Maeve Mulrennan reports on the Public House residency in Allen, Co. Kildare.

In August 2011 The Leap Inn, Allen, Co. Kildare was inhabited by four artists: Fergus Byrne, Victoria McCormack, Áine Phillips and Dominic Thorpe. I had been granted funding from Kildare County Council to curate a residency in my father’s bar and grocery, The Leap Inn. The artists would be based in the residential section, which has been uninhabited for nearly four years.

At first the aim was simple: give artists time, space and a small fee so they can work. This then developed into inviting the artists to respond to a site: The Leap Inn, the surrounding countryside and the people who frequented the bar and grocery. It was initially kept very open.I had hoped that one of the artists might make some public intervention, but I had to be realistic, we didn’t get all the money we asked for. In the end, all four artists wanted to make work to show.

It was important that this experience was documented, so I invited Jonathan Sammon to do so. We now have a rich bank of images and a video on Vimeo[1]. Jonathan also acted as an advisory to the artists, helping them process this site in a short amount of time.

Áine Phillips knew exactly what she was going to do: she has been researching Ireland’s first cookbook which was written by a woman from Kildare. She wanted to make a book of recipes given to her by people in Allen. She also wanted to do an installation in one of the bedrooms. Dominic Thorpe wanted to try out different things in a space that would culminate in a 24 hour performance. He came armed with hundreds of clocks. Fergus Byrne had been interested in the large bags of oats sold in the shop wanting to explore the oats as both material and object. Victoria deliberately did not want to know too much about the place before she came: as we know each other she was almost too aware of my perception of the place and wanted to experience it for herself. She was drawn to the forested Hill of Allen and was exploring it within hours of her arrival.

The artists’ stay did not go unnoticed. The process began with my frequent trips home to prepare the space in advance of the residency. The house had experienced some water damage from a burst pipe two Winters before. I also had to make sure that all of my family’s personal belongings were either removed or tidied away. I was aware that my family were placing a massive amount of trust in me. Although attached to a bar, the residential part of the building has always been quite private, with even the great-grandchildren of the family only knowing the downstairs part. This was where my subjectivity came in as well; I have never not known this place, where things are kept, how things are done. It was difficult to envisage how the meeting of my family life and professional life would turn out. It was strange to look at the site from a professional perspective: I have never considered the Leap Inn in terms of aims, objectives, projected outcomes and potential impact before. I have not remained as connected to this place as other family members have. I find it hard to keep track of things that have happened since I left home twelve years ago: my home remains in the past. This residency has changed that: I was forced to see it in the present. I have since come to the conclusion that not every experience needs to be objective in order to be successful.

The group had decided they would do performances on Saturday evening, and have the installations ready for public viewing. Suddenly I needed an audience. Finally the fact that everyone in the village knows me was a good thing.

Áine arrived first, on Tuesday 23 August. I had arranged for her to attend the weekly knitting and crochet group with my mother and sisters, one of whom was home from America with her nine year old daughter, Amy. As I can neither knit nor crochet, and the group stipulates no children, Amy and I were left behind. In the two hours that followed, I was anxious that the women would not like having their group infiltrated by an artist. I needn’t have worried, as Áine came back excited and animated. She had gotten several recipes for her book already, and also inadvertently acted as ambassador for the residency; telling the group what was happening. Áine went on to collect recipes throughout the week, and made a book in my mother’s kitchen on Friday night. Áine’s performance would take the form of a cookery demonstration in the bar. She was unsure what the tone of this would be, but knew that by Friday it would be clear. Each day she learned more about her audience and the context. By Saturday night she knew she was not going to make a recipe from the book, but give the audience one of her own, that was taught to her by her mother. Áine’s performance took place in the upper area of the bar, while in the bottom part the clientele watched the Premiership results on TV. People that she met throughout the week attended as well as people who came to see the other performances and installations. Áine’s installation was a success with our audience. She had amassed a quantity of bra straps from making another piece a few years ago and made them into bats to be hung from the ceiling. Áine saw the girls’ bedroom with its love heart wallpaper and Narniaesque wardrobe as the perfect site.

While Áine and I collected Victoria from the train station on Wednesday  morning, Fergus and Dominic (or ‘The Men’, as my Grandmother decided they were to be called) arrived. It was a strange feeling coming into my parents kitchen and seeing them drinking tea with my sister. We went for a walk up the Hill of Allen. Victoria got straight to work and we returned home with branches and pine cones. Victoria spent the next two days working in the ‘good’ sitting room, making a measured and aesthetically subtle intervention starting in the fireplace and spreading out. There was an oval shape on the wall where someone had painted around a mirror rather than removing it. Victoria began by embellishing this with pinecones, creating a definition around this forgotten space.

‘The Men’ had decided to sleep in the old house as well as work in it. What followed was four days of intense, immersive experimentation and a processing. Fergus continued to work with the oats, and managed to find a livery yard that would allow him to feed oats to two of their horses as part of performative process. Fergus’ actions did not strike anyone as odd, no one questioned him when he arrived with a feeding trough made from an antique drawer. On Saturday evening Fergus worked through a performance downstairs with the drawer, the oats and images of his work with the horses the day before. Upstairs, the audience entered a bedroom with porridge that Fergus had made and an old hymn book that had escaped the clean up and had remained behind. The room used to be the one that my Grandparents’ lodger slept in. Fergus explored this idea of an outsider living within a family construct.

Dominic began his 24 hour performance on Friday evening in the bar by drawing simultaneously on two sheets of paper with both hands. This was accepted as something everyday and normal. Games of darts were played and conversations had while being present with Dominic. He then moved upstairs into my Grandparents’ bedroom. Dominic spent the rest of the night and following day working with the furniture in the room as well as the clocks that he brought. On Saturday I had to work in the bar during lunch, and had the strange experience of watching a rugby match on TV with the locals while knowing there was a performance going on above our heads. Dominic’s performance was an exercise in being absolutely present in a space. Again my cleaning skills let me down as Dominic had found an old photograph of my Grandfather and my uncle as a child. It was a performance that was engaging for the audience but personally very powerful for my family and I. My uncle, who knows Dominic in his other guise as a musician, found it compelling to see this durational work in the room where he was born. I was worried that Dominic would faint, get dehydrated or even worse, decide that the performance was not working. Of course I needn’t have worried, within ten minutes of finishing, he was in the pub enjoying a pint and catching up with friends.

At time of writing it has been one month since the residency and I am still unsure as to how I feel about it. The artists have all remarked that it was a brave thing for me to do; joining my two worlds together without knowing exactly what would happen. It is hard to be objective but it has made me understand that art happens all the time, everywhere, even when you are pulling pints and shouting at the rugby match.

Maeve Mulrennan

All accompanying images by Jonathan Sammon. This project was supported by Kildare County Council.

Alex Davis , administrator for the Irish Visual Artists’ Rights Organisation (IVARO), which manages the Resale Right on behalf of its members, looks at the implications for artists.

In less than two months time the Artists Resale Right is due to be fully implemented in Ireland for the benefit of artists’ heirs and beneficiaries. Yet there is still concern that the Government may fail to bring the Right in on time or will introduce it in a manner that minimises the benefits to artists and their families.  Alex Davis, Administrator for the Irish Visual Artists Rights Organisation (IVARO), which manages the Resale Right on behalf of its members, looks at the implications.

Background

The Resale Right allows visual artists an ongoing stake in the value of their work by paying artists a modest royalty when their works are resold through auction houses, galleries, and art dealers.

The Resale Right was initially introduced in recognition of the fact that artworks often don’t achieve their full value until late in an artist’s career or even after their death.  France was the first country to adopt the Resale Right in 1920 in an attempt to address this issue by providing an entitlement in law for artists to share in the ongoing sales of their works and also to allow them to make appropriate provision for their families.

Under an EU Directive, all EU member states had to introduce the Right for living artists by 1 January 2006.  The Irish Government failed to bring it in on time leading the artist Robert Ballagh to take a case against the State for loss of earnings.  Ballagh was successful and the Right was introduced (through rushed regulations) on 13 June 2006, but only for living artists.

The final step for full implementation of the EU Directive is for the Right to also be applied to the resale of works by deceased artists.  The deadline for this is the 1 January 2012 from which point the Right will be enjoyed by the families and beneficiaries of deceased artists for 70 years after the death of the artist.

Cause for celebration

The inclusion of heirs in this scheme is of huge importance and should be a cause for celebration. For some families the Right might be their sole inheritance. Artists’ families are generally responsible for maintaining the artist’s legacy. This can be a very time-consuming and expensive undertaking. Some of the tasks include storage, conservation, cataloguing, maintaining records, authenticating works, responding to requests to reproduce the artist’s works, providing information for exhibitions and catalogues, and assessment of provenance. Artists’ estates have been losing out on important income, which would enable them to continue their valuable work.

Cause for concern

There is good reason to believe that Ireland will once again fail to implement the EU Directive on time. The Government has recently published its legislation programme for the remainder of 2011 to mid 2012 and there is no reference to the Resale Right.  This is despite numerous submissions from IVARO urging them to take action. The result of their inaction is that either the 1 January deadline will not be met, or perhaps worse still, it will be implemented through rushed regulations rather than proper legislation once again.

In 2006 the Right was introduced through Regulations rather than legislation. IVARO has nearly six years experience of trying to make the current regulations work and has encountered numerous difficulties that make certain royalties impossible to collect.  Full legislation is required in order to implement the right in a manner that will make it most meaningful to artists and their families.

Problems with the current regulations

Under the current regulations galleries and art dealers in general have avoided the resale right. IVARO has found it impossible to reach any accord as to payment of the royalty with the vast majority of the commercial art galleries which process re-sales. There is evidence that some of the art market dealers are holding on to the resale royalties collected from the purchasers long past the time that they should have paid the artists or their representatives^[1]. IVARO also suspects that some galleries may have put aside the artist’s resale royalty pending the point at which they or the seller is obliged by a court order to pay it to the artist, or the three year time limit for information expires. IVARO is fearful that many of these galleries may not survive the current economic conditions, and this money will be lost entirely to the artists to whom it is due.

Currently in Ireland, only works resold for €3,000 or more are eligible for Resale Royalties, which is the highest threshold in the EU.  Member States are allowed to impose a lower threshold and many have chosen €1000. This option was taken up by the UK, our nearest neighbour, and Europe’s largest art market. In Ireland nearly 98% of art sells at auction for less than €50,000 and 50% sells for less than €1,000^[2]. Having the maximum threshold of €3,000 is totally out of step with the Irish art market and has resulted in a relatively small number of artists benefitting from the right. A threshold of €1,000 or lower will benefit a much wider constituency of artists and be a further stimulus for artists to create new work.

A number of other efficiencies could be gained by the drafting of new legislation in this area. As it stands, artists have to be aware of any of their works that sell over the threshold. They then must seek information on the seller from the art market professional for that specific sale. The art market professional has 90 days in which to respond to this request. The artist, or in many cases IVARO, must then apply to the seller for payment of the royalty. It is a laborious, time-consuming and difficult task, especially for individual artists. This system could be streamlined with the introduction of compulsory collective management which would include reporting of qualifying sales.

The EU Commission’s Communication on Copyright Management^[3] comes to this conclusion: “Collective management appears also to be the de facto basis for the operation of artists’ resale right under Directive 2001/84/EC, even if it is not mandatory.” Despite this the Irish regulations make no provision to assist or encourage collective management in Ireland.

If compulsory collective management was introduced and a collecting society was appointed this would mean that resale royalties would be automatically collected on behalf of all rights holders, whether or not they are members of the collecting society. Art Market Professionals would be required to supply the collecting society with data after each sale. The collecting society could then collect the royalty from the seller and distribute the proceeds to the rights holder without delay. Royalties for foreign artists whose work is resold in Ireland would also automatically be collected ensuring that Ireland complies with it’s obligation to “ensure that amounts intended for authors who are nationals of other Member States are in fact collected and distributed.” – Article 28, EU Directive 2001/84/EC.

Solutions

The rationale and founding principle of the resale right is that artists and their heirs share in the increasing value and exploitation of their works. Together with other means of support, it represents an important factor in strengthening the artist’s security and economic autonomy, without any additional cost to the exchequer.   In order to maximise the efficient implementation of the resale right IVARO makes the following recommendations:

• The resale right should be fully implemented through primary legislation to benefit artists and their heirs.
• The minimum threshold of the resale to which the right applies should be set at €1,000.
• That legislation requires compulsory collective management as a means of collecting, administering and distributing the artists’ resale right.
• That the royalty rate should be set at 5% for resales below €50,000.

IVARO is calling on artists and their supporters to sign a petition supporting the full implementation of the Artists Resale Right.  To sign the petition please visit: www.ipetitions.com/petition/dds

Even better still, write to the Government, setting out your support for full Implementation. You could outline your work as an artist, any difficulties you’ve had making a living from your creative work and the difference the Resale Right could make to your family.  Contact details for the two relevant Ministers are below.

Minister Richard Bruton TD

Department Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Kildare Street

Dublin 2

Minister Jimmy Deenihan TD

Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht

23 Kildare Street

Dublin 2

[2] An Investor’s Guide to the Art Market by Dr. Clare McAndrew. Published by Liffey Press.

[3] “The management of Copyright and Related Rights in the Internal market” COM (2004) 261 final

Detail showing the reproduction of Harry Clarke's 'The Last Hour of the Night' 1922

SEAN LYNCH DISCUSSES HIS PROJECT ME JEWEL & DARLIN’

I lived in Dublin in 2008, while I was participating in part IMMA’s artist residency programme. I had never really had the opportunity to be involved with the art scene there, and I had a great time working in the city over seven months. During the course of my residency I decided it would be interesting to explore some histories about the city and make an artwork that would reflect this process.

The resulting project, entitled Views of Dublin, was exhibited at the Gallery of Photography later that year and was based upon a series of inter-related events in the city in 1965. John Le Carre’s cold war thriller The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was produced as a film in that year, and a replica of the Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie was constructed in Smithfield Market as part of the film’s set. Actor Richard Burton and his wife Elizabeth Taylor stayed at the Gresham Hotel for ten weeks, attracting much attention. Recollections of these events are today still heard around the city, and the Wall replica is often recalled as an unusual oddity of Dublin architecture.

My research focused on the aftermath of the Wall’s removal. After the production of the film, Bart Cummins, a local scrap dealer, purchased the set in its entirety. He re-erected a watchtower in front of his yard in Inchicore and appeared on national television as the man with the best-known replica of the Wall. He gradually sold it off in sections. Some of the material was recycled to rebuild Saint Christopher’s School, the first Travellers’ school in Ireland. Situated in Cherry Orchard at the western edge of Dublin, the school was organised and run independently of the Department of Education by civil rights activist Grattan Puxon.

The artwork I produced considered the prevailing politics and economics of Dublin of the time – via this transformation from film set to makeshift school; along with the day-to-day realities of the Traveller community agitating for civil rights in 1960s Ireland. A sixteen page publication was produced and freely distributed, a public talk with Puxon occurred, and a gallery presentation featured a collection of images cut out of newspapers of that time and enlarged as digital prints, framed as documentary residue of these events.

The process of unearthing, assembling and distributing all this information became an important journey for my practice – specifically in how to understand the complexities of urbanity and Dublin in particular.  The artwork’s reception led to an invitation from Dublin City Council to make a public artwork for the city in late 2008.

Following this invitation, I worked closely with Ruairi O Cuiv, the city’s public art officer, to see what might be possible within what was a completely open brief. Potential ideas were developed, assessed and shelved over a two-year period. There was no deadline for the production of the piece, and every time I visited the city, I’d do another bit of research and fieldwork, and add my findings to what I had already found. I attempted to set a broad remit for myself to produce a piece that continued my interests into the materiality of the city, which, by its very nature, is a very extensive and multi-layered topic.

One of my favourite haunts in Dublin is the Irish Architectural Archive on Merrion Square. One day, when looking through a publication from 1922 called Dublin of the Future – a proposal for the redevelopment of the city – I came across a reproduction of a drawing by Harry Clarke. Entitled The Last Hour of the Night, Clarke’s biographer Nicola Gordon Bowe best describes it:

The Last Hour of the Night is one of the stranger expressions of his imagination. A bald, emaciated creature swathed in translucent strands of hair-like drapery stoops commandingly in the centre of the picture, cloven toes emerging from stubbly shins, and spindly hands extended on either side. On the left is a montage of Dublin’s finest buildings, all casualties of the Troubles – the Four Courts, above it the Custom House and, on, top, the General Post Office, all encased in flames. On the right of the figure a row of Dublin Georgian town houses stands, fallen into the decay typical of the twentieth-century state of so many of these once proud dwellings. Beneath the houses two policeman watch as children play on the street and weary-looking figures pass by. Above, in the top right hand corner a blazing star in the jet-black sky perhaps heralds some new hope for the city.

Impressed, I made a photocopy of the page and it stayed on my desk in Banff, Canada for several months during a residency there in 2009. It began to act as a visual apparition of the flux and disorder of the past and potential futures of Dublin, an allegory for an urban form that is disorganised but recognisable, shifting and uncertain.

A plan was gradually formulated: a display case located in the centre of O’Connell Street, that could exist as a place for documents such as Clarke’s drawing to be presented. Such a device would make reference to the many monuments that are present on the street, but instead of commemorating a famous person, time or deed, it would consider more incidental moments and objects through an exhibition programme onsite. It would soak up these minor histories and, very subjectively, breathe them back out again.

The title for the project, Me Jewel & Darlin,’ a kind of affectionate slang used in the city, was adopted from Eamonn McThomais’ book of the same name. I enjoyed thinking about the dichotomy of documents as monuments, and monuments as documents, a notion that Foucault talks about in The Archaeology of Knowledge (1), and began plans in summer 2010 to enact a realisation of these ideas.

The case was fabricated by metalworker Neil McKenzie, who I’ve worked very closely with on a previous project about the DeLorean car company in Belfast. Together, we decided to make the case from the same grade of stainless steel used in the Spire nearby. Neil worked with assistance from Bushy Park Ironworks in Tallaght. Ruairi O Cuiv sought permissions, permits, insurances and electricity for the case. Structural engineers were consulted. A website was planned, that would disseminate some of the research material relevant to the exhibition programme. Following a conversation with Isobel Harbison, a curator living in London, I co-ordinated the appearance of The Last Hour of the Night on O’Connell Street to coincide with the opening on January 27 of ‘The Geneva Window,’ the exhibition she had curated for The Lab based on Clarke’s work of the same name.

Since the original pen and ink drawing of The Last Hour of the Night is today lost, a version was reproduced to the same size as the original, framed and placed within the display case. A lighting system illuminates the print each evening from dusk. In its siting, the print is intended to make direct reference to its immediate locale. For example, in the bottom left corner of Clarke’s work, he rendered the GPO in flames. In its position on O’Connell Street, one can see this image, while in the shadow of the GPO itself. There is no label or explanatory text inside the case; instead I wanted Clarke’s work to exist as part of the city, without having to justify its presence in the form of an authoritarian museological approach.

As many people will remember, the location of Me Jewel and Darlin’ on O’Connell Street is where Eamon O’Doherty’s Anna Livia sculpture was placed. Very soon after its appearance there in 1988, it was christened with the nickname ‘The Floozie in the Jacuzzi.’ The sculpture was removed in 2000 after Dublin City Council decided that its upkeep was too labour-intensive: removing cigarette butts and bus tickets from its fountain, while having to watch soap powder being added to its waters to see it bubble.  In placing another artwork there 11 years later, I became aware of the day-to-day usage of my work, and how people might interact with it in what would be perceived as a negative manner. As ever with public commissions, concerns of vandalism are present.

Yet, public space is not about consensus, but contestation: complete resolution of an artwork is always challenged by everyday friction and usage. With these considerations in mind, I composed an essay that appears on the project’s website that details public reaction to a series of monuments and artworks in Dublin from 1862 onwards. Much of this research was completed by looking through the newspaper archives at the National Library and at the National Irish Visual Arts Library at NCAD, and features information on the Crampton Memorial, Marta Minujin’s James Joyce Tower, and Richard Serra’s Sean’s Spiral, amongst others.

In early April, documentation of a performance by Danny McCarthy on O’Connell Bridge in 1982 involving a hundred whiskey bottles floating in the River Liffey appeared inside the case, and more displays are planned over the case’s lifetime, with further contextual information, interviews and essays to be posted on the website www.mejewelanddarlin.com

Sean Lynch

www.seanlynchinfo.com

www.mejewelanddarlin.com

(1) Michel Foucault. The Archaeology of Knowledge. First published in 1969, English edition 1972 Routledge. Now available as a ‘Routledge Classic.’

