. She also By fictionalising Gray’s revisit to the house, the character’s designed the furniture, the floor coverings and the wall old age echoes the deterioration of the building and the 36 hangings; her approach was about creating a complete disintegration of the pristine finish. inhabited space. This contrast to the clinical urban functionalism of modernism created a new way of living. At a later stage I decided to have male characters in the interior. It evolved from the idea of playing with temporality. The house could be read first through its relationship Badovici, Le Corbusier and Gray were peers from the with the body. Gray strove to heighten bodily awareness, same generation. By choosing two middle-aged men to providing a profusion of glinting materials in the bathroom suggest the characters of Badovici and Le Corbusier, – tiled walls, folding mirrors, porcelain sinks – whose while choosing a significantly older woman to take the cool surfaces provided a respite from the relentless part of Gray, the characters are no longer occupying the Mediterranean sun. Such material palpability invoked a same time and temporality. This may suggest that they are sense of the erotic, the sensual. trapped within time and the building while Gray has left, moved on. This film examines female creativity and a different understanding of space. I wanted to pull back from the Although the two male characters are engaged in a existing feminist discourse and the debates about the discussion, the viewer never gets to hear what they are presence of Le Corbusier’s murals. I would have wanted saying. The only audible spoken words are from Gray’s to film this house even if the murals didn’t exist. character who states, “Il y a un chemin vers le haut et un chemin vers le bas. Le chemin d’en haut et le chemin d’en There are five characters in your film, two women, bas ne sont qu’une seule et meme route” (“there is a road two men and the house. Yet there is no narrativity per se; which leads upwards and there is a road which leads 2 we perceive that each of them bears a symbolic weight, downward. Both are one and the same”). like a ghost memory haunting them. More precisely, the characters in your film are not acting like symbols, I would agree that there are five characters in the film; but like signs: they index a previous situation and an however, the second female is a representation of Grays’s otherness. The two men echo Jean Badovici (the lover) long-time housekeeper and companion, Louise. This figure and Le Corbusier (the thief or the rapper), while the two is not meant to represent Gray. This woman was an women echo Eileen Gray. The men are inside, they unplanned fifth character. She was actually the clapper- occupy the house and have a conversation about it, they board woman on set and was caught in the frame next to rationalise it; the women are outside, they observe and the Le Corbusier mural. I debated about her inclusion as one of them says a quote from Eileen Gray. In the film, she had made an unintentional appearance. I also thought the men and the women are separated and never meet. that her role as housekeeper-companion shed a chink of light on Gray’s background as an Irish-Scottish aristocrat. E.1027 was designed and built by Eileen Gray for Jean Badovici and herself between 1926 and 1929. She named the house E.1027: E for Eileen, 10 for J (the tenth letter of the alphabet), 2 for B and 7 for G. They both lived there most of the summer months until Gray built her own house in Castellar in 1934. 41

Laura Gannon A house in Cap-Martin, 2007 film stills courtesy the artist A House in Cap-Martin is essentially based on a series Indeed, you firmly link space and time. Is time the space, of metaphors and images: resurgences, pairing, echoes. the setting of this film, one could even say of most of The surface of a tree echoing the skin of the older your projects (Sala della musica, 2004-7)? woman, echoing the walls in the house. Beyond the narrativity, the work is formally rich: fading, repetitions, That is a good way of describing it; the time is the space marks on the film, the sound of the sea during the whole and the space is time. They are a single and double entity movie. How important was the notion of time and its that I stage my work around. capturing in your project? The off-frame and ellipse are extremely important in The film originally was conceived as a one-screen work. the film; they structure the film. How do they resonate During the editing process, a shift took place, in order to together? accommodate the placement of the characters. A duality in the narrative is created by the two screens shown side The off-frame operates as a device to remind the viewer by side. There is a division between exterior, interior, time, that no story is a straight one-dimensional narrative; age, male and female. equally there is more than one character involved with the existence of E.1027. This device hints at unsolved histories, 38 Although Le Corbusier painted eight murals in the house, a layering of events that have taken place over time and only one features prominently in the film. When it appears have contributed to the current energy of the house. it is what I call an interruption, it flashes in silence in and out of the screen. As the house is familiar and ‘recognised’ by one famous iconic photograph, the framing of the film is intentional, It also appears in both screens at different times, breaking in showing details of the house rather than a long shot. with the structure of opposites (male, female, interior, The viewer never directly sees the situation of the house exterior). The woman standing beside the mural thus within a wider frame that would give exact information of appears in both screens, breaking through the structure of its geographical location. left screen – exterior, female; right screen – interior, male. The viewer is invited to examine the here and now of a The notion of time is the backbone around which the work building in decline and in doing so, is aligning the reality is built. The effects of time are evident throughout the with the myth. work. Breaking down linear time is an important element of the film, both by changing the age gap between the Vincent Honoré is a 1 Peter Adam, Eileen Gray: characters and by having Gray ‘revisit’ in old age. The edit Paris-based independent Architect/ Designer, Harry curator whose previous N Abrams, 2000, p 33–335. choices echo this. The fading and the repetitions are No caption of the photographs included to reinforce the effects of time in the building and positions include curator at Tate Modern and Palais of the murals published in L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui the protagonists. While it is obvious that the female figure de Tokyo. in the left screen is aged, the flashes and fades in the film mentions Eileen Gray. In subsequent publications, also point to mortality and fallibility. the house is either simply described as “Maison The slowing down of the speed of the film in the right screen Badovici” or credited directly removes the male characters from the now. They occupy to him. The first recognition of Gray in architecture since another time which is not defined, as they themselves are the twenties came from not; they are suggestive of spectres destined to repeat Joseph Rykwert, ‘Eileen Gray: their gestures remaining trapped in the interior. pioneer of design’, Architectural Review, December 1972, pp 357–361. I also wanted to make oblique references to modernist 2 This was one of Gray’s notes; history .The single tree in the entrance yard of the house see Adam, op cit, p 378. is a reference to Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and this reference, I believe, is evoked in the suggestion of time held in stasis and again reinforces the idea of repeated gestures and being trapped in time and memory. c . Chris Clarke

James Coleman Absent works 39

My experience of James Coleman’s transparency Such a gesture is about how the second-hand reproduction installation Connemara Landscape is of an image gone differs from the temporary event, the one-off, and the site- missing. In an exhibition catalogue entry, amidst the specific. Coleman, whose work typically undergoes several photographs of paintings and video screens and other shifts in medium, from staged tableau to photograph to photographs, there is only a brief, explanatory text against slide projection to installation, would know this better than a white background. anyone. The documentation of the finished piece (at one stage) cannot help but feel incomplete, an unhappy Connemara Landscape, 1980, is to be experienced compromise and a very different product. The artist as a projected image. typically presents and exhibits his work but, in this case, The artist kindly requests that the image is not the offer can be rescinded. It also points to the importance photographed or visually recorded. of subjectivity in determining meaning, not based on a © James Coleman static, objective representation, but one at that place and time, and through the extrinsic conditions of its exhibition. The picture gives way to language, and the prohibition of The reproduction of a work is its dilution, the denial of that picture. And yet, for an artist like Coleman, the linguistic “the existence of any specific ‘place of art’, in favour of a possibilities of an inherently visual medium have always forever unfinished discursiveness, and a never recaptured been an essential component of the work, that which desire for dissemination” (Bourriaud).1 Coleman, in removing ‘exceeds the image’ as a title, description, list of materials, access to the image, cuts the work off from a partial date, etc (not to mention the voiceover element in the reading, from the extrapolation of conjecture and (what he actual work). In his request against the visual recording of may see as) misunderstanding based on an image that the installation, Coleman appropriates the gestures of the isn’t Connemara Landscape (as, for example, in this injunction, in the formal, impersonal language and typeface essay). And yet, his written request is also a part of the of the text, and the legal copyright which underlines it. The actual installation, a text that accompanied the projected replacement of the original confirms his right to determine ‘landscape’, so that what remains is an injunction against its dissemination, and, by extension, its interpretation. the reproduction of the image and a reproduction itself. There is no contradiction. The statement which refuses an incomplete version, a visual recording, of the work is the same as the fragment of the site, the material demonstration of the reproduction’s incompleteness. There is an actual piece involved here (apparently, a single- document is a misrepresentation, a false version and, slide projection of an abstract composition), but more consequently, an ‘incorrect’ picture of the viewer’s interesting is the artist’s decision to control the experience experience. The work isn’t a site left open for the wholly of the original installation, and the negative gesture’s unrestricted, autonomous readings of the critical viewer, reinstatement of authorial intent. The projection of the but instead proposes a conditional space between image in a specific place creates a site of subjective authoritative truth and subjective opinion. For Coleman, interpretation which takes in both the spatial and visual the act of looking at an image is never just passive, nor is conditions of the installed work as well as the unexpected it open to any and all interpretations. and infinitely variable preconceptions of the gallery visitor. This momentary encounter is a sort of collaboration In Slide piece (1972–1973), a static projected image of between artist and viewer, encouraged by the allusive and an empty city square in Milan (where the artist lived after open-ended nature of the work. That the projected image moving from Ireland2) is repeated, each reiteration of the is abstract and indecipherable, and its visibility dependent same photograph accompanied by a voiceover approaching on the positioning of the spectator in the exhibition space, this picture from a different perspective. The work is made places a certain responsibility on the subject. Yet the subjective, variable, in the piece itself, taking over the individual reading does not gain a truly autonomous value, critical role in elaborating conflicting viewpoints. In the 40 but is rather informed by its surroundings, by the promise generic title, in the deserted city square and the casual of a ‘landscape’. To distill all this in a single photograph banality of the photograph, Slide piece seems to present (and this is generally how his projected works have been a tabula rasa, “an empty iconic point of reference for the presented) overlooks the participatory aspect of Coleman’s activation of the speakers’ (and the viewers’) responses” work, the immersive quality of the total environment, and (Buchloh),3 even as the soundtrack already supplies the the play of the intentional and the unforeseen. Against answers. The text refuses to settle on one account, “a forever unfinished discursiveness,” the author is resur- saturating the image with readings and making polyphony rected as the guarantor of contextual integrity. In this way, a variation on objective authority, a singular voice that Coleman sets an example for other artists concerned with speaks, revises, changes its mind, and speaks over accuracy of experience, in particular Tino Sehgal, whose himself (the commentary, made up of descriptions of the performance-based interventions often use gallery staff scene given by different individuals, is recited by the one members as actors and models. In This is contemporary narrator). For the viewer, there is the appearance of (2005) the visitor entered the exhibition space to find all openness in the equivalence of multiple critical positions, eyes turned in his direction, a brief pause before his even as the work (and the repetition of the audio proximity triggered the repetition of the title as a chant, recording) reveals itself as the representation of aporia, telling him the work. Sehgal’s refusal to document the a simulated uncertainty. work (extending even to verbally ‘signing’ his performances) is not only the synthesis of his seemingly incongruous “The spectator… becomes subject to a psychological background in choreography and political economy, but tension, deriving on the one hand from his or her captivation a telling tribute to Coleman. In a rare remnant, Sehgal by the image and the lure of the commentary, and on the scribbled over the text from Connemara Landscape, other from a disturbing sense of being controlled by an 4 replacing Coleman’s name with his own, title with title, outside ‘will’ – the ‘other’ as the unseen commentator.” copyright logo with scrawled drawing. The viewer’s reading can only emulate that of the speaker’s, There is something strangely ‘pre-post-modern’ about whose approach to the image from a range of perspec- Coleman’s (and Sehgal’s) gesture, in the desire to hold tives might be expected to ‘fill in’ the complete picture, onto authorial intention while, all around him, the work and but instead points to the spaces left untouched and the its meaning have been reduced to the ongoing circulation inexhaustible nature of subjectivity. Any individual revelation of signs and codes. And yet, this isn’t an attempt to stamp on the part of the spectator is automatically absorbed into the work with the artist’s signature or an outdated notion the discursive system; an inevitability that the soundtrack of objective truth. Rather, it reaffirms the specific makes recognisable, by making it the work itself. Again, experience of the subject over the system of subjectivity. difference is levelled in the uniform voice that is the In place of a ubiquitous field of relative positions (which authority of both the audible, recorded readings and the add up to nothing, as no particular reading can be promise of those not yet spoken. What Coleman has favoured over another without destabilizing the whole presented here is not, as Buchloh stated, “an empty iconic structure), Coleman offers the closure of the open-ended point of reference,” but a composed image that merely site. It is the perpetual revitalization of the past event over displays the characteristics of an open work. The viewer the trace element, whether this is the installation shot or (or perhaps we should say the gallery visitor) is granted the isolated fragment of the wall text. The photographic critical space, in-between and over-lapping the recorded texts, but is simultaneously made conscious of the In the suggestion of a hidden meaning which slips through incompleteness of his reading. In another strategy of in spoken narrative (there is no re-reading lines of text Coleman’s designed to avert objective cohesion, the spoken in the installation) and transparency projections soundtrack was made in three versions, as English, French (that are opaque in content) but which ultimately refuses and Italian, and with differences in translation.5 There is to cohere or make sense, the ulterior motive of Coleman’s thus no authoritative text, independent of where and when entire practice is found. It is this stimulatory aspect of his the work was installed, that can be reprinted to accurately work, encased in the experience of the viewer disarmed describe the common experience of the subject. In a and re-activated before the immersive experience of the similar way, the slide image, although represented fairly projection space and the ambiguities of speech, which is faithfully in appearance in its reproduction, becomes the ‘meaning’. The ongoing search and the eventual lack of merely another silent, still photograph. Take the picture, an answer, an answer that isn’t meant to exist, are what just the picture, out of the total environment of the gallery Coleman has copyrighted, what he refuses to show as a and it is handed over to an unfinished discursiveness secondary script or photograph. based on a fragment of the total work. It no longer even qualifies as a Slide Piece.

1 Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational of each version of the work Is it enough to say that the work has no meaning or is it aesthetics, Dijon: Les Presses is slightly different. Thus an 41 rather a case of the maintenance of subjectivity in a calcu- du réel, 1998, p 26 English translation of the lated setting, where spaces of interactivity are established 2 While I would hesitate to [quoted French] passage overemphasize the autobio- would not parallel the English under the rule of the installation? Raymond Bellour has graphical connections of the version of the piece.” p 34 said that, in Coleman’s work, “meaning – constructed artist to his work, one could 6 ‘The living dead (Living and from a scintillation of possible meanings, endlessly torn say that Coleman’s background presumed dead)’, in James down and recombined – does not, properly speaking, (specifically the Irish literary Coleman, Paris: Centre tradition) plays a part in ‘his’ Georges Pompidou, 1996, 6 exist.” Not properly speaking. reading of an image. So while reprinted in James Coleman: the location of the city square October files 5, Cambridge, Certainly the environment is intended to provoke awareness in Milan reflects his own lengthy Massachusetts: The MIT in the viewer of his or her position in establishing stay there at a formative point Press, 2003, p 60 in his career, there is an 7 Fredric Jameson, ‘Marxism connections between the separate elements of the work, allusion to the transplantation and postmodernism’, in to (attempt to) write the narrative through individual of the Irish modernist writer The Cultural turn: selected experience. The gallery space looks to draw in the to continental Europe (in par- writings on the postmodern ticular James Joyce’s time in 1983–1998, London: Verso, extrinsic, without letting any of the inside back out. In this Trieste, now part of Italy, for 1998, p 37 way the subject is implicated and made into an intermediary, ten years, roughly the same the missing part of the incomplete work and the sole amount of time spent living in the country as Coleman. Of Chris Clarke is Visual Arts bearer of this experience as a viewer. From the instant course, Joyce had also studied Education Officer at the visitor exits the space, the specific qualities of the English, French and Italian – Cornerhouse, Manchester. installation – the measured rhythm of the slide carousel, the languages that Slide piece is spoken in – while enrolled at the accumulation of divergent versions and explanations, University College Dublin) the precise correlation of perception and interpretation – 3 Benjamin H D Buchloh, exist only as the absent and unique combination of the ‘Memory lessons and history deliberate and the accidental, as the memory of subjectivity. tableaux: James Coleman’s archaeology of spectacle’, in That the work means something else, outside of the gallery, James Coleman: projected is no surprise but is, in fact, the ‘truth’ of Slide Piece. images: 1972–1994, p 55 In this sense, the meaning of the piece is that there is no 4 Jean Fisher, ‘The place of the spectator in the work of meaning. This relation is similar to that of system and James Coleman’, Open Letter product, signifier and signified, or as Fredric Jameson 5–6 (Summer – Fall 1983), has stated (in describing the somewhat hypocritical and reprinted in James Coleman: October files 5, Cambridge, foolproof nature of the post-modern sphere): “A system Massachusetts: The MIT that constitutively produces differences remains a system, Press, 2003, p 23 nor is the idea of such a system supposed to be in kind 5 From the endnotes to Jean Fisher’s article mentioned ‘like’ the object it tries to theorize, any more than the above (‘The place of the concept of dog is supposed to bark or the concept of spectator in the work of James sugar to taste sweet.”7 There is a qualitative difference Coleman’) is the following between the work which attempts to provide a stimulus to explanation: “…the voiceover subjective thought and the thought itself. c . Graham Parker

42“2, 3, 4…” Garrett Phelan (opposite) at the hands of the artist, who would appear to weigh Garrett Phelan and execute each additional mark as both improvised Trusted servant, 2007 courtesy the artist performance and discreet personal ritual of understanding, a consistently updated act of navigation beyond the point his last maneouvre took him to.