Artut Zmjewski 'Two Monuments' (2009) Video Still

JASON OAKLEY REPORTS ON – The ethics of collaboration within socially engaged arts practice – A SEMINAR DEVISED BY THE FIRE STATION ARTISTS’ STUDIOS, DUBLIN AND HOSTER BY THE NATIONAL COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN (11 MARCH 2011)

Aesthetics, ethics, participation, collaboration, authorship and power dynamics – whenever art with political aims or some kind of social or community remit is being discussed, this heady brew of concepts is brought to the boil. The most frequent outcome is a simmering divergence of opinions around these ideas; along with anxious hand-wringing about what should, could and can be done, to address the ‘problem’ of highly educated professional artists trying to speak for the disenfranchised and underprivileged groups who are usually the subjects of such projects. What can also percolate is a sense of shame and guilt about how the supposedly ‘empowered’ art world is inconsequential in the face of actual social problems. And so, despite frequently claiming the contrary, contemporary art often has to resign itself to its autonomy – cut off from, ignored and often derided by society at large.

This messy and curdled situation was addressed by a seminar on the work of the Polish artist Artur Zmijewski entitled The ethics of collaboration within socially engaged arts practice. The event took place on Friday 11 March and was devised by The Fire Station Artists’ Studios, Dublin and was hosted by NCAD. In 2008 The Fire Station Artists’ Studios commissioned Zmijewski to develop a project in Dublin; and the result was a video work entitled Two Monuments (2009). At the end of last year, this work and another Zmijewski piece, the 20 screen video work Democracies (2009) were shown at the RHA (19 Nov – 22 Dec 2010).

Artur Zmijewski’s work stages and records what are often ethically troubling scenarios. He describes his model of working as a ‘social studio’ process, whereby social situations supply the materials and content for the fabrication of his works. The results often make for uncomfortable viewing. His video work 80064 (2004) documented the artist persuading an elderly Auschwitz survivor to have their now faded concentration camp tattoo restored. While the sardonically titled Democracies (2008) presents footage of a head spinning variety of demonstrations, counter demonstrations and other forms of political activism, representing every ideological hue – including a protest against the Israeli occupation in the West bank, a Loyalist parade in Belfast, a re-enactment of the Warsaw Uprising, the funeral of an extreme right wing leader in Austria, and a crowd of German and Turkish football fans.

The event at NCAD took the form of a panel discussion and a screening of Two Monuments. The panellists were Dave Beech (UK writer / artist), Dr Aine O’Brien (Director of the Forum on Migration & Communications FOMACS) and Jesse Jones (artist). The chair was Liz Burns (Development Manager, Fire Station Artists’ Studios) who set the basic co-ordinates of the discussion, citing Claire Bishop’s 2006 Artforum article The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents as identifying how contemporary art practices, were increasingly being judged by the ethical quality of their participatory processes; rather than aesthetic values of the quality of the production of the finished work.

Liz Burns explained how Zmijewski’s practice sought to side step a lot of the conventional baggage associated with ethics and notions of participation in socially engaged practice. Burns pointed to the influence of Professor Grzegorz Kowalski, under whom the artist had studied at Warsaw Art Academy (1990 – 1995). Kowalski’s classes stressed a non-judgemental curiosity, akin to the impartial scientific detachment of anthropology, rather than working from a position of having a supposedly ‘ethical’ agenda, based on attempting to right wrongs and so on.

Burns drew particular attention to Zmijewski’s essay/manifesto The Applied Social Arts (1), in which the artist calls on art to abandon its self-depreciating acceptance of its ‘autonomous’ position; and instead actively pursue a role alongside other reality shapers such as science, politics and even organised religion. Zmijewski outlines in the text, that in order to achieve this goal, art practices should be re-configured as types of algorithms. That is, rationally planned procedures devised and carried out  – just as they are in mathematics, computing and other related scientific disciplines – in order to achieve specific goals.

This might provoke a sharp intake of breath in some readers. Yes, indeed, Zmijewski’s work suggests that art should become more instrumentalised; and endeavour to be very clear about its modes of operation. It’s only by doing so, Zmijewski argues, that society’s categorisation of the artist – as he puts it as “… an idiot savant of sorts; someone with interesting and important things to say, but no idea how these things came to them or what use to put them to” – can be resisted and countered (2).

Artur Zmjewski 'Two Monuments' (2009) Video Still

Unabashed instrumentalism is very apparent in Two Monuments. Zmijewski’s starting point for this work was a specific invitation in 2008 from the Fire Station to address the changing nature of Polish-Irish relations and the labour market. At this time the previously booming Irish economy was beginning its decline; and immigrant workforces, from Poland and other Eastern European countries, were feeling the impact. Zmijewski set about contriving a ‘social studio’ situation, whereby these issues – and indeed tensions – could be encouraged to arise. Over a series of visits to Dublin in 2008 – 2009 Zmijewski invited Polish and Irish unemployed men and women to take part in a series of workshops, where they were given the perhaps slightly cynical brief to working together to construct their own workers’ monuments. Two Monuments comprises edited documentation of this fraught process; and shows unemployed Irish and Polish men making one sculpture, while unemployed Irish and Polish women make another. As Liz Burns wrote of the project “while both groups complete their tasks, and make sculpture promoting equality and co-operation between their respective countries, the meta-language within the film suggests a certain inability to communicate and articulate” (3).

As a filmmaker herself, Dr Aine O’Brien declared an interest in exploring the complexities and contradictions of social documentary methods, but expressed doubts about how affective Zmijewski’s works were in this regard. O’Brien’s presentation posed some pointed questions. What was to be gained by the separation of aesthetics and ethics in this discussion? Why the defensiveness about the authorship and crafting of these works by the artist?

O’Brien saw Two Monuments as a missed opportunity for both unpacking the power relationships between Zmijewski and the Irish and Polish workers; as well as an exploration of the artist’s methodology and motives. In her view, the levels of participation in the work were low; and O’Brien wondered if the participants had any involvement in the editing of the film. In her view the work lacked a real sense of anthropological engagement. However, speculating that the artist would no doubt enjoy and appreciate the seminar as a ‘social studio’ situation in itself, O’Brien did acknowledge the provocative nature of this work, along with Zmijewski’s eloquence about his practice in his writings.

Of course, participation and collaboration shouldn’t necessarily be regarded as somehow virtuous or desirable in themselves, they represented a wide spectrum of possible levels of coercion. David Beech typified the art world’s current obsession with socially engaged work; as an unthinking entreaty for “better, deeper, stronger and more”; seemingly ignorant of the fact that monstrous events require participation and collaboration as much as virtuous ones. Beech wryly noted that totalitarian states are far more ‘participatory’, than liberal democracies. Echoing Zmijewski’s concern about ethics clouding objectivity, Beech argued for a shift from a concern about the rights of the individual; to a more collective ethics of emancipation. As he put it, the liberal notion of the sovereignty of the individual, often did so at the expense of the first person plural.

Jesse Jones saw the emphasis placed on the viewer as co-author of meanings in Zmijewski’s work as crucial. Jones saw both the artist and viewer as complicit as both producers and transgressors of ethics. Jones stressed how his work deliberately undercuts any expectations of arriving at a catharsis or resolution. For Jones, Zmijewski’s frustration of this process raised productive problems for the spectator, making us consider and account to our ethical understanding about what might be the fairness or truth of what was being represented.

As the commissioner of Two Monuments Liz Burns was able to provide further background information on the project. She explained that the participants were paid for their time; and encouraged to treat their role in the project as a job. As well as this it was made clear to the participants that they would have no role in editing the final work. O’Brien found it problematic that the participants were paid – and wondered exactly what their job description was? Jones and Beech were in agreement that at the very least this offered a critique to the prevailing ethos of ‘soft-capitalism’ whereby so much labour goes unrecognised and un-rewarded, in a culture of increasing volunteerism.

Beech conceded that it was possible to look at Two Monuments, and say that Zmijewski had failed to address huge social inequalities. However, his view was that ultimately the power imbalances and ethical dilemmas in the film should be seen as simply reflecting those that exist in the world. Jones likewise argued that Two Monuments was a fiction, a construction; and whatever was lacking in the ethics of the film could only be fixed in lived experience.

This seminar offered a thorough exploration of the ethics of Zmijewski’s processes. But what of the aesthetics? Zmijewski’s videos have a deliberately ‘anti-aesthetic’ look – they employ pretty standard, journalistic, utilitarian TV news camera work and editing techniques; attention is focused on content, not form. This stance in itself might have been interesting to explore, particularly with two filmmakers on the panel – Jesse Jones and Dr Aine O’Brien. For example, Jones’ work, while equally as ideologically engaged as Zmijewski’s, utilises a well crafted cinematic approach, employing professional production crews, soundtracks, costumes, locations, casts of actors and other performers etc. It might have been fascinating to compare such a differing – yet nonetheless political – approach with Zmijewski’s work.

However, a strong conclusion to the discussion could be drawn from David Beech’s declaration that ultimately, the issue of authorship in Zmijewski’s social studio model of practice, was something of a ‘red herring’. As Beech put it “culling authors changes nothing, saying everyone is an author changes everything”.

In his essay Uncompensated Trauma: On Art, Technique and Division in the publication produced by the Fire Station to accompany Two Monuments, Beech observed that “… there is a rift in the social relations of the work. And it is not a failing. What is clear in Artur Zmijewski’s work is that the universality of the spectator has dissolved, its hegemony dissipated in a world – and an art world – characterised by dissensus, conflict, antagonism and trauma.” (4) In short, any of the issues we might have as viewers with Zmijewski’s practice – be they aesthetic or ethical – can ultimately be read as an urgent call for an end to passive spectatorship, and a shift to real action and engagement in the complexities of the world.

Jason Oakley

Notes

1. This text first published in 2007 in the left-wing Polish journal Kyytka Polityczna, is reproduced in an English translation the publication of the same name, produced by the Fire Station Artists’ Studios to accompany Zmijewski’s Two Monuments project.

2 From The Applied Social Arts, re-published in English in The Applied Social Arts: Artur Zmijewski. Fire Station Artists’ Studios 2010. The publication can be purchased through www.firestation.ie/projects/publications

3. Liz Burns Introduction. The Applied Social Arts: Artur Zmijewski. Fire Station Artists’ Studios 2010.

4. Dave Beech Uncompensated Trauma: On Art, Technique and Division. The Applied Social Arts: Artur Zmijewski. Fire Station Artists’ Studios 2010.

Ailbhe ni Bhriain 'Great Good Places' (Video Still) Courtesy Domobaal, London

AILBHE NI BHRIAIN TELLS THE STORY-SO-FAR OF HER CAREER AS A PROFESSIONAL VISUAL ARTIST.

I recall reading an article (somewhere) in which John Baldessari said (to someone) that approximately one percent of art school graduates go on making work after college – and of that percent only one percent make a living from their work. I am sure his calculations were about as formal as my referencing of them, but, applied to my own (committed, talented) year groups through college,  the figures still manage an around-about-rightness.

Of Baldessari’s percentiles, I belong to the former: I do not make a living from my work. I work chiefly in video and video is tricky. A benefit of this uncommercial niche is not having to store unsold bubble-wrapped works under beds and in other people’s garages. You could also say it gives the luxury of being a purist, removing the pressure to shape work towards a buying audience. The downsides are obvious enough: lack of money; need to do other things for-to-get money to make work; lack of time to make work because of doing other things to get money to make work etc. But for the majority of artists (aforementioned 99%) this is nothing new. I state it just to signal that, for me, career development means simply supporting the continued production of work, and is an ongoing and often roundabout process.

My professional development, according to my official profile, appears pretty straightforward: a neat series of steps from BA to MA to PhD, to part time lecturing to full time lecturing, interspersed with exhibitions which, if attended, would make a nice tour of Europe. This neatness is of course misleading – the numerous jobs in restaurants, bars, primary schools, secondary schools, grammar schools, golf clubs, community groups, special need centres, graphic design centres, clothes shops, prints shops etc, all having been erased.  While I will focus here on the major stepping stones, it’s worth remembering this alternative CV as an important part of the picture.

BA and aftermath …

I studied Fine Art Print in the Crawford College of Art & Design from 1996 to 2000. I loved the course, loved the college and emerged, aged 21, terrified that I might never make work again. My first exhibition post BA was a group show, which took place in Athenry. There were some prominent artists involved and the show was due to travel to London, Paris, New York. It didn’t even make it to the end of its Athenry run, the curator turning out to be a curator / gambler; my work disappeared, alongside all notions of being launched. (The positive: the push to produce my first body of independent work.) My second exhibition was a group show in Paris, organised through the Blackchurch Print  Studio in Temple bar. Alas, there was rain in France, there was a leak in the roof,  and another body of work failed to make it home. (The positive: insurance money, which helped fund my MA in the Royal College of Art.)

My movements between 2001 – 2002 went something like: Cork-Dublin-New York-Dublin-Donegal-Dordogne-Dublin-Belfast-Galway-London. This hopscotching was grounded by a few key things. I joined the Blackchurch Print Studio, an amazing resource that in my case provided access to an identity as an artist as much as to practical facilities. I also took part in a mentoring programme with Nigel Rolfe through the Cork Film Centre. This provided enough intellectual fodder and practical help to really engage me in video practice.

The move to video felt a natural progression from my earlier print based installations, but it was primarily a practical decision: video provided an economic way of working, both in terms of space and finances, and for a two year period the camcorder functioned as  tool, sketchbook and studio in my practice. My application for MA study was an almost purely video-based portfolio.

Ailbhe ni Bhriain ‘Great Good Places’ (Video Still) Courtesy Domobaal, London

MA…

My first foray into postgraduate study was an MPhil in text and image studies in Trinity College in 2001. I was genuinely interested in the course, but became alarmed at a world in which making had no place, and left one month into the first semester.  I began an MA in the Royal College of Art the following September.  Choosing to study in the UK was financially difficult, but the model of the RCA appealed to me – a solely postgraduate and solely art & design college, with a genuinely international student profile. It is also a two year course and operates a pass-fail system in studio assessment; this time and freedom from percentage-tags, to my mind, allows for the risk-taking intrinsic to good art.

I loved the RCA,  though possibly my main education came from untimetabled activities -  a creative writing workshop, evening film screenings, an alarming amount of time spent in the college bar. The college offers a high level of exposure for students:  for some, the final MA show will still pass almost unnoticed, while for others it will act as a catapult into intense critical attention. It’s worth remembering that the latter  doesn’t always signal the beginning of a successful career – sometimes a practice does not survive this level of scrutiny at such an early point.  For me, many of the opportunities were slow-burners, but there’s no denying I gained a lot from the high profile of the student shows.

PhD…

Post-MA, I continued to make and reflect on my work, and began, after a time and almost despite myself,  to formulate this understanding into a PhD topic. I was wary of going the PhD route; I have seen PhD students theorise their practice of all its magic and strangeness, and feel that art in this context too often winds up as the tool to illustrate rather than generate thinking. But in Kingston University, where I began my PhD in 2005, there was an understanding of art-making as an inherently critical process, and a sense of art’s ability to operate independently as a research form.  There were great people behind this – Louis Nixon, Katy McLeod, Elizabeth Price – and an approach, which was rigorous and loose, confident and curious. I was funded by the University for my full three years, and thus had an extended period of concentrating solely on my work.

I stayed in London originally in order to be at the centre of all-things-artistic, but at some point realised that every professional opportunity was arriving into my life via email  I figured it was time to go to cheaper, more survival-friendly places and moved first to Glasgow and later to Cork, where I completed my PhD in 2008. Determined not to lose my practice to academia, I exhibited a lot during this period;  this external activity formed an important part of my research, and a solo exhibition on The Butler Gallery eventually became part of my final PhD submission.

Exhibiting…

A common piece of advice to artists is to choose exhibitions carefully, yet in my experience it’s also good to stay open. Some great opportunities emerge from humble sources – for me, an exhibition in the Reina Sofia Museum arose from a small independently organised event in Madrid (I got an email from an architecture student and took a chance). In general I put a lot of work into applications and have found open submission exhibitions a great way to get work out there. Again, I think keeping a broad remit is good  – my video work has featured in drawing,  print and painting exhibitions and, if anything, most rejections have come from the media quarter. Being curated in unexpected ways can reveal whole new possibilities in your work.

A benefit of video is that multiple copies of the same piece can be shipped cheaply and shown simultaneously, but there can also be a lack of control over how a piece is shown. I am now very specific about installation requirements, and where possible will supply the equipment myself. The Cork Film Centre has played a huge role in my professional development, providing equipment to make, test and exhibit work.

My experience of exhibiting has been very varied: sometimes I am flown to openings; sometimes I don’t get sent an invite. Sometimes I receive a fee for each screening of a work; sometimes the  equipment I send is not returned. Since 2007 I have been represented by domobaal, a London based gallery, and so have happily been able to share or hand over a lot of this professional negotiation.

Now…

At the moment I am working towards a solo exhibition at domobaal later this year; I also have a full time job and a 10 month old baby, so the work happens at lunchtimes, nap-times and at odd hours of the morning. But it does happen. I received an Arts Council Bursary last summer and so have a budget for the very first time; budgets are extraordinary things and I am excited about the new video pieces. My studio is in my home and this is how I’ve operated, by choice, for years. I am very disciplined, vigilant even, about making work – probably that post-BA fear of never making work again still lurks.

Building a career around making art is a pretty awkward proposition. ‘Professionalism’ is increasingly taught in undergraduate art education, which I think is worthy but problematic – with artist’s statements and applications preceding artwork in cart before horse / does: what-it-says-on-the-tin manner. (When it works,  art should surely surprise its maker.) Still, I’m not sure I can suggest better survival techniques. My own experience boils down to: keep making work; take every opportunity to exhibit seriously; pay attention to the ‘Wrong Way Turn Back’ signals, however flaky it makes you appear; and keep making work.

Ailbhe ni Bhriain

Mercedes Fire

Ruth E. Lyons profiles ‘Mercedes Fire’, an artist-led seven-day touring summer school.

As it becomes increasingly the norm for more art colleges to offer the continued study of visual arts practices at masters and doctorate level, there is a greater demand on artists to obtain higher levels of academic qualifications. I am interested what effect this increase in time spent by artists in development within institutes of education has on the character of contemporary art.

Colleges can provide a shelter for artists – giving them space to develop – but these institutions also inform, passing down knowledge and perpetuating schools of thought. Past a certain point in the development of one’s art practice, I’ve been wondering if the shelter of the art college actually encourages a shirking of responsibilities? Shouldn’t artists claim independent agency over their own learning?

In light of these questions, I have become interested in alternative models of learning and peer critique – that can offer an alternative to formal education while still providing a sense of community and collaboration. As I personally experienced in the course of the ‘Mercedes Fire’ summer school 2010 (1), there is an amazing sense of generosity and camaraderie within the art community in Ireland, which openly invites the free formation of alternative models of social engagement and learning within it.

‘Mercedes Fire’ was conceived of by Claire Feeley (now assistant curator in the Serpentine Gallery) and myself in the winter of 2009, at a time when neither of us had any major prospects on the horizon. The inspiration for the project came from Claire Feeley’s experience of a summer school in Estonia in 2008 (2) and my vision for the development of projects at the Good Hatchery – an artist-led project I co-direct with Carl Giffney in Co. Offaly (3) – combined with a shared interest in notions of monumentality. In light of the amenities we considered to have at our disposal; a residential studio space (the Good Hatchery), two cars and lots friends throughout the country working as artists or in art institutions we decided to combine all these elements into a touring summer event.

‘Mercedes Fire’ took the form of a seven-day touring summer school, with three nominated UK based artists and invited Irish participants under the theme of ‘monumentality’. It was out of a desire to make connections between activities in Ireland and elsewhere, that we invited artists from the UK. The selected artists were invited in light of nominations from various organisations that we admire currently working in the UK. These included Situations in Bristol; Cerbyrd in Wales; Ganghut in Scotland and Nottingham contemporary.

In their application to the summer school the nominated artists were asked to consider “how an event, history, person or ideology can be represented in the name of a public? Has the age of permanent sculpture past? How does society represent itself and its values through public sculpture? What would a monument for the future look like?” Their responses to these questions, along with presentations and workshops on the theme formed an integral part of the week’s schedule.

The week-long tour began in Cork and then followed a deviating route to Dublin – informed by art events and spaces along the way, including a two day stay in the Good Hatchery. For the most part, the tour participants consisted of Claire Feeley; the three main fellows: Megan Broadmeadow (4), Samantha Donnelley (5) and Helen de Main (6): and myself packed into the confines of a golden Toyota Yaris – as we sped from one destination to the next, taking in a transient views of roadside sculptures and the Irish landscape along the way. The schedule of the week included visits to various art spaces, both established institutions and artist led, meetings with other artists, curators, writers and institution directors along with presentations by the fellows and other invited artists. We were interested in providing the fellows with a broad view of artistic activity in Ireland, while also exploring the theme of monumentality in its widest terms.

In Ballymore Eustace our meeting with the group of some 20 or so artists and writers was entitled ‘Mercedes Fire V’s Radical Love’ – which took the form of a gathering under a tarpaulin in the forest – sheltering from a sudden down pour. During the ensuing discussions, what became most apparent was a shared belief in the importance of collectivity; whether that be in the sense of working together to create a monument, or simply working together for the sense of sharing and an ‘ideal of love’.

‘Radical Love’ was organised by artists Joseph Noonan Ganley and Sam Keogh; and took the form of a three-day camp out on a friend’s land for invited artists and writers. During their stay each of the participants presented a contribution to the proceedings in the form of a written paper, an artwork or an action related to the theme of ‘radical love’.

In Callan we visited the Workhouse Test (7) and their video show ‘Kinetoscope Parlor’ featuring work by Eilis MacDonald, Brad Trummell, Matt Calderwood and Tessa Power. Artists Kate Strain, Bridget O’Gorman and Etaoin Holahan direct the Workhouse Test as a space for experimentation in contemporary art practice and virtual interactivity. As its name implies it is located in a former famine workhouse that is also home to Endangered Studios. Down the road from the Workhouse Test, also in the unlikely location of Callan town we visited Fennelly’s Pub for an evening of food, music and film screenings. Fennelly’s is a former multi-purpose pub that is now owned and run by artist Etaoin Holahan as an event-space.

During the weeklong tour, it was our encounters with other artist led groups that had the greatest impression on our invited fellows. It opened up interesting discussions on the comparison between activities in Ireland and those in the UK. What each of the fellow’s noted after our meeting at ‘Radical Love’ and our visit to Callan, was the sense of camaraderie and openness that exists in the art community in Ireland. The UK artists were struck by the self-sufficiency of the artists that we encountered; and the fluid relationships that exist between artists, curators and writers – as demonstrated through the welcome reception we received at each of the art institutions and during our visit to and involvement in a discussion group at the ‘Unbuilding’ project in Bray (8).

Throughout the tour, we invited artists that we met to join us for the two days of presentations and discussions in the Good Hatchery. A group of some 25 or so artists arrived equipped with tents and sleeping bags and set up camp in the yard. The group also included Guest Fellows James O’hAodha, Angela Fulcher, Carl Giffney, Mark Clare and Paul Timoney – who along with the three main fellows and myself each gave a presentation on their work and its relationship to monumentality. These two days were split between discussions around the campfire, artist’s presentations and listening to excerpts from the book Magnetic Promenade and Other Sculpture Parks by artist Chris Evans.

Within the theme of monumentality, what became the dominant concerns were collectivism, representation and responsibility. In relation to learning, by failing to recognise or counter the increasing academicisation of art practice, do we risk allowing a dominant structure to become representative of the art scene as a whole? In my own work my concern with these themes lie in viewing utilitarian structures in our landscape – such as pylons, communication devices, etc –as monuments to our time, from a hypothetical anthropological perspective. I am interested in questioning where our responsibility lies in relation to these structures? What claim if any do we have on these ‘monuments’ that we allow to stand for us?

Our 2011 summer school will be based on the theme of ‘Islands and the Leviathan’. It will take place in July / August. The school will be based on the west coast, with a specific focus on the seascape of Clew Bay and its numerous Islands.

‘Mercedes Fire’ was an unfunded project. An artist fee of €100 paid by each of the main fellows, which covered the costs of food, petrol and hostel accommodation in Dublin. Claire and I would like to thank all those who made Mercedes Fire possible: Mick O’Shea and Irene Murphy, Chris Clarke, Catherine Harty, Stephanie Hough, The Basement Projects, Matt Packer, Eamonn Maxwell, Sam Keogh and Joseph Noonan Ganley, Kate Strain, Bridget O’Gorman and Etaoin Holahan, Clodagh Kenny, Mark Clare, Peter Prendergast, Angela Fulcher, James O’hAodha, Paul Timoney, Carl Giffney, Eilis Lavelle, Cliona Shaffrey and Rosie Lynch.

Ruth E Lyons

Notes
(1) http://thegoodhatchery.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/schedule.jpg
(2) http://publicpreparation.org
(3) http://thegoodhatchery.wordpress.com
(4) Megan Broadmeadow – http://www.megartmix.co.uk/
(5) Helen de Main – http://www.helendemain.net/
(6) Samantha Donnelly – http://www.frieze.com/shows/review/samantha_donnelly/
(7) The Workhouse Test – http://theworkhousetest.wordpress.com/
(8) Unbuilding project – http://unbuildingproject.wordpress.com/

Anne Lynott reports on ‘The Museum Revisited’, a seminar on ‘New Institutionalism’ and contemporary art galleries and museums, held at The Science Gallery, Dublin, 16 October 2010.

‘New institutionalism’ has been a buzz phrase in European curatorial discourse since the last decade. The late 1990s saw previously independent curators beginning to move to key posts within major art institutions (1). And by the new millennium, developments were taking place in how galleries and museums were being operated. This ‘new institutionalism’ was characterised by self-reflexivity and an interest in alternative curatorial models, particularly those aimed at debate and dialogue with other fields of knowledge. A defining characteristic was that exhibitions no longer had precedence over other types of activity. Instead, equal importance was placed on discourse, research, analysis and thinking about contemporary art, as much as presenting it. As Claire Doherty has put it “new institutionalism responds to (some even say assimilates) the working methods of artistic practice and furthermore, artist-run initiatives, whilst maintaining a belief in the gallery, museum or arts centre, and by association their buildings, as a necessary locus of, or platform for, art.”(2)

European institutions, which have always been less dependent on private donors than their American counterparts, have had more freedom to make programming changes along new institutional lines. Nonetheless, the key ideas behind new institutionalism – self-reflexivity and responding to new artistic practices, have made it an attractive model to many curators in the United States. Addressing this issue, Amanda Ralph of IADT, Dun Laoghaire organised ‘The Museum Revisited’ a seminar that explored the relevance of these new forms of curatorial practice. The event featured presentations by two US based curators, both working in Los Angeles – Anne Ellegood (Senior Curator at the Hammer Museum) and Shamim M Momin (Director/Curator of LAND, Los Angeles Nomadic Division). The event took place on 16 October, at The Science Gallery in Dublin and was presented by Culture Ireland in association with the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles and IADT’s MA in Visual Arts Practices (MAVIS).

Anne Ellegood began by sketching out an overview of the Hammer Museum’s structure and history. The museum was founded in 1990 by Dr Armand Hammer, a private collector who wanted to make his collection available for the public to view. Three weeks after the opening of the museum, Dr. Hammer died ¬¬– all construction was halted and the building was left unfinished. In 1994, after two years of negotiations, a partnership with University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) was finalised. The university assumed the management and operations of the museum, and relocated its collections, the staff of UCLA’s Wight Art Gallery and the Grunwald Centre for Graphic Arts to the museum’s building. The director of the Wight Art Gallery, Henry Hopkins, led the museum until his retirement in 1998, after which Ann Philbin was named director.

Ellegood attributes the Hammer Museum today as the one, which Ann Philbin created ¬¬– changing from a museum showing travelling exhibitions in the beginning to one that honours active engagement with LA artists and publics. Alternative spaces were a template for the director, who began her career in the late ‘70s with internships at the New Museum of Contemporary Art and at Artists Space in New York. “Those were totally formative times for me” she told the New York Times in 2004. “That really explains why I can’t get away from the artist as the central figure” (3).

The institution strives for the museum to be a gathering place, a kind of town hall with different options for people; not just exhibitions, but events, screenings, discussions and activities which make the museum a place that people will come back to again and again. Co-ordinated by Anne Ellegood herself, the Hammer Projects offer a dense programme of exhibitions with up to five running at a time, concurrent with the museum’s main programme. These single-artist shows aim to highlight the careers of established LA and international artists whom Ellegood believes to be under-recognised. She cited Friedrich Kunath, Larry Johnson and Tom Marioni as recent Hammer Project artists.

As a collection-based institution the Hammer seems to be engaged in a balancing act between traditional formats of programming and new radical elements. And as with many European institutions throughout the last decade, the Hammer curators have explored different ways to approach the display of their collections through the involvement of artists in the curatorial process. The series of projects entitled ‘Houseguests’ invites local artists to curate a show from the museum’s Grunwald Collection of prints and drawings. These exhibitions allow viewers to examine how artists think about exhibitions and art history, whilst also drawing a contemporary art audience’s attention to historical works.

The museum also runs a public programme of 250 events per year in the courtyard level theatre. Events in the theatre include screenings, talks and discussions on topical socio-political subjects and are organised by a new Public Engagement department. This was created when the museum decided to actively tackle issues that might enhance the museum experience for visitors by hiring a curator of public engagement and visitor services.

The Hammer’s Artist in Residence scheme has also activated new ways for public engagement with recent resident Mark Allen creating numerous novel scenarios in the museum. He orchestrated a ‘Dream In’ where people were invited to sleep in the gallery and have their dreams analysed in the morning, and ‘Micro Concerts’ in the coat check room, where a violinist and a bass player would play for a couple of minutes to an audience of two in the tiny space. By inviting an electric guitarist to follow and play for visitors one at a time around the museum and installing ping pong tables on the museum’s balcony, Allen demonstrated the museum as a space where the public can engage with art in different ways and how the museum can respond to new working methods of artists.

During her presentation, Anne Ellegood attributed much of the Hammer’s success in finding new and better ways to engage with artists and publics to their strong relationship with and respect for the museum’s Artists Council. This is a group of 12 artists, on paid three-year contracts, who meet three to four times a year and advise museum staff on what should happen around the museum. The council is divided into two groups, the ‘innies’ and the ‘outies’, defining those that are interested in what is happening in the museum and those interested in the museum reaching out to the community.

Most of the European curators associated with new institutionalism had previously working independently and had considerable profiles for their freelance work. However Shamim M Momin, Director and Curator of Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND), arrived at her current position with considerable institutional experience under her belt. Talking through her curatorial background, which included 12 years at the Whitney Museum of Contemporary Art in New York – including the co-curation of the 2004 and 2008 Whitney Biennial exhibitions. Momin was also branch director for eight years of the Whitney Museum at Altria, which was a glass-enclosed public space on 42nd Street in New York. She cited the experience of working with artists on a commission basis for the biennials and the quasi-public space of the Altria as two important elements that fed in to the setting up of LAND.

One of the difficulties for the European new institutional curators of the ‘00s was the association of the museum building itself with traditional exhibition formats. The restrictive nature of the building spurred curators to find other ways of presenting work both spatially and temporally. LAND, a non-profit public art organisation that, as its name suggests, is building towards the notion of decentralisation through integrating its nomadic endeavours into the cultural ecology of Los Angeles. Momin considers the growth of the LA art community interesting in terms of its influences on larger practices, and this became a structural analogue for LAND. By taking the experience of qualitative rigour from the Whitney, and also finding a way to represent expanded artistic practices (those that may include music, books and performances as well as paintings, video and other works) Momin is attempting to allow disparate elements fit together in a more holistic sense. The idea is to combine the institutional and qualitative rigour with a more responsive, nimble way of working. In this way, LAND can be tamed in to whatever is happening with the artists. Also, not being fixed to a particular site allows LAND to communicate with several remote audiences, which in some ways are more receptive than a local exhibition audience would be.

Momin described LAND as having three levels, though when one looks in to it, there seems to be much more going on with each event and exhibition expanding or developing into new stages. First there is VIA, which launched with LAND in January 2010. This was a suite of temporary public projects by four Mexican artists whose work was selected based on a unique and distinct relationship between the artists’ practices and the dynamic site of the LA cityscape. This was followed by VIA Stage 2, which consisted of staggered launches of new commissions throughout the year emphasising the conceptual basis of the project by spreading it not only across space, but time as well. The other levels of LAND mentioned by Momin are LAND 1.0, a series of multi-artist/multi-show events, and LAND 2.0, which consists of one off exhibitions. The group also run Nomadic Nights, which is a monthly, salon-style event in roaming locations throughout Los Angeles and Frame Rate, a programming series based on moving image works.

New institutionalism is institutional critique practised from the inside, examining and questioning the ideological structures through which they operate. Both the Hammer Museum and LAND are re-shaping museum and art-viewing cultures in Los Angeles through values of fluidity, discursivity, participation and production. The Hammer is following trends of large European museums, using non-exhibition centred programming to attract larger and more diverse audiences, as a way to sustain the museum. LAND may be looking to smaller institutions in Europe whose curatorial aims were more intellectually and politically directed. Both LA entities are using these event-based curatorial strategies as a way to move beyond the traditional concept of exhibition as the display of artworks in a white cube.

The productive nature of this institutional reflection, with curators working hand-in-hand with artists, provides an openness, which may not have existed before. Local artists can imagine their institution to be what they need it to be, or ‘home’, as Anne Ellegood described the Hammer for LA artists. Although both Ellegood and Momin state they are ‘following the artists’, the spreading trends of New Institutionalism were motivated by curators infused with political consciousness and theoretical curiosity. They had a desire to connect with broader socio-political issues, which, it could be argued, now inform artistic practices. Whichever way one sees the development of artistic and curatorial practices over the last twenty years, it is clear that working together in the institutional framework offers greater theoretical consciousness, critical awareness and political sensitivity for the artist, curator and public alike.

Anne Lynott

Notes
1) Several New Institutional examples of the 1990s and 2000s included Künstlerhaus Stuttgart under Ute Meta Bauer, Nicolaus Schafhausen took over Kunstverein Frankfurt, Maria Hlavajova took on BAK in Utrecht, Nicolas Bourriaud and Jérôme Sans became the founding directors of Palais de Tokyo and Catherine David, Charles Esche and Maria Lind took charge of Witte de With in Rotterdam, Rooseum in Malmo and Kunstverein München respectively.

2) Clare Doherty, ‘The institution is dead! Long live the institution! Contemporary Art and New Institutionalism’, Engage Review, Issue 15, Summer 2004

3) Anne Philbin, www.nytimes.com/2004/10/06/arts/design/06hamm.html

Augustine O'Donoghue 'The Disappeared: Mother and Son'

Augustine O’Donoghue reports on her recent work with the Artifarti Project in the Western Sahara Liberated Territories and the Tinduff refugee camps in Algeria.

Over the last number of years, my art practice has taken on an international dimension, which involves working with a wide range of communities around the world, often outside the traditional art arena. In early 2009, I undertook a research trip to the World Social Forum (WSF) in Brazil with NCAD. At the event, we had a chance encounter with organisers of Artifariti, an experimental art festival in the Western Sahara Liberated Territories. We invited them to speak at an upcoming conference / exhibition in NCAD ‘Art with Africa’. Following the success of this event, Artifariti invited NCAD students and staff to attend Artifariti 2009 in Western Sahara Liberated Territories and the Tinduff Refugee camps Algeria. Following my involvement in this event, I was invited back this year to develop a collaborative project with Saharawi refugees in Tinduff refugee camps (along with Irish artists Neil Rudden and Brian Duffy).

The Western Sahara is located in North Africa. It is a former Spanish colony, which was invaded by Morocco and Mauritania when Spain withdrew from the country in 1972. The invading Moroccan forces bombed and napalmed the civilian population, forcing them to flee across the Sahara desert into Algeria. Over 165,000 Saharawi refugees have remained stranded in the Sahara desert in Algeria for over 35 years, making the refugee camps in Tinduff the second oldest in the world. The area experiences one of the harshest climate conditions on earth. Those that did not manage to escape remain cut off from their families by ‘The Wall of Shame’ – a 3,000km wall built of sand and stone. It is the second largest defence wall in the world after the Great Wall of China, protected by 100,000 Moroccan forces and 5 million land mines.

While Mauritania later withdrew from the country, Morocco continues to occupy and control the country. Saharawis living in occupied territories live under Moroccan rule and face daily discrimination repression and human rights abuse. In 1991, there was a cease-fire between the Polisario Front (1) and Morocco, monitored by the UN on the promise of a referendum to determine the Saharawi’s right to self-determination. However, King Mohamed of Morocco has since declared that there is no need for the referendum. While UN forces are present in the Occupied Territories, they remain an ineffective presence. France continues to block a UN mandate on monitoring human rights so it has the dubious mission of being the only contemporary UN peacekeeping mission in the world without a mandate on human rights. Morocco blocks journalists and international political delegations from visiting the country to avoid reporting on the gross human rights violations in the country. Human Rights organisations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Frontline has issued numerous report on the human rights abuse in the country, but the international community has largely ignored the plight and non-violent peaceful resistance of the Saharawi people.

It is in this context that Artifariti arts festival was initiated by Association of Friends of the Saharawis, a solidarity group in Seville as a way of highlighting the human rights violations of the Saharawi people. The event brings International and Saharawi artists together to develop work. While international artists tend to work across all contemporary art forms, the Saharawi artists tend to work in more traditional painting and sculpture although there is a shift happen in this area even from last year which is probably due to their exposure of new ideas and ways of working by International artists. Artifariti now in its fourth year has grown and developed in a number of directions since its inception. Artists from 14 different countries participated in this year’s event. Most of the artists worked in the liberated zone in Tifariti, which was a day’s drive across the desert from the camps. This year, due to the nature of my work, I based myself in the refugee camps and unfortunately as a result did not meet or view the work of the majority of other international artists.

However, I did work beside Irish artist Neil Rudden who ran collaborative workshops mainly using the medium of textile to transform a traditional Saharawi tent called a Jaima into a symbol of solidarity, while simultaneously creating an interior space to encourage creative practices. People responded with great enthusiasm to his concept with people of all ages from children to senor citizens working on the project.

Augustine O'Donoghue henna application for 'The Disappeared'

The focus of this year’s exhibition was disappeared people. Forced disappearance is a feature of the Western Sahara conflict. Over 30,000 civilians have disappeared throughout the conflict, with many civilians kept in secret detention centres by the Moroccan government. Some disappearance last a few days, weeks or months, while others last years. However, once disappeared many civilians are never seen again.

The experience of visiting the camps in 2009 helped formulate my ideas for this year’s project. I hoped to explore a project that could engage in the cultural traditions of the Saharawi people and to use materials that could be found in the area. Key to this was to develop a mechanism that would allow the work to be shown or reactivated in other countries.

My project titled The Disappeared involved collaborating with Saharawi artists, Eseniya Ahmed Baba and Mohamed Suliman. Mohamed, originally my translator for the project became a key person in the development of the project. The first part of my project involved the development of a series of portraits of disappeared people using henna paste. Henna is a natural plant dye used to decorate skin and part of the cultural tradition of the Saharawi people. I worked with Afapredesa The Association for the families of Saharawi prisoners and Disappeared, to get photographic images as well as stories and information on the disappeared. As Henna is applied to hands, the story of the disappeared person is told to the person receiving the henna and they in turn are asked to pass the story of the disappeared person on to another individual before the image fades from their hand. Henna can last between two to three weeks on the skin. As I applied the henna to many of the Saharawi’s hands and told the story of the disappeared person, many of them told me the story of disappeared people in their own family. This was something I had not anticipated, but reflects the extent to which the problem affects so many Saharawi families.

The second part of the project, which I am currently working on, is the creation of ‘Henna art kits’. The kits contain henna paste and stencils incorporating portraits of the disappeared people. In addition, they include stories of the disappeared. They will be sent to individuals and organisations involved in human rights issues across the globe and also to the many Western Sahara Solidarity groups established worldwide. This is a crucial feature of the project as it allows the work to be reactivated by different people in different locations. This may occur at a cultural or political event or perhaps just in a home between family members (2).

Saharawi refugee camp

Another interesting development that emerged through the work came from an encounter with an elderly woman in the camp. Her husband was disappeared 35 years previous. Through my local translator, she spoke of her husband, but struggled to describe the man he was or what he looked like. However, while speaking she mentioned he was a poet. When asked if she could remember any of his poetry she recited his humorous and witty poems with unstrained laughter. It was through his poetry that I really began to see the portrait of this man. His character, humour and wit all became apparent. I discovered his poetry was never recorded in any form as it came from an oral tradition. His wife believed she would never be asked to recite his poetry again, I got the impression that it was a significant moment for her to recite his words again. As no photographic image of this man exists, I am trying to somehow develop a portrait from his poetry (3).

Developing art projects in the desert is not an easy or straightforward process. The intense heat makes the simplest of tasks almost impossible. Trying to simply think or work out plans in such a climate was a struggle. Contending with sickness and diarrhoea is also part of living in the refugee camp. Attempting to obtain information on the disappeared people while in the camp was a slow process as organisation and communication can be chaotic. On many occasions I waited hours for someone to turn up for a pre-arranged meeting because even though they may be just a 15-minute drive away, they could not always find transport. Walking in the sun is not an option and there are no telephones for one to inform you they are running a few hours late! This is normal life for the Saharawis and is something one must to learn to accept when working in such an environment. It was a challenge particularly when working to a tight schedule, without the modern conveniences to hand.

On return to Ireland from our first visit the Irish artists established a Western Sahara solidarity group and have undertaken a number of cultural and political events collectively and individually. This has helped strengthen our relationship with the Saharawi people and help develop an engaged understanding of the political situation which I feel in turn influences the artwork that comes from such a relationship. I hope to see Irish artists’ relationship with the Saharawi people develop and evolve. This already seems to be happening in an organic way with plans underway for future collaborations and projects.