Certainly though, understanding or guessing at Phelan’s momentary modes of working feels less problematic than rationalising his approach as a strategic, let alone tactical artistic choice. Trying to explain it in terms of precedent and likely success feels frustrating and seems to run counter to his praxis – like the scientist building perpetual motion machines, he believes that it’s doomed and makes it anyway. If there’s a key to Phelan’s broadband sampling of the information culture around us, it’s less in understanding his findings than understanding his will to even try and parse the data. And if there’s been a strong strand of 43 melancholy running through his work, it’s in that attempt to shed the weight of knowledge or consciousness within the work itself – asserting a conceit of innocence after the fall (or in his case, leap). Seen from outside that conceit In Lipstick traces, Greil Marcus produced a typically seems absurd. From within the work, mid-enunciation, breathless description of The Slits in the studio about to it makes a certain sense. make their first recording. He focused on their nervous “In reality, the past is preserved by itself automatically. giggles, the hum of electric and a woman’s voice in the In its entirety, probably, it follows us at every instant; mix saying “Ready…?” followed by another saying all that we have felt, thought and willed from our earliest “Oh no!” just before the guitars plunged into the song. infancy is there, leaning over the present which is about For Marcus this was the plunge down the rabbit hole, to join it, pressing against the portals of consciousness or the tilt over the edge of the rollercoaster – a point that would fain leave it outside.” where the joy of sheer kinetic momentum overcame the Henri Bergson, Creative evolution potential intention. Phelan likes the image I offer of The Slits in the studio – And my initial response to Garrett Phelan’s project is that that most intelligent and self-possessed of groups, he’s at his happiest and most productive ‘headlong’– standing in a hostile environment and captured in the very implicating and disentangling himself on the run. In his moment of realising that their potential actions will installations and recordings he seems at his best responding transform them (the splash page at Phelan’s website was to the contingencies of his own momentum and reveleing at one stage a speech bubble containing the words in the momentary contradictions this brings, rather than “...THAT TENSE Expectation...”). We agree to disagree clearing the path with theory first. Encountering his work about its application to his work though – I’d been thinking in this mode can be exhilarating – the installations in specifically of those nervous giggles before commencing, particular express lavish cartoon philosophies, which but Phelan is at pains to emphasize that his pre-cognition announce themselves loudly in their hand-drawn frenetic- of failure to communicate runs through the work and ism, relishing the clamour of their presence amongst overrides any sense of joy in making it – ‘arduous’ is the earlier marks on the site. This is not site-specific practice word he uses. I’m not entirely sure I believe him and I as “delicate-allusion-to-a-building’s-previous-use,” but an return to that gut response that he’s happier in motion apparent brute graffitti logic applied with uncommon than in the static knowledge that a possible trajectory is grace. doomed. He in turn reminds me that above the door at the entrance to the first part of his series of installations These installations, the most visually striking elements of Formation of opinion was the handpainted slogan, what might be Phelan’s keynote project, Formation of Redundant. For someone so prolific and generous and opinion (an ongoing “exploration in four phases examining whose work carries such a multiplicity of possibilities and how morals, values and principles enter into our society”), meanings, Phelan is very eager to emphasise the belief were installed in an abandoned council house block in that most media systems and the epistemological systems Dublin, a disused workshop for mending fishing boats in for understanding them are inadequate and worn out at Donostia-San Sebastian and the Dublin Civic Offices. best, or absolutely untrustworthy at worst – and that his Each space experienced a visual transformation over time own work is under no less suspicion. If the viewer in turn is implicated by that suspicion, so be reading found texts were broadcast continuously over a it. Those who pass through the door have been warned. 30-day period. Described in the abstract, these projects Yet like the visitors to Chris Burden’s Samson (1985) seem obviously redolent of John Cage’s Imaginary (in which a 100-ton jack connected to a gear box and a landscape No.4 (1951) or Radio music (1956), given turnstile at the gallery entrance threatened, in theory at their reliance on chance operation and of course the radio least, to destroy the gallery if enough viewers entered the medium. But for Phelan, the soundwaves must pass building), the viewer is not merely activating a joke at their through his own body in the making of the work – he own expense, but being cast in a wider dialogue about describes the process in these works in very visceral the role of the artist and art viewer. It’s a dialogue that the terms, most particularly in describing them as akin to a artist, for all his protestations to the contrary, still believes seagull regurgitating food. And whether he cares to admit matters. or consider it, much of Phelan’s work addresses beliefs about immanence – implying (pace Deleuze’s ‘plane of And for Phelan, as with Burden, he’s in the mix with you – immanence’) that not only the dualist distinction between to follow the logic of his work to its conclusion is to bring mind and body is a false one, but also that the distinction the temple down on his head too. In a heroically doomed between viewer and artist is equally false. His role in and elegant essay which can still be read on Phelan’s embodying the process and this implicit claim is very 44 website1, Daniel Jewesbury asserts that the work “is involved, and yes, earnest. provisional, but it is not simply engaged in a puerile deferral of meaning for its own sake” (author’s italics). Idiomatically though, the performance aspect of his work He thus attempts a systemic account of the various runes, finds less in common with the portent-laden, funereal flowcharts, imprecations and slogans that make up actions of performance art that might be traced back Phelan’s arcane cosmology for his installation Now: Here through experiments in time and space in visual art from (2003). After a determined, even perversely faithful Fluxus onwards, and more to do with the theatrical following of Phelan’s markers, Jewesbury finds himself treatment of found text that occurs in the deconstructive caught between the pictorial void of a large sprayed black approach of the Wooster Group and the beautifully hole on the wall of a Dublin council flat and the dubious desultory am-dram of later-period Forced Entertainment. consolation of John Dee’s mysticism (when your thoughts Where Phelan’s visual installations enact a frantic on a system lead you to John Dee, it’s like thinking about decorative ritual that ultimately reveals a kind of ‘script urban planning and alighting on Guy Debord – it’s an after the fact’, betraying the contradictions and pleasure of illuminating axis of thought but it promises to totally distort an improvisation that publicly doubts its own free will even the original basis of enquiry) - the void it is then... Yet as it proclaims it – the audio works accede to that doubt throughout the essay Jewesbury keeps faith with the from the start. Handing over the criteria for his movements artist’s intentions in a way that I’d argue is consistent with to a pre-determined task, Phelan goes about animating most viewers’ experience of the work. There’s an earnest his work with a kind of self-contained world-weariness that quality to Garret Phelan’s work that inspires trust, a sense makes little appeal to be witnessed, let alone animated with of a local, personal stake for the artist that belies the meaning by a viewer’s presence. It’s definitely a different generic nature of the material he quotes. I think of artists mode from the invested mania of the visual installations. whose work bears certain formal resemblances to Phelan’s and that work invariably bears a more mannered Phelan’s not alone in instrumentalising himself in this way, approach to language (Keith Tyson) or mark-making though his act of personally implicating himself in the (Basquiat, say). process is less prevalent than the approaches of artists making claim to a more objective position. In my small Making a claim of earnestness for Phelan might seem WiFi-saturated neighbourhood alone there are any number paradoxical, since at times in the work he is attempting to of artists whose approach to the explosion of internet perform the role of neutral conduit for entirely found text, data is cool, systemic and aims to create mechanisms of particularly in the audio works such as Trusted servant meaning that are external to them – seeking perhaps an (2007) or A regurgitated conversational monologue of archival poetics, to paraphrase Hal Foster.2 Phelan though little political consequence (2006). In the former a random introduces his own flawed, local presence as a worthwhile sampling of found sources is read aloud by the artist on troubling obstacle to these data flows – perhaps believing a YouTube video (to be removed at the artist’s discretion that there’s as much to be revealed by immersive resistance as the official act of closing the exhibition .all hawaii as any other strategy. His is more of a crag and tail, local, eNtrées/luNar reGGae at IMMA – the artist having been relief portrait of global data flow as it attempts to pass ‘entrusted’ to carry out that role). In the latter the artist sits through and around him, than an external algorithmic blindfolded at a table with a microphone speaking aloud formula for sifting it. a text being fed into his headphones. And in Black brain radio (2006), random two-minute MP3’s of the artist Garrett Phelan God only knows (detail), 2005 installation shot Dublin Civic Offices

Garrett Phelan Lung love (detail), 2004 installation shot Donostia-San Sebastián courtesy the artist In fairness also, lest the earlier theatrical references support of his position that we are suspect before we should mislead the reader, the ambivalence or distance even hit the power button. in Phelan’s performance of his task is not studied or affected, but has more to do with day-to-day human At other times the computer interface adds moments of contingency around the task than it is with an illustrative richness to the discussion. One of us may close a window mode of performance. As I’ve said, during our conversations in an open program – multi-tasking whilst half-listening to about his work he continually deflects any claim about the other. An inadvertently revealed image or document pleasure in the process by reasserting that ’arduous’ may now find itself in radical juxtaposition: an online nature of the time-based tasks he sets himself eg recording football message board thrust into the same time frame as the numerous two-minute audio clips that make up the old Leeds United newspaper cuttings on a bedroom door random soundscape of Black brain radio: “days of (from a documentation shot of Now:here); a research nothingness,” as he put it to Sarah Pearce in her essay on paper on the 1984 UK miners strike revealed onscreen that project. Pearce in turn cites David Bell in relation to alongside images from Phelan’s recent work for the Iziko Phelan’s working methodology: “My experience of South African National Gallery (the gleefully tautological machines is always mediated by cultural factors; I’m never A 2007 portrait of the 11 Irish Dunnes Stores strikers just sat at my computer, typing, without simultaneously who, on following a directive issued by the Irish 46 logging on to all the ideas and images that clutter the Distributive and Administrative Trade Union in 1984, mediascape and my own mindscape.” Phelan’s uninflected requesting their union members not to handle South renderings of his audio material are duly punctuated with African products in support of an end to Apartheid in coughs, background noises, gulps for air during long South Africa, went on strike for a 2 year 9 month period sentences, typing noises and distracted pauses. Pearce commencing 19th July 1984). This latter juxtaposition calls it “a kind of disengaged semi-conscious state of prompts a discussion about the interpolative role these autism” and there’s certainly something to that, though two events played in the respective evolutions of our that description could also apply as a stage instruction to political consciousness. The photographic series of the an actor delivering Lucky’s monologue in Waiting for now middle-aged workers, described by Phelan as Part 4 Godot or for any number of Ionesco characters – suffice of the Formation of opinion series, is closer in tone to it to say finally, that in his audio works, Phelan ‘performs’ the audio elements of the same project than the visual less as high-modern cipher of alienation than as roadie, installations, in that its use of media (language, documentary carrying out desultory soundchecks for the culture at photography) attempts to create an honourable distance large. One, two, testing... from its ostensible subjects, yet somehow still directly implicates the artist in his historical and Phelan might well ...One, two. Between May and September 2007 we’ve say contemporary political passivity. He’s too hard on been negotiating the time differences and technological himself – nobody forces him to channel his dissatisfaction delays of a jerky Skype connection between Ireland and with existing systems of communication, representation Brooklyn. We’re trying to discuss Phelan’s work and and indeed dissent into artistic inquiry. It’s an active establish common references whilst also trying to learn a cultural and political choice to contest even areas that rhythm of speech that allows us to speak to that task with appear exhausted. It’s a choice Garrett Phelan makes the technology and circumstances in hand. There’s some continuously, despite his doubts and to his credit. faffing at the beginning to get different operating systems to speak to each other; a forgotten headset; a pause for an ftp download; some circling around appropriate intimacy for this remove. Over the course of a few weeks the flood of VOIP competitors emerging on the open market sees Skype try to expand too quickly for its infrastructure and crashing one day, setting us back more time. In one conversation Phelan’s natural conversational mode of emphatic empathy feels slightly out of sync with the time delay and my own questions arrive too late, too stilted in the same frame, making progress slow. “Did you get what you wanted, Graham?” “Yeah. Pretty much. We’ll maybe speak again soon...” In one such exchange around Baudrillard we realize that we’re each working with a completely different definition of his “ecstasy of communication” and we can only laugh, log out and head for the bookshelves. All these failures are grist to the mill for Phelan’s approach to his work, of course – evidence in Garrett Phelan Life again. Light again. Leaf again. Love again, 2006 installation shot courtesy the artist/ Mother's Tankstation

47 At times his quixotic nature takes him into more personal make an equivalent collapse more than likely for him, terrain. Phelan’s fantastical 2006 show at Mother’s he simply makes a different foray in another direction – Tankstation, Life again. Light again. Leaf again. Love deferring failure with increasing intricacy. again, had a gentler, more muted feel than the larger scale works and added another welcome dimension to his It’s a close-run thing at times. At one point in our practice. In this show of audio and small painted works, conversations Phelan quotes a staff member at the Dublin Phelan presented his ‘real-life’ communing with nature via Civic Offices asking “Garrett, when will common sense bird-watching, within a fictional frame where birds had prevail?” in an interview during the furore in the building evolved and disappeared because of man’s interactions caused by his rapidly expanding installation God only with nature. As in other work, the potential belief in an knows (2005). Phelan likes the phrase. I mutter a few idea of immanence is never far away – the famous hesitant phrases of my own about Gramsci and ‘common Spinoza assertion that “God is nature” occurs to me sense’ being part of hegemonic formation and kind of, um, whilst viewing the works with the artist’s fictional claim ‘problematic’ as a term, but it’s not an invited response in mind, so that subject, artist and viewer become and Phelan cheerfully reasserts his interest in the term and configured on the same plane of equivalence in the nature politely changes the subject. Accepting that a term is heavily of everything. With Phelan’s work though, you’ve also got loaded with ideological baggage is no reason to avoid it in 48 to embrace the contrary possibility that he’s as likely to be his eyes – the chase is afoot and he’s off headlong again. playing dead literal about the term ‘nature’, or making a Failure generates its own momentum after all. pun, as the mood suits him. Both interpretations fit with his practice of embracing contradiction. “Ready?” “Oh No...” And looking again at the large-scale installations, I think of 1 www.garretphelan.com Graham Parker is an artist Susan Sontag’s description of Walter Benjamin’s writing based in New York and style as “freeze-frame baroque” – where each sentence 2 Hal Foster, ‘An archival impulse’, October 110, Fall 2004, MIT Press Director of floating ip. “had to say everything, before the inward gaze of total concentration dissolved the subject before his eyes.” (below) The image she painted was of each essay barely finishing Garrett Phelan Black brain radio, 2006 before collapsing under its own internal weight. When performance shot Garrett Phelans’ forays into certain conceptual terrain courtesy the artist c . Gemma Tipton

WHO MAKES PLACE? ARCHITECTURE AND PUBLIC 49 SCULPTURE (WHOSE JOB IS IT ANYWAY?)

‘Can artists make great places?’ ran the subheading from cost-effective, make it quick; and that of the artist: the Building cultures conference, which took place at humanise it, please; and facilitate any necessary social the University of London last September.1 With sessions transitions for the people involved. As these shifts in including ‘Creativity, property and cultural regeneration’ emphasis have become more or less institutionalised in and ‘The Role of art in making successful places’, thinking, many artists have begun to feel a little irritated the question that hovered in the ether, yet which the with the demand to be the social, cultural and creative conference left unanswered, was “why should it have to?” conscience of development. Why should art be co-opted to make cities ‘better’ places, particularly when there are so many areas in which At CREATE’s Suburbs and cities panel discussion, which architecture seems to be failing to take on the job itself? took place in Blanchardstown last year,2 Iain Sinclair, Lisa Goldman, Andrew Cross and Graeme Miller took questions The mutterings of disquiet and discontent are a relatively from the audience – one of which came from an architect new phenomenon. Initially Percent for Art was seen as and was (in the manner of so many interventions at panel an innovator, a way to engage architects with artists. discussions) a statement rather than a question. It went ‘Collaboration’ was the key word (whether it took place in something like this: you’re all so creative and amazing, any meaningful way or not), and the sums of money and I think you’ll all agree that it should be mandatory for involved in commissions made them seem interestingly planners and developers to involve artists at the earliest lucrative to artists, especially those whose practice stages of all building projects, because then they would already involved large-scale work in public places. be so much better and more wonderful. To which the ‘Creative’ became a buzzword as a marketing tool for panel responded: no thanks, we’d rather not. It shouldn’t commercial and tourist development; and planners and be our responsibility to fix your mistakes, or to enable you developers realised how relatively inexpensive it could be to get away with the work you’re doing by sanitising it to co-opt artists into their schemes. With this has come a with a bit of art. We might make work that comments on separation of roles within many development projects, public projects, that addresses development or social whether commercial or ‘social’. At the most reductive level, transformation, but that doesn’t mean it should be co-opted the creative role of the architect is: make it big, make it by the institutions we’re interrogating. So where does that leave public art? When I interviewed of the spaces in which they are to be sited, it is the artist him about his new commission to make a massive work who is required (just as in Docklands’ commissioning of for Dublin’s Docklands (a giant honey-combed figure that Gormley) to take on the responsibility for place-making. will stand, Goliath-, or Gulliver-like in the Liffey), Anthony Gormley suggested that “It’s a much bigger question, “This is the problem,” agrees Gormley. “[There is] the about how art in this era is going to work.” He expressed signature architecture that provides a destination, the same sense of disquiet with the current cultural irrespective of its use value or its responsibility to recognise transaction between artist and development body that had the particularity of the vernacular, listening to the what been felt at Building cultures. “There was a certain the place has to say … This is the risk, there are a lot of degree of ‘bristling’ amongst the artists who were being object lessons out there, but I don’t think I make signature invited to propose.3 Bristling that, in a sense, the artists works, every time I’m invited to do something, I start again. were being asked to carry the responsibility that the Apart from this continual examination of what constitutes a DDDA [Dublin Docklands Development Authority] had body and how it can be imagined, I don’t have a signature. signally failed to exercise; the issue of responsibility, in If you looked at the Dublin project, you wouldn’t necessarily terms of how the grain of the city is experienced. If you realise that it had been made by the same person who take the social responsibility of creating a rich and made the Angel of the North, because they are radically 50 differentiated texture, you don’t do what you see here, different, so to that extent, I’m not a signature artist.” That which is a very bald commercialisation, looking for point is arguable, most particularly in this context because maximum return. It’s very much corporate culture that is it is likely Docklands extended the commission to Gormley supported by this environment, and there is a sense in because they rather hoped he would be a signature artist. which this project is being invited to humanise what is a Nonetheless, he is an artist whose work can carry many bald financial opportunism, and I think that’s a shame.”4 layers of texture and resonance, and when he relates the proposed new work back to his Field, which appeared in Nonetheless, Gormley works in a tradition of art-making IMMA over a decade ago, and speaks of it in Swiftian that begins, he notes, with Carl Andre. As Gormley puts it, terms (Lilliput and Gulliver), I find I can ignore the references Andre’s slates on the floor removed art from its position as to Swift (just as I ignored Libeskind’s contention that he the unique object on a plinth, separated from the world, chose the colours for his new Docklands concert hall after with high aesthetic and commercial value attached. From being inspired by the Book of Kells), and remember how this point, “slates on the floor become something for living wonderful I found Field, how much I enjoyed the experience bodies to stand on, the position of art becomes one of of Blind light, his show this year at the Hayward, and infiltrating and relocating how people feel in the world that consequently can have high hopes for the forthcoming already exists, rather than inscribing it with values or Dublin project. narratives. And I see this,” Gormley says, speaking of his own project for Docklands, “as a continuance of that That the DDDA have chosen Gormley for the project does gesture, saying can we infiltrate this given environment not, however, mean that they are unalert to different with an object that is only there as a resonator for the life strategies for public art. Bodycity is a three-part project – that is already around it. It’s not the artist’s duty to try to a series of video projects and a discussion day which took massage the social realm, the social environment.” place in November this year, plus further exhibitions and interventions taking place in 2008 – exploring other That may be the case, but whether it is the white-cube aspects of art and the city, and joining a discussion that is gallery, the civic plaza, the grand museum, or a corner of gathering momentum.6 Meanwhile CREATE’s recent a social housing project, context affects art, and art that Symposium on Public Art at The Dock in Leitrim looked at ignores its context, particularly that sited in the public different models of practice, focusing on dialogue and realm, suffers accordingly. One development of our ritual, and considering the fresh forms that public art is globalised craze to acquire iconic signifiers for our taking. It was organised, as CREATE Director Sarah Tuck modern metropolises is the resulting sameness of cities, puts it, “to challenge the idea of public art as confined to where place becomes interchangeable, and location could the traditional and monumental; and to highlight the fact be anywhere. Thus Dublin will have its Calatrava bridges, that artists working collaboratively with communities are its Libeskind Concert Hall, and now its Gormley sculpture. interrogating inventively the way that public art is both What is interesting about this is the shift in roles between conceived and executed.” 7 In terms of relational aesthetics, art and architecture. Robert Irwin has described the many of these fresh forms site the work in the transactions difference between the ‘arts’ of art and architecture, as between artist and participant, rather than in an ‘object’ one of responsibility5; architecture has a responsibility to to complete the work. Nonetheless, removing the focus the user in a way that art has not. Yet as cities compete to from the object does not necessarily mean that we should commission ‘signature’ architects to create iconic works be promoting object-free cities, where all the artwork is as part of a shopping list of cultural necessities, and those happening at the level of personal exchange… buildings are often ‘dropped in’, regardless of the texture 57