In 2009 a film school was established in the camps as part of this year’s event many of the Saharawi worked in the school on collaborative film and photographic projects documenting aspects of their own life and culture. This is an interesting development and I think takes on some of the issues around representation that I felt were not adequately addressed in the 2009 event. It’s also a way of supporting and developing an indigenous Saharawi film language. There are also plans underway to develop an art college in the camps an exciting and ambitious dream for an impoverished population exiled in the desert where daily life is a struggle for survival.

For me, Artifariti has been far more that an art exhibition, it has helped build friendships and grassroots solidarity links with our fellow Saharawi artists, their families and their nation as they continue in their struggle for human rights, dignity and freedom. Sahara Libra!

Augustine O’Donoghue

(1) Polisario Front the political representative of Saharawi people. They operate as a government in exile from the Tinduff Refugee camps. Since 1979, the Polisario is recognised by the United Nations as the reprehensive of the people of the Western Sahara.

(2) Another step in the project is the further development of the henna designs. Currently, the designs incorporate portraits of the disappeared people. However, when I visited relatives of disappeared people in the camps, many did not have an image of their disappeared relative as they fled the country without possessions during the Moroccan invasion. A number of relatives had only their fingerprints or signatures from official documents. Therefore, I am hoping to develop a new series of designs, which will incorporate fingerprints and signatures into the henna designs so their story can also be included in the project.

(3) I have been collaborating with Mohamed Suleiman, the local translator, artist and Arabic calligraphy to develop a portrait using his poetry through calligraphy. While I frequently employ collaborative strategies within my work, this is a new and exciting type of collaboration for me: It will be interesting to see how it unfolds. Mohamed became a key person within my project. I have worked with several translators over the years but this was my first experience working with an artist / translator. Mohamed ‘picked up’ on things that a regular translator would not have understood. He brought enthusiasm, insight and passion to the project. I felt our relationship changed in an organic manner through the project from translator to collaborating artist.

Commonage exhibition - Old Co-op, Callan

Cliodhna Shaffrey profiles ‘Commonage’ a project merging art and architecture that took place in Callan, Co. Kilkenny during 31 JULY – 8 AUGUST 2010

The Arts Council recently published a study into public engagement with architecture in Ireland, written and researched by Alan Mee and Richard Wakely. The authors acknowledge that public engagement with architecture is a relatively recent phenomenon in Ireland and must therefore start from “a low base”. The study identified a range of actions, which the Arts Council might wish to consider as a means of enhancing the level of supports for engaging the Irish public with the art form of architecture. Mee and Wakely recommend the facilitation of a broader approach encompassing the wider built environment and giving opportunity for the public to be exposed to, become aware of, appreciate, and participate in the creative endeavour associated with architecture.  Commonage – curated by Rosie Lynch, Tara Kennedy and Jo Anne Butler for the town of Callan, County Kilkenny was funded under the Arts Council’s Touring and Dissemination Architecture Award, 201. It was an exemplar of a broad approach – as well as being a beautifully pitched and curated experience.

Commonage was conceived as a distinct strand of the Callan Abhainn Rí Festival – a community festival based on inclusion and participation, initiated by Patrick Lydon of Camphill and organised by Callan Community Network. It was devised as a week-long event, which provided opportunities for a small group of artists and architects to undertake “a radical exploration of the built environment of Callan”; and as a basis to make new work and situate it throughout the town. The curators also selected a number of existing artworks.

The spaces used (both inside and outside) were back lanes, hill tops, public spaces and empty buildings  – the Co-op building on the main street, the Pumphouse at the end of Clodeen Lane, The Moat, Fennelly’s bar on Bridge Street. The project involved major clean ups of large and vacant spaces, undertaken in collaboration between the festival staff, curators and local people. For Commonage these spaces were either re-opened to the public or opened up for the first time. The sites in combination with the works situated in, offered visitors a very particular experience of the town of Callan. The works, in a sense, offered a means to connect people with public spaces and architecture, and in turn to link up more the architecture of the town and its public spaces. The impressive – and little changed over the years – urban structure of Callan acted as ‘frame’ for the commissioned and selected artworks.

I began my own visit at Fennelly’s on Bridge Street, where HURL (Home University Roscommon Leitrim) had presented a series of audio recordings made with local people about their town’s histories and imagined futures – voicing an odd mix of knowledge and idiosyncratic information from several residents’ perspectives and passions inclusive of that for the local rustic loaf.  HURL is Ireland’s newest university and was set up by a group of individuals dedicated to the exchange of soft knowledge so the subject matter that is of interest to them is wide-ranging dealing in current and critical material to methods and rituals for living that are quickly disappearing or easily lost.

Fennelly’s house and pub combined the remnants of a farmhouse out the back.  It is the sort of building that was one time very common in towns throughout Ireland, but very few of them now remain in their original form. Its new owner Etaoin Holahan is giving it a new lease of life by using it as place for ‘pop-up’ events as well as her home. We were allowed to ramble around the house, freely  – up and down ladders and through empty rooms and downstairs to the little pub – where the audio recordings were set up for listening and Gerry Cahill’s picture postcard sketches of the town could be bought.  Unfortunately I didn’t make it to the Workhouse Test – another ambitious project space in Callan in which Etaoin is involved. Curated with Bridget O’Gorman and Kate Strain, Kinetoscope Parlour showcased video works by Matt Calderwood, Eilis McDonald, Tessa Power and Brad Troemel.

Culturstruction (Tara Kennedy and Jo Anne Butler) built a viewing platform of charred timber at an overlooked place on the river – presenting the possibility for a picturesque moment in a non-picturesque site.  It’s a place where a lot of local kids hang out and to get there you have to walk down a small back lane and, when you get there the river is small and shallow and the landscape is overgrown and weedy. Culturstruction’s interventions often operate at the intersection between art and architecture and offer a small-scale improvement for better social environments. Their bespoke platform for the teenagers was beautifully crafted – with the help of local skilled labour – its geometric form was built firmly to jut out into the river.

In the Co-op building – an impressive agricultural and industrial complex and a key building on the main street that is no longer in active use – I saw Rhona Byrne’s video Model Town,  – commissioned for Commonage and made earlier this year while on a residency in the Mattress Factory, Pennsylvania, USA. It was projected onto stacked bed heads making a unique installation space for this projection. The video focuses on the miniature village made by Laurence Gieringer from Pennsylvania, who made a model village over a 60-year period. Documenting this lifetime of work, Byrne illustrates how ‘one man’s passionate commitment to envisioning a bigger picture than the world he knew and how, with a do-it-yourself mentality, he shaped a dream into a sustainable reality’.

Also in this complex was a work by Gabriella Kiss, 15 people swinging and more (2005) a video installation celebrating how people come together and enjoy themselves. Katie Managan, exhibited her a recent graduate work from NCAD – including a kinetic sculpture made out of strips of film reel and a spinning wheel. This impressive modernist sculpture glistened as it whirled  – witty and surreal. First-year architectural students from UCD were set the task to design a house and garden for Camphill Callan as part of their course work. This was exhibited alongside Dominic Lavelle’s graduate thesis of a similar theme. Models and drawings from a selection of the students were upstairs in the loft and presented using the building’s structure and found furniture for their display. There was an immediacy in the pragmatic and cosy way the architectural models were displayed in this spacious agrarian interior that seemed to aid readings of architectural proposals for Camphill and underline a desired connection or rootedness to place.

Camphill – for which the young architects proposed their interventions, is an organisation and charitable trust working with people with special needs. The Camphill Communities, of which there are quite a number now in Ireland and around the world, was established first in Scotland, by a group of Jewish refugee doctors, who after the Second World War wanted to do something positive for the most vulnerable people in society. Their vision inspired by the philosophies of Dr Rudolf Steiner advocated for becoming creative with one’s own human potential.  KCAT Art & Study Centre, another organisation in the centre of Callan is established as an environment in which artists and students from different backgrounds and abilities can work and create together. These two organisations seem to have seeped into the very spirit of Callan. Tony O’Malley also had his home and studio here  – now a facility for artists’ operated by the RHA.

Perhaps there is something in this mix of the 19^th century vernacular architecture (agricultural and industrial buildings) built on medieval foundations, farming communities and presence of artistic and alternative communities and the feeling that the Celtic Tiger only tinkered at its fringes that combines to make Callan the place it is today. Credible and appealing, because it is authentic and not clichéd or a facsimile, nine miles outside the sophisticated Kilkenny city, Callan is not over polished and is simple enough. But all over Ireland, we might say there are towns like this, what sets Callan aside is that the people here sense an essence of architecture in their immediate surroundings; it’s not as if it has a hotlist of architectural highlights, but that somehow the streetscape and buildings add up and it is, as the curators and so many of the local community, so astutely considered a good place to start a conversation about place and thereby get to the root of what might be considered the most profound ambition for architecture  – to create place.  And, it is perhaps, as the curators suggest that small towns like Callan, “away from the bustling cities and the hubs of the global financial industry, where ordinary residents experience the vagrancies of the global economy and the impact of global changes…. [is] where we can learn to develop a sustainable future”. (1)

At night-time the moat in Callan was lit by the Good Hatchery artists Carl Giffney and Ruth E. Lyons. Their installation Missionary 52 – 7 comprised of temporary architecture and high-powered lights and was ambitious – romantic and dreamy – staged between the trees, drawing our attention to the skies above. Their research uncovering the Callan motto ‘Keep Watching the Skies’ suggesting a greater connection to the celestial influences on the world around us.

While a week can be a short time in the life of any project, especially where so much hard work is invested in its realisation, the curators took good care to document Commonage by commissioning artist and documentary photographer Henrietta Williams. William’s tracking of this event has produced a particularly original series of photographs, which certainly bring another dimension to revealing the experience through her camera’s lens. Lisa Cassidy’s  Prologue was a small printed zine, also presented as a personal response to Callan where she set about “pulling things out of context, like a tiny museum made just from my point of view”.  It responds to Callan with ‘total delight’ picking up in outline sketches and small texts details that have captured her. “To dwell is to leave a trace” – she writes, quoting Walter Benjamin, and we sense this everywhere in Callan, a town that hasn’t changed that much, where traces are everywhere.

Cliodhna Shaffrey

(1) Small town sustainability, Heike Mayer and Paul L. Knox, Birkhauser (2009)

www.commonagecallan.com

Production sill from Terminal Convention (working title), an experimental documentary by artist and filmmaker Mike Hannon.

Sara Baume introduces ‘Terminal Convention 2011′ an major international art exhibition that will take place on the site of the former Cork International Airport (17 – 27 March).

What do you get if you cross hundreds of empty baggage trolleys, a couple of stalled conveyors and a dehydrated fountain with a gaggle of international artists, musicians and speakers – then shuffle them all together in a tumbledown airport on the outskirts of civilisation across the St. Patrick’s weekend? It may sound something of an obscure joke, but suspend disbelief long enough and you might well find yourself revelling in just such an event throughout 11 eclectic days this coming springtime…

An initiative of Static Gallery in Liverpool, the shrewdly titled Terminal Convention 2011is set to take place in the former Cork International Airport, which was decommissioned in favour of a shiny new facility in 2006. It is the brainchild of Static’s director, Paul Sullivan, who has had links with the city since Cork was European Capital of Culture in 2005. At the heart of the event will be an exhibition installed throughout the abandoned building with Peter Gorschlüter (Deputy Director of MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main) as curator. Terminal Conventionis also set to consist of a symposium co-ordinated by John Byrne (co-director of Static and Programme leader of Fine Art Liverpool John Moores University), an art fair and a major music event. While the line-up of musicians was still quite provisional at the time of going to press, the confirmed symposium speakers include George Yudice of the University of Miami, Charles Esche and Steven ten Thije of the Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven. The list of participating artists is a more concrete cause for excitement – Douglas Gordon, Damien Hirst, Imogen Stidworthy, Frederic Pradeau, Diane Guyot, Juan Cruz, Padraig Timoney, Becky Shaw, Peter Norrman, Jacqueline Passmore, Ross Dalziel (Sound Network), Adrian Williams, Shane Munro and Le Pavillon (Palais de Tokyo/Paris). In addition, the National Sculpture Factory, as partners of the project in Cork, have selected three Irish artists – Seamus Nolan, Nevin Lahart and Martin Healy.

“I remember coming through the new terminal, knowing that the old building had been decommissioned and looking out at it, thinking, that would be such a great place to do a project,” Sullivan tells me. He is sitting on a window ledge upstairs in the defunct Departure lounge with John Byrne and Peter Gorschlüter on either side, and a picturesque setting of blue skies and runways in the background. It is the first weekend of official site visits and the terminal is variously scattered with artists, architecture students and other members of the organising team – each absorbed in their own explorations – taking photographs and making drawings as they go.

Airport Property Manager, John Bruen, seems happy to let me roam the strangely familiar building. Unlike mostly everybody else, I can remember when it was a functioning airport, when as a child, I was brought on annual visits to pick up my English grandmother. It is especially strange for me to see the escalators stalled, the lifts suspended in mid air, the fish tanks drained, the check-in desks deserted and everything eerily dwarfed by adulthood.

“The response I’ve got locally,” Sullivan says, “when we talk about the project being in the old terminal, is that people almost seem to automatically bypass the art bit and think, ‘well how do we get into the building?!’ They remember it as it was before and want to see it again.” It goes without saying that an event of this calibre will attract members of the art community from further afield, so it’s good to hear that the organisers are just as aware of the inhabitants of its host city and even those living beneath the flight paths in the surrounding countryside. “The range of events that are happening are going to attract a range of audiences,” he says, “there’ll be people flying in especially for the event, but I presume the majority of the audience are going to be Irish.”

Peter Gorschlüter mentions that they hope to organise a farmer’s market to run alongside the art fair ­– buttermilk scones and muddied turnips meets white emulsion and multimedia installation.  This is sure to attract a more diverse audience – above all other counties, Cork loves its markets. When asked about his role as exhibitions curator in such a multifaceted event, Gorschlüter stresses that “the art is everything, across all parts of the project.” He describes this weekend’s site visits as something of a “blind date” for most of those present, in terms of both meeting each other and encountering the abandoned terminal for the first time.  “The main idea was to bring together those that had a particular interest in making interventions in the space, in working site-specifically,” he says, “it’s not about taking art from all over the world and showing it in this particular place, but about inviting the artists to respond.”

It’s a risky approach for a curator – one that requires a certain surrender of control to the spontaneous, ambiguous relationship between artist and infrastructure.  But Gorschlüter’s calm and confident manner give the distinct impression that it will pay off, that his trust will ultimately allow for a more interesting exhibition. The list of artists is well varied – both in terms of country of origin and media of choice. When I ask Gorschlüter about the selection process, he says that “some of the artists were selected through my connections, some through Sullivan’s connections and others through the National Sculpture Factory.” It seems fitting that he expects “a lot of the work will be about communication, one way or another.”

Communication certainly is not something of a problem between the three main organisers – it’s clear from our conversation that Terminal Conventionis being driven by their overlapping interests and shared ideas.  The symposium, set to take place over a few days at the start of the event, will be a great way of examining these driving concerns in a little more depth. “All of those ideas about different kinds of audiences, local/national, are part of the whole context of the show and the conference anyway,” John Byrne says, “these kind of issues continually come up if you are going to site it in a place like this.” The idea of having such an integrated symposium is something of particular appeal to me – of being able to put the discussion into context by means of the living, original artworks and events that immediately surround it. “It’s really important that the conference doesn’t just end up sitting on top of the exhibition like some kind of an alienated dialogue,” Byrne says, “that it works with the space and the issues, that it picks up from some of the things you will have heard before about ‘airport art’ – that kind of bland and ubiquitous art that one tends to associate more with the art market.”

Gorschlüter reflects Byrne’s views when he criticises his own overuse, as a curator, of the word ‘international’ in the writing of press releases, and when he talks about how tired he is of constantly encountering the same type of artwork the world over.  He sees the exhibition as an opportunity to create a discussion around “difference and diversity” in a strangely appropriate, almost ironic situation.

In terms of the artists themselves, I got a chance to hear Adrian Williams and Shane Munro talking about their respective practices the following day, as part of a seminar for students in the Crawford College of Art and Design.  While cautious to reveal specific plans for Terminal Convention, both describe examples of existing work that nicely shows why they were invited and how suited they are to the project as a whole.

Back on the window ledge in the decommissioned terminal, soundtracked by the occasional low growl of ascending and descending aeroplanes, I feel it only right – considering the existing economic straits – to bring up the question of funding.  Sullivan explains that “funding is coming from a handful of places” – mainly from Static, also from the National Sculpture Factory as cultural partners in Ireland and from John Moores University in Liverpool and CIT in Cork as academic partners.  He is keen to emphasise that “Static’s model is not to be reliant on public subsidy in any way”, and that “a lot of the money for Terminal Convention will come through the music event – revenue generated from ticket sales and sales of alcohol, with our partners who are running the bars.”

Sullivan isn’t shy to admit “the whole thing is a complex web that needs to be navigated to get it through to March.”  In the aftermath, there are plans for a publication, plus re-presentations in CIT Wandesford Quay Gallery in April and Static in September.  “That’s a whole other kind of curatorial challenge,” Sullivan says, “how does this huge project then move to a space the size of a regular gallery, and not even a large one at that…”

In order to record the challenges at hand, a filmmaker has been selected as one of the participating artists. His brief is to follow the project through from its shaky beginnings and make some kind of a documentary-style work to be screened at the re-presentations. On my way back out of the abandoned terminal, I bump into Mike Hannon, the appointed filmmaker, and he is happy to discuss some ideas. Although still in its earliest stages, Hannon is clear that the finished piece will have more of the art film and less of the straightforward documentary about it.  He describes, with compelling enthusiasm, his interest in subtle details – in crinkled calendars, strands of drifting spider-web and in the pervading ghost town atmosphere.  When he uses the term ‘apocalyptic’ in relation to how everything is still modern and familiar, yet simultaneously switched-off and abandoned, he captures the place exactly.

Unlike everybody else I have met who is involved with the project, Hannon is a native of Cork and still locally based. I am glad to have found someone who actually remembers the terminal as a operating entity, with whom I can authentically reminisce about the welcome fireplace and the Jack Charlton bronze, about a time before air travel was humdrum and there was still a sense of excitement and anticipation about spaces and sights like these, about Baggage Reclaim and Foreign Exchange. At least we can take solace in the fact that Terminal Convention is set to bring the building back to life again in such an innovative way, and that we will have the chance to remake our childhood memories out of an event so unexpected and extraordinary.

Sara Baume

www.nationalsculpturefactory.com

www.statictrading.com

Bryonie Reid Discusses ‘Fields Of Vision’, a Project Initiated by the Leitrim Sculpture Centre in 2008, from her Perspective as a Cultural Geographer.

In 2008 the administrators of the raft of funding known as ‘Peace III’ called for tenders from arts organisations planning research, activities and events addressing the legacy of politico-religious conflict in Irish border counties (1). The Leitrim Sculpture Centre responded to a brief requiring four arts-based events to examine ideas of identity and victimhood, and history and experiences of the conflict, and engage with school children. After an open call, artists Diane Henshaw, Andrew Dodds, Seoidín O’Sullivan and Moira Tierney were chosen to implement proposals for both workshops with schools and their own work, the results of which were exhibited at the Sculpture Centre this year as ‘Fields of Vision’. (2) With the Sculpture Centre’s director, Sean O’Reilly, as curator and Hayley Fox-Roberts as schools facilitator, I was involved with the project as a cultural geographer. In this article I discuss certain of its processes and outcomes: first, the special strictures placed on visual art projects by Peace III funding; second, the relationship within the project between visual art and cultural geography; and third, the exhibited work, read through the lens of cultural geography (3).

I am conscious from my own research of the profound complexity of conflict in Northern Ireland, and was perturbed by the extent to which this complexity was unacknowledged in the brief, which stemmed from the Special European Union Programmes Body (SEUPB). The Sculpture Centre received money with the stipulation that it “organise arts-based events focusing on exploring identities and victimhood” and “use the arts as a medium to portray history and experiences of conflict’, while ‘involving schools and youth groups in peace and reconciliation based arts projects” (4). The remit requires an overlap between art practice and community work, and while many artists make community engagement central to their work, the wording here is sufficiently blunt to have necessitated careful consideration of the way forward.

Although ‘identities’ and ‘history’ are conceptually broad enough to interpret in ways appropriate to art practice and working with children, the term ‘victimhood’ has multiple, contradictory and painful meanings for people affected by the Troubles. Not only is it a raw subject to broach, but I question whether it is a suitable subject for children born and brought up since the ceasefires of the mid-1990s and geographically at some distance from the epicentres of violence. Likewise, ‘experiences of the conflict’ may be substantially meaningless to a post-ceasefire generation. A strength of all arts, visual, literary and performative, is that they push beyond ‘the shackles of identity and definition’, alluding to meaning without closing it down, and each artist involved in ‘Fields of Vision’ expressed serious concerns about being asked to address in their practices concepts which were simultaneously vague, limiting and simplistic (5). During the project it became an important (and occasionally challenging) part of the curatorial and exegetic role to read the artists’ work in the light of the funders’ brief, finding and making clear the connections between the two without compromising the artists’ integrity.

My contribution to the project concerns its relationship with cultural geography. Having common interests in landscape and place in visual art, Sean O’Reilly asked me to be involved in the formal application for funding and then in an ongoing consultative and interpretive capacity. Geography was central to the project, given its siting on the Irish border, and we decided to view the notions of identity and victimhood and history and experiences of the conflict through the lens of landscape. This would ground the amorphous conceptual framework within which artists were being asked to work and offer them a means of approaching the requisite subjects obliquely and sensitively.

We suggested that these notions could be traced in material and representational landscapes, and that a geographical methodology would be productive in understanding local landscapes and the effect of the border, and help the artists to circumvent the pitfalls evident in the original brief. Changes in the landscapes of the Leitrim and Fermanagh border over the last forty or fifty years (including the geography of smuggling, the closure of border roads, abandonment of farms, transport infrastructures, the presence or absence of community facilities, forestry and recent housing developments) tell stories about politico-religious difference, local and national economies, rural, urban and suburban living in Ireland, negotiating an international border and political violence. Implicit throughout are ideas of identity, victimhood, history and conflict, and the artists could deal with these ideas through examining landscapes in ways fitting their own interests and methods.

As the project evolved, the issue of the relationship between the artists’ work and the pieces produced with them by children during the schools workshops arose. Initially I certainly thought of these workshops as a necessity to secure funding, but a distraction from the real conclusion to the project, the artists’ exhibition (6). The limitations of such thinking eventually became clear. While it had been envisaged at the outset that the children’s work and the artists’ work would be produced and exhibited separately, for at least three of the artists the workshop process resulted in the children making work integral to what they were producing themselves, either conceptually or materially, and they requested a combined exhibition (7).

Diane_Henshaw, Installation view, 'Drawing Music'

Diane Henshaw, in her work Drawing Music, displayed recordings of traditional music from Leitrim and Fermanagh alongside drawings representing the melding of cultural and material landscapes in a distinctive border setting. Several showed the Leitrim village of Kiltyclogher, abutting the border and blighted by the closure of border roads during the Troubles. One resembled a bird’s eye view of the village and surrounding landscape, evoking both its cross-border connections and recent history of geographical isolation. Another spoke of the vagaries of border economies through a disused petrol pump. Henshaw’s schools groups produced four large collaborative drawings. Three were marked respectively ‘Garrison’, ‘Killesher’ and ‘Kiltyclogher’, and other clues to their siting were discernible through illustrations of landscape features and collaged copies of old photographs. These public geographies were layered with the children’s private geographies, with ‘Miss Doherty’s house’ marked on one drawing, offering interestingly subjective and personal views of particular border landscapes.

Andrew Dodds’s piece, End Times, emphasised direct engagement with cross-border landscapes under the guidance of local ecologist Anja Rosler, with evidence from the children’s encounters with these landscapes displayed in the gallery. This included a digital film of the children exploring the former demesne of Glenfarne in Leitrim, now heavily wooded, finding and identifying various forms of flora and fauna as they walked. Photographs taken by the children during another expedition to the nearby Florencecourt estate in Fermanagh were also shown, as well as the tools they used to collect and categorise, the gathered objects and materials and their drawings, all arranged by the artist.

Andrew Dodds, 'End Times'

Dodds’s work referred to partition, and the effects of their respective locations North and South of the border on Glenfarne’s and Florencecourt’s recent histories cannot help but point to the parallel histories of the border and the two states it divides. The recent pasts of the demesnes were approached from an ecological perspective, so that rather than explicitly outlining political and social histories of the border, Dodds alluded to them by looking at their geographical effects. By presenting his work with the children’s he allowed for multiple individual perspectives on border landscapes and their meanings.

Seoidín O’Sullivan brought together several works, including a text and image by Lorcan O’Toole of the Golden Eagle Trust, kites made by the school children and digital films depicting the launching of the children’s kites in her work, Mapping Flight. The group followed the movements of a tagged eagle chick who wandered from Donegal into Fermanagh and Leitrim. It was poisoned at some point on its journey, and the kites were flown at the foot of Truskmore in north Leitrim, one of its roosting spots. Sited near the border, the work made strong allusion to its paradoxical presence and absence (for humans as well as animals) through juxtaposing the physical freedom of movement of the eagle with the impact on it of moving between states with differing regulations and conventions. The idea of shared landscapes made wry comment on border histories of division and conflict, while the violence done to the eagle chick also reflected subtly on the history of political violence on the border.

Seoidin_Sullivan, Eagles Kite Flying Workshop

Are We There Yet?, by Moira Tierney, consisted of two Super 8 film loops blown up to 16mm, made by the children and the artist (see figure three). The children’s films addressed the idea of the border elliptically, with only ambiguous or fleeting signs such as variations in accent and references to the BBC in their commentaries locating the sequences geographically. One group’s re-enactment of a Star Wars narrative, and the inclusion of police in another’s role play may be read to evoke the border’s troubled past, but the tone was light-hearted, again tendering a child’s view of his or her border locality as ordinary, familiar and shaped by forces other than national politics. Through Tierney’s eyes, the border was shown to be both banal and strange, unexceptional rural views giving way to the fortress-like aspect of a police barracks. The decision to include all stutters, jumps and flares resulting from the film’s processing reinforced the sense of cognitive dissonance arising from the border’s topographical invisibility together with its social, economic and political effects, manifested in the landscape on either side.

Despite the special and occasionally difficult conditions imposed on ‘Fields of Vision’ as a result of its Peace III funding, the artists maintained the particularity and honesty of their individual approaches. The interweaving of the children’s with the artists’ work in the exhibition points towards the integral part played by the workshops in the artists’ research and practice. For a cultural geographer, the four bodies of work offer fresh and creative engagements with a complex border landscape, and constitute a rich resource for interpretation and discussion of the border. All reveal the border to be what J.K. Gibson-Graham call ‘a site of becoming’, historically and geographically embedded but nonetheless fluid (8).

Bryonie Reid

1. Peace III Programme money is administered through the European Union’s European Regional Development Fund which is managed by the Special European Union Programmes Body.

2. The exhibition ran from 11th June to 31st July 2010.

3. At the time of the project, Hayley Fox-Roberts worked for Community Connections, a community development project based in west Fermanagh, north Leitrim and north-west Cavan. Her existing relationships with schools in the border area were invaluable in setting up the schools workshops for the artists.

4. All quotes from contract between ‘Leitrim County Council (Lead Partner) on behalf of County Leitrim Peace III Partnership with The Dock (Contractor) – Lead Partner with Leitrim Sculpture Centre’. The Dock in Carrick-on-Shannon and the Leitrim Sculpture Centre were able to apply together for one tranche of funding, splitting both the money and the required outcomes between the two organisations.

5. Reginald Shepherd, ‘The Other’s Other: Against Identity Poetry’, pp648-660 in Michigan Quarterly Review, vol. 42 no.4, 2003, p648.

6. This was a personal view only, not a matter of agreement between the curator, schools facilitator and me. In fact, we did not discuss it until at the stage of planning the exhibition.

7. The exhibition included the following new works: ‘Border Lines’ and ‘Drawing Music’ by Diane Henshaw; ‘End Times’, by Andrew Dodds; ‘Mapping Flight’ by Seoidín O’Sullivan; and ‘Are We There Yet?’ by Moira Tierney, with soundtrack including music from Macdara Smith and the Bahh Band, courtesy of Brian Fleming. Due to constraints of space I have neither mentioned nor explained in detail every piece of work included in the exhibition.

8 .J.K. Gibson-Graham, A Postcapitalist Politics, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2006, pxxvii.

Stephen Doyle Discusses his Project ‘The Great Belfast Art Hunt’

Going on the ‘Whitechapel art hunt’ in London’s East End in the summer of 2008 ended up being a revelation for myself and the friends who attended the event with me. Previously thinking that the London art scene both began and ended with the big institutions such as the Tate Modern, the Hayward and the National Gallery, the event cleverly encouraged us to explore galleries we never otherwise would have dreamed of visiting – primarily because we had no idea such places existed. So off we went searching out tiny gallery spaces in non-descript alleyways, having a great deal of fun in the process. Fast forward two years: and now it is the big institutions we ignore, in favour of the dynamic and innovative things happening in local underground art scenes.

I first started exploring the Belfast contemporary art scene when I moved here from London in the summer of 2009, and it came as a welcome surprise to discover that there were over 25 exhibition spaces in the Belfast City Centre alone, with even more on the peripheries. An eclectic mix of artworks could be found: you name it, and it was there: craft, installations, photography, video art, conceptual art, performance art, and then the obvious mainstays of paintings, prints and sculpture. There was even a gallery dedicated to architectural exhibitions. In short, there was something for everyone. And yet there existed the age-old problem: for the most part these galleries were only known to insiders. Many Belfast residents, even those who would consider themselves devoted ‘culture vultures’, had no idea of the exciting plethora of galleries that existed on their doorstep. Of course they knew of the Ulster Museum. Some might also be vaguely aware of the Ormeau Baths Gallery, the Golden Thread and/ or Belfast Exposed, but that was about the limit of many people’s knowledge.

It was a situation the galleries themselves were unhappy with. Certain private galleries can be forgiven for wanting to keep a select clientele, but not only do most publicly subsidized galleries have an actual remit to encourage wide sections of the public through their doors, but their staff usually have a personal desire and inclination to turn the appreciation of contemporary art into a more mainstream leisure activity. In short, conditions were ripe to bring the ‘art hunt’ model to Belfast. By this time I had discovered that it was not just London’s East End that had hosted an ‘art hunt’, but that the event was a tried and tested formula that had featured in developed cities all over the world, including New York, Sydney and San Francisco. In each case the results were the same – a framework was provided in which contemporary art could be enjoyed in a fun and unpretentious manner by people who were not necessarily art-world insiders.

For the event to be a success I needed at least 10 Belfast galleries to take part. Inexplicably, I was worried the idea would be met with reluctance, but nothing could be further from the truth. The concept was met with unanimous enthusiasm, with even galleries that were normally closed on a Saturday offering to open up for the day, whereas other galleries were willing to extend exhibitions by a few days so that they would have something on display on the Saturday. It was actually rather wonderful to see curators’ veneer of jaded cynicism turn into enthusiasm for a few precious seconds as I broached the subject to them. Alas, the world-weary front was soon back in place, but that was OK, I had what I needed.

I also needed funding. There were two primary costs – the printing of flyers, and then the food and drink for the gallery party, which would conclude the art hunt. I received financial sponsorship from the John Hewitt bar, and I stood to generate up to £300 through ticket sales, which were retailing at between £4-6.

On the day, everything ended up going according to plan. Participants met up outside Belfast City Hall at 12.30pm and were each given their Belfast Art Hunt pack. Inside each pack was a specially created map of Belfast City Centre that listed 26 different gallery spaces. There was another piece of paper listing the rules of the hunt, and then another sheet with a list of clues. Each clue revealed the name of a gallery, which the contestant then had to visit. So one clue  might be “come to this gallery for a swim”, with the answer being the Ormeau Baths Gallery. Another clue might be “a gallery open to the elements”, the answer being Belfast Exposed. Thirteen galleries in total participated in the event, and in each one there was a word pinned to a wall which contestants had to make a note of. This was how they proved they had been there. They had just over three hours to visit all the galleries. At 4.00pm they were directed to meet at the secret gallery party, where there would be food and drink, and a prize draw for everyone who had successfully collected all the passwords.

Through the kindness of certain individuals and institutions, a great number of prizes were amassed. The prize that generated the most excitement was a beautiful framed and glazed limited edition print by renowned Northern Irish artist William Artt, part of his latest series of works titled Sedimentary. Meanwhile photographer Frankie Quinn from the Red Barn gallery donated a photographic print, SpaceCRAFT donated a £50 gift voucher, the Golden Thread Gallery donated several books, Belfast Exposed donated a photographic print / poster, and main sponsors The John Hewitt bar donated two bottles of wine and a lunch for two.

There were 12 volunteers who helped out on the day as assistants. In order for contestants to clearly identify who to turn to if they needed help, and in order to have a bit of fun, all 12 helpers, as well as myself, dressed as cowboys or cowgirls. These helpers included five of Northern Ireland’s most promising contemporary artists, all of whom were more than happy to look silly for the day; the message couldn’t be any clearer – the world of contemporary art can be fun. This had always been the raison d’être of the Belfast Art Hunt: to provide an antidote to the stiff formality that can all too easily pervade the contemporary art world. Commentator Don Thompson hits the nail on the head with the following remarks, which, although they refer to private galleries, also aptly describe certain public galleries, especially when such subsidised spaces so often follow the private gallery’s intimidating ‘white cube’ aesthetic so slavishly. Thompson notes: “Observe people looking at art through a gallery window; frequently they pause before pushing the buzzer, then walk away. The quick escape has nothing to do with the art being shown … It is the fear that the dealer will treat you as an unwelcome intruder or, worse, as an idiot, and will patronize you” ⁽¹⁾. It’s a pertinent point; such a fear, of being treated like an ‘unwelcome intruder’ or ‘an idiot’, characterised much of my early gallery-going experiences, and I know plenty of others who have admitted to feeling the same sentiments on more than one occasion.

In the end a total of 75 people participated. This number included a wide mix of people, from all backgrounds, and of all ages. Most had no background in the arts, which was exactly what I had hoped for. The reactions were as I had planned: everyone was surprised that Belfast had so much impressive and exciting art on offer. Typical reactions included the woman who informed me she had lived just outside Belfast City Centre for over 20 years and yet today was the first time she had ever set foot in the Ormeau Baths Gallery, one of Northern Ireland’s largest and most exciting art galleries. Meanwhile, there was someone who had been studying at Queen’s university for over two years, yet today was the first time he had entered Queen’s University’s Naughton Gallery, one of the greatest University galleries in the UK.

There are a handful of huge art institutions dotted across the globe, places such as the Tate Modern and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, that have proved that the consumption of modern and contemporary art can be successfully transformed from an obscure specialist hobby into a mainstream leisure activity, one that can be enjoyed by people from a diverse range of backgrounds. Such institutions have been able to achieve this thanks, in large part, to their enviable budgets that have funded a series of remarkable marketing and branding campaigns. Such high-profile marketing initiatives are, of course, well beyond the means of smaller galleries in less populated cities; however, the success of the Great Belfast Art Hunt demonstrates that there are other ways that the myth of contemporary art’s elitism can be debunked. As ever, imagination can triumph over financial limitations. As the old adage goes, problems are only opportunities in disguise.

Stephen Doyle

Notes

Don Thompson, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: the Curious Economics of Contemporary Art, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008

“Traditionally, sculpture has been the territory where permanence is celebrated… a founding image of this short century is that of a sculpture being dragged down from its plinth”. (1)

“That which is real exists, that is all we can say (but existence isn’t everything – it is, even, the least of things)” ⁽²⁾

I graduated from my BA course in sculpture at IADT in 2009; and I was fortunate enough to be awarded the IMOCA (Irish Museum of Contemporary Art) Graduate Residency Award. The award gave me the opportunity to spend a year immersing myself in a space that allowed me to refine my practice in relation to scale and situation. The award consisted of a studio space and a solo exhibition spot at the venue – I presented my show in June this year.

This unique space is located off Baggot Street, in a warehouse that previously housed the Office of Public Work’s Building Maintenance Service. The immensity of the space available to me was to have a profound effect on the development of my work. My work is primarily sculpture, where I create temporal and transient things with short life spans, that carry on through the mediums of photography and video. I have a penchant for creating sculptures that try to fill the space they inhabit, and so it was liberating to work in a spacious environment where I had to struggle to make something look big.

K Bear Koss, the director of IMOCA was very generous and allowed me to experiment with the space throughout the year. One of the more ambitious pieces I created during my time there was I Am Not Content. The title was taken from a quote by Lawrence Weiner in one of his Tate Interviews in which he repeats this phrase over and over in an effort to emphasize that his work is not about himself, rather human interaction and existence.

In the large yard at the back of the studios there is a rather romantic looking petrol station that captured my imagination. It was used as a place for the OPW vehicles to refuel, and consisted of one petrol pump, under a mushroom shaped roof.  Made from cast-concrete, the station stands 15 foot tall and has an unusual form than looks akin to a cake stand. To me it looked rigid and formal, yet tired – yearning for interaction after years of abandonment, like a man-made stage waiting for the play. Things made from concrete usually indicate the enduring presence of whoever conceived of and built it, and yet here was this melancholy pump, with moss growing on the concrete, and no petrol to entice vehicles. It was the stillness of this large object that intrigued me, and I wanted to draw upon this silence by animating its space in some way. When you draw a circle around an image or an idea it’s because you want to highlight its importance. In this way I wanted to make visible the thought space around the pump.

My practice is concerned with notions of idealism and ideology – and so it was a joy to have this aesthetically pleasing, and yet defunct petrol pump as part of the building. Petrol, or the lack of it, made this dormant object a symbol for our current social and political climate – the capitalist dream cemented in a monument to an economic production of the past.

I placed an inflatable plastic sphere around the petrol pump as an ‘anti-monument’. I was rejecting traditional sculptural materials and the connotations of their use. Capitalism, communism, socialism, each political ideology uses art to create a hegemony – and so I wanted to build something that would surpass these associations by using a transient, temporal form. The sphere was 30 foot high, and completely encapsulated the petrol pump, segregating the monument from the rest of the world. It was a composition of opposites, designed to clash, and it is still unknown if the plastic or the concrete was responsible for the destruction of the work. The static concrete –  stubborn and unmoving – versus the dancing ethereal plastic. This was quite a violent juxtaposition and I found this pairing of opposites appealing as a fresh way to approach the topic of idealism. The piece lasted about six hours before the plastic tore, and the immovable petrol pump was reunited with the space at IMOCA.

The ‘live’ experience of the work was quite over-whelming as the sphere battled for existence against the pump. Huge reams of plastic swayed to and fro as it relinquished its control to the wind. Its scale was so large and yet it was powerless in controlling its fate. It survives now as the video I Am Not Content, and it is here that we can see its quixotic hopelessness, and enduring endeavour, idealistic because it is existing against all the odds, and hopeless because it is impossible for it to continue. This piece also speaks of human existence,  as we see something, which was once physically real, embrace death and continue to affect the present through a representation. This poses the question, does it matter if an object no longer exists for it to be regarded as a sculpture?

‘Silent Vibrations’ was the title of my solo show at IMOCA, which took place from 2 – 9 June. The works in the show referenced various avant-garde ideals that shared a faith in art’s ability to change mankind for the better, whilst also pertaining to nothing, and so I created an exhibition of oxymorons – as suggested in the title. I believe that art has not changed mankind for the better, it has however made us more interesting.

Grey, Installation View, IMOCA, Dublin

The piece entitled Grey, comprised of a series of large white inflatable installations that deflated and inflated alternatively. Continuing with the format of opposition, I created a piece with two forms, a light white plastic, and black smooth rubber. Referencing 1960′s inflatable artworks, my pieces were installed in the buildings’ now inoperative duct pipes, which were used to transfer the air from one inflatable to the other. Each large white shape was suppressed in some way by a shiny black rubber tyre tube, symbolic of the industrial realism that both destroyed the inflatable art dream, and rendered the duct pipes inoperable.  In a paradoxical twist, the tyre tubes that suppressed the white are also obsolete, (as car tyre’s today are tube-less) creating a cycle of past ideals being suppressed by past industries. This cycle continued for the duration of the exhibition,  until the work was dismantled and videoed for future reference.

On the other side of the gallery there was a series of copper and rubber installations. Working electrical machines circulate electricity continuously in order to work, however these pieces were built as experimental circuits that failed to relay the electricity, and instead leaked the power that would have made them work.

Monument to Social Networking Site, was a piece that was suspended from the overhead pipes, and grounded in a yellow box that was spray-painted on the floor. This faded box has “bedroom”, written inside it, and was part of a previous plan for the space as residential apartments. I found this would-be bedroom of interest as it was an aspiration never realised, much akin to the ideals held by the 1960’s inflatable artists, as well as Russian avant-garde of the 1920s. The piece began by considering everyone I knew on Facebook and linking common friends with copper wire, creating a long, twisting incoherence of strings that would confuse the direction of any electrical current that were to pass through it. By grounding the piece in the imagined bedroom I was anchoring the work in a non-space that is virtual reality, while also linking almost everybody I know to the IMOCA building in a way that would require no effort or knowledge on behalf of the people on which the work was based.

Monument to Social Networking Site, Installation View, IMOCA, Dublin

Aesthetically, the piece looked reminiscent of Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International – designed as a symbol for modernity, and yet never realised. There is a certain utopianism about monuments that are never built, akin to El Lissitzky’s ‘prouns,’ and this poses the question if in today’s society we believe in something more if it hasn’t been physicalized as that way it can never be corrupted.