Anthony Gormley Artist's impression of the proposed Dublin Docklands Sculpture, 2007 courtesy Wilson Hartnell Public Relations A recent project by Louise Walsh for the LUAS at similarity of purpose from those who fund them – asking St James’ Hospital, Dublin, has fused the two sites of artists to give us art to make things better. And until the transaction, creating both an object that functions as an planning and design of our cities catches up with the work art work in its own terms, and a process, which Walsh of those artists who are investigating how that might be aims to analyse: achieved, it is no wonder that artists are increasingly saying – why? Why should we have to? And why don’t you go I want to make a model of this practice, as it was created and do a better job yourselves?… Artists will continue to around tiers of support, layers of training,” she says. make work that comments on the city, but there are signs “I want to analyse, assess and, crucially, evaluate it. Lots that the city is less and less likely to be comfortable with of community projects don’t have a material outcome, or what they have to say. don’t have a strong engagement. My projects are about making pieces of work that do exist, they are structural 1 Building cultures, at University Gemma Tipton is a interventions. There’s still a level of commemorative of London 20 September 2007, writer and critic on art sculpture that I want to hold onto, but I want to find ways part of Urban Design Week and architecture based and London Design Festival, of contemporising them, of making them valid, and in Dublin. 2007 embedding constituent groups in the developing of the 2 6 September 2006 52 work, but still making them – as part of my art.8 3 Dorothy Cross, Anthony (opposite) Gormley, Luís Jímenez, Louise Walsh + participants Andrew Kearney, Thomas artists with their clay sculptures The innovative aspect of Walsh’s project lay in the layers Schütte, Grace Weir (later cast to bronze, for of training and the extent of the transactions that took 4 Anthony Gormley, interviewed installation on the forty-metre place. Students from NCAD’s Sculpture Department by the author, 22 August 2007, structure at the St James Dublin Hospial LUAS stop) worked with young people from the community over an 5 Robert Irwin, interviewed by photo Michael Smyth extended period. The resulting piece – a fence, which is the author, quoted in Space: courtesy the artist part seat, part sculpture, is a quirky hybrid of the functional architecture for art, ed. Gemma Tipton, Circa, Dublin and the fantastical, as strange beasts and gargoyles sit 2005 atop the fence’s pillars. While the project was initially 6 See www.bodycity.org supported by IMMA, St James’ Hospital and LUAS, the Bodycity is curated by Nigel scope of Walsh’s plans (to work with local teenagers over Rolfe and Cliodhna Shaffrey, with Shelagh Morris as a long period; to really engage with their developing project administrator. interests in art, architectural and local history; and to teach 7 CREATE, in association with the participants bronze casting so that they could create Leitrim County Council Arts Office, Symposium on public their own pieces for the project) meant that additional art, 13–14 September 2007; support was necessary, which came from a range of Sarah Tuck interviewed by the individuals and corporate bodies.9 An intervention on this author, September 2007 8 Louise Walsh, interviewed by scale means a genuine engagement is necessary, but the author, 26 October 2007 while there is a resulting object, Walsh agrees that “the art 9 Diageo, Dublin City Council, is in the transaction, and there’s also a tension between Irish Youth Foundation, CREATE, Eric Kinsella (Jones proposing the work and then trying to deliver on it. It’s in Engineering Group) Belinda 9 the action.” While art must have an aesthetic aspect, she Moller and Roddy Doyle, says, “I also need it to activate the space in which it is P Elliot Developers Edward sited. There are huge structures going up in the world, McLone (Glenveagh Ltd) and Bill Black. Sponsorship in kind and I want those structures to include people who haven’t came from Irish Fencing, CAST, had voices, who haven’t got money.” For Walsh, those and Wallace Construction. sites of transaction are where art can realise its potential for power and meaning.

Walsh’s intervention exists on an entirely different scale to Gormley’s. The intent of each is different, from the artists’ point of view, and cities rich with cultural texture have room for both. They also have room for purely decorative projects, for temporary interventions, and for the fugitive art that appears without official plan or sanction. They also, unfortunately, make room for the art that is just plain ‘bad’… “Lighting,” offers Gormley as a critique of some aspects of public art, “is a disease.” And yet between the differences in Gormley and Walsh’s work there is a 53 c .

54 POSTCARDS FROM EVERYWHERE

This is how we billed it:

Win-win opportunity for an artist in conjunction with Circa Here’s a chance to get an image of yours onto 30,000 postcards, and be paid 150 euro for your efforts. The postcards will be distributed through an extensive network in Dublin called The Picture Works – that’s at 195 venues throughout Dublin city and county.

What do we want? An image that will make people pick up the postcard. The image doesn’t have to be new; it just has to be yours and it has to work.

We let people know about the competition in mid-July, primarily publicising through the web; the deadline was 7 August. The result was overwhelming, both in quality and in sheer number of responses. 380 artists sent in work, from around 20 countries.

We were delighted. Choosing a winner was not easy, but we settled for one by Krista Leigh Steinke, who is based in Pennsylvania. Rather than attempt a sampling from all the works submitted, we are reproducing here the three pieces Steinke sent in. The top one of the three was used on the postcard. More of her work can be seen at www.kristasteinke.com

Entrants were given the option of having their work presented on Circa’s website. The results are at recirca.com/artnews/552/2.shtml

To all who participated, sincere thanks. Krista Leigh Steinke (top) the apples grew ripe and fell far from the tree (from the series Backyards, BB Guns, and Nursery Rhymes), 2006 archival digital C-print 56 x 71 cm courtesy the artist

(middle) the better to see you with, she said (from the series Backyards, BB Guns, and Nursery Rhymes), 2006 archival digital C-print 56 x 71 cm courtesy the artist

(bottom) the rabbit was in the field eating the grass (from the series Backyards, BB Guns, and Nursery Rhymes), 2006 archival digital C-print 56 x 71 cm courtesy the artist c . Sydney Norton Sydney Norton researches contemporary German drawings in the department of prints, drawings, and photographs at the Saint Louis Art Museum.

56 Letter from St Louis

(below) Peter Marcus from Grand Center series, 2006 collagraph digital photo on paper mounted to canvas 152 x 259 cm courtes the artist/ Bruno David Gallery Located on the banks of the Mississippi River, St Louis, centralized locations throughout the city. Downtown and Missouri gained the nickname ‘Gateway to the West’ for other metro areas such as Tower Grove Park, Lafayette the numerous pioneers who passed through to settle in Square, and Soulard now boast wine bars, art galleries, newly discovered territories. By the mid-19th century it restaurants, shops, and most importantly a growing density was a bustling river port, some of whose residents of people. New metro lines have helped to connect these became wealthy by producing lumber, brick, and beer. once insular areas to one another. Large numbers of Wares were shipped downriver by steamboat to the Bosnian, Chinese, and Vietnamese immigrants contribute southern states, and later by rail to the northeaSt By the substantially to the city’s economy and rebirth. turn of the twentieth century, Union Station, a gargantuan Romanesque-style building on the western edge of Since 2002, the contemporary art scene in St Louis downtown, became the largest and busiest rail depot in has, as a consequence of successful urban renewal, the world. experienced a renaissance. A government-funded initiative to revive Grand Center, a formerly seedy mid-town area, By the 1840s large numbers of German, Irish, and Italian has resulted in an appealing and lively arts community. immigrants made St Louis their home; and after the Civil The once modest Forum for Contemporary Art has morphed War, rural blacks from the South arrived in search of better into a sleek and spacious contemporary art museum that opportunity. In 1904, at the peak of its economic glory, exhibits both celebrated international artists as well as 57 St Louis hosted a World’s Fair, still a great source of pride local ones. Next door, the rarified Pulitzer Foundation for the city’s inhabitants. Numerous traces of this period of exhibits mostly modernist masterpieces in a meditative grandeur are evident in the city’s Victorian parks, gardens, structure designed by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando. and stately mansions. Right down the street the Sheldon Galleries present intriguing smaller shows on photography, works on paper, Culturally, St Louis enjoys a rich and diverse history. architecture, and painting. Scott Joplin, Miles Davis, Katherine Dunham, Tennessee Williams, T.S. Eliot, and Sara Teasdale are just a handful Several St Louis artists are thriving locally and nationally. of the prominent cultural figures who lived and worked Tom Huck, who grew up in a small town called Potosi, here. In 1947 the German artist Max Beckmann moved to is a master of the woodcut medium. His grotesque and St Louis after accepting a professorship at Washington biting satires about rural Missouri life are inspired by the University. The Saint Louis Art Museum, housed in a Northern Renaissance artists Albrecht Dürer and Pieter classical structure that was also designed for the World’s Bruegel, as well as the American cartoonist R Crumb. Fair, now presides over the largest repository of the artist’s paintings, prints, and drawings in the world. Formal abstraction is still a favored aesthetic approach within the St Louis establishment. Abstract artists Michael Like so many American cities, St Louis – once the fourth Byron, Ernest Trova (both of whom also create Surrealistic largest city in the United States – fell on hard times. works), Jerald Ieans, and Eva Lundsager have fared well The elaborate passenger railway and trolley systems were both within and beyond St Louis’s borders. Over the past gradually dismantled, giving way to the hegemony of the year, the 34-year old painter Erik Spehn has created a stir automobile and highway. Racial violence, precipitated by amongst collectors and curators with his mesmerizing and years of officially sanctioned job and housing discrimination meticulous grid designs, made with strips of automotive against blacks, led, ultimately, to waves of white flight to tape and lines of acrylic paint that are applied with an the suburbs. Well into the 1990s the city endured a eye dropper. disheartening period of economic decline that was underscored by dramatic population decrease, the closing Fortunately, a much needed alternative art scene has of shops, widespread abandonment of buildings and taken root in recent years. Painter Matt Strauss has houses, and general urban malaise. Printmaker Peter pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars of family money Marcus has captured aspects of this urban blight in his into White Flag Projects, a pristine, 2000-square-foot Grand Center Series, a collection of large-format gallery and reading room that features works by artists not mixed-media prints that pays homage to the architecture ordinarily supported by commercial galleries or museums. and ghostly surroundings of abandoned brick houses. Juan William Chávez, director of Boots Contemporary Art on Cherokee Street, has transformed an old cobbler shop Not until the late 1990s did St Louis begin to experience into a meeting and exhibition space for emerging visual large-scale revitalization. Historic buildings such as artists from around the world. His publication bootprint The Leather Trades and King Bee buildings, both of which features articles by scholars, curators, and artists from previously served as inexpensive studio space for artists, places as diverse as Istanbul, Los Angeles, and Geneva. were bought by developers and refurbished into fashionable These alternative art spaces have infused St Louis’s lofts. Artists have since dispersed to cheaper, less contemporary art scene with fresh vitality. Reviews

Antrim Sandra Kerr: Pain in the neck David Hughes 92 | Belfast Belfast 3-13 c . 58 September 2007 Slavka Sverakova 86 | The double image David Hughes 110 | Berlin Art fairs in Berlin David Ulrichs 96 | Birr Synesthesia sat Jason McCaffrey 74 | Cork Cicada Elaine O’Sullivan 77 | Radio ON Matt Packer 90 | Dublin Play safe: Battlefields in the playground Tim Stott 67 | Ronan McCrea: Medium (the end); Medium (upside down) Tim Stott 98 | Marcel Van Eeden: The archaeologist – the travels of Oswald Sollmann Chris Fite-Wassilak 106 | Karl Grimes: Dignified kings play chess on fine green silk Sherra Murphy 103 | Alice Maher: Bestiary Jennie Guy 83 | Galway Women war photographers Aileen Blaney 70 | Kassel Documenta XII Fergal Gaynor 60 | Limerick Michael Minnis: Here, and nowhere else Karen Normoyle-Haugh 94 | Linz Ars electronica Paul O’Brien 80 | London Mamma Andersson Cherry Smyth 100 | Venice Sophie Calle: Prenez soin de vous Susan Thomson 64 | Wexford Mary Ruth Walsh: Still life Gemma Tipton 72 | Book Critical mess: Art critics on the

state of their practice Brian Curtin 108 | c . Fergus Byrne Essay, 2007 from Synesthesia Sat photo Caroline Gustavsson courtesy Paul Murnaghan (see review p 74)

c . Fergal Gaynor Kassel June – September 2007

60 Documenta XII (opposite) on appearance itself, one begins to correct documentaries, Documenta James Coleman wonder if the statement is not meant XII works as a kind of education. Retake with evidence, 2007 projected film as a smokescreen, or at least a form When a blackboard and seats are © James Coleman of interference intended to offset encountered a little way into the courtesy the artist/ Marian Goodman any crudity of association between Aue-Pavillon – as far as I could Gallery, Simon Lee Gallery, Galerie Micheline Szwajcer curatorial thinking and artwork. ascertain it was not attributed to any artist – it is difficult not to look This is the natural destination of a knowing and say “ach so.” line of development taken by Documenta since Catherine David Consequently, a later statement by in 1997 embraced the then-current the curators in the preface, that relational-aesthetic mood. Although a “the exhibition becomes a medium batch of artists, and a contemporary in its own right and can thus hope artistic ethos, were given a platform, to involve its audience in its own a degree of agency passed over into compositional moves,” is more the hands of the curator pursuing a enlightening than the opening claim theme by means of sometimes of formlessness. Like a post- 61 interchangeable artists. In part this Impressionist painting, the exhibition was a reaction to Documenta IX’s is indeed informed, but in such a perceived alliance with the market, way that the viewer must actively its dependence on safe, established participate in that form-making names; in other respects it was an process – they are not presented issue of the peculiar character of with finished, recognisable figures. 1990s socially oriented work. Since The corollary of this is that the it is difficult to aesthetically judge curator becomes a painter of sorts, relational art (as critic Claire Bishop and the viewer finds him or herself Documenta XII leaves the strong has pointed out), a stress on content, in a process of piecing together impression that it is not an artist-driven political and ethical, began to emerge, from suggestive strokes and partial exhibition. If there is something which came to the surface in structures a certain model of happening at present in art studios Documenta XI as a strong strain of contemporary art. Presumably you and scenes across the world, it is the documentary and photojournalistic. go away edified, in the best bourgeois not represented there. Instead the The very fact that an artwork referred tradition. In the best bourgeois visitor is left with a sense of constant to a social injustice, or pattern of tradition also, most of the German mediation on the part of the curators, globalization, was sufficient to make holiday crowd I found myself among Roger M Buergel and Ruth Novak, that work worthy of attention, even if went away partially amused, and of a choice of works subtly it did not call attention to itself as partially bored, probably diverted. informed by a certain taste and activism or protest. All it needed was Art educators (and self-educators) understanding of what ‘contemporary a recognised aesthetic coding and were doubtless more inspired, but art’ is. Moreover, this taste and the capacity to lend itself to current though Documenta XII is a subtle understanding of the idea of contem- cultural discussions. Documenta XII and rich affair, I suspect that most porary art somehow manages to appears to issue directly from this artists were left unmoved. occupy the position of real subject of movement towards, on the one hand, the exhibition. Consequently, Buergel greater curatorial centrality and, on and Novak’s opening statement in the other, a concentration on content. the catalogue – “the big exhibition The curators’ process of judgement, has no form” – seems misleading. their generation of the system of If the exhibition, because of its size values evident in the works’ content, perhaps, were a loose structuring becomes the show’s informing through which some contemporary dynamic, its sense. This has an artistic event – intrusive and hardly interesting effect on the experience digested – were making itself felt, of viewing the exhibition. If for one could accept the claim for Documenta X the exhibition was formlessness. But when, despite its about letting the viewer look in on size, an interpretative process can modish models of sociability, and for be seen at work in almost every Documenta XI it was almost sufficient room, to the point of almost taking to present the public with ethically In each pavilion the informing pattern this strand. In general there seems technology, was stark and powerful, is not evident – in fact each exhibition to be a suggestion that aesthetic and Olga Neuwirth’s …miramondo space seems quite jumbled and values are somehow cross-cultural multiplo…, one of the Benjaminian loosely related. Certain indicators, and common to all mankind, and pieces in the Neue Pavillon, combined however, begin to suggest that a certain pieces, notably Tseng Yu various media with great delicacy. particular account of art is at work: Chen’s videos of children (which I James Coleman’s Retake with the reproduction on the main stairs found, despite the expressions of evidence belongs to this category. of the Fredericianum of Klee’s Angel delight in the attached curatorial text, of history – the inspiration for Walter somewhat disturbing), seem to Benjamin’s pessimistic refiguring of situate that commonality in intimacy historical movement – the reproduction and childhood play. of a Manet in the Neue Galerie, the antique collections of Near and Certain artists crop up again and Middle Eastern arts in the Schloss again, though often in quite different Wilhelmshöhe, a single 1977 contexts. In a more conventional Richter. The spirit of Benjamin is felt exhibition there would have been 62 again and again in the course of the one or two rooms dedicated to the exhibition, especially in the Neue work of Lee Lozano (an artist who Galerie in which the artworks have a managed to infuse her 1960s generally more introverted and elegiac geometric abstract oil paintings with tone. Alongside this melancholy view a sense of aggressive sexuality) or of history runs a commitment to the John McCracken (on the evidence of use of twentieth-century materials, the Documenta inclusions, my least perspex being a particular favourite, favourite minimalist sculptor), two as well as to painting of an anti- artists who have recently had large Greenbergian, impure, referential retrospectives, and whose work kind. Finally (to skip over a number served to provide offbeat reminders of other signifying threads), an of contemporary art’s history and intriguing aestheticist approach to core aesthetic values. Black internationalism appears from time American painter and graphic artist to time. Contemporary works are Kerry James Marshall’s work from the placed near examples of folk or eighties to the present, despite its decorative art from various world diffusion across the exhibition, was cultures which, in purely aesthetic certainly given preferential treatment. terms, seem to echo them: African Again Marshall has had a substantial tribal fabrics next to abstract international show in the last few drawings, for instance. To complicate years, so that one suspects that the issue, Nigerian urbanist David the base material for the carefully Aradeon’s tracings of interconnections constructed exhibition was gathered between Brazil and Central/ Muslim during the curators’ travels to major Africa in the Aue Pavillon suggest venues since 2003. If this is true, then that hidden historical flows between we are encountering contemporary the two continents underpin what artistic production after its having seem at first glance to be been passed through two sets of anthropological correspondences; filters, first through the museum/ and another African artist, this time gallery system, then through the from Benin, Romuald Hazoumé, educative agenda of the curators. turns the primitivist gaze around by making Picasso-like, African-mask- Documenta XII’s strongest work inspired sculptures out of waste bypassed this double filter. Often materials. These two stood out for bearing the date 2007, it came from me, but left me wondering to what artists represented only by a single extent they had managed to sustain work who had probably been included the integrity of their voices in the purely on the strength of their recent curatorial concert by going against practice. Imogen Stidworthy’s I hate, the current of the exhibition along if a little dependent on spectacular I first encountered the Roscommon a way of drawing attention to its man’s work in Documenta XI and artificiality. Similar alienation effects was astonished that so sophisticated occurred throughout the piece, with and internationally known an artist (a the actor, for instance, referring to friend of Dan Graham’s, who curated the edicts of the ‘god’, while standing an Arte povera show in Dublin in next to a copy of a Praxiteles. In terms 1973) should be so little known in of the Oedipus, the god should be Ireland. This situation is rapidly Apollo, but the Hellenic statue is of changing, and Retake with evidence Hermes. Then again, there is a is unlikely to do any damage to his suggestion that the classical reputation. It is an ambitious work. Its tradition itself is being referred to: medium, projected film, is relatively signs and referents shifting positions conventional for Coleman, but this like Japanese screens. The mediation doesn’t undermine the complexity of of the Greek plays through the the piece. A single male actor, quasi-Shakespearean language and dressed in black, delivers a series of staging made me think of the similar Fergal Gaynor is an monologues in different areas of mediations forced upon the original 63 independent scholar, what appears to be simultaneously a Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights: writer, and member of museum, or archaeological dig, and Greek tragedy was only available to art-intervention group art/ a film set. The props are all classical, them through the Roman plays of not art. and it became clear a little way into Seneca. It also occurred to me that the piece that the subject matter is although Coleman is most easily also. It is a retelling, within a contem- associated with Beckett in terms of porary art medium, of Sophocles’ Irish artistic tradition, by taking on Oedipus trilogy: Oedipus the King, the Oedipus story he is placing Antigone and Oedipus at Colonos. himself in a lineage with Yeats, who It is initially a little disconcerting that composed a version of Sophocles’ Harvey Keitel is the actor concerned, Oedipus ‘for the modern stage’ in and it is hard not to wonder whether the twenties. his extremely intense, almost over- intense, performance isn’t the result Coleman’s piece was one of the of a Hollywood actor feeling that he highlights of Documenta XII, a fact had to do something special for an that goes against the show’s general artwork. But in hindsight Keitel’s rationale. I certainly don’t envy the larger-than-life presence was appro- Documenta curators’ situation: priate for the piece: he must be at the exhibition requires a tight-rope one and the same time simply an walk, with overbalance on one side actor, the actor as it were, delivering resulting in a safe dependence on the great European monologue, and established (marketable) names, something like the ghost of Oedipus, and on the other in an overcontrolled repeating his traumatic story at affair, with the curator becoming the the other end of European history. agent of meaning at the expense of The work struggles with a number of the artist. such double representations in attempting to do the impossible, and perhaps, it is suggested, undesirable: bring one of the founding artistic moments of the European tradition into a contemporary setting. Its use of an artificial language, Elizabethan or Elizabethan-influenced Romantic English, takes much of this strain, and I would like to see the Coleman-composed script, as at times it seemed to become pastiche, though this may have been deliberate, c . Susan Thomson French Pavilion June – November 2007 Venice