None of the work from the show is in existence today – although their elements still exist, they are separated into various boxes. The inflatable piece Grey, has been re-worked for a solo show at PLACE, in Gorey, Co Wexford, in which an inflatable art being comes alive in the night and knocks over the commercial entities in the gallery.

To return to the present, I am currently on Erasmus in Tallinn Estonia, investigating notions of idealism, as part of my MFA at NCAD. I want to understand the post-communist psyche in relation to the creation an Estonian culture of contemporary art. Upon discovering an empty Erasmus report folder labelled Tallinn, and learning that no NCAD student has been placed there in the past, I decided to explore the Estonian history, and what I found was a country with a history of recurring occupation and a newly formed democracy. This past year has been spent exploring ideas of balance and contrast, scale and society, and as I look ahead to the next year, it is to be spent immersed in this new place, a place where ties with the past contrast with hopes for the future, studying political mechanisms as they strive for balance.

Ella Burke

[1]. Massimiliano Giono, Ask the Dust in Unmonumental. Ed. Laura Hoptman. Phaidon Press 2007

2. Baudrillard, Integral Reality: The Intelligence of Evil or Lucidity Pact. Berg, 2005.

On 29 May, on a rainy London Saturday, artists, environmentalists, punk rockers, vegetarians, vegans, bike lovers, misfits, a lot of tattooed ladies and just about every other kind of person you can think of descended upon The Rag Factory on Heneage Street. The Rag Factory is a non profit organisation supporting the creative community in London, it provides spaces to rehearse, audition, film, work, think, create or just to meet. Today it was the home of the sixth annual London Zine Symposium.

So what are zines? A zine is any independently produced publication, usually made by hand or through DIY means and with little budget. Who makes zines? People from all walks of life, some people write about their own lives (per-zines), others talk about issues that are important to them, some people make them as works of art, some to teach new skills and share ideas.

Edd Baldry, one of the founders of the London Zine Symposium described how before the symposium zine makers didn’t have a designated time or place to trade, sell, or buy zines. Even more importantly they didn’t have a place to meet other zine creators. Inspired by the Portland Zine Symposium in Oregon, Edd, Natalie and their friends decided to set up the first London Zine Symposium in 2005. Edd was part of a collective squatting in an old university building and decided that this would be the perfect venue for the event. The symposium began there on Gower Street, and moved from place to place each year until finding its current home in the Rag Factory in 2008.

Many of the exhibitors – zine makers and distributors – have been there from the very beginning, and they talk fondly of the thrill of being in a squat and feeling like rebels! More and more zinesters have joined the symposium every year, some even travelling from America and a few of us Irish zine makers popping over for the event too.

2010 was my second time selling at the symposium. I had one of the 64 stalls jam packed with every type of zine imaginable. Besides the stalls there was also a number of workshops, this year’s included, a discussion: ‘Create your own culture’, an exercise in: ‘Collaborate writing of feminist-queer sci-fi’, zine readings and a kid’s comic workshop. Along with all of the exhibitor’s stalls there was a table for individual zines, which anyone could sell from on the day, a great place to get your zine making career started. There was also vegan food to nibble on and best of all there was no rent on the stalls. A donation bucket was passed around for you to contribute what you could afford. Another way to show your support was to purchase symposium t-shirts, programmes, books and badges, I bought them all and went home on the plane looking like a walking billboard for zines.

Demand for stall slots has gotten greater every year; Edd received hundreds of stall applications months before the event was due to take place. To accommodate as many people as possible many of the stalls were divided between three different distributors. This was great fun because it caused us all to mingle a lot more, to share change and to give each other breaks to go to stretch our legs and check out the workshops.

When most people think of zines nowadays they think of black and white photocopied pages stapled together, containing information about punk bands, rants or writings about political issues. Zines like this are still a prominent feature of any zine event but over the last few years, probably due to events like the symposium, zine makers have been pushing the boundaries and experimenting with content, binding, papers, layouts and shapes. Organisers of the symposium have noticed a decline in the classic photocopy style and a rise in art zines made with great skill and attention to detail. The term zine might be relatively modern but DIY publications have been around for a long time.

Two 20th century artistic and cultural movements pioneered DIY press, long before punk zines and have influenced the production of zines today. The artists of Dadaism regularly made and distributed underground publications using a cut and paste collage style, to make bold statements such as “we demand the right to piss in different colours”. The Dada magazines: Cabaret Voltaire, Dada, 291, 391, and New York Dada, also demonstrate techniques that would become future characteristics of zines: rants and detournement.

The Beat Generation were also notable for their DIY attitude. Allen Ginsburg in particular used independent press to get his work and the work of his friends out there. The Beats made small publications, and pamphlets to distribute and promote their work, giving them out at poetry readings, gigs and everywhere else they went. They experimented and collaborated, causing their work to cross over into many different genres. Like zine makers today the Beats were not just artists, they were jacks of all trades: writers, musicians, poets, speakers, publishers, activists etc.

The most recent high profile collaboration between zines and the art world was Sarah Pierce’s Irish contribution to the Venice Biennale 2005. A library of Irish zines was displayed at the event in ‘The Monk’s Garden’. The zines can now be found in Seomra Spraoi’s ‘Forgotten Zine Library’ in Dublin and new zines are being added to the collection all the time. Anyone and everyone are free to go and spend as much time as they like rooting around and absorbing these little hidden treasures.

Three years ago my friend Andrea Byrne and I started a contributor based zine of art, poetry and stories called Baby BEEF. We were both fine art students and found the zine a great way to get our work out there, and we had a great time meeting and networking with other artists. Being part of the zine scene presents lots of fun opportunities to us and has caused us to make lots of new friends. Besides London zine making has brought us to Belfast’s ‘Out to Lunch’ Arts Festival where we sold zines, and to Cork where a contributor of ours organised a gig to fund the printing of our next issue. Baby BEEF has since evolved in the name of our independent publishing company. We have moved away from the black and white photocopy format to create limited edition handmade artist books and zines that we sell at markets and soon on our website. At the moment the zine scene in Ireland is relatively small but hopefully this will change with new zine / comic / artist book fairs such as ‘Summer Edition’ and ‘Independents Day’ – both Dublin based – that have both held their second annual events this year. These events have both been influenced by the London symposium and have the same ethos of building a DIY community and inspiring people to get involved.

I arrived to the symposium early and found a stall with a Baby BEEF sign on it. I set up my zines, along with some other zines, made by Irish zinesters that couldn’t make it over. Sat next to me was Dan Tyler who had been up all night finishing his new zine and putting messages into glass bottles. Dan was great company for the day, we traded zines and he told me that he worked in the rehabilitation of with people with brain injuries and hoped to open a business some day that would provide jobs for people adjusting to life in society after serious accidents. Dan’s black and white photocopied zine The Ship of Fools is romantic, angry and poetic. His stories about South London contain what he calls “a dark bubbling laughter throughout”.

Girl photographer by Eleanor Jane was one of my favourites of 2009 and I was delighted to pick up the new issue #5 this year. Eleanor lives and works as a freelance photographer in Newport in Wales. The zine is packed with full colour photos from Eleanor’s everyday life and her travels in America and Dubai. The photos are accompanied with stories, diary extracts, mixed CD lists, photography tips, resolutions and even writings in Welsh. It is a visual feast.

Another highlight for me cost a mere £2, an absolute bargain for an inspirational zine packed with ideas, Sugar Paper: 20 Things to Make and Do made by Seleena from Manchester and Kandy from Derbyshire. It came with all the ingredients for a felt purse, just one of the fun things inside its pages. The zine also teaches dance moves, knitting, the blanket stitch, recipes and lots more fun crafts and past times. Both of the zines creators sell handmade and knitted goods on the internet.

It was hard to pick which zines to mention out of my huge bundle that I brought home with me. But I think the ones I talked about give an overview of different types of zines and different types of zine makers. That’s what I love about zines, the stories of the people that make them. People that come from so many different backgrounds and occupations, but all of them take the time to get out theirs scissors, and long-armed stapler to share something of themselves with other people. Zines capture the thoughts and opinions of people from a certain time, they talk about problems, politics, the environment, and they teach people new skills and open their eyes to new ways of doing things. They provide a space to wonder. They give a voice to the little people, those ignored by the mass media and alienated by society. Events like the zine symposium provide a venue for this community to grow. In the age of technology were everything seems so impersonal and distant, zines give back a bit of humanity, something you can touch and hold, knowing someone else made it with love, hope and passion and sent it out into the world for you to find.

Sarah Bracken

www.babybeefartpress.com

VISUAL, Carlow

Le Corbusier contended that “museums are a recent invention; once there were none. So let us admit that they are not a fundamental component of human life like bread, drink, religion, orthography”. (1) Modern museum architecture began as recently as the 1970s with the Centre Georges Pompidou. So marked the beginning of the innovative museum of the people, located at pedestrian level in the civic realm rather than at an elitist remove: the palace on the hill. Some of the museum milestones over the past 30 years include; the Guggenheim Museum, New York by Frank Lloyd Wright (1959), Centre Georges Pompidou (1977) in Paris by Renzo Piano & Richard Rogers, Mario Botta’s redesign of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (1997).

Bilbao, however has gone a step further than its earlier counterparts and subsequently changed the face of contemporary museum architecture. With his design, Gehry introduced an architectural typology that unabashedly sets out to upstage the art it contains. For the first time the art experience, and thus stated function of the museum, is secondary. “The ‘Bilbao effect’ made two things absolutely clear. First, that a city, and possibly a whole region, can profit from a new museum, and secondly, that architecture had finally become emancipated from the art exhibited inside it.” (2)

This type of architecture, however, has its critics, particularly within the profession. For architect, Valerie Mulvin, “today, global architecture has fractured into nearly as many directions as art, but this does not necessarily mean innovation…[It is] less focused on making appropriate spaces and more on the creation of star events. Innovation is stifled at the lower end with endless repetitions of the successful motif. There are probably fewer original ideas floating around in the making of architecture than ever before”. (3) Feargal Harron of Kennedy Fitzgerald Architects also dismisses Bilbao, “current contemporary thinking is leaning more towards what David Chipperfield has done in Germany and what Tony Fretton has done at the Fuglsang Kunstmuseum in Denmark. In these examples the architecture is more restrained with a classical approach to modernism and the display of art”. (4)

Whether a new landmark icon or a redefined structure, there is little doubt that we are often faced with the development that “the experience of place is replacing the experience of art.”(5) Internationally, examples of now obsolete buildings being reused for art are apparent in the Tate Modern as a former power station, the Baltic in Gateshead, a former flour mill, the Lingotta Exhibition Spaces in Turin, a car factory and Ireland’s best known example would be IMMA, a former military infirmary. The successful fusion of historic heritage and contemporary purpose is noteworthy in Carlo Scarpa’s Castelvecchio Museum, Verona (1956-73) and Norman Foster’s Sackler Galleries at the Royal Academy of the Arts in London (1985-91).

For many architects, the challenge of architectural redefinition and reuse of defunct spaces holds continued appeal. For Valerie Mulvin, “found spaces and reclaimed landscapes provide an antidote to the perceived over packaging of purpose-made buildings.”(6) Regionally, in Ireland, the practice of redefining space is well established and includes a broad miscellany of previous functions. Thus we have former clothing factories (Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Dublin and Void Art Centre, Derry), market houses (Ards Arts Centre, Newtownards, and Millennium Court Arts Centre, Portadown), town halls (Down Arts Centre), Customs Houses (Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork) banks (West Cork Arts Centre), yacht clubs (Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh), city liveries or estate stables (Triskel Arts Centre, Cork, and Clotworthy Arts Centre, Antrim), gaols (Basement Gallery, Dundalk and Dunamaise Arts Centre, Portlaoise), linenhalls (Linenhall Arts Centre, Castlebar) townhouses (Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, Garter Lane Arts Centre and Galway Arts Centre) and Victorian swimming baths (Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast).   Finally school buildings are adapted in a number of instances with examples including the Model, Sligo, Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast, Verbal Arts Centre, and the Playhouse, Derry.

From 1990-2005, nearly 30 venues opened, with more recent landmark new builds being the most costly; Source in Thurles by McCullough Mulvin Architects, 2006 at a cost of €10 million, Solstice in Navan by Grafton Architects, 2006 at a cost of €13.5 million (hybrid of interchangeable spaces appropriate to performing and visual arts) and Visual in Carlow, 2009 by Terry Pawson Architects at a cost of €18 million. (The 3,726 sq metres three-storey building design is based on the model of the Germanic Kunsthalle, an exhibition space without its own collection).

Recently Mick Heaney wrote “after a decade of expansion that saw ever more grandiose spaces springing up in towns around Ireland, Visual was the most expensive example yet….[It could be argued that] in the depths of a recession, launching an expensive arts venue in a small midlands town now looked like an act of folly”. (7) So how are the directors of these buildings ensuring survival?

Heaney explains that the resources are rarely there to match the ‘big budget facades.’ Belinda Quirke, Director of Solstice explains; “we’ve been cost-cutting from day one. There was no incubation space for the arts to develop and now there’s a place for the local arts to work.”  Carissa Farrell, Director of Visual explains that the venue is ambitious and will compete on an international stage, but it has yet to receive Arts Council funding towards running costs. (8) Some argue that the creative industries have the potential to aid Ireland’s economic recovery and according to Seamus Kealy, Director of The Model, Sligo (re-opened in May following an extensive redevelopment programme), “the redeveloped Model is the type of arts project that can assist in our national recovery. At a time when ambition has been stilted across all sectors of the economy, we are delighted to have an innovative programme of showcasing and learning that will stimulate creativity and enterprise across all disciplines and age groups. We have a busy hive of studios on the top floor with nine artists working on their practice and creating new work from The Model”. (9) It is too early to know if this ambitious claim will be realised but the inclusion of local artists utilising studios at the Model means there is consequently a direct impact on the local economy.

In Northern Ireland, arts infrastructure development has also been significant, the Arts Council of Ireland have now met their objective to provide a dedicated arts facility within a 20-mile radius of every person living in Northern Ireland and have since shifted focus to Belfast and Derry. They contend, “flagship arts facilities such as the Playhouse and the Crescent Arts Centre promote the highest architectural design standards, support a range of arts activities, and can be major contributors to the social and economic regeneration of our towns and cities. In the past three years, the Arts Council has contributed £14m to nine completed projects, with others such as the Lyric and The Mac in the pipeline”. (10)

Comparable to the big budget developments in the Republic of Ireland, the Braid Arts Centre in Ballymena (2007) has a significant presence in the town centre and is fully integrated as a sizeable extension of Mid-Antrim Museum. According to the architects at Consarc, the Braid “has been designed like a piece of jewellery, conscious that it is visible on all sides, dominating the surrounding skyline on the site it occupies. Further the architectural language relays something of the interior functioning of the building.”(11) The transparency of the glass curtain wall emphasises the presence of creative endeavour within. Provision includes a 425-seat theatre, arts workshop spaces for the making and display of art, lecture theatres, café, shop and a temporary gallery. Spaces are highly flexible with moveable partitions to extend spaces.

Strule Arts Centre in Omagh (2007) is also centrally located and its design by architects Kennedy Fitzgerald and Associates features a footbridge linking the waterfront site to a new college, existing bus station and riverside walk. It contains a 400-seat theatre, a 125-seat lecture theatre, a visual arts gallery, dance studio and café, and meets the requirement of a “flexible arts based building with a multi-functional brief.” Jean Brennan, Director of Strule Arts Centre in Omagh, explains, “in some respects we are very lucky as our town centre location means we can exploit our venue for non art-related activities such as conferences and meetings. Growing this income is becoming more important for us, as we need to generate our income targets to allow us to programme elements that may not generate income, especially visual arts. Those working in the visual arts need to start looking at ways to generate income for galleries, particularly as most local authority venues in Northern Ireland do not get arts council funding.”

According to Neil Murray of Hamilton Architects, the brief for the Crescent Arts Centre requested “multi-purpose spaces for visual, performance and creative arts – art galleries, flexible workshops, studios, offices and café are also included”. Due to the state of disrepair of this Grade B1 Listed Building, “before commencement of the project only 50% (circa 1000m2) of the existing building floor area was safe to use. Now the refurbished and extended premises provide over 2500m2 of flexible spaces. The dedicated art galleries comprise 120m2 of this total.”(12) The gallery space is arranged within three interconnected rooms, which allow for ‘narrative flow’ according to the curator Dickon Hall; “We find that the experience of the viewer is enhanced by the privacy of the space and also its intimacy; the cavernous and often bombastic, large, factory-like gallery spaces that have become almost standard since the 1960s have removed the intimacy between viewer and object.”

Considering Ireland’s size as a country, the development of its arts infrastructure over the past 20 years has been immense. It is clear however, that the sustainability of these buildings is an issue. Arts Council funding north and south sees cuts year on year. Architects and centre managers believe that variety of art forms and comprehensive representation (making and doing) is the key to survival in harsh economic times. Feargal Harron states, “flexibility is becoming a trend certainly in recent art centres that have been built in Ireland over the last 8-10 years.”(13) Centre Managers are no longer as precious about their programme elements in terms of exclusivity and costs are shared through touring visual arts exhibitions as well as the performing arts. The multivalent experience of numerous art forms and the presence of a shop / cafe within the centre maximises the potential of attracting visitors. Art has to become part of the social agenda rather than operating exclusively. The commercial elements of shopping and dining “are aestheticized by the museum site… and promoted as pseudo-cultural products”. (14)

Marianne O’Kane Boal

Notes

1. Le Corbusier, ‘Other Icons: The Museums,’ 1925, from The Decorative Art of Today, translated by James I. Dunnett, pp.15-23, Cambridge, Mass/; MIT Press, 1987.

2. Suzanne & Thierry Greub, Eds Museums in the 21st Century: Concepts, Projects, Buildings Prestel, Munich, 2006.

3 Valerie Mulvin, ‘Notes on Building for Art,’ in Space: Architecture for Art, Gemma Tipton, Ed, CIRCA, Dublin 2005

4 Feargal Harron, Kennedy Fitzgerald and Associates, Interview with the author, July 2010.

5 Gemma Tipton, Space: Architecture for Art, CIRCA, Dublin 2005 (Belting in ed Noever, p.80)

6 Valerie Mulvin, ‘Notes on Building for Art,’ in Space: Architecture for Art, Gemma Tipton, Ed, CIRCA, Dublin 2005

7 Mick Heaney, Report, Culture Supplement, Sunday Times, 11 July, 2010, p.18-19.

8 Ibid

9 Seamus Kealy, Sligo Weekender 20 July 2010

10 Response by Arts Council of Northern Ireland to Tourism Strategy for Northern Ireland to 2020 the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI), May 2010

11 Andrew Cowser ‘Civic Re-branding,’ Perspective, Vol 17, No. 4 July-August 2008.

12 Neil Murray, Hamilton Architects, Interview with the author, July 2010.

13 Feargal Harron, Kennedy Fitzgerald and Associates, Interview with the author, July 2010.

14 PoYin AuYeung  “Museum Space: Privatizing Culture/Imaging Desire,” in The Meaning of Site, edited by Katya Sander, Simon Sheikh, and Cecilie Høgsbro Østergaard (Copenhagen: The University of Copenhagen, 2000), pp. 96-119.

Rafeal Lozanos - Hemmer. 'Vectoral Elevation Dublin'

Belinda Quirke Discusses the Meaning and Implications of the Recent Spate of Light-Related Public Art Events and Artworks.

The Berlin Festival of Lights has a theme tune … cue eurotrashtic beat, tempo moderate, non descript background musings with sensitive soulful singing by the artist Ayman “…I see it…I feel it, It’s like something I’ve never seen…I’m feeling free and I cherish every moment…turn the lights on… let it shine on..I can see things I’ve never seen”. I listened to this while surveying an image of an illuminated multicoloured Brandenburg gate, with text “be free, be sexy, be Berlin” , nestled proportionately under its quadriga of galloping steeds (1)

Across Europe, a myriad of festivals obsessed with light have appeared diverging widely in concern and depth of intention. Cities are embracing the artificial and natural in immense outpourings of street projection, installation, conferences and events. Artificial light, for better for worse, remains one of the greatest symbols of modernity, marrying, with urban architecture, a sense of progressiveness and intent. Janus-like, the most established light festivals frequently derive from imported or pre-existing communal rituals and ideals of celebration, hope and benevolence, the victory of light over darkness.  Light festival origins can also be seen in cities at high latitude during ‘White Night’ celebrations, when long summer nights are broken by the briefest nightfall.

In order to attract large scale foreign and domestic tourism, cities are realising the cultural, economic and regenerative properties of light in urban planning and design.  Fête des Lumières in Lyon, France, has attracted four million visitors to date and enjoys a tripling of business in the city during the four day event. Frankfurt’s enormous Luminale: The Biennale of Lighting Culture, runs in association with Light+Building, a leading international lighting trade fair alone drawing 180,000 visitors.