64 Sophie Calle Prenez soin de vous

Sophie Calle Prenez soin de vous installation shot, French Pavilion, Venice courtesy CULTURESFRANCE into a musical score. This is You update the epistolary novel and encyclopaedic, monstrous analysis. cut out all the other letters, endlessly No letter from a critic though, as if replaying, rereading, revisiting, you are only waiting for these to be analysing just one letter, repeating it written, an absent few letters. with variations like a musical score. An explosive repetition, as if the So many actresses reread the letter trauma itself has sent the reader, on video. Each sees something the bearer of the e-mail, you Sophie, different. The clown loves the into psychotic overload, total brackets, really loves the brackets, fragmentation. as if perhaps they are arms, arm brackets to hold you, to hold the Why did he call you ‘vous,’ Sophie? words they contain, a hug for the A number of times this question is words, a last hug. Two sets of raised and we do not receive an brackets, a gift for the clown. answer. Why the polite form, so very formal for lovers? And yet ‘vous’ is 65 A cockatoo eats the letter on video, plural too. Perhaps this is a standard interrupting the other videos and e-mail to all of you, the others repeatedly saying the last lines of included, the others he rejected for the letter, “Prenez soin de vous” you at the beginning. Dear Sophie, (“Take care”). Parroting. The words start to become meaningless The signature at the end is an X, You must be hurting. Unless of through endless repetition, divorced a kiss, a disguised name, X-rated, course the letter isn’t real. But for from their original context. a place on the map, a vote, an the moment let us assume it is. illiterate’s signature, or a simple You receive a Dear John-type letter It’s such a French show, Sophie, mistake. X for Xavier perhaps. X is breaking off your relationship by reminiscent of a whole body of a polyvalent letter, like the letter of e-mail, and you reply by asking 107 French literature, recalling all those which it is the last letter. Sophie, women to respond to the letter – epistolary novels like Les Liaisons your other eXes are also reduced to a psychiatrist, a sexologist, a judge, dangereuses through to the new interchangeable letters, B, R, etc. a fortune teller, a journalist, a novel, the obsessional doomed love Or X of the crucifix, a passion play primary-school teacher, and many of Marguerite Duras. In your and you are the victim, Sophie. artists, actresses, singers. Another intertextual analysis of the e-mail, all X14 in the English translation, rejection, Sophie, the death of the quotes you find are from French the fourteenth yet empty translator’s another relationship? And you literature, all from different periods. note, the fourteenth eX but also a choose Venice to situate this When in one video a rifle-shooter chemical symbol or X to the power explosive response of yours, city of shoots holes in the letter and it is of 14, XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx romance, deathly, obsessional love, later framed in a light box, it is the XxX, a lot of kisses perhaps, but glauque canals, the veins of love very epitome of the new novel, from whom, X or the translator? circulating in Venice, waiting for the blanks in the text and the assumption night boat (N for ‘notte’) to come to that this is where truth and light Letters become other letters in all take away all those things of the day, abide. It is reminiscent of Oulipo too the various translations the e-mail the love, the letter, death in Venice, and its language games, Raymond undergoes, just as lovers turn into the Styx. Queneau’s Exercices de style, other lovers, changing letters, from in which he tells the same story 99 B to X. Many of the women were The letter is transcribed phonetically, times, each in a different style. photographed with the letter into braille, into barcodes, Latin, covering their head, as if they are English, shorthand and text-message At one point in the rifle-shooter rendered anonymous, interchangeable, style (cutting out further letters). video, the target scoots back to her depersonalised, decapitated. It becomes a word square, the so that she can check how successful sentence lengths become a graph, her shooting was, like a reverse it is analysed for intertextual zoom, an e-mail arriving or inverted references, is corrected for its shooting, like this show. You have grammar, analysed legally, by a nine- been shot, Sophie, but how you and-a-half year-old girl, and is turned hit back! And yet, Sophie, such a funny show! Susan Thomson is an artist I laughed out loud so many times. and writer, currently You pastiche us, don’t you, our crazy, pursuing an MA in Viusal Arts Practices at Dún romantic ideas, the idea of the Laoghaire Institute of Art, female obsessive. So over-the-top it Design and Technology. becomes very funny indeed. And yet, if it weren’t so funny, it might be a little frightening, Sophie. Oh Sophie, we have all been there, obsessing over a phrase uttered by a lover, which we analyse to death. What did that mean, does it have a double meaning, what was the tone of voice, etc, etc? Like the most resolute literary critic, we look for hidden clues. And how you make fun 66 of us too, Sophie, all of us critics endlessly feeding upon a text, analysing it in terms of Marxism, structuralism, poststructuralism, feminism, psychoanalysis, reader response theory...until the text itself becomes tiny, almost irrelevant (and yet simultaneously aggrandised) in relation to the vast proliferation of text surrounding it. This critical letter fails totally to be larger than your work. It would be swallowed up by it in one gulp.

Sophie, perhaps you should get some help. It sounds a little co-dependent to me. And you seem more interested in his absence, Sophie Calle Sophie, if you don’t mind me saying. Prenez soin de vous installation shot, French Pavilion, Venice Sophie, I love the show, I love your courtesy CULTURESFRANCE work, I love you. Forget him. Perhaps we could meet in Venice, some time.

Take care, S c . Tim Stott Project July – September 2007 Dublin

Play safe Battlefields 67 in the playground

The spirit of playful competition is, as a social impulse, older than culture itself and pervades all life like a veritable ferment [Civilisation] does not come from play like a babe detaching itself from the womb: it arises in and as play, and never leaves it. Johann Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 1950

However ‘old’ it might be, the ‘play drive’ has rarely been so prevalent as it is now, as game-playing and performance take centre-stage in the development of dynamic social systems. Games also display the shared experience of these systems, making this experience available for differential evaluation and interpretation. For the most part, Play safe tracks varieties of ludic Axel Stockbuger performance, but any account of Boys in the hood, 2005 such must contend with the installation shot, Project courtesy Project categorical indeterminacy of games themselves (their straddling of the sacred and the profane, of autonomy and contingency, of seriousness and frivolity), as well as the turbulence and caprice of the playfulness that all games, to a greater or lesser degree, involve. In Wild seeds, a video showing a by binding a second skin of armour sovereign engagement in rule-making playful re-enactment of a confrontation but, in an act of delicate subversion, (Vaskichi) to largely docile, between Israeli settlers and the IDF by turning the body inside-out, and unidirectional transactions with in the Golan Heights, 2002, Yael extending something like the body’s programmers (Boys in the hood): Bartana works with the capacity of softness, its fleshly vulnerability, to a hence, the advocacy of the collective games to enact a form of coded ridiculous limit. agency (eg nonhierarchical coupling, violence and to instigate simultaneous nonguided exchange, emergence) processes of binding and unbinding. In Gintaras Makarevicius’ Vaskichi, nurtured in immersive entertainment The coding of violence within a the frequent wrangling concerning networks leaking into real-world game structure is possible because, rules of engagement and the referral situations (Jane McGonigal). But any for instance, a nip denotes a bite but to real-world situations as figures of appeal to agency must contend not what a bite denotes (Gregory arbitration justifies the game’s fiction with the voluntary servitude operative Bateson): so, a nip is not a bite and and binds the players to it. Such in gaming situations, as well as the not not a bite. Put simply, due to its self-regulation is noticeably absent desublimating intensities of play, constitutive ambivalence, a nip from the first-person narratives all of which would suggest that displays those signifying frames recounted by the gamers in Axel exercises of the will through play 68 between which it moves. Similarly, Stockburger’s Boys in the hood, cannot be anything but precarious. re-enacting a violent confrontation and moral anxiety is never far away as play brings into play the frames as these latter further fold the real Joost Conijn’s Iron and video offers within which that confrontation took with illicit fantasy and total simulation. a gentle and respectfully asymmetrical place, offering the possibility of their But perhaps, as is evidenced by portrayal of a family of traveller reworking. both these works, gaming is more children at play. Left to their own an escape from confusion than a fall devices, children tend to take hold In light of this, the broken transcrip- into it; an attempt to substitute a of the valueless things of the world, tions of dialogue that, on a separate perfect, if simulated, world for the in order to learn the weight of their screen, anchor the allegorical drift everyday confusion with which we potential and divert their function: of Bartana’s video seem rather to are all familiar, motivated by a in play, they construct constellations diminish a politics that already takes common desire to reduce complexity just as they initiate processes of place without them, insofar as to a set of identifiable procedural ruination, demonstrating in both the “stylised and gestural forms of the representations, accepting only plasticity of material (Walter Benjamin); positive” (Brian Sutton-Smith) enough complexity for our games to hence, perhaps, their fascination already have the capacity to dramatise be compelling. with filth. Of course, there is no a negative, ie to say no whilst denying either the innocent cruelty (playfully) saying yes. No doubt, many games (especially of their performance or the grace FPSs) normalise the extreme and with which they fuse the real and the The performance of protest often turns arbitrary use of violence, as well as fantastic (compare the disgrace of to techniques of the carnivalesque. a whole set of contingent social gamers for doing the same). If we consider such performance to paradigms. But this argument, However, their powers of mimetic be constitutive of democratic politics which Stockburger seems to support, improvisation, contact sensibility, per se, then it is not so much a offers a rather one-sided view of the and spontaneous fantasy, diminished protest for democracy but of autotelic pleasures pursued in the in the course of educational democracy against the ‘proper’ course of a game. An argument that progress that effects the rhetorical distribution of the sensible, ie the sees gaming only as the infantile subsumption of paidia by ludus, police (Jacques Rancière). Politics gratification of a destructive, suggest another kind of education, sets up a stage whereupon, without gluttonous ego at a virtual level arising from the contacts and tensions authorisation, dissensual modes of disavows at least two things: the encountered in collective play. visibility and aurality become operative, primacy of the game over the player, threatening lines of demarcation that and the subsequent threading of the Conijn observes these children are kept in place, ultimately, through game experience through multiple without sentiment, as though they violence; hence, the need for the identifications; and the intransitive were sending signals from another means of playful degradation to be bliss of ‘unbinding’, in which the heroic world: and perhaps they are – also one of defence. Ralph Borland desire to make a scene and have the the future impresses itself indelibly says of his Suited for subversion: last word dissolves in ease and drift. upon the child’s every gesture, just “As much as the suit is armour, it is as each gesture, coupled with the also disarming; as much provocation As ever, the question of agency arises, sharpness of the child’s joy, provokes as protection,” This suit protects not and there is clearly a lapse here from the future to be different. (above) Tim Stott is a lecturer at Yael Bartana the National College of Art Wild seeds, 2005 and Design, Dublin, and DVD still the Dublin Institute of courtesy Annet Gelink Gallery/ Projectc Technology.

(below) Joost Conijn Siddieqa, Firdaus, Abdallah, Soelayman, Moestafa, Hawwa and Dzoel- Kifl, 2004 video still courtesy Project

69 c . Aileen Blaney NUI Galway July 2007 Galway

70 Women war photographers If a whiff of feminist tokenism regard its collection of distressing body; the cheapness of human life emanates from the title – Women photographs – taken across Israel/ on the bombed-out streets of war photographers – of an exhibition Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir Sarajevo – the forsaken husk of a of war photography included in the and the former Yugoslavia – as man’s body shrouded in bulky winter visual-arts programme of the 2007 compelling viewing. Should such clothing; the sadistic triumphalism Galway Arts Festival, the harrowing people, who derive a positive of victory after the fall of Vukovar, imagery hanging in the neo-gothic experience from viewing a catalogue Croatia, in 1991 – an armed civilian, halls of the University’s Aula Maxima of man’s inhumanity to man, examine wearing a fur stole and tophat, dispels any temptation to associate their conscience? seductively toys with a machine gun these photographs with a ‘woman’s in a theatrical play of exhibitionism eye’, or softened feminine perspective Perhaps the answer to this for the camera; the growing epidemic of the conflict and war zones at conundrum lies in the nature and of female self-immolation in stake. Notwithstanding that detailed extent of the exhibition’s contribution Afghanistan – a woman in visible biographies and headshots of to a ‘pictorial archive’2 – already agony displays severe burns on her the five contributing female photo- heaving with grainy images of war body, naked apart from a scrap of journalists rebound to the gender appearing in the print media and cloth. Although the extent of suffering question, robust descriptions of flickering across television screens shown weighs heavily on the viewer, 71 their unstinting dedication to a daily. Arguably, such a visual archive and could – unproductively – nomadic profession and inventories greatly determines the geopolitical convince him or her of the of prestigious awards signalling realities which individuals affiliated to intractability of human suffering, international kudos are anything but a mediatised world ‘remember’ if, as John Berger states, “The belittling of their membership of the and subsequently reflect upon. precondition for thinking politically ‘fairer’ or ‘second’ sex, and nod Assuming the singularity and integrity on a global scale is to see the unity toward a venerable lineage of female of the images on show here, these of the unnecessary suffering taking photojournalists such as Lee Miller photojournalists might be perceived place,” these photographers open and Margaret Bourke White. as photographer-witnesses, their camera’s and society’s shutters while voyeuristic viewers become onto geographically dispersed While depicting the suffering of conscientious witnesses to instances of violence, united in a others for a living is far from beyond documents of war and suffering. common ethical bankruptcy. ethical reproach, the occupational hazards of working in the field of war Although the wars and conflicts represented in this exhibition will 1 Duncan Anderson, Glass photography partly exculpate photo- warriors: the camera at war, journalists from cynical speculation be more familiar to the globalised London : Collins, 2005, p viii regarding the sagacity of their community than, for example, 2 Detlef Hoffmann in Cornelia the conflict in Chechyna or the Brink, ‘Secular icons: looking professional practice. In a discussion at photographs from Nazi on this topic, one historian’s comment Falkland’s war, its flawlessly concentration camps’, History & that “When soldiers are taking cover, composed, large-format, high-quality memory, Spring/ Summer 2000 the photo-journalist is taking pictures prints, resolutely bearing the (1), Vol. 12, p 143 – even platoon commanders on the hallmarks of the ‘professional look’ Western Front in the First World in war photography, refocus the Aileen Blaney lectures War had a greater chance of sur- Western gaze on Israeli-enforced part-time in Film Studies vival” is instructive in this regard.1 injustices in the West Bank – a at Trinity College, Dublin. By contrast, the typical Westerner, close-up of a soldier’s foot pressing who washes down images of war down on the arm of a protestor (opposite) during a joint Israeli/ Palestinian Alexandra Boulat with coffee over breakfast, or might Snipers Room - Mostar, Bosnia, survey them in air-conditioned demonstration against the Israeli 1993 galleries or even, in the context of ‘security barrier’; irksome Palestinian © Alexandra Boulat / VII courtesy War Photo Ltd Women war photographers, can militarism in Gaza – an infant dressed view its images online and avail of up as a militant chews hungrily on a a scroll-down box to select their plastic grenade; the daily realities of preference of war – has little to living in the occupied territories – shield him – or herself from in a back-garden, a Jewish father accusations of self-serving who cradles his baby as he watches voyeurism. Yet most individuals his other children play on swings has choosing to visit this exhibition at its a revolver tucked into his waistband, actual as opposed to web site will and a machine gun slung about his c . Gemma Tipton Wexford Arts Centre July – August 2007 Wexford

72 Mary Ruth Walsh Still life Considering that we seem not to They are edifices to be admired from Losing references such as the ebb know what to do with our courthouses, a distance in a clinical fashion. and flow of daylight, and the sense town houses and other significant Highly effective scientific studies, of distance and space, which we public buildings – unless it is to turn perhaps, excluding – yet fascinating acquire from known objects such as them either into shopping emporia nonetheless. normal heights of buildings and or art galleries – Mary Ruth Walsh’s trees, we accept what we are told, Still life, an exhibition about shopping Of course, in electing to spend time and enter the time-experience of centres, held in an arts centre that on drawing the curves and catches the mall. was a former market place, was both of light on a piece of plastic that intelligent, and appropriate. once encased something such as That the ideas generated by this a tray of profiteroles, memorialising exploration of the ersatz environment The relationship between art and and monumentalising it as art, of the shopping centre may also architecture is an interesting one on Walsh has added another layer in applied to our experience of looking many levels, not least of which is her exploration of the different at contemporary art in many of its one of longevity. While architecture meanings of longevity expressed in new architecturally aggressive may appear immemorial, the treasures the ephemeral, in architecture and cathedrals brings an extra level of of art history contained in our fine-art in art. In being drawn to look like vague disquiet to the central tenet 73 museums are, for the most part, far something long-lasting, permanent of this exhibition. What you see is older than the buildings they inhabit. (a building), the throwaway (which not necessarily what you get, and The permanence of architecture is, itself is likely to physically outlast what you get may well not mean in fact, spurious. Still life uses the both building and drawing) has what it seems. idea of the throwaway to address acquired the socially immortalised this notion, the atria and aisles of the status of art. coldly post-modernist shopping mall, Gemma Tipton is a which Walsh portrays in her lyrically A previous body of work, White writer and critic on art and architecture based affecting DVD installation, being goods, saw Walsh investigating in Dublin. constructed from mould-injected some of these themes by expressing plastic packaging, objects designed the packaging and some discarded (opposite clockwise from to be discarded. elements from such ‘white goods’ top left) as washing machines as great Mary Ruth Walsh Permanence and impermanence architectural edifices. Juxtaposing here become infected with a sort of the increasingly temporary nature of Still life, 2007 DVD still cross-ambiguity, in that the anticipated the satisfactions brought by the life-span of shopping malls, once set promises of our consumer culture Still life, 2007 at approximately fifty years, has been with ideas of the (equally false) card, paper, paint, plastic packing, undertaker’s wheels, reduced (by those who know, in – promises of eternity embodied by drawings where else? – the USA) to twenty. architecture, Walsh has discovered The weighty facts of steel, glass and a rich theoretical seam to mine. Still life, 2007 DVD still reinforced concrete are becoming more ephemeral than the flimsy In Still life this seam of theory is at Still life, 2007 plastics that briefly hold exotic fruits its most compelling in the DVD, paper, pencil & watercolour which lulls the senses in the same on supermarket shelves, for these, all courtesy the artist we are told, will take hundreds (or is way that architecture, air, sound, it thousands?) of years to biodegrade. smell and surfaces are all orchestrated to so do in the highly artificial A series of drawings in the main atmosphere of the shopping mall. space of the Wexford Arts Centre Here, time seems to pass more magnify these pieces of plastic, and slowly. Or does it speed up? It is a sketch them to a perspective that common experience that leaving the turns them, with a trompe l’oeil hermetically sealed environs of one effect, into buildings; vast, monolithic, of today’s shopping malls, in which futuristic palaces. There is a seductive the outside is ruthlessly excluded, beauty to these, and also a clever and the inside stage-managed to coldness to the delicately produced manipulative perfection, what drawings that separates, almost seemed like a brief trip has in fact alienates, the viewer from them. taken up most of the afternoon. c . Jason McCaffrey Various venues August 2007 Birr

74 Synesthesia sat

Mark Cullen Mark Cullen Star Power Night Sky 53º North courtesy the artist courtesy the artist Juliana Walters’ Found dying leaves was played out through Jeremy is a delicate series of leaves Deadman’s Flayed, a comment on suspended on thread above a blow the excruciating passage of time in heater. These leaves are painted an office environment. A standard with heat sensitive paint which office clock hangs on the wall, changes colour when the timer on accompanied by cries and moans the heater kicks in. Transformation with each passing second; it also, of a different kind occurs through intentionally or not, references the Slavek Kwi’s extraordinary sound misery endured by the poor in the work, Drawing the air. Embodying workhouse system. the spirit of synesthesia, it manages to be a sound work that is at the Amongst the works away from the same time intensely visual. The aural main venue was a video/ musical feast, which was recorded on-site collaboration between Karl Burke from objects found in the room itself, and Mark Garry. A simple and quite punctuates the space with electronic aesthetically beautiful video entitled tapping, high-pitched squeals, and Landscapes, comprising a series 75 The damp and dimly lit rooms of occasional birdsong, which transports of plastic dust sheets blowing in a the partly dilapidated Birr Union the listener to a mesmerising breeze in a wood, is accompanied Workhouse were the main site for electronic jungle. by a sombre musical score. The the enigmatically titled Synesthesia music adds a sense of drama and Sat, an event in which the works of Upstairs, a large room has been foreboding to the scene, which thirteen artists competed for space altered by Sonia Shiel’s enigmatic contrasts nature with the artificial and attention with the building’s I’m all giddy and this is about qualities of the spectral sheet, which evident advances of structural decay. starvation, a spatial, painterly rises and falls with ominous potential Paul Murnaghan curated the project, intervention in the room’s architecture to suffocate the surrounding foliage. and managed to transform the space and plumbing which has echoes of Although visually and aurally into a temporary venue for an Jessica Stockholder’s playful use of seductive, verging on the hypnotic ambitious art event. The majority of ready-made objects and the extension at times, I couldn’t escape the the pieces on show were created of painting into the sculptural. The impression that I had encountered specifically for it, and alongside building’s antiquated plumbing is this work before. The artists’ fluency Birr Union Workhouse the works of utilised to great effect to organically in the language of much recent five more artists were scattered merge a small painting, which seems video art manages to render the throughout various venues around to reference stains and marks on the piece as slightly derivative. Birr town centre. walls themselves, with a series of Elsewhere, a meeting room inside water-filled plastic bags that appear a freemason’s lodge hosted a video On the ground floor of the workhouse, to grow from the crumbling brick by Susan MacWilliam and paintings Séamus Nolan’s No confidence Part and plaster. by Patrick Murphy. MacWilliam’s 2 requests a participatory action on video Explaining magic to Mercer, the part of the visitor, who is asked Appearing as a phantasmagorical a dialogue between a disembodied to punch out a section of the apparition on the floor of the end voice and a small boy drawing fluorescent strip on a euro note of room upstairs is Rhona Byrne’s pictures at a kitchen table, reflected their choice and affix it to one of the video Still waters. Approached from the boy’s open-mindedness to the tiny glass squares which adorn the the hallway, a glow in the centre of supernatural and curiosity for new surface of a mirror ball dangling from the floor in the large end room ideas. On the walls, pictures of past the ceiling – a comment on the gradually materialises into a rushing Grand Masters of the lodge vied for value we place in currency in general torrent. The projection has an inbuilt attention with Patrick Murphy’s Oz and in the euro in particular. In the optical illusion in being installed face paintings, brightly hued renditions era of the electronic transaction, down, so that the viewer is put in of stills from The Wizard of Oz. the mirror ball, a symbol of a bygone the position of looking down through This was a thoughtfully engineered disco age, becomes synonymous the floor at tiny figures on surfboards conjunction between the Freemason’s with an outdated mode of value which appear and are held by the closely guarded secrets and an exchange rather than the artwork’s constantly moving wave before exploration of the bizarre and the being an anarchic statement made disappearing beneath the break only unexplainable, in keeping with through the defacement of currency. to be replaced by another miniature the equally extraordinary condition surfer. A different kind of struggle of synesthesia. Murnaghan has been careful not to structure, and relate more to the Jason McCaffrey is an art be too overtly prescriptive in his interrelation of all the senses critic and painter. curatorial stance; works were employed within the experience and allowed breathing room to remain contemplation of their individual distinct. Some subtle curating was in practices.” There is a supposition evidence, however, in an overall inherent in this statement, however, sense of cohesion, which in particular that the artists involved will engage parts could be interpreted as a more than one particular sense in single installation, owing a great deal their realised works. The real strength to the extraordinary character of of the show lay in the challenge to the workhouse building, which the audience, who were asked to undoubtedly imposed its own relinquish any preconceived notions particular resonance and atmosphere. of the strict divisions between the The artists’ works and their methods senses, in order to enter into the of presentation have not been spirit of a playful exploration of compromised in order to appeal to synesthesia. Far too often, the wonder 76 a wider audience unfamiliar with of sensual exploration through art contemporary practice in Ireland. has come as a second thought (below) In the publicity material for the event, behind a more cerebral or intellectual Caroline Ann Connolly Beta Carotene, 2007 Murnaghan engages in some tentative agenda. It is of course possible to courtesy Paul Munaghan tight-rope walking with regard to his reconcile both, but stimulation through role here as curator, by hoping that sensory perception has the capacity (opposite) Danielle Sheehy the artists’ reactions “will be to achieve a more fundamental Hamlet unencumbered by any pre-ordained resonance on both body and mind. courtesy Triskel Arts Centre c . Elaine O’Sullivan Triskel Arts Centre August – October 2007 Cork

They arrive very secretly, in the night perhaps, or it may be that for several days, weeks or years they had been assembling. Periodical cicadas have fascinated entomologists for years; they are large prehistoric insects that emerge out of the earth like a tidal surge. They each have distinctive 77 Cicada behaviours or calling signals and communicate with each other over vast distances. These calls will eventually merge to create one loud buzzing chorus. Cicada is an international group of stereotypical depictions of distressed Circular movement may also be artists from Ireland, the UK and women. A fusion of subtle and more detected within the work of Miriam Australia who met through a number unnerving imagery keeps Hysteria Lloyd. She is an English artist of art projects in the 1990s. Freed hovering on the critical side of this currently living in Australia. For from the potential constraints of a threshold. Cicada, she presents Tooraweenah, curatorial brief, Cicada is an artist-led a video installation and a series of initiative that aims to develop a Life after literature by Irish artist still images shot in the Australian dialogue between the participating Danielle Sheehy is a series of vibrant Bush. Lloyd creates immersive artists and their individual work. paintings. They appear like nonlinear environments that aim to bring the The conceptual configuration and storyboards and their bright, animated viewer closer to a remote location. artistic style of the individual pieces style is well suited to their quirky Tooraweenah is a Ute truck spinning seem somewhat disparate at first subject matter. The tragic and out of control to a Bach aria, evoking glance, yet connections can be mundane are superimposed as both the beauty of a ballet dancer detected on closer encounter. Shakespearean anti-heroes and and the dangers of a joyride. The still other tragic characters from images give panoramic views into The Triskel is housed within an literature are re-imaged in more the expansive landscape, while the 78 eighteenth-century converted banal contexts. For example, Lady video provokes a sublime response, warehouse and many of its exhibition Macbeth is depicted reading a a fusion of beauty and dread. The spaces evade the symmetry of a newspaper and Ophelia exposes viewer is considered integral to the White Cube. The many curved walls belly, breast and knobbly knee in effectiveness of the work, and while and nooks of the building present a a seaweed bath. Many of the the video was engaging, it was challenge in the display of work, but characters depicted are represented difficult to feel completely immersed also an opportunity for the innovative within literature as being mentally in the Australian Bush while wearing use of space. Nowhere is this more unstable, even suicidal, but in headphones and looking at a small evident than in Australian artist Sheehy’s hands they escape or are screen. On the opening night, the Sara Zitner’s use of the elevator. denied their tragic/ heroic status. video was shown in a black-box The word Hysteria is splayed across The caricature style of these figures theatre space on a large screen with its closed white doors. Journeying makes them appear bold and slightly surround-sound, and this was far from one floor to the next, the viewer grotesque but their witty edge keeps more effective. A shift from viewing is confronted on three sides by them from sliding into simplistic farce. the piece individually to viewing it black-and-white photographs of the collectively also enhanced awareness artist stitching herself into her bed. Tighe O’Connor is an Irish artist of being connected elsewhere, to This claustrophobic space evokes living in London. He presents a a location beyond the immediate a sense of psychiatric confinement, collection of abstract paintings and environment. while the motion of the lift, its rise two neon-light installations. His and fall, reflects an oscillating mood paintings are infused with striking Without a specific theme or curatorial pattern. The sewing image not only colours, floating forms and ethereal brief, Cicada brings together four recalls traditional female craftwork figures. Losing my soul saving my artists whose work would probably but also points towards the stitching soul is an abstract cloud study in not be exhibited side by side in of wounds both physical and which the outline of a human figure another context. While each artist psychological. These still images are emerges. Many of the paintings have has individual concerns and difficult to view, due to their placement, spiritual titles, yet cellular forms or approaches, their placement within echoing the way in which traumatic spores rise through them. Kiss of the group provokes a consideration experience resists representation or the lost soul is an oceanic painting of interconnectedness. The human translation. This is also true of the that is permeated with these wayward mind’s response to different spatial artist’s wax book and hand sculpture forms. O’Connor describes the contexts and environments is a located in the foyer; the book contains concept behind this painting: “there common thread that runs throughout writing created using hair like a is only so much of the soul that can the exhibition, whether that is thread, but the text is illegible. inhabit a person; and parts of this a space of confinement or On the page opposite the text lies can retreat to protect itself. This is expansiveness, domesticity or an image of a woman screaming. the moment when you feel those spirituality. In the cracks where This piece is more overtly disturbing parts returning.” His neon works are communication breaks down, where than the photographs in the lift. very different in style to his paintings, we struggle with words and look to Zitner examines the image of the yet in Pi a neon circle rises above the visual, Cicada resounds. female hysteric and runs the risk of the ground and invades the cubic reinforcing rather than questioning exhibition space with colour and light. (top) (middle) (bottom) Elaine O’ Sullivan is a Sarah Zitner Miriam Lloyd Tighe O'Connor freelance writer on visual Hysteria Tooraweenah Pi and performance art, installation shot, Triskel film stills installation shot, Triskel currently working as Writer courtesy Triskel Arts Centre courtesy Triskel Arts Centre courtesy Triskel Arts Centre In Residence for Cork Art Trail.

79 c . Paul O’Brien Linz September 2007

80 Ars electronica (opposite) and intense sound. You completely spectator is slowly led by a strangely Wim Delvoye lost your sense of orientation – costumed figure into an area of Cloaca, 2007 courtesy Ars Electronica the only way to get some relief was complete darkness. Ultrasound sets to cover your eyes. A number of off the formation and implosion of tiny people who had arrived in a state of bubbles in a liquid (in a transparent insouciance left in some distress. I container) that give off light in the Over a wet September week in Linz, managed to stick it out, but only just. configuration of sound waves – this year’s Ars electronica festival Had it gone on much longer I would an awesome experience. At the was entitled Goodbye privacy. The happily – if asked – have betrayed other end of the scale of sublimity symposium section focused on the any political secrets I possessed in was Cloaca by Wim Delvoye, a topical issue of the disappearance order to get out. And you had to pay complicated machine that duplicates of privacy in the digital age and how as well. the human digestive system together to combat it. (The dispersal of our with the artificial production of personal information over cyber- If FEED was a bad trip – though excrement, thereby commenting on space grows at an alarming pace – not to be missed on that account – art, the art market and (no doubt) cyperspace is increasingly displac- an opposite experience awaited in capitalism itself. ing ‘real’ space in terms of signifi- the Landesmuseum. Entitled Mirror 81 cance in our lives.) A notable cells by Sylvia Eckermann and Peter The growing centrality of Hybrid Art contributor to the privacy discussion Szely, this provided the opportunity is – unfortunately – tending to from a civil-libertarian perspective to crawl into a room with floor, walls edge out the works in the Interactive was Danny O’Brien, an expert on and ceiling made of reflective Art category, a nomenclature which techno-legal issues and member of surfaces. The viewer could then has in any case been challenged in the US-based Electronic Freedom recline and take a virtual journey recent years by the questionable Foundation. The organisers managed through a landscape projected on claim of some of the featured works to tie this issue in with a debate the ceiling and controllable via a to any noticeable interactivity. This among local Austrian jurists, so that computer mouse – it would have year’s winner, an interactive optical the audience for some of the sessions been easy to idle away a few hours game with pointing devices by was unusually be-suited (part of there. Equally memorable in the Ashok Sukumaran, was more the debate took place in the local same building was a large, red-lit, impressive in idea than in actuality, courthouse). womb-like space entitled Earth at least in terms of the experience chapel by Brazilian artist Ernesto offered in the exhibit. On the other An especially worrying issue in this Neto, where you could get back in hand, Bernie Lubell’s Conservation area seems to be the paranoid touch with your primal feelings after of intimacy – a large, intricate, attempt by the entertainment industry the disorientation of FEED. Outside though essentially low-tech Heath to control information, with resultant in a city square was a mock-up of Robinson-type device made of wood incursions on our privacy. This in turn a beach where participants could – was endearingly playful. In the raises an interesting question – in sunbathe (in the rain, as it turned out) Computer Animation category (won an economy which is increasingly and interact with virtual characters by Ben Hibon’s Codehunters) the knowledge-based, could capitalism on a similar beach in Second Life. growing ability of digital media to survive the de-commodification of reflect the ultimate in Gothic information? A new category – Hybrid Art – grotesquerie was evident, particularly reflected the growing prominence of in the extract from Pirates of the On the art front, the one really ‘crossover’ work between art and Caribbean: dead man’s chest (Hal memorable event was Kurt science. The winner (represented by Hickel/ Industrial Light and Magic) Hentschlaeger’s FEED – a sensory- a number of bio-art installations from and in Silent Hill – the making of bombardment session that took the Art and Science Collaborative (Stephane Ceretti/ BUF). The winner place in some caves outside the Research Laboratory of the in the Digital Musics category was town centre. The large body of University of Western Australia) was the conceptually intriguing ambulance workers outside the venue more bio than art by a long shot. Reverse-simulation music by should have served as a warning, Heavily science-oriented, it was Masahiro Miwa which – as far as also the legal disclaimer that one less memorable than one of the I could gather – rigorously had to sign before participating. The runners-up entitled Camera lucida: subordinates human performance to event started off innocuously enough sonochemical observatory (Evelina the dictates of computational laws, with some writhing figures on a Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand). With creating the kind of ritualistic screen. After a while the room started almost religious ritualism recalling music which ancient people might to fill with thick mist, strobe lighting the ancient mystery cults, the have made, but did not. Winner of the Digital Communities to be played with in the Ars Paul O’Brien section was Overmundo, a website Electronica Center (temporarily ([email protected]) teaches aimed at fostering an ongoing moved to a downtown location while at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. debate about Brazilian culture. its Danube-side headquarters are Runners-up included feminist and being rebuilt and extended, with a anti-racist sites, as well as the scheduled re-opening in 2009). Electronic Freedom Foundation itself. A welcome addition to the awards was one for theoretical research, supported by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Media.Art.Research and won this year by Florian Cramer for his book entitled Exe.cut[up]able statements, which apparently covers everything from kabbalism to codeworks. 82 Theoretical weight was added to the year’s events by notable contributions from media theorist Lev Manovich and veteran cyber-guru Ted Nelson. Evelina Domnitch, Dmitry Gelfand Camera lucida: sonochemical While all this was going on, the observatory, 2007 usual high-end toys were available courtesy Ars Electronica c . Jennie Guy Royal Hibernian Academy September – October Dublin 2007