The global organisation LUCI Lighting Urban Community International, was initiated in tandem with this growing significance, defining itself as a network “using light as a major tool for urban, social and economic development, with a concern for sustainability and environmental issues” (2). Four main strategic committees are chaired by member cities; Urban Strategies and Lighting (Liege), Culture and Lighting (Glasgow) Technological Prospects and Trends (Shanghai), Sustainable Development (Eindhoven). On behalf of LUCI, the city of Glasgow has commissioned a tender to research “the Economic and Cultural Benefits of Lighting Festivals and other Night-time Events”.  No city in Ireland is currently a member.

Identities of festival of lights can be ambiguous in definition as coherency between light art, light design and illumination can be roughly amalgamated. At their lowest, they appear as garish technical fêtes of architectural encroachments, whilst at their high point, a fluid dialogue between residents, the city and contemporary culture. While considering contemporary artists working in light, Elizabeth Baker’s article for Art News, “The Light Brigade” (1967) posits the idea that light – “a common industrial material…that has until recently stood for the most common aspects of a flashy advertising culture-may now realise a different potential in its symbolic capacity to arouse emotional response, and in the hands of artists, transcend its materiality (3).”

Dan Flavin detested this notion of transcendence concerning his fluorescent icons. In the context of light art, the event is often a misdirected prominence rather than a site specific material singularity. However, a number of cities and art projects are readdressing a light inquiry in an urban context.

In 2005, Light Art from Artificial Light curated by Peter Weibl and Gregor Jansen at ZKM, Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany created an almost encyclopaedic survey of light art featuring works of Dan Flavin, Bruce Nauman, James Turrell to Olafur Eliasson, Jenny Holzer and Zaha Hadid, illustrating a diverse breadth of artistic concern. (4)

The Centre for International Light Art in Unna, Ruhr, is the only light art museum in the world. It features both permanent installation from and temporary exhibition. In tandem with this preoccupation, Ruhr created the worlds “first” Light Art Biennale entitled “open light in private spaces” in 2010 as part of its European Capital of Culture programme. Curated by Matthias Wagner K, 60 different light art pieces were sited in home, work and recreational spaces reimagining. the event nature of light festivals, and consequently distinguishing light art, from illumination and light design (5).⁵ To confuse a landscape issue, Linz, also introduced a Light Art Biennale this year, edifying an existing engagement at Arts Electronica and public commissions by native Waltraut Cooper throughout the city. The theme of the 2010 biennale “private light in public spaces”(sic.) is “a gentle teasing of the German Light Art Biennial” and influenced by Beuys’ iconic performance How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare.(6)

Turin’s Luci d’Artista arose from a Christmas lighting commission involving 14 Italian artists. What began as a customary desire of city councils to design Christmas illuminations, has impressively and imaginatively grown to an annual light event which commissions an impressive array of international work.  Luci d’Artista is curated by Ida Gianelli, Director of the Castello di Rivoli Museum and Pier Giovanni Castagnoli, Director of GAM. Featured artists permanently on display include Jenny Holzer, Rebecca Horn, Joseph Kosuth, Daniel Buren and Mario Merz.  Turin regards the permanent installation of light art as part of the city’s strategy to position itself as a leading city of contemporary art, amalgamating with other art events to combine into Torino Contemporanea-Luce e arte (Contemporary Turin-light & Art) (7).

Is there merit in considering a light art event for Dublin? In 2008, The Science Gallery initiated, Lightwave: a festival, bringing together scientists, engineers, technicians, lighting designers, and artists to contribute to its opening event. A number of interventions and related discussions throughout the city demonstrated the potential growth of an even larger city wide investigation that could stimulate collaboration with contemporary art and architecture. Whilst Lightwave was deferred in 2010 due to budgetary cutbacks, the Director of the Science Gallery, Michael John Gorman believes a Festival of Light for Dublin; “could offer a specific focus on innovation with light across the arts and sciences that is not present in other festivals of light”.

No doubt technological advances are a major impetus in contemporary light art development and a stimulant for public interaction. Rafael Lozanos- Hemmer’s Vectoral Elevation, O’Connell St., Dublin encouraged the public to create unique light designs online that were projected skywards by 22 robotic searchlights. The highly popular Playhouse (Dreambox) featured in last year’s Dublin Theatre Festival, used over 100,000 LED lights to light window frames of 330 windows of Liberty Hall in the creation of a giant interactive display. Participants were invited to download the Playhouse Animation Creator to generate animations that were screened on Liberty Hall, whilst accompanying music and sound pieces was broadcast locally on FM radio (8).

Certainly there are a number of Irish artists whose practices are not framed by, but incorporate artificial light in sculptural installation; Corban Walker’s ZIP commissioned by Breaking Ground at Ballymun Civic Centre ‘stitches’ two walls together with blue and green LED lights. Martina Coyle’s Efflorescence in Balbriggan created a steel bridge adorned by hand sewn silk between two buildings illuminated by UV light. Brian Duggan’s recent Step inside now step inside at the Hugh Lane features the use of neon and a bisected carnival motordrome in correlation to the gallery’s elliptical setting. Niamh McCann’s work regularly features discarded neon and electrical signage within installation, to name but a few. Interdisciplinary art collaboration as well as science is a substantial prospective. In a city that hosts international theatre, dance, writers and film festivals, in addition to Darklight and Dublin Electronic Arts Festival, a positive exchange of ideas and expertise could be built on pre-existing synergies. There is always something ultimately enticing, that for a duration, the city becomes a playground and gives you, free of charge, a different perception of itself.

Belinda Quirke

Notes

1 www.festival-of-lights.de

2. www.luciassociation.org

3. Michael Govan and Tiffany Bell, Dan Flavin: A retrospective, Dia Arts Foundation in association with Yale University Press, 2005

4 .http://hosting.zkm.de/lightart/stories/storyReader$18

5 www.biennale-lichtkunst.de

6. www.lightart-biennale.com

7. www.comune.torino.it/artecultura/luciartista/

8. www.daft.ie/playhouse

Edel Horan Reports on ‘Touring Exhibitions – Who Benefits?’ a Round table Discussion Held at VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow on 28 April

VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow hosted the discussion ‘Touring Exhibitions – Who Benefits?’ (28 April) in conjunction with the venues showing of the touring exhibition ‘Noughties but Nice: 21^st Century Irish Art’ (2 April – 8 May 2010) curated by Mike Fitzpatrick and Susan Holland. The exhibition was originated by Limerick City Gallery of Art – where it was first shown. ‘Noughties but Nice: 21^st Century Irish Art’ was supported by the Arts Council touring pilot scheme and subsequently the touring and dissemination of work scheme. The exhibition’s other ports of call were the Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny and Solstice Arts Centre, Navan, where it finished up. The stated central curatorial aim of exhibition was to survey the “extensive terrain of contemporary Irish art over the last decade”. The exhibition featured works by Aideen Barry, Sarah Browne, Denis Connolly, Anne Cleary, Amanda Coogan, Joe Duggan, Ciara Finnegan, Andrew Kearney, Sean Lynch, Caroline McCarthy, Tom Molloy, Seamus Nolan, Eamon O’Kane and John Shinnors.

The panel for the discussion comprised Belinda Quirk, Director of Solstice Arts Centre and Carissa Farrell Director of VISUAL; the artists Amanda Coogan, Seamus Nolan and Aideen Barry; the exhibitions co-curator Susan Holland of Limerick City Gallery along with Val Ballance, Head of Venues at the Arts Council.

Val Ballance spoke first and considered the term ‘access’ and what this means for exhibition organisers and audiences. In his view, it was exactly such access – in the most general sense of the term – which a touring show like this sought to promote. ‘Noughties but Nice: 21^st Century Irish Art’ offered other regional publics and institutions the benefits of Limerick City Galleries programming and resources.

Strikingly, Ballance ventured the opinion, that in his view regional arts centres, through such initiatives were actually ‘outperforming’ certain of the city galleries in Ireland, in terms of both offering more varied programmes and considering the dynamics of their audiences. Expanding on this idea, Ballance cited Mike Fitzpatrick’s introductory comments in the shows catalogue, which discusses consideration of the ‘one and many’ in exhibition curation and planning –, the one being the artist, the many meaning the audience. A Fitzpatrick had put it, the aim of a good touring show was to serve “separately but coherently” the one and the many – and a show ultimate success would be judged by the many: the audience.

The subject of public and audience was made much of during the round table discussion. A key point raised was the notion that touring shows had the potential to create and develop new audiences. It was observed by Carissa Farrell, that the focus, in terms of funding decisions used to be on artists; and the move to the Arts Council’s emphasis on considering the audience was a significant and welcome one. Co-curator of the exhibition, Susan Holland added that the curator’s job as being one of bring together audiences and artists.

As Val Ballance pointed out, it is essentially audiences – as taxpayers – who are the arts funders. As such it was essential that time should taken in curatorial and programming planning, to consider, develop and address audiences. Ballance noted that audiences should neither have art ‘foisted’ on them; or kept from them, as “having work [in a collection] which people don’t see is a waste of money”.

‘Noughties but Nice’ kept in mind both of these points. The show comprised a mix of previously exhibited works and those that had not. The curatorial reasoning behind this mix of old and new, seen and unseen was due to a desire as co-curator Susan Holland put it, to show a “broad wealth of practice” in order to respond to the complexities of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ decade. Examples in the show included Eamon O’ Kane’s new work Cardboard Modernist Furniture; and Denis Connelly and Anne Cleary’s Plus / Minus, which although being an old work was presented in a new way. As well as this, Ballance observed that the works in the show were predominantly concerned with issues of viewer / audience engagement. Examples include Aideen Barry’s works focus on psychological and mental states; Seamus Nolan’s practices engagement with state power and Amanda Coogan’s critiques of consumer society.

The consensus amongst artists on the panel was that the benefits of a touring exhibition were all in the mobility and making of the work accessible to more diverse audiences. After showing Adoration at Live @ 8 in Galway, Amanda Coogan was unsure who else would get to see it. As part of ‘Noughties but Nice’, Coogan felt the work had got “a really good outing” by being shown in four venues as opposed to one. The piece was seen by more people – and along the way came to the attention of both Kinsale Arts Week and Dublin’s St. Patrick’s Festival who subsequently both incorporated the work in their respective visual arts programmes. Another plus for Coogan was the fact that in each venue the exhibition layout was different, thus permitting the artist to re-imagine and re-configure the work in different ways.

Coogan added that that a well planned touring show such as ‘Noughties but Nice’, offered a curatorial ‘investment’ in artists. For Coogan, this type of care and attention could make a huge difference for artist in terms of providing a kind of ‘investment’ in artists making innovative and interesting work. Aideen Barry also felt that the curators of this show were very supportive of her work. It was also noted that touring shows often offered the opportunities and resources for the proper documentation and discussion of artists. The ‘Noughties but Nice’, catalogue included essays by the curator, along with contributions by Shaun Hannigan, Niamh Anne Kelly and of the artists. Each artist featured in the show, was given a four-page section in the publication.

Seamus Nolan similarly observed that a touring show could allow for an “expanded practice”. In terms of his own work, this was especially the case, as Nolan’s practice is focused on the politics of culture; and he often works with local community groups. Thus being part of a touring exhibition offered the opportunity to re-contextualises his work in such terms in each venue. For Nolan it was the “immeasurable values are important”, he noted that his experience of being in a touring exhibition had brought up many questions concerning how a venue or show seeks to ‘educate’ its audience. This concern with creating audiences and engaging audiences was something that Nolan found problematic for Nolan. He noted that for the visual arts in general, audience numbers are very difficult to ascertain, unlike theatre where ticket sales are counted and targets set etc.

Joe Duggan, Golden Boy God, Assemblage, 2009; Two Prominent Boulders, C Print, 2008; Unfinished Church, Wood Model, 2009. Installation view at Limerick City Gallery of Art. Photo: Patrick Biesty.

While it was felt that institutional collaboration could offer a valuable sharing of experience and result in the forming of connections, some problems were flagged. In particular the question of how to communicate to diverse audiences that spanned a wide socio geographic areas was a challenge for the organisers. Reaching out to audiences and creating PR which covered all the particularities of each venues profile and audiences presented a challenge for each director. PR does “sustain a venue” according to Carissa Farrell and “presenting an identity of a venue is important in terms of press because they run with a certain identity”.  As the identity of a venue, especially in regional centres is important in terms of its profile, the issue arose of whether a venue loses its own particular identity when hosting a touring exhibition? For example some venues have a policy of including local artists, for the purposes of their local profile and relevance – a touring show can upset this balance.

In the application for the Arts Council’s touring exhibitions schemes, Susan Holland outlined how she had stressed the importance of promoting “additional links regionally” and sharing a “huge body of research”. By creating links between regional arts centres, Holland explained how the curators of ‘Noughties but Nice’ wished to create opportunities for venues to work with each other. Solstice director Belinda Quirke stressed the need for such connections – especially in light of the budget constraints that regional art centres had to work with. Quirke observed that touring exhibitions such a ‘Noughties but Nice’ brought a diverse contemporary practice to Navan, which they themselves would not necessarily have the resources and budget to access. Carissa Farrell did note that however, hosting a touring show, itself required resources – the hosting venue needs to have enough staff to invigilate; as well the technical support and staff to run what might be a complex exhibition in terms of equipment and media set ups.

The response to this touring pilot was a positive one, echoed by all who took part, including the audience. One of the closing questions was whether Ireland was too small to host touring exhibitions? The example of ‘Noughties but Nice’ seems to suggest that this is certainly not the case. It was agreed that the connections fostered by the participating venues would prove to be invaluable resources for all of the participating institutions.

Overall, Seamus Nolan’s interest in “immeasurable values” had a key relevance to this project which surveyed work made during the materialistic yeas of the Celtic Tiger years. What can be said for the next decade? During the ‘tiger’ years Carissa Farrell saw art becoming “very introspective”; but as evidenced in the both work featured in ‘Noughties but Nice’ and the models of curatorial and artistic practice underpinning the exhibition, there seems to be a turn towards ‘the audience’ taking place – a looking outwards again. As Susan Holland noted, more and more “audiences and audience development are becoming a topic of conversation” between institutions and funders. Simply put, according to Carissa Farrell ‘Noughties but Nice’ “considered the audience very well; and that is why it worked”.

Edel Horan

Jason Oakley: Talk me through the redevelopment/ extension by Sheridan Woods architects?

Séamus Kealy: The entire extension of The Model increases our scale by about 40%. It augments the redevelopment undertook in 2000 and balances cleanly with the original architecture.

'Dorm' / Model re-opening night.

The building is designed with the visitor in mind. It actually feels much more comfortable inside than the grandeur of the new façade might suggest. I have strong issues with intimidating architecture, especially giant art spaces that are sometimes un-inviting to non-art specialist audiences.

We’ve nine new artist studios. Seven are rented out by local artists, one is set aside as a recording studio, and the final one is an artist residential studio. Our guests include Boris Groys for the summer, and right now we have Italian artist Paolo Tamburella. Having all these studios furthers our role in being a hub of production, and this production will rotate as we change artists in the residential programme throughout the year.

We also have a new Black Box space that functions both as a cinema and a performance space for music. The space seats 240 for films and up to 400 standing for performances. We’re working with the IFI in Dublin to deliver a new cinema programme that will be delivered in the coming months.

Club Curious's both at 'Dorm'

The gallery space has been extended; there is now a full circuit of galleries on the gallery floor of the building. And a new kitchen has been provided for a destination restaurant, also opening shortly.

JO: What are the key ideas behind the ‘Dorm’ exhibition in relation to the re-opening of the Model?

SK: As an opening show, I wanted Dorm to demonstrate a curatorial ethos – a genuine concern for public participation and accessibility, while addressing some currencies around art’s role and relationship to the public.

The concept for Dorm arose when I attended the Frieze Art Fair in October 2008. I was disgusted with the pomp, glamour and emptiness of that fair. It was my first attendance, and I had expectations of course. To have these expectations absolutely defeated by the vacuity of the fair provoked a kind of employable outrage: This structure of the art fair could be used, parodied even, to make an interesting project about how relevant contemporary art can, should, could and does get produced. So Dorm is just that – it takes the structure of an art fair and returns this format to an ethos of collaboration and non-commercial, ephemeral and participatory projects.

Inherent in the project are questions about the present and future conditions for art production, especially in this more challenging economic climate. We need to look forward to support artists without institutional trappings as well as explore means that artists can develop their work in a different setting. For me, it’s an exciting time.

The project also tackles the myth of individual genius by stressing the collaborative nature of much art production, and emphasizes the importance of that today. The historical links to collective practice from the 1950s onwards are also vital for taking a hard look at artistic practice today. For example, the general lack of political challenge in contemporary art, despite much theoretical rhetoric, appears here from a different angle. Artist groups and collectives had often aligned themselves with political activism, or had even been political activists themselves. Along with a “cultural critique” there was action. There are instances of this also in the contemporary projects at The Model currently, for example WochenKlausur or Thierry Geoffroy’s work.

Freee, Fuck Globalization, 2007. Image courtesy of the artists.

Another matter that Dorm faces straight on, which is why I curated this project as the opening project, is that of the art institution as a hub, not as a museal space of quiet reflection and escapism. Art spaces have a role to play in the shaping of cultural and socio-political identities, and this should be a noisier affair in my mind than it usually is.

JO: The re-opening of the gallery got some good local and national print media coverage. Is an engagement with mainstream media is a conscious strategy for the Model?

SK: Yes. This has always been an interest of mine, actually. It can be tricky to find means of mediating contemporary art to the press, which will invariably mis-interpret the artwork if one is not careful. However, I would be as interested – if not more interested – in having ‘Dorm’ receiving coverage on the evening news rather than in Art Forum. The art world is often navel-gazing and even defeatist when it comes to engaging broader audiences. We can all agree with Debord and identify and fight the spectacle, but this doesn’t mean turning away from the apparatus altogether. It’s the responsibility of curators to broach creative means of distributing the ideas of exhibitions. Mainstream media is one tool to employ in that regard.

JO: Could you talk a bit more about the ‘The anti-catalogue’ produced for ‘Dorm’?

SK: Instead of mystifying or even reifying artists and their work, as catalogues often function in doing (especially making the work more commodifiable), I am more interested in building serious discussion and analysis around projects, at different levels. Anti-catalogue is a means of seeking a deeper level of engagement with the project, and also a means of enabling the project to spill out beyond the gallery walls. It is also a collaborative effort, and will continue to be, with different commissioned editors and writers. This doesn’t mean that we will no longer do catalogues, we will, albeit more occasionally than previously.

The pocket-sized format of the publication should, I hope, also attract new readers to art discourse, while hopefully enabling the rest of us to resist tossing the texts away over the usual frustrations of much art criticism: empty rhetoric, solipsistic opinion-making, useless romanticisations, badly researched ideas, and far too lengthy, un-engaging texts.

JO: … and the Model facilitates other different modes and levels of access and engagement  – through the Model’s blog, Young Model and the education programme etc. Is this evidence of deliberately holistic curatorial approach?

SK: It’s evidence, rather, of a great team at The Model – that responds to the programme actively and mediates it in various forms to the public. But again, it is the responsibility of the curator to ensure that projects are communicated as broadly as possible, so we are fortunate enough to have a great website, a leading education programme, and people who engage in various forms of outreach. Gallery outreach is critical today.

In a way, we need to act like the church – ensuring that the message goes out to as many people as possible, so that we can draw people into our walls. The church would believe that it is sharing spiritual salvation; we would believe that we are sharing, provoking even, cultural reflection. Both come to form some sort of identity in a community, whether subtle or not. It might sound idealistic but this has always been an important aspect of curatorial practice for me.

JO: What do you think the role of an historical collection like the Niland collection in the context of the Model is?

SK: We will have the Niland collection displayed on rotation throughout the year. This is a crucial aspect of our multifarious but focused role in providing programming. We have a strong relationship to contemporary art as well as to local and national traditions. We produce shows from our collection and bring new forms of discourse and scholarship around them. For example, this summer ‘Jack B. Yeats: The Outsider’, which is curated by Brian O’Doherty and Emer McGarry, opens alongside a new film by Irish-born artist Duncan Campbell. We continually seek ways of complementing these seemingly divergent projects. With these two shows, we find parallels in discussions around conflict, reconciliation and Irish identity both pre and post troubles. Both Brian and Duncan will participate in a symposium this September in that context.

JO: From the experience of working in an off-site mode and in temporary premises, will we see more ‘extensions’ of the Model are all of its activities now retracted to the model building?

SK: In addition to our outreach and young model programmes, which reach into Sligo, North West and Northern communities, we will continue off-site projects where possible. We’ve commissioned artist Séamus Nolan with his project The City Centre, which sees him revitalizing Sligo’s Trades Club. This is a long-term project that we’ve had a close relationship to and will continue to maintain a relationship with. Other tentacular projects might see us continuing with off-site projects in Sligo, and of course, out of Sligo. We have many partnerships, and continue to generate new ones all the time, and this means that we are never just contained to the mothership.

JO: Does the Model see itself as a cultural catalyst for the area?