Alice Maher Bestiary 83

“Well now, Today it’s upside down And I’ll have to stand on my head To reach it Tell me this: Why should I bother my arse?” (excerpt from The Gift by Eilís Ní Dhuibhne, a collection of accompanying poems to The Night garden, drawings by Alice Maher)

Alice Maher The Seduction, 2007 charcoal on paper 152.5 x 102 cm courtesy the artist/ Green on Red Gallery/ RHA I had a crick in my neck due to a In the early 1990s, Maher painted see how the feminine – or the cold, and was suffering from general on fabric, symbolising a period when beautiful hairy women, as my six-year human frailty when I first visited Alice Irish women were emerging from old daughter has named the drawings Maher’s exhibition called Bestiary at genuine oppression, and her work – is embroiled in nature, how the the RHA. Maher’s show of new was not necessarily guided by the inner psychology of the female charcoal and pencil drawings and feminist theory coming from the subjects is rendered, without regard wall installations is the last show in States at a similar time. Ironically, to accuracy of scale. the main gallery of the RHA, which her current obsessive layering of is to undergo a well-deserved charcoal in many of her drawings still On the opposite wall, Maher, with refurbishment and is set to reopen in gives Maher’s surfaces a velvety a team of five other artists, has October 2008. Neither the physical appearance, disguising the fact that recreated the lake at the centre of pain, nor the unexpected chill in the it is on mere paper, rather than fabric. Bosch’s The Garden of earthly air of the gallery itself, could prevent delights. Its exterior is blackened my gaze from wandering upward, In the series of charcoal drawings, via the use of paint with charcoal towards the black monochrome it is clear that Maher must have overlay. In the ‘show and tell’ frieze, high on the wall at the top of studied Bosch’s work in great depth. evening at the RHA, Maher said that 84 the RHA stairs. I wasn’t alone, She has traced groups of human the reason why she generally works for bored into the side of the soon- and animal figures from Bosch’s in monochrome is because choosing to-be-removed marble staircase was original painting, producing blacked- colour uses too much thinking time. a bronze girl produced by Maher. out scenes of carnal and bestial By working in black, she allows her Upon closer inspection, I realized pleasure. These drawings are then full concentration to focus on the that the exquisite and decorative decorated with both classical and subject at hand. The very density filigree-like frieze that appeared to be contemporary motifs, creating a and blackness of the work seems to either protruding, or set into the wall, voluminous discourse on hedonism make the void of the gallery smaller was actually drawn by hand directly and suffering. It is interesting to too. When asked during the session onto the wall with layers of unfixed muse upon why Maher uses such if it pains her to think that this vast charcoal. I immediately identified overtly decorative influences – endeavour is a one-off, she replies with this temporary and fragile work Pompeian panels, eighteenth-century that she likes the idea that although of art. wallpaper, and contemporary the work will become invisible to the headscarves – to fill in the spaces of naked eye it will remain in the fabric The gallery in which the show is her Bestiary drawings when it could of the wall itself. This statement situated is a huge, tall, open void. be suggested that the decorative helped me realize that because of Maher seems entirely unintimidated gesture is seen as a lesser one in Maher’s innate mastery of drawing by this fact, and seems to have no contemporary art. All one has to do and compelling use of surface, as problem in playing with this spatial is wander around the Venice well as her unashamed referencing emptiness in her Bestiary exhibition. Biennale and witness the surge of of another artist’s oeuvre, Bestiary Hieronymus Bosch’s unconventional text-based artworks to see that it is has succeeded in creating a detailed painting The Garden of earthly now completely acceptable to say pictorial discourse out of nothingness, delights largely influences the starting rather than draw your art. One can’t that same nothingness that is central point for the artist. The centre panel help wondering if Maher is moralizing to our philosophical questioning of of Bosch’s triptych, which details via her own artistic process, while one what happens after we die. naked scenes of human and animal views the symphony of ornamental delight and romance, is presumed charcoal dust. Is the work of art as Jennie Guy is a writer and by many to depict the original vulnerable as the pleasure seekers curator based in Dublin. progression of humankind into sin. depicted in her drawings? Although the initial inspiration for this exhibition is the controversial work The Night garden series consists of of a celebrated sixteenth-century very small and intimate drawings. artist, those expecting Maher’s own They seem to be in direct contrast exhibition to explain Bosch’s painting to the density of her other work. within her own work will be However, it is only when one sees disappointed. If, on the other hand, how often Maher has employed an one is willing to accept that starting eraser that one can understand that points are not necessarily points of their complexity has been removed. arrival, Maher’s Bestiary may prove She leaves in its stead narratives of more than satisfying. myth, folklore, and fairytale. Here you Alice Maher Roots pencil on paper 30x 21 cm courtesy the artist/ David Nolan Gallery/ RHA

Alice Maher Omnium gatherum, 2007 charcoal on paper 152.5 x 102 cm courtesy the artist/ Green on Red Gallery/ RHA c . Slavka Sverakova Various locations September 2007 Belfast

belfast

86 3-13 september 2007

Allan Hughes Read my lips, 2007 twin-monitor synchronised DVD installation installation view and still courtesy the artist her second introduction, answering of an old printed page. They defend “the timorous or carping few” who their gravitas almost without the judged anything unusual as wrong. sensuality of the living. Wedge The spatial ambiguity insists on smuggles in a beauty that belongs details: is it a picture on the wall or to some brilliant eternal world, in an a view through a window? Is the attempt to soothe the pervasive reaper with scythe in or outside the anxiety born of serious health room? Is the bed so strangely problems. He who observes changes curved an allusion to a sarcophagus the observed. A link favoured during or a podium? The answer is: both in the recent controversy about the all cases. A multivalent locus of anthropic principle4 in relation to desire, the image articulates female dark energy/ dark matter appears erotic dynamics in a fusion of Eros also in art. Aisling O’Beirn collapsed and Thanatos: Jane’s arms frozen literary exegesis, (Bohr’s) like two claws, both threatening and complementary principle and the disabled, around Helen’s sensual politics of the quest to understand body. Rego proposes that the the universe in a nonhierarchical 87 integrative coherence of a story display. A constructed and does not prevent eisegesis to forge suspended sculpture and a frame- a deeper meaning of contemporary by-frame computer animation of her existence. drawing, as well as framed drawings form, in her words, constellations. Although they overlap, illustrations, The drawings and the sculpture literary exegeses, eisegeses and were inspired by the NASA Hubble hermeneutics differ in what they pull 3D map. The animation explores out of the text. Revolving around the diagrams and explanations from the contemporary relevance of the text in book Theories of everything by John question, hermeneutics already has D Barrow. To pull out meaning from a glorious tradition.2 Martin Wedge given interpretations and forge a exhibited3 portraits inspired by ‘thinking space’, randomly collected illustrations in Short practice of second-hand frames were placed Three of the exhibitions considered surgery by Bailey and Love. The on empty sheets of paper and here, between the above dates, uniform level of energy in the black determined size and composition. displayed paintings by male artists drawings felt mysterious for how Drawing’s autonomy is undermined only; a video work and installation the drawings produced a number of once more by display in an appeared once each. minute surprises within the sameness asymmetrical and loose polyptych. of theme and rendering. Large and The political in O’Beirn’s art appears A travelling group exhibition of small, colour or monochrome, the to relate to the dissemination of lithographs, Stone – plate – grease paintings gathered around the ideas about how to and how not to – water,1 called for better display subjects of ‘harmed individuals’. The think. It is not a crowd pleaser, it is than the narrow corridor spaces and small female head Portrait I, 2007, not optically sensational, its small harsh lighting facilitated. Both flaws arrested my attention. I responded to scale and its ‘unfinished’ look turn into an advantage for viewing a the woman’s serene acceptance of mismatch the grandeur of any theory small, dark print by Paula Rego, Jane the deformation of her face, and also of everything. The installation5 and Helen, 2002, one of twenty-five to the tacit kindness of the grisaille coincided with the launch of plates inspired by reading Charlotte veiling her illness. Grisaille, a mode O’Beirn’s book Or so I’m told, Brontë’s Jane Eyre and other stories. of painting with at least a 700-year- an overview of her art practice. The value of the image lies not in its old tradition, surfaced when a painter, relation to the famous text, although like Giotto or van Eyck, preferred the Art creates an order that is not in it would appear to be close to the denial of polychromy in a quest for a sympathy with systems. Even passage “…I clasped my arms convincing lie. The proverbial master Stephen Weinberg concedes that closer around Helen… (who said) of tromp l’oeil in grisaille, the Dutch although consciousness may have …don’t leave me Jane, I like to have painter Jacob de Wit (eighteenth a neural correlate, its existence does you near me” (p 78). Its menacing century) even gave grisailles his own not seem derivable from physical ambiguity undercuts modes of name: ‘witjes’. Wedge understands laws.6 Sensations and memories are authority and moral codes in the the visual force of a marble relief, of moulded by the brain, the phenomenal same spirit in which Brontë wrote a photograph bleached by time, and pickpocket.7 Conor Kelly invented A Brief history the screen quite quickly, as if trying, 1 Stone – plate – grease – of wormroot8 based on heteroge- and failing, to catch the previous one water, the Naughton Gallery at Queen’s, 4-29 September neous utopian urban plans and outside the frame. These concerns 2007. Paul Croft curated the ideas. Thomas More (1478–1535), are similar to those of Rudolf Stingel exhibition, wrote the texts Vauban (1633–1707), Ebenezer who, inter alia, constantly disrupts and designed the catalogue published by School of Art Howard (1850–1928) and the habitual experience of the Press, University of Wales, Le Corbusier(1887–1965) provide moving image. Video’s natural Aberystwyth. visual and verbal sources for tendency to hybridity is explored for 2 One famous example: Hieronymous Bosch took a elaborate, tightly controlled, highly its power to connect to the instability verbal source, Visio Tundali, detailed views of a nonexistent city. of perceptions and values. Hughes written around 1148, possibly, A map of the Low Countries and does not seduce the eye, although by an Irish monk Marius, as an inspiration for the images Belgium drawn in the shape of a lion he keeps a high level of raw visual of hell painted soon after (the earliest example by Michael force in each synchronised phase. translations of the Visio Atringer in 1583), which at times became late-fifteenth-century represented civic pride and It is one of the almost forbidden bestsellers. 3 Martin Wedge: New paintings confirmation of the Peace of pleasures to observe where an idea and works on paper, 88 Westphalia, is echoed by the shape may travel. Take an ébauche. Fenderesky Gallery, 29 August of a huge rat in The allegory of Thomas Couture (1815–1879) and – 21 September 2007 Edouard Manet(1832–1883) gave 4 This says that some properties wormroot, 2007. The painting of the universe are the way somehow manages to both parody impetus to the meteoric rise of the they are because if they were and glorify history and historical unfinished surface. Jonny McEwen10 different we would not be exhibited a series of landscapes, around to observe it. More on paintings. Kelly’s pictorial control www.newscientist.com/blog/s does not allow an immediate entry. some with high horizon echoing pace/2007/09/is-there- His palette is dry like tombstones; classical Italian landscape, eg human-link-to-dark- Beckoning, most with low horizon so energy.html. Some harsh cri- the paintings position themselves tique of Stephen Weinberg near architecture, monuments, and delightfully defined by the Dutch (Nobel Laureate) on images of archaeological discoveries. paintings of the seventeenth and www.edge.org and eighteenth century, eg Imminent. www.math.columbia.edu The utopias thus belong to the past. 5 Aisling O’Beirn, Dark matter, In smaller paintings, a glowing Evoked by nature and evoking The Third Space, 14 background animates the black nature, the soft modelling of the sky September – 12 October shapes with the brimming energy of almost signals a romantic escape. 2007 As if to anchor the high sky to the 6 Roberto Lanza, ‘A new theory a distant volcano with a hypnotic of the universe’, The pull. Evocations of hunger (plates earth, at the lower edge of each American scholar, 2007, and cutlery, rats) and of a siege of a painting there is a heavy frieze of accessed on rectangular shapes in divided http://www.theamerican- city (firing canons) add up to the scholar.org/archives/sp07/n failing of utopia. Repeated stencilled brushstrokes, sometimes in thick ewtheory-lanza.html, p 11 of images of real buildings (eg in Paris) paint, at times with embodied collage. 11 These either increase the drama of 7 With apology to Michael P pop up on imaginary sites, governed Lynch by strict order indifferent to nonsense, the storm or cold or end of the day, 8 Conor Kelly, A Brief history of in reference to More’s Raphael or appear superfluous. wormroot, Engine Room Hythloday. Gallery, 6-29 September 2007 It is not snobbery or elitism to 9 Allan Hughes, Read my lips, Old Museum Arts Centre, 13 Channelling recorded sound prefer art that differentiates between September – 13 October through an impersonal medium of profundity and mediocrity to that 2007 which merely exists. Both have 10 Jonny McEwen, Approaching synchronization and through blue, Tom Caldwell Gallery, 11 changes of sound registers disrupts values, different, not exchangeable September – 6 October 2007 viewers’ expectations. Allan Hughes values. alters interactions between language, Slavka Sverakova is a dubbing and identity by a deliberate writer on art. deceit: in the video installation Read my lips,9 the female’s lips speak the words which are delivered in a male voice. Except that it is not a male voice: the original voice register of the woman has been changed. Hughes moves each image across 103

(top left) (bottom left) Jonny McEwan Paula Rego Imminent, 2007 Jane and Helen, 2002 mixed media on canvas stone and photoplate: 51 x 51 cm lithographic crayon and courtesy the artist drawing on drafting film 31x 54 cm (top right) courtesy Naughton Gallery Martin Wedge Portait I, 2007 (bottom right) oil on canvas Conor Kelly 76 x 62 cm The Allegory of wormroot, 2007 courtesy Fenderesky Gallery oil on canvas courtesy the artist c . Matt Packer Cork 12 – 16 September 2007

90 Radio ON Radio ON, 2007 installation/ performance shots courtesy Dobz O'Brien [R]adio is one-sided when it should Resonance FM, WPS1 in New York, understanding the possible be two. It is purely an apparatus for or kunstradio in Austria – all radio incorporation of conflicts into distribution, for mere sharing out. stations which are strictly dedicated democratic society, Radio ON was So here is a positive suggestion: to artists and the arts scene. in effect making a space of imagining change this apparatus over from a notion of community constructed distribution to communication. To make a rather false separation, in a different way from the usual Bertolt Brecht, The Radio as an apparatus Radio ON’s artistic connections sanction of the word. Here, with of communication, 1932 were closer to the practices of artist local, national and international groups such as Bik van der Pol or relevance at a political level, the Devised as a platform for issues of SuperFlex, less concerned with emphasis was more on how a “art, publics, politics and society,” material production (or formal experi- community could be understood as featuring debate, conversation, mentation) and more concerned with a bringing-together of activated lectures, music, poetry and sound the kind of discursive spaces that art differences, rather than being arts – Radio ON was a five-day can provide. Considered from a defined and distributed like a dose. programme of live and pre-recorded radio context, however, many of radio, broadcast from a temporary Radio ON’s individual programmes Interestingly, O’Brien and Baker’s studio in the Shandon area of Cork would not have sounded out of Radio ON shares its title with Chris 91 during one week in September. place on a late-night talk slot of a Petit’s 1979 film starring David The website, radioon.eu, now acts regular or national channel. Beames, a film set in Thatcher’s as an archive of the project, with Britain with seemingly little further introductory information and online It was the eclecticism of the project connection – except, that is, for a listening available of all programme as a whole that set Radio ON’s description written by the British sessions. distinction. In playing host to a Film Institute of Petit’s film and a motley crew of different voices and sentiment that both Radio ONs hold Although ‘art, publics, politics and guest participants – from Conal in common: society’ conjures a woolly mixture – Creedon and Martin Lynch’s audio hardly exclusive, radio was surely history of local legend Father “capturing the sense of faltering the only appropriate medium for O’Flynn, to Dr Brenden McAlroy’s communication and lurking such a nebulous task. In its history, lecture on foundational economics, disenchantment in a country radio has been a veritable open sea to Justin Carville and David Farrell’s uncertain of its place and future, of experimental, populist, and discussion of globalism and it remains quietly and subversively propagandist practices, capable of photography – the committed listener optimistic that redemptive change ticking every issue on the list while could find themselves rebounded might come, but not necessarily also positioning itself as a strategically through issues that were interestingly from the expected sources.” free and distributive medium. interactive across local, global and disciplinary divides. As a result, Created by artists Dobz O’Brien and despite being aware of Radio ON’s Patricia Baker, Radio ON identified limited range of broadcast reception itself clearly as an art project. This – approximately 25 miles radius, was announced frequently during there was none of that feeling of Matt Packer is Fellow in the broadcasts, as a way of sensibly entrenchment that tends to come Curatorial Practice, Lewis introducing the project to new with listening to much local radio. Glucksman Gallery, Cork. listeners, some of whom – we like to imagine – had tuned in unaware, Throughout Radio ON’s five-day simply seeking a respite from the programme, the typically burdened homogenous tangle of local and notions of ‘local’ and ‘community’ national commercial radio. Yet if began to shimmer a little, Radio ON was an art project, it was re-imagined as both circumstantial art radio in a different sense from the and speculative notions. This was radio experiments of Kurt Schwitters brought to an apex on the final day through to contemporaries such as of broadcasting with a series of Brandon Labelle – artists who ‘agonism’-themed sessions, including have consistently used radio as a a lecture by Dr Fergal Gaynor and a substantive and plastic medium. pre-recorded conversation between Radio ON was also different from Gerry Tubritt and Reverend Mark the type of art radio of London’s Gray. Using agonism as a model of c . David Hughes Greystone Library September – October Antrim 2007

92 Sandra Kerr Pain in the neck When I get to Greystone Road And here is where Sandra Kerr’s dis- I sidle over to ask the mums how Library in Antrim there’s a kid standing play case sits like an alien spaceship they like the exhibition. They laugh, tip-toed at the glass display case in the middle of the local library. there is a ripple of humour. They which is Sandra Kerr’s exhibition, think they’d be hell to wear. One Pain in the neck. He’s looking at In the light of the internet browsing looks like a bridal tiara and bracelet, the brooches and bracelets and and buying that is going on against I’m told. What does it mean, asks necklaces made from buttons and the far wall, these plastic spines that one. I take a quick look round, but plastic clothing tags arranged on attach price tags and information Das Kapital doesn’t seem to be on black books. Some are attached to tags and security tags to clothing the shelves here. However, there are the books like leaches or molluscs; bought in shops seem to be distinctly kids videos for a quid and there’s others seem to be slithering over anachronistic. Like remnants of one of Tin Tin. We’re reading Hergé the books or towards or away from another age. I am reminded very at bedtime these days and I’ve them. They do seem to have some vividly of the Pitt-Rivers Museum in promised the boys to look out for the kind of life. Perhaps that’s why the Oxford and I start to entertain myself videos. A great buy. A bit scuffed kid is looking so suspiciously at by marvelling at the artefacts that and without its original packaging, them. He can’t seem to decide some foreign and strange and of course, but that’s not what we’ll just what they are. His eyes are almost forgotten civilisation thought be looking at. Is it? 93 narrowed. I’m tempted to see in his were so important that they produced nose pressed against glass the them in vast numbers. They are fetish David Hughes is a writer image of the Victorian urchin nose objects: examples of a culture’s and artist who lives near pressed against the window of a religious artefacts. Here hundreds of Lisburn. posh restaurant. I’m tempted to take the tags are clustered together to a shot of him but, well, you can’t make the shape and decorative (opposite) these days, can you, just walk up to features of the ornaments. Sandra Kerr from Pain in the neck, 2007 a kid in the street, or in this case a courtesy Clotworthy Arts Centre public library, and take his picture. Usually of course these tags are hidden from view. Here there is a His mum calls him back to her. She’s reversal. The tags are fetishised and sitting with a load of other mums produce a kind of fetish object. The and toddlers at a bank of computers kind of object one could imaging against one wall of the library. They adorning the neck of an otherwise are variously googling and ebaying. naked model in a Helmut Newton, Browsing and comparing specs and or on the mysterious chimeras prices. The internet and its wares (half-man, half-beast),those composite are much more accessible and objects with human heads, and the appealing and welcoming than the fantastic flying animals which appear Spar and post office and wine mart throughout Marc Chagall’s work. across the parking lot. This little Or perhaps Ernst’s bird/ women with compound of library, school and their stripped-back skin exposing shops is stockaded. There seems to arteries and nerves. Indeed these b a siege mentality here, the shops tag ornaments look like some kind of have no windows, they are just set of exposed fibres, as though they decorated sheds, and everything have been denuded. Like an else has bars on its windows. exposed bunch of nerve endings. Wouldn’t we be happy if folk wanted to steal books? Why barricade the These are not vital of course. These library? are what is discarded and abandoned and, rather than being the literal pain The stockade is in a kind a strip in the neck that they would be left development of technology parks on the garment, they now playfully and churches and schools and retail become things that would cause a parks on the outskirts of Antrim. pain in the neck if worn. The thing A kind of zoning disaster area that of no value now becomes the object seems to have had the genteel heart to which value is attached. Indeed as ripped out of it. price tags they attach value to the garment. c . Karen Normoyle-Haugh Limerick City Gallery of September – October Art 2007 Limerick

94 Michael Minnis Here, and nowhere else It seems increasingly apparent that corresponding photographs (taken form of hallucination: false on the there is a trend that encapsulates by Minnis) of the present day. The level of perception, true on the level a large section of current art. DVD projections of Dnipropetrovs’k of time: a temporal hallucinaton… Appropriating, re-energising, at dawn are breathtakingly still, so a mad image, chafed by reality.”1 re-presenting and re-locating past much so that you have to look very Minnis is not interested in portraying histories have become the closely to see that they unfold in real the real Ukrainian city, only in buzzwords for contemporary art. time over 90 minutes. Sunrise over replicating the naïve, kitsch version These concerns are also central to the Dnipro River in particular has a from the original promotional imagery. Here, and nowhere else, the current Turner-esque quality to it, both in its exhibition of Michael Minnis’s works picturesque view and its soft pastel Here, and nowhere else, like the at the Limerick City Gallery of Art. shades. In terms of the paintings enigmatic title suggests, exaggerates Minnis uses various techniques, themselves, the strongest is the the feeling of dislocation and such as re-photographing, enlarging Plaza series, where Minnis zooms in displacement. This exhibition is and cropping, in order to fragment, on fragments of a photograph of the largely based upon fragments of a fracture and disconnect. The process crowded plaza. The arrangement of history, culture and place, which the of selection features strongly in this the small individual paintings roughly viewer is meant to piece together. exhibition, the artist carefully and corresponds to their placement in The result is akin to a jigsaw puzzle 95 rigidly editing his work, in what he the original photograph. The selection with a significant number of the sees as an ongoing project. and omission of specific details pieces missing, so we never get a within each canvas holds a certain sense of the full picture. Overall, The basis for this solo exhibition took interest. The raw, unfinished quality the exhibition is nonrevelatory, the root in a chance find, a book that of the brushwork gives a sense of city of Dnipropetrovs’k remains as Minnis discovered in an Oxfam fluidity and motion to the paintings in closed to us now as it did back in shop in Limerick. The book is a an otherwise still, placid exhibition. the eighties. Echoing Sontag’s photographic tribute to an isolated vehement reaction ‘against Ukrainian city, Dnipropetrovs’k, There is a huge distinction between interpretation’ during the sixties, in 1989. The year is significant as it the images from the eighties, which Minnis’s body of work undercuts saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and portray a bustling, colourful city meaning and defies interpretation represented an exciting era of enjoying an economic upturn, and and becomes an ‘hallucination’ of change for communist countries. the images from the present day, a place that never truly existed. The highly saturated photographs, which depict an isolated city, largely industrial cityscapes and idyllic unchanged in terms of industrial Karen Normoyle-Haugh is sunrises featured in the book expansion and urban development. an art historian and visual combine to form a colourful vignette The photographs of Dnipropetrovs’k arts writer. of a city on the verge of transformation. taken by the artist in the last few That is, as we see the book months portray a city frozen in a time 1 Roland Barthes, Camera lucida, through Minnis’s subjective gaze. warp, to such an extent that Minnis Vintage Press, London, 2000, Through the selected works, Minnis was able to re-capture much of the p 115 re-presents the city of imagery found in the book. However, (opposite) Dnipropetrovs’k based on the while these photographs of banal Michael Minnis photographs from 1989 and today. cityscapes and overly sentimental Sunrise over the Dnipro River, Dnipropetrovsk on two consecutive sunrises are essentially documentary, mornings 19th & 20th July 2007, Here, and nowhere else signals a they are far from truthful portrayals of 2007 return to painting for Minnis and, the city. The city itself is one of the two-channel video installation courtesy Limerick City Gallery of Art although he still relies heavily on lens centres of industry in Ukraine, based media, the exhibition is manufacturing cruise missiles impregnated with painterly concerns. amongst other weapons. Despite its In Plaza interior (between times), healthy economy, the city is inacces- Minnis re-photographs, enlarges and sible to tourists; thus the only window crops some of the original images into their culture is through Minnis’s so that they become pixelated and re-presentation of the tourist- distorted. The high saturation and promotional imagery. What Barthes pixelation of these re-photographed maintains of the photograph is images possess a distinct painterly incisive when applied to Minnis’s quality. These manipulated images imagery: ‘the photograph then are projected amongst crisp, becomes a bizarre medium, a new c . David Ulrichs Various venues September – October Berlin 2007

Art fairs in Berlin Wrestling for our attention, the overarching concept were two IKEA Clearly taking the best-positioned countless art events in Berlin this lamps, dangling in the holes of the booth, the janinebeangallery, Berlin, autumn lost much of their charm. wall physically dividing House trip set the tone for Berliner Liste (30 Dizzying numbers of calendared from the rest of the fair. While there September – 3 October 2007) with events scared off even hardened were gems among the works on a handful of works delicately painted gallery-goers. And at the end of display, the exhibition was a curatorial by the Polish artist Aleksandra September, Europe’s contemporary- failure. Perhaps expectations were Chaberek. As in these works, art capital played host to four art high, but perhaps an art fair should the theme of sexuality prevailed fairs, bundling close to 400 galleries. not try to be more than it is – a throughout much of the Berliner place where art is bought and sold! Liste. Indeed, whether The Joe About beauty was the deliberately series, 2005 – 2007, by Guerra de ironic title of this year’s Art Forum Effectively marketing Preview – la Paz, or Myriam Quiel’s Ornament Berlin (28 September – 3 October the emerging art fair (28 September I, 2007, there seemed to be a 2007). Half-seriously chosen to – 1 October 2007) as Art Forum fascination with naked bodies and self-critically reflect the increasing Berlin’s testing grounds means that homoeroticism. commercialisation and banalisation it avoids being labelled ‘reactionary’. of art, the title remained an empty Although it focuses on the Berlin The Berlin Kunstsalon (28 97 comment devoid of any noteworthy gallery scene, it offers a platform for September – 2 October 2007) is application or relevance. Instead of emerging galleries worldwide. the ‘enfant terrible’ of the four fairs. making it a useful leitmotiv for the Dominated by its premises, Hangar Spouting a clear anti-commercialist fair, the free-floating slogan only 2 of the airport Berlin Tempelhof, attitude, its exhibition space is raw confirmed that, like any other art fair, the impressive view from its balcony and untreated; there were no Art Forum Berlin is all about money. revealed that all the gallery booths well-defined booths and where one are equally sized – an obvious gallery showed its work in containers, Art fairs are for businessmen, not art manifestation of the fair organisers’ another projected one single still lovers. Thus the fair boasted nine egalitarian attitude. image onto a graffiti-defaced wall. lounges – evidently, Art Forum Two artists joined forces to present Berlin takes smalltalk seriously. Like the vulture in Rigo Schmidt’s a work about Valle de los Caídos – Lounges aside, the fair consisted of Untitled (Geier), 2007 – which we the memorial Franco built for himself three main parts, including the could make out from the distance – near Madrid in Spain. Uncomfortably, ‘curated’ exhibition House trip. This we slowly circled down the stairs it documents the faces of Spanish year, many gallerists reinterpreted from the veranda. With sixty galleries, tourists visiting the cross, which was the art-fair booth as a gallery space, Preview – the emerging art fair is erected with the sweat and blood of as opposed to a simple presentation half the size of Art Forum Berlin, his political opponents. Yet despite box. While the art fair’s organisers but the quality was by no means the horror enshrined in the site, welcome this change, the secondary. Although Galerie artfinder, the tourists smile on with a gaze that ‘gallerification’ of the booth will Hamburg, offered a black water-basin says: the panorama from up here is inevitably bring us the first nomadic marvellously reflecting the exhibited spectacular. At art fairs it is difficult art gallery. Unsurprisingly, Art Forum work, Preview’s booths were, to enjoy the view: they are not Berlin, among its 136 galleries, generally, not as elaborate. But then memorials and only very rarely are boasted some splendid gallery neither does Preview pretend to be they memorable! booths (eg the stand of Galerie Sies more than a place where buyers and + Höke, Düsseldorf, resembled the sellers of contemporary art meet. David Ulrichs is a Berlin- scorched black interior of a house: based art critic and a an idea proposed by the Belgian The eerie location – an old regular contributor to artist Kris Martin). transformer station in Prenzlauer Lápiz –Revista Internacional Berg – made last year’s Berliner de Art (Spain), ART (Belgium) and CircaAr t Announced as a curated exhibition, Liste memorable. In a failed attempt Magazine (Ireland). the inclusion of House trip, was to repeat last year’s success, its disappointing. Its curator, Ami Barak, initiator, the gallery owner Wolfram (opposite) spent most of his time puzzling Völcker, this year invited sixty galleries installation view, Galerie together the pieces, optimising their to a former post freight depot. While Thaddeaeus Ropac (artwork: Lori Hersberger) ‘fit’ to the given space, which may be most of the galleries are German, © the artist and Galerie a masterstroke of spatial reasoning, only twelve come from the capital. Thaddeaeus Ropac but it is definitely not a curatorial tour de force. Feebly binding together the c . Tim Stott Goethe Institut and September – October Gallery for One 2007 Dublin

98 ronan mccrea medium (the end); medium (upside down) Before the end, something is coming of erotic investigations, brought offering its contours, its intricate to an end. about by the erosion of separation accumulations, convergences, and Friedrich Kittler between things, and with it the drifting dissolves to be read as a possibility of release and attempted concatenation of ciphers and To illustrate the process of entropy, union: a rather melodramatic staging, misfires. The sequence also enfolds, Robert Smithson famously wrote of then, of the erotics of loss, separation bringing distant bodies into proximity a child running one way then another and medium in a state of collapse, through surrogate skins and the in a sandpit filled half with black and but one that keeps in play the quilting of murmuring voices. half with white sand. Here, a second uncertain possibilities of mediums action does not have a restorative at the time that their qualitative But then, within the horizon of the effect, reversing the consequences differences face redundancy due to sequence’s ambulatory diegesis, of the first, but rather furthers the standardised quantification. the upside-down figure of McCrea’s confusion. Similarly, Medium (the daughter flickers across, by turns end) consists of two counterpoised Where Medium (the end) is left too emblem and end, proxy and but cumulative actions that affect tightly bound to its conceit, its closed protagonist, drawing out vertical the simultaneous fade of a projected loop exuding the faintest whiff of permutations. It is this perpendicular image from white to black and vice absolutism, its pendant, Medium relation of the inverted and static 99 versa. A static slide carousel (upside down) gives itself over to image to the sequence in which it is eventually causes burn-out and with the eroticism of processes of placed that, perhaps more than the it cancels the listing of a system fragmentation, suspension, and slippage of narrative efficacy, draws towards one bias or another. substitution, but this time without the indexical placement of individual ‘The end’ is a return to anti-entropic finality. A familiar duality is thus slides away from the traps of symmetry accomplished via a invoked, of a determined and closed naturalism and into more obscure ‘schizophrenic’ erosion of distinctions. system in contrast to one that is complications of desire and the ‘Schizophrenic’ not in the sense of plural and open. The necessity that mediation of time. being split schizoid so much as guides the first towards its end is devoured by surrounding space in offloaded in the second so that it Tim Stott is a lecturer at a process of gradual assimilation: to might drift through contingent the National College of Art speak of a system’s death is simply affects. This is not to say that loss and Design, Dublin, and another way of describing an unin- does not inform the second; rather, the Dublin Institute of Technology. terrupted equivalence, a coolness this loss is not mourned through the motifs of tragedy and melodrama, and stillness, between its formerly Ronan McCrea dissymmetrical and dynamic elements; nor does it presume universal appeal from Medium (upsidedown), to take this as an allegory of through recourse to a fateful rhetoric. 2007 This is loss at the other side of slide installation with sound, psychological death is to evoke the 78 slides 35mm, duration 8'30'' monstrous dream of becoming mourning, where the source of loss courtesy the artist without qualities. itself is lost in becoming portable, borne along by being written over There is probably a rather ordinary and written out by others: a process punchline waiting to reward study of of mourning that does not end at the this imperceptible and prolonged recognition of loss but rather uses implosion, but it might be one better the latter to turn over a previous not to get for the moment, allowing repertoire of representations. boredom to get the better of one instead; the boredom of one who Medium (upside down) draws heavily remains an extra to a system in from a familiar notion of textuality which he is included only as noise. and associated figures of error, inversion, and glissement. The Italian Georges Bataille wrote of a form of author cited by McCrea makes the ‘strong communication’ that might claim that the material of film itself is bind elements together through the not just a carrier of signs, but a skin wounds that disperse their integrity, between interior and exterior. This is exemplified by the communication shown to be something of a false between lovers, but it is possible dichotomy as McCrea’s sequence that such dissolution as occurs in of multiple, superimposed slide Medium (the end) models the end projections unfolds like a skin, c . Cherry Smyth Camden Arts Centre September – November London 2007

100 Mamma Andersson (below) In a poem about friendship, Tua powerful, austere rural landscape, Karin Mamma Andersson Forsström writes, “You said nothing as if the subconscious mind is held About a girl, 2005 courtesy Magnus Karlsson/ is ever finished/ You said that in tame, domestic suspension. Stephen Friedman Gallery/ everything is transitory/ except for David Zwirner/ Camden Arts a few glowing and soiled pictures.”1 Andersson’s distinctive style draws Centre This sense of the incomplete, of attention to narrative and conceptual images providing the anchor in times processes that usually remain hidden. of shift, chaos and intellectual Artists like Munch, Bonnard and impoverishment, troubles the Ensor haunt her interiors as if she atmosphere of Karin Mamma cannot tackle a painting without Andersson’s paintings. Brought up evoking and transmuting the way a in a small town in Northern Sweden, scene has been painted before. Andersson infuses her work with How we perceive and are shaped the suggestion of provincial shame – by art history and how contemporary shabby interiors with mismatched artists articulate themselves under its furniture and uninhabited birch weight is a major theme. Rather than forests under snow. Conventional sample in postmodern fragmentation, 101 interior and landscape genres are Andersson visits art history heroes reconfigured and blended into through a pre-Modern salon hang, dreamscapes – often in the same drawing attention to the self-conscious painting. Spatial relationships are staging in art galleries themselves. rendered in a both studied yet improvisational way, with layers of In Cul de sac, 2002, is it the semi-transparency interfering with landscape genre itself that is the realism and skewing the timeline. dead-end? Does the empty frame – a metal grid – suggest the barrenness Rooms under the influence, 2006 of Minimalism for Andersson, or the is a key work, ‘influence’ a key word. failure of creativity itself? She seems The stage-set design asks what embarrassed by her response to the entertainment is going on here. How crisp seductiveness of the birches are spaces imbued with character/ that were her trademark for many personality/ taste? There’s the tea years, inspired by artists like Corot trolley, the symbol of middle class and Carl Fredrik Hill, one of Sweden’s hosting in the 60s and 70s – foremost landscape painters. throbbing with aspiration. As a kid, Andersson drew stories constantly. In The Blank memories always A favourite was ‘the ugly and the open from the south, 2002, an epic, nice family’, the latter being the one majestic painting, modernism is she didn’t have. Now she says her quoted in the group of black metallic paintings are about stories she sculptures brooding in the foreground. doesn’t want to tell. The natural landscape is reduced to a few forlorn trunks. With an assured The scene is doubled and inverted and deeply sedate melancholy, like a silkscreen print – a ’70s the fantasy ruins conjure a different aspirational hobby – an abstract kind of cul de sac, an intact but painting on the wall is replaced by a depopulated tradition. For Andersson, Mondrian reproduction in the flipside this painting is “…about mortality. image, as if painting is reduced to The ruin repeats itself. Mortality is interior design, denoting taste and also something comforting.” status. Paintings within the painting, often an empty frame, a blank or reflecting mirror, a window that frames an outdoor scene, recur in many of the works, perhaps standing in for the artist herself. The interiors are sandwiched between the Andersson also expands the As well as an aura of sophistication, 1 Tua Forsström, from ‘Snow boundaries of narrative painting with there’s something of the auto-didact leopard’, published in I studied once at a wonderful faculty, her handling of materials: a queasy about her style as she discovers Bloodaxe, 2006 palette, scratchy gestures, turps what she values through multiple pours, cardboard-cut-out figures, traces, additions and subtractions. Cherry Smyth is a critic, half-finished lines, scraped-away Here’s someone whose work exudes curator and poet. surfaces, and introduces glazes, nail an insouciance about what people polish and spray paint. think, a bolshy confidence that (below) allows fun and failure to battle it Karin Mamma Andersson Sleeping standing up, 2003 Influenced by Pinter, Andersson’s out as she goes. By painting the courtesy Magnus Karlsson/ dramas are invoked by the demateri- twenty-first century through a scrim Stephen Friedman Gallery/ alisation of realism – the amorphous, belonging to the turn of the last David Zwirner/ Camden Arts Centre spreading houseplants, the outdoor century, Andersson re-invigorates invading indoors like a gaseous representational painting and creates substance, highlighting the artificiality a mood of kinship and devotion that of the ‘wall’ and the suspension of results in a stunning celebration of 102 the furniture which gives a mood of painting itself. alienation – like a home where the houseplants are talked to more than the people in it. c . Sherra Murphy Gallery of Photography September – November National Museum 2007 Dublin

karl grimes dignified kings play chess on

fine green silk 103

(opposite) Karl Grimes Killed striking 1 (detail), 2007 archival pigment print courtesy Gallery of Photography

Natural history can be a well- constructed language only if the amount of play in it is enclosed: if its descriptive exactitude makes every proposition into an invariable pattern of reality and if the designation of each being indicates clearly the place it occupies in the general arrangement of the whole.1

Taxonomies are philosophically risky propositions. Their systemic specificities must, by dint of task, impose an order that can only seem stultifying by comparison to the rude, unruly profusion of the natural world. Tension between the classifying grid of natural history and its irrepressibly prolific subject is the exploratory domain of photographer Karl Grimes’s most recent work, installed simultaneously at the Gallery of Photography, Temple Bar, and the National Museum, Kildare Street. In Dignified kings play chess on fine green silk,2 Grimes trains his compassionate and thoughtful eye on the idiosyncrasies of Dublin’s Natural History Museum, where he spent a year as artist–in–residence. Privileging the image (as opposed to their placement in the ‘arrangement architectures. Grimes has skilfully Foucault’s textual focus) in his reading of the whole’, pointing back to their engaged a complex set of historical of natural history, he demonstrates origins, piercing the grid’s order. and contemporary issues surrounding that the ‘descriptive exactitude’ of Composed within a phalanx of white display and classification, the ways the photograph, rather than frames, their animation defies the we internalise their logic and underpinning the taxonomic system, intent of the collector to still and implications, injecting new visual life may well undermine it. Invoking the classify; they refuse to take their into the worn skin of the archive. careful observation beloved of places in the ‘boxed set’. Victorian science, Grimes intimates 1 Michel Foucault, from Though the mammal specimens in ‘Classifying’, in The Order of that its subjects stubbornly resist the things, Routledge, 2001 neat categorisations required by the the Museum are intended as proxies 2 A mnemonic device for the Linnaean system. for their live kin, they are in fact Linnaean taxonomic system – reifications – what designates one Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Grids recur regularly in Grimes’s species from another has largely Species. work, here shaping a framework been removed; the anatomy of entirely consistent with the subject bones, organs, musculature. We are Sherra Murphy is an 104 matter. Killed striking I is an left with what amounts to shaped Assistant Lecturer in engagement with the Barrington bird furs, skins with artificial colouring Visual Culture at the Dún collection, a compulsive assembly of and glass eyes, sculpted into forms Laoghaire Institute of Art, Ireland’s aves, laid out in white saying more about animals-as-idea Design and Technology. boxes across the Museum’s walls. than conveying anything fundamental (opposite) In his quest to discover information about their morphological states. Karl Grimes about migratory patterns, RM The Sartorial taxa and Taxum totem from Taxum Totem series, 2007 C print and Diasec Barrington developed a network of series describe the artificiality at the 183 x 122 cm light keepers, who posted him the heart of the stuffed specimens, courtesy Gallery of Photography wings and legs of birds which had invoking tailoring and ritual as apt died flying into lighthouses, blinded descriptive frameworks. If natural by the beams, often during storms. history as a language or grammar The Museum still holds this collection means that each animal must of migratory fragments and their articulate an aspect of the complete accompanying documents; Grimes grid, become a generality, then depicts it in a grid of 39 photographs, Grimes’s rendering of individuals each one comprising a square elides that ideal – the portrait format black–bordered envelope, divulging distils the reconstructed features, or obscuring its contents. The rhythms the stitching of the skin, the paint of wings and legs emerging from and shiny eyes, into a question some of the regularised black and about the efficacy of systems sepia squares counterpoint the employing individuals for describing paperwork and identification tags abstracted totalities. This is further peeping from others, or the blank, complicated by idiosyncrasy, history refusing emptiness of still others. and presentation; the taxidermy is The trompe l’oeil quality of the old, lumpy and odd. The drop-dead pigment prints suggests sepia gorgeous images, with rich black photographs, watercolours and grounds and subjects lit as though gravures simultaneously, implying an glowing from the inside, detail scars, eerie sense that one could pick up bumps, hair and feathers with and handle the notes, invoices and astonishing tactility. Material disembodied limbs, such is their attention to specific attributes again inferred physicality. The specificity foregrounds the visual over the of gesture, colour and texture in the textual, sympathy over nomenclature. animal remains sets them at organic odds with the rigid sameness of Other classificatory structures are Barrington’s civilised envelopes; treated in the exhibition; plastic they flutter, arc, struggle to escape wildlife toys, Victorian instruction the language and geometry binding manuals, the formal consonance them. The avian fragments resist between internal and external 115 c . Chris Fite-Wassilak Draíocht September – November Blanchardstown 2007

106 marcel van eeden the archaeologist — the travels of oswald sollmann Ah, the golden age of travel!: exotic from these images, opening up a pace of his placement on the wall locations, idyllic settings, the air of playful space between the past and echo the layout of comic-book intrigue and mystery, all captured in the present. History books, pages. The K M Wiegand series picture-perfect postcards from the newspapers, official records, and carried with this a political and far reaches of India and Somalia. personal letters are some of the cultural commentary that was at The romantic rhythms of train narratives that fill this gap, and here once humorous and relevant, casting journeys, the wistful evocation of it is made into a crystalline, spatial the known historical developments train stations and train tracks. relationship which the viewer navigates since World War II as a clay to be Though here, scrawled in rushed to create their own. moulded. The Archaeologist, however, cursive over one image, someone seems more a formal exploration of has written, “Please do your bit for The majority of the drawings here the dramatic techniques of this him! He’s innocent!” The suggestion are postcard images: landscapes narrative structure, making the of espionage or murder is in the air and snapshots of streets featuring construction of plot and character but never spelled out, it is between a town name, as we follow from itself into detective work. While not the lines, or rather in the gaps Mogadishu to Utrecht. Van Eeden nostalgic in its evocation of the past between the seventy-seven drawings makes use of the salon hang to being enacted in the present, the of Marcel Van Eeden’s installation present a multiplicity of concurrent intentional distance to this golden 107 The Archaeologist: the travels of moments, and though there is no age still lends it the flavour of a Oswald Sollmann. Our protagonist, prescribed movement through the mildly observed period drama. As a fictional character whose name is exhibition, it seems it moves such, the meta-narrative workings derived from the infamous gunman conventionally clockwise, taking us of the show remain involving and Lee Harvey Oswald and lesser- from Morocco to finish up in Ireland. interesting, but the story you uncover known pharmacologist Torbald H Interspersed are several brief, is like a film that is engaging, Sollmann, is never seen or identifiable, claustrophobically close-up glimpses suspenseful, but ultimately light- but judging by these glimpses into of murky figures or unknown details, hearted and forgettable. his globe-trotting life he is an and it is apparently upon Sollmann’s archaeologist of the glamorous return to the Netherlands that things Chris Fite-Wassilak is a Indiana Jones variety, caught in an begin to unravel. Some form of writer and curator based in unspecified film noir drama that is wreck or bomb site, gloved hands London. reminiscent of Hitchcock’s North pointing to a map, possible blood by Northwest. stains, and of course men shadowing (opposite) their faces with fedoras. The pace Marcel van Eeden from The Archaeologist – But Sollmann’s escapades are quickens by hanging several drawings the travels of Oswald Sollman perhaps closer to the more pedestrian in neat succession, and it is a series courtesy Chadha Art Collection/ archaeological reconstructions of featuring a man travelling by train Wetering Galerie/ Galerie Zink/ Tony Robinson’s Time team than with an important-looking suitcase Draíocht might first appear. Van Eeden’s followed by a knife-wielding scuba- practice involves finding photographs diving scene that seem to be the in magazines, books, and newspapers dramatic climax of the narrative. that date before his birth in 1965, What results is a set of numerical reproducing them in A5 size charcoal measurements taken from this drawings before re-inserting them underwater excursion, the into one of his ongoing narratives. intelligence value of which can only His presence at the 2006 Berlin be guessed. Biennial consisted of over 150 of such drawings detailing the Van Eeden’s work is undeniably fictionalised secret life of real-life cinematic in its use of the composition botanist K M Wiegand, who somehow of images from the mystery and also managed to be a boxer, art thriller genres, but his installations collector, and top-rank Cold War spy. are the closest I have seen to the (Wiegand features here elliptically, narrative workings of comic books as the recipient of an illegible in a gallery space. His deliberate postcard from Sollmann sent from muting of narrative particulars only Brussels.) Van Eeden’s method highlights that the act of narration enforces a gap that emphasizes his itself is performed by the movements and our own experiential distance of the viewer, while the rhythm and c . Brian Curtin Book 2006

108 critical mess: art critics on the state of their practice Critical mess: art critics on the Elkin’s opening (and ludicrously nonspecialists and artists state of their practice is a map of the uncritical) statement “Art criticism is themselves. Think of Dennis Cooper, anxieties held by a (the?) very small in worldwide crisis” sets the tone the underrated Lawrence Chua or class of named art critics about the (p 1). Saltz takes to task “academics Collier Schorr. One great suggestion nature and function of contemporary and art theorists” for demonizing of Critical mess is that the world writing on art. The ‘mess’ of the title and belittling art (p 23); Relyea’s needs more books on and about art signals a difference from previous near-tortured engagement with the criticism. In the meantime, if art characterizations of a contemporary legacy of Greenberg and Krauss criticism is in a mess, it appears to ‘crisis’ in art criticism. Rubenstein makes him appear woefully blinkered be a mess of ‘their’ making. states in the introduction that ‘crisis’ for the contemporary global contexts implies a condition that can be of art production; Charlesworth fails Raphael Rubenstein (ed), overcome, while ‘mess’ means to support his trashing of “belletristic” Critical mess: art critics on hopelessness. Critical mess aims to forms of writing with substantial the state of their practice, figure and analyze the mess, but examples and his essay remains Lenox, Massachusetts: Hard Press the essays here are also arguably unpersuasive; Heartney ultimately Editions, 2006; ISBN: 1889097675 testament to whatever we might says nothing, merely providing a (paperback) understand as a mess or crisis for partial overview of the so-called 109 art criticism. The essays are by turns crisis; and Duncan and Plagens slip Brian Curtin is an art writer based in Bangkok paranoid (James Elkins), defensive between anecdote, bitchy polemic and recently curated Here, and bitchy (Jerry Saltz), delusional and conservative responses to the there, now: contemporary (Lane Relyea), damning (JJ problems of contemporary criticism. art from India. Charlesworth), resigned (Eleanor Duncan calls for a “re-evaluation of Heartney), cynical (Michael Duncan) the art historical canon” (p 113) and and mean-spirited (Peter Plagens). Plagens refers to contemporary art These critics are not the only included, as “a fecklessly ‘transgressive’ but the others do little to alleviate a sub-division of the entertainment sense of this collection as largely industry” (p 118). Oh, whatever. wretched. One could be forgiven for wondering The claim that contemporary art if art critics are the best people to critics do not or can not make value write about what they do. However, judgments more or less frames the the essential problem with Critical collection. The reasons for this mess is its editorial framing and ostensible failure include the lack of selection of essays (many were common standards in a pluralistic published previously). Indeed, and era and the neutering of criticism’s possibly in contradiction to what I potential power by the increased sketched above, many of the essays capacity of curators, collectors and have their merits; but in terms of museums to determine the reception editorial framing, none of the essays of art. The effect is a type of writing respond to the fact of an expanded that gives great attention to the field of and for art criticism or writing. artwork itself rather than the politics For example, there is barely an of criticism. JJ Charlesworth writes acknowledgment of, let alone about the historical shift in terminology sustained engagement with, the from art critic to art writer and implications of an ‘art world’ that is brazenly refers to the latter as currently emerging from diverse “a dandified copywriter” (p 78). traditions and concerns (call it Of course, not all the writers here globalism) and the demands on concur with Charlesworth, but it is critics and writers necessarily the consequence of claims such as entailed. Moreover, while curators these that a variety of arrows are and museums might be singled out slung. On one level, Critical mess for undermining the power of critics, reads as mere in-fighting. this canon-making collection of writings implicitly dismisses the often wonderful writing on art, with real critical bite, produced by so-called c . David Hughes Golden Thread Gallery September – November Belfast 2007

110 The double image

Mary McIntyre (right) (left) Once the smallest detail has Passage, 2007 been understood then colour lightjet photographic print everything has been understood, on dibond 1997 80 x 100 cm colour lightjet photographic print courtesy the artist on dibond 80 x 100 cm courtesy the artist In this show of ten painters and ten the gallery. The two works have And if this makes you want to pick at photographers, curated by Dougal pulled space and time into a single the surface, get at what is denied, McKenzie for the Golden Thread manifold, a space-time continuum: then you might emerge into the next Gallery’s Collective histories of the entire exhibition now swirls canvas along, Yo, Sweden, a cartoon Northern Irish art series, most artists around this strange attractor. inner landscape of pipes and tubes have just one pitch on the gallery Imagine each gallery as a butterfly and apertures and orifices and walls. wing joined by the virtual passage, mucous and nerve endings. The or two swirling circulating movements huge canvas gives us stop. How do For some, it contains one large creating a figure 8 or an infinity you get beyond that? Well, you painting, such as Mark McGreevy’s symbol with its crossover point that escape into McIntyre’s Passage Yo, Sweden or Darren Murray’s ‘space’ between the two prints. which shoots you through its space Bavarian Alps. For Michael Minnis it warp into Gallery Two. But to Joy’s is a cluster of paintings. The exquisite If McIntyre’s prints are a coyly veiled right, in Gallery One, are Peter Liberty No. 1 and Liberty No. 2 are manifold, then Jewesbury’s are a Richards’ stark digitally manipulated small oil paintings on linen that offer rather more hard-core exhibition of crime-scene memorials. Richards’ loose gridworks of pastel tiles. an incision in the landscape: abundant bars are arms raised in defence and Here they bookend the rectilinear undergrowth and overgrowth, bushes, find their echo in their neighbour, 111 casements of his Unity No. 1. branches and grasses, surround an Mary Theresa Keown’s painting, The relationship between the three irrigation or drainage ditch, a narrow The Destined, a composite studio, a canvases has the fractal quality of cement-sided channel. Joy, and the space that appears to be generated the same pattern repeating at desire which longs for it (colour from grafts of other spaces which different levels of magnification. lightjet photographic print) is a divided itself holds its two wings to connect diptych; one panel now hangs just the energy which is running between So, if most artists are constrained inside the door of each Gallery. They the works, and we move in turn to its to their spots, why the seeming stand in for the invigilators or gallery neighbour, Sean Hillen’s work, two discrepancy of two works by Daniel assistants who might give the visitor collaged postcard constructions that Jewesbury and two works by Mary information, some hint of what the themselves fuse and graft together McIntyre being separated from show is all about. And indeed, in different places and times and each other and located in separate Gallery One, Joy introduces us to people and continents to produce galleries. What can we deduce from Susan MacWilliam on her left and a mythical IRELANTIS. this break in logic? to Peter Richards on her right. In Gallery Two she introduces us to In Gallery Two, on Joy’s right, is McIntyre’s Passage (print on Colin Watson on her right and to Colin Watson. Perspective in the Dibond) in Gallery One and Once Hannah Starkey on her left. If you Jewesbury implies the meeting of the the smallest detail has been think Joy is rather blatant, rather too sides of the channel at some distant understood, then everything has open and brassy, then the antidote, point: implies a deltafication of the been understood (colour lightjet the flip side of the coin, is the parallel lines. In Watson’s painting photographic print on Dibond) in ‘French Lieutenant’s woman’ of Silent sleep, there are the erotic Gallery Two back onto each other MacWilliam’s Girl series, encased deltas of both the underwear and on either side of the dividing wall. in her lilac brocade as though having negative space between the slightly Passage hints at an underpass no body. Haunting and haunted, open legs of the sleeping female emerging into woodland, a grainy the girl is a revenant; she will not figure. The geometry of the painting night scene in tones of burnt yellow rest easy; we dare her to gaze at us provides two arrows which meet at ochre. The passageway connects to meet our eyes, but she, like her crotch which sits absolutely two places: the implied entrance we Starkey’s silent, waiting woman in centre to the canvas. Following back cannot see and the putative exit we the cafe window, turns away from along the force field, the vector, of detect by virtue of the light it emits. us, directs us elsewhere, through the the arrow we arrive at John Duncan’s Once works and reworks a gridwork railings of the park or the cemetery, photocollage, Boom town, which motif (one of the recurring motifs of her head eternally turned away. locates two sofas before a great tear the show), in its glasshouse panels Whether standing or lying in the in the walls of a derelict room through and its rectangles of garden. A figure grass, she, like Starkey’s woman, which we can see an overgrown tends a central rectangular allotment stares, as it were, backward, though garden. Here the vectors are of garden with mature tree and bush the material of the print and, as sightlines, the rush of the inside out plantings. Their positioning offers though blessed with second sight, and the outside in. Is it the garden of the possibility that Once masks the through the gallery walls. They are Passage, is this where the passage other point of the ‘passage’ and thus also strange attractors. emerges? The tear in the walls leads extends its logic through the walls of us to Minnis’s rents in the façade which in turn leads us to McIntyre’s garden and her glass panels and her rectangular allotments which takes us in turn to Gallery One.

To the left of Joy in Gallery Two is the silent Hopperesque woman of Hannah Starkey’s October 1998 (c-print on aluminium). She, like MacWilliam’s Girl, turns away from us, directs us elsewhere, through the café window, as she sits rupturing the symmetry of curtains and lamp- shades. We are constantly passed along, passed on, referred on in the 112 exhibition. Whilst each work has its particularity, it is in their dialogues and echoes and shared motifs and exchanges that the pleasure of the exhibition is to be experienced.

These are some of the dramas and narratives, dynamics and movements, recirculations of image and element and motif and energy, of this show. It is called the The Double image but that does not do it justice. This is the fractal image, the image repeated within the image, across the image, between the works: the motif reiterated. The form of the exhibition itself reiterates, then, the title of McIntyre’s central work, Once the smallest detail has been understood, then everything has been understood. Now, Dermot Seymour’s painting, Space rat, seems not an anachronistic close-up of a rodent’s snout, but the inquiring nose of our navigator running his maze, his labyrinth, this space-time conundrum.

David Hughes is a writer and artist who lives near Lisburn.

(top) (bottom) Sean Hillen Michael Minnis The Car park at the Great Falls, Liberty no 1, 2006 IRELANTIS, 2005 oil on linen 11 x 16 cm 33 x 38 cm courtesy Golden Thread Gallery courtesy Golden Thread Gallery

(centre) Daniel Jewesbury Joy, and the desire which longs for it (detail), 2001/ 2007 colour lightjet photographic print 91.4 x 122 cm courtesy Golden Thread Gallery