SK: Absolutely. There is a fine dance to play between serving national and international

Freee's booth at 'Dorm

audiences while being, as you say, a ‘catalyst’ for the region. It is in our vision statement to be a “hub for discourse and gatherings around contemporary art and culture” and to develop “relevant, urgent programming.” This means that we have a close relationship to local audiences with every aspect of our programme, and of course, the programme’s overall proximity to socio-political concerns is relevant here. Essentially, we wish to attract people from the region especially to hang out here. We’re not simply a visiting site for tourists and culture vultures – and the building design is key to that and complements the programme that way. A civic space at our new façade will also be developed shortly, and that will enhance this role of being the place to be.

JO: What else can we look forward to from the Model?

SK: Since I spoke about the Yeats show above, I’ll mention briefly the Kabakov show. Their work speaks for itself and we’re delighted to have them come over in October to install their project Angelology. This will be a full installation throughout the space around the idea of an angel that has fallen to earth. The project will be highly accessible while maintaining that splendid romanticism that the Kabakovs employ so well, without falling into sentimentalism. It will be a project for everyone.

2006, photographer unknown. Images of the state governor, Ulises Ruiz are depicted over different captions that read (from l - r): The Innocent, The Cynic, The Thief, The Authoritarian, The Repressor, The Ruiner, The Assassin, The Shit.

Adam Stoneman Considers why Ireland Needs Graffiti Art With a Message.

The question of whether graffiti counts as art or vandalism – or both, still divides the opinion of the average person on the graffiti covered street. However, the Irish cultural establishment has been less equivocal in embracing this countercultural practice. These days it is not uncommon for an ‘urban art’ event to be sponsored by a local council or business, and there are now legal walls designated for graffiti in many major Irish towns. It has also entered the galleries and museums; this February BaqsR and Crap have displayed their work in the Galway City Museum and stencil artist ADW held an exhibition at the Back Loft Gallery, Dublin in April. This follows recent major retrospective graffiti exhibitions at the Tate in London (2008) and the Foundation Cartier in Paris (2009). Graffiti is currently a hot commodity. Two Banksy prints recently stolen from a gallery in central London were worth £16,000. The increasing popularisation of this pursuit has meant that Irish graffiti artists are receiving international attention. Last December, Dublin based Maser took part in the Europe-wide Vodafone 360 Heroes Challenge. Certainly there are benefits from the increased exposure: sponsorship for events and materials and perhaps more opportunities to make a living. However, a question is worth asking – is something lost in the institutionalisation of graffiti?

A recent move to the southern Mexican city of Oaxaca made this question more pertinent for me. The difference was on the walls. Here the street acts as a democratic message board. Personal declarations of love are scrawled next to slogans calling for proletarian revolution. Complex graffiti characters sit next to simple painted messages informing passers by of the time and date of the next trade union meeting. If there is one thing that unites all these disparate markings, it is a spirit of resistance and rebellion that is both poetic and political; the image of a clenched black fist over a red heart – “Todo el poder al pueblo (All power to the people)” above, “Todo el amor al pueblo (All love to the people)” below; a stencil of a child, mouth bound with a gag marked ‘ABC’, reads “Justice not just tests”.

Perhaps it should not be surprising that graffiti here is more political. After all this is a country with a long tradition of socially conscious public art. The Marxist muralists of the 1930s – Riviera, Orozco and Siqueiros are considered national heroes, their murals decorate important state buildings like the National Palace and the National Museum of History. Southern Mexican states like Oaxaca and Chiapas, where a substantial section of the population face an everyday struggle to feed and clothe their children, have long histories of radical uprisings. Because the graffiti is more overtly political, corporations and the state apparatus will sponsor nothing but its removal.

Photo: Juan Pablo Ruiz Núñez 2009. The writing above and below the fist reads 'All Power to the People / All Love to the People".

Graffiti was even part of the political struggle here in 2006, when an annual teachers strike was violently suppressed by state police resulting in the deaths of at least 17 people, including Indymedia journalist Brad Will. In reaction citizens launched a fierce graffiti campaign, which saturated the city. The visual impact was compelling; every inch of available space was targeted – messages were often impulsive and hastily sprayed, signalling a giddy optimism: “¡Abre los ojos! Oaxaca ya despertó’ (Open your eyes! Oaxaca has awoken)”. Stencils depicted the Governor Ulises dressed up in fascist uniform, or as a pig, rat or dog.

Despite international condemnation of the deaths, a long march to Mexico City and a hunger strike, the structures of power held firm and, supported by the President, Felipe Calderon and 3,500 Federal Police, Governor Ulises stayed in power. Although graffiti alone can never manage to topple repressive and corrupt governments, it can establish an atmosphere of solidarity and support, which in this case helped sustain the opposition’s resolve for seven long months of conflict.

This is the power of graffiti as a political intervention in times of social turmoil, its potency as a form of visual resistance; Republican murals in Northern Ireland, writing on the Berlin Wall, Situationist slogans in Paris during May ’68 and more recently graffiti on the Israeli West Bank barrier – as with protest songs in folk music, graffiti occurs spontaneously as a cultural response to subjugation and tyranny.

But just as 60’s protest music is redeployed to sell Land Rovers and Jeeps, street culture too is easily emptied of social content and appropriated for commercial capital; the youth and energy of the graffiti style, free from any overt meanings or signification, is ideal for lending ‘urban cool’ to marketing campaigns and trendy products. Like the iconic Che Guevara image, the vague associations of romantic rebellion and youthful opposition are now provided for consumption by graffiti culture. Indeed, no form of art is capable of resisting recuperation and being absorbed by commodity culture.

But does this co-opting of urban culture affect the content of the work? The kind of graffiti that receives institutional support tends to be flashy, highly stylised and message-free. Often well achieved on a technical basis, it rarely addresses the social world it exists within. Value is more often placed on energy, line and colour rather than subject matter. And while writing one’s name with a tag inscribes a presence, it does not go beyond the limitations of individual signature.

Ireland’s own political situation is obviously the other side of the world from that of Mexico, yet we have no reason to be politically complacent. We are still facing a different version of the same severe economic crisis, one caused largely by the aggressive greed of both local banking systems and global financial markets. The last 20 years has seen an increasing gap between the surplus wealth of the top strata and the subsistence economy of lower income groups. The current inertia in western politics has led to lower levels of popular participation (especially amongst young people). Irish artists cannot afford to turn away from the economic and ecological crises. There is an urgent need for art and culture in Ireland to engage and contend with the deep social problems we face.

Street art represents the ideal medium for an engaged practice. It operates within a public space and therefore lends itself to open, direct democratic speech. It is not so easy to give voice to a political critique in Ireland if you happen to be identified as a ‘member of the travelling community’. A can of paint, like a wooden box on a street corner, is the ability to stand up and speak publicly; an image or message on a wall enters the public domain in an instant; everyone walks down the same streets and so it transcends the social strata. Stencils provide another effective way to counteract the ideologically charged images we encounter every day; easy to achieve, they are high contrast and high impact.

It can also be an invaluable tool for campaigns that do not have traditional access to mainstream media. The ongoing conflict between Royal Dutch Shell and the Shell to Sea campaign underscores this. While protestors may write angry letters to the editor, Shell can afford to undertake a highly-publicised campaign in every national and regional newspaper; a grassroots group simply does not have the resources to match this. Intelligent, visual incisions made in the public arena however, can foster a decisive atmosphere of support. Although some stencils opposing Shell’s actions in Rossport did appear in my hometown of Galway in 2008, they tended to be more well-intentioned than visually compelling. Too often, political stencils here pale in comparison with the technical skill and aesthetic effect of non-political graffiti pieces. Unfortunately it seems that Ireland’s burgeoning graffiti scene will not become a critical force as long as it maintains its double-edged relationship with the corporate sector. Until artists start making work that challenges the status quo, graffiti will be condemned to the status of a trendy marketing gimmick, and any radical charge it might have had will have been neutralised.

In Oaxaca I discovered the potential of street art. Whether it counts as art or vandalism or both, what is inspiring is that it is a sign of a people resisting ‘the way things are’. From the beautifully noisy walls of Oaxaca we should take something back home; the possibility for rejuvenating our own stagnant political situation through imaginatively charged democratic street art. Our grey streets could be injected with colour and ideas – words and images to wake people out of a catatonic state of political complacency. Paint is cheap, and ideas cost nothing. Find a wall and make it speak.

Adam Stoneman

Nevan Lahart, 2:20 Horsepower Apocalypse. installed at the 'Non-Car-Showroom. Photo: John Beattie.

Jonathan Carroll Talks To Jason Oakley About ‘Shop If Can, Look If You Want’ A Contemporary Art Trail Organised For Dublin’s 2010 St. Patrick’s Festival.

JO: How did the idea for ‘Shop if can, Look if you want’ come about?

JC: I had been involved the visual arts element of the St. Patrick Day Festival since 2007. Each year, I would begin putting together a variety of proposals from September for the following March. The sponsorship team and the festival’s CEO would basically act like door-to-door salesmen looking for partners to help fund one of my proposals. The difficulty of getting funding became the creative force behind the ‘Shop If Can, Look If You Want’ idea.

Temple Bar Cultural Trust liked the idea of using empty retail spaces for art; and my initial idea was to highlight the fact that there are always things to see and do in Temple Bar that do not involve alcohol or a deep wallet. TBCT additionally provided me with a small budget, which was matched by the festival itself (the festival does not ring-fence a budget for the visual arts but relies on outside partners and funders).

JO: What were the key curatorial ideas and themes?

JC: I stated the following in the press release: “the sites of commerce and culture find themselves in a moment of confused transition where the abiding sense is that of uncertainty of the next step. The exhibitions reflect this ambiance by occupying vacant retail spaces”. So I was primarily thinking of the experience of the expected audience. I had a desire to elicit the feeling that they were in an undefined space, a temporary mirage or oasis coming out of these recessional times.

Rather than exhibition invigilators, we had ‘non-shopkeepers’ who were general festival volunteers. I wanted to use their inexperience to my advantage, so I told them that the role they were to play was that of a shop assistant that works for a temp agency, they could have been sent to the Brown Thomas department store, but today they were sent to the Non-Car-Showroom, this confusion would equalize them with the visiting public rather than putting them in conflict with them or putting them under pressure to ‘sell’ the curatorial idea.

The Non-Car-Showroom, located in the former Cultivate retail space on Essex Street was the first space I wanted to curate. It’s a large interior space and I thought it would be a perfect venue to exhibit an artist’s work that dealt with the automobile.  I had in mind an anti-Top Gear stage set, relating to a notion of ‘bottom gear, driving through the recession’. Therefore, underlying themes such as recycling and DIY along with the era when the automobile offered a bright vision of the future underpinned the recycling of space throughout the exhibition.

JO: How did you source the artists for the show?

JC: I chose all the artists starting with the notion of the theme for each individual space. I eventually had five different Non-Shops in mind: Non-Taxidermy, a Non-Gymnasium, a Non-Car-Showroom, a Non-Laundrette and a Non-Electricians. When I contacted one artist they would suggest another and when I described the idea to anyone else in the arts they also gave me some names. It grew organically from there. I don’t consider any exhibition to be definitive, but rather a starting point for many more projects.

JO: How did you secure the venues and staffing?

JC: TBCT gave me two spaces to use for free and they introduced me to the Gaiety School of Acting and Smock Alley Theatre. I negotiated a lease for the larger Cultivate space. I researched what a gallery of equivalent size would charge and thought of an offer that would suit what is only an empty retail space with no staff or gallery lighting. I had to provide copies of insurance cover, including public liability – fortunately the festival has this cover. The staff were sourced from the large number of volunteers that the festival attracts each year.

JO: The show was successful in getting media coverage in the Times and on RTE. Did you have a strategy to address wider audiences that the usual contemporary art constituency?

JC: The key to curating any exhibition is to know your audience and the strengths of the organization behind the initiative. Within the St Patrick’s Festival, the visual arts must compete to be noticed. The Festival is all about loud noise and the big picture, ‘Skyfest’ and Big Day Out types of things – parades and funfairs. You have to play the game that you are in. I liked having this challenge as a curator and think it makes for a more interesting career if you can balance this with the more concentrated conversation within the artworld.

The Festival does publicity very well – they are like a very colourful butterfly, they have only a week to express themselves and then they disappear for another year.

Firstly I had the chance to include the exhibition in a printed programme of 200,000 that is distributed with the Irish Independent and a website that receives one million hits from January to March. My publicity was also supported by the festival’s dedicated private PR consultancy whose sole job for a few weeks is to get you into the papers and onto television. To take advantage of this, I programmed the visual arts to begin before all other events and continue until the end of the festival. Nonetheless we had only a window of two hours to publicize our event before the Skyfest knocked us off our perch. In the end, we appeared on the RTE Six-one news but were replaced by Skyfest for the later bulletin.

JO: Are there particular steps you took to address the audience, in terms of this event being part of the St. Patrick’s Festival?

JC: The main challenge is to maintain some integrity for the artists. That is you must include some work that you have considered in advance as useful for the press and marketing. I would have to several times discuss what a TV crew would experience if they came to see the show “what is the picture? What is the headline? Where is the action?”.  This entails a certain amount of ‘show-ponying’ of your artists, the performance/live element is crucial for exposure and attracting media, without this the rest of the exhibition is ignored.

JO: Could you briefly describe some of the key works in the show?

JC: Nevan Lahart’s 2:20 Horsepower Apocalypse was the largest work in the exhibition and was key to a lot of other work that was displayed with it. It was a full-sized hearse made out of black bin liners along with other various inventively-used throwaway materials. It was an eye-catcher, prominently displayed in the centre of the Non-Car-Showroom. It worked perfectly – both metaphorically and physically – as a symbol of the recession. But also offered a humorous and inventive possible future. Joe Stanley also responded brilliantly to the invitation to include his Auto-Geo Machine in the Non-Car-Showroom, by creating a revolving fluffy display case that would fit perfectly in one of the prominent windows in the exhibition space.

Joost Conijn’s Hout Auto / Wood Car video was a lot of people’s favourite work in the show. It was projected in a cupboard through a jungle hut like reed mesh that existed in the Cultivate space when we arrived. The video shows the artist travelling through twelve countries (from Amsterdam across Eastern Europe) in his hand-made, wooden, steam powered, wood-burning car. The idea that you can drive for free from donated wood through so many countries again offers an alternative route for our survival when oil runs out or we have to rely on barter again.

Amanda Coogan’s Adoration Live 2010 was also a key work, which encapsulated many elements of the exhibition and the effect of the recession on the arts. Amanda proposed a live performance of her video piece called Adoration. For a live performance, Amanda required six choristers and four soloists. As we did not have the budget to make this happen, Amanda came up with a new work that would change from a window display with mannequins to a work with Amanda taking the place of the mannequins and performing live. We then had three different ways of showing Adoration throughout the short run of the exhibition. The window display, with an inside and outside view of the work; as a video performance; a live performance by Amanda and the large projection of the work in Meeting House Square after dark. I had four nights of projections running during the exhibition; these complemented the main exhibitions and hopefully gained the interest of a different crowd, who only come into Temple Bar after dark.

Roisin Beirne’s work The Fall in the Non-Gymnasium was the most challenging piece we tried to include. This large performance / sculpture work had only before been tested indoors as part of her final year exhibition in NCAD. It had to be rethought and built from scratch in a very short time. The idea of commissioning new work in public spaces would be desirable for the Festival in the future.

Sonia Shiel had a solo space, which she transformed into her Non-Laundrette. What was important and different about Sonia’s approach was the underlying political reaction she had to the invitation. She made a large sculptural piece that showed the position of the arts in the greater scheme of things that is at the bottom of the pile, well below bars and cafe society and now on a par with the banks, which have just joined the estranged arts. I liked that Sonia was sceptical about celebrating the sudden availability of now devalued space. Like her, I agree that all is not all rosy in the arts garden.

One of the spaces that worked best in the exhibition was the Non-Electricians, where four artists installed themselves in a very complimentary way. Sharon White had been using the space (2 Saul’s Court; the former 2 Cool Design unit) as a studio to make new work for the exhibition, so she had a good sense of where she wanted to place her wacky and playful inventions (made from old wood and found objects). Gillian Fitzpatrick also produced all new work for the exhibition. She creates work that takes on the appearance of futuristic space age technology by making moulds from waste packaging and found objects and making casts in plastic and resin from these. The resulting objects appear to be mass-produced and machine-made. In fact they are unique and hand-made artworks. When she exhibits her work, she utilizes the infrastructure of the exhibition space. She often places her work in close proximity to existing signage, electrical points, fixtures and fittings.

Jay Koh Discusses His Dialogical Projects Ni Hao –Dia Duit And Reading The Self, Reading The Other, Which Explore Cross-Cultural Exchange Between The Local And Chinese Communities In Dublin.

Image: Jay Koh – article in the Sun Emerald, relating to ‘Ni Hao –Dia Duit’.

This article discusses some aspects of the dialogical components of my practice that are focused on the creation of trust between potential collaborators via dialogue and exchange (1). My specific focus is Ni Hao – Dia Duit (hello in Chinese and Irish) and Reading the Self, Reading the Other, cross-cultural projects concerned with identifying and building sustainable interactive channels between the local and Chinese communities around Dublin’s Parnell Street).

Background

Ni Hao –Dia Duit (hello in Chinese and Irish) was initiated in 2007 via CityArts, Dublin with support from the Irish Youth Foundation and Dublin City Inner Partnership. The project aimed to research, identify and nurture some key sustainable ways of establishing interactive channels between the migrant and local communities around Parnell Street (2).

From my research, I found that the general behaviour of Chinese migrants is that they prefer to remain invisible and not to attract attention – basically so that they can go about doing their studies or business without hindrance. This trait can be seen as being inherited from a conditioned strategic response to living in a densely populated and competitive society and under an authoritative, scrutinizing system such as China. At the same time, as a group they desire to congregate within the comfort of the familiar (food, aesthetic, language and proximity) – resulting in the creation of ‘Chinatowns’ in whichever part of the world they migrate to.

Such inclinations and actions can create certain ‘fronts’ (3) that communicate non-verbally a message of isolation and ghettorisation. In Ireland, such behaviour may be seen by some Irish people as signs of unfriendliness, especially when augmented by the fact that many Chinese people lack the knowledge to communicate in local slang; refer to local events (sports, politics etc) or participate in Irish drinking culture.

Encounter 1

“Oh! Are you a spy?” I was confronted with this question when trying to initiate a conversation with a young Chinese man living in Dublin. The incident took place in the initial stage of the dialogical framework of practice – using everyday situations and encounters to identify potential participants for Ni Hao – Dia Duit.  Their questions probably emanated from reasoning, based on their cultural knowledge, that artists usually paint or write calligraphy; and that commercial goals are probably an important criteria of art activities. They may well also have thought that in China any artist, who acts and operates freely in public spaces, is probably assigned to do so by the state authorities. As an artist working without a commercial goal and funded by NGOs, I came to understand that what I was doing would likely appear to be a strange phenomenon, from the pragmatic cultural perspective and knowledge of this particular Chinese migrant.

Reducing uncertainty between strangers

The encounter above highlighted for me the need to establish some basic forms of acceptance between strangers, before further engagements could take place. In the methodology of my dialogical practice I utilise listening, conversing and investing time in order to reduce the uncertainty (4) between strangers during initial encounters – so that they can move forward to form relationships. In order to create social situations to facilitate this, for example in Ni Hao – Dia Duit I organized get-togethers with potential Chinese participants and Irish artists who had an interest in participating – usually in a private room of a Chinese restaurant fitted with a state-of-the-art karaoke machine, a common retreat space for the Chinese to socialise and relax among friends.

Encounter 2

Informal workshop / talk on dating. Part of Jay Koh's 'Ni Hao –Dia Duit' project

It was at one of such arranged interactions that a case of cultural misunderstanding occurred – leading to the withdrawal of one young Chinese person for the project. He felt that he was being put under scrutiny, like a specimen on display, by the barrage of questions put to him by an Irish artist participating in the project. The artist had a background in youth work, and seemed to see the dialogical process as a question and answer game – as the answers keep coming, it seemed to them that the interaction was moving along positively.

Listening & Non-verbal dialogue

Gemma Corradi Fiumara, in The Other Side of Language, criticises western philosophy for prioritising the articulation of ideas (in writing and speech) and suppressing the role of listening. If listening isn’t regarded as integral component of a dialogical exchange, the conversation is literally one-sided and authoritarian. (5)

By ‘listening’ I would also include attentiveness to non-verbal body language – the posture of the body and micro-expressions that can denote discomfort, irritation and suppression of certain feelings. Pioneering researchers, Haggard and Isaacs discovered ‘micromommentary’ expressions when researching into films recorded during psychotherapy sessions (6). I don’t mean to suggest that artists need training in psychotherapy, but they should have an awareness of the role of the non-verbal communicative within dialogical / communication based art projects.

Other forms of non-verbal dialogue that I investigate as part of my practice include the generation of meanings through interpretations and public and communal perceptions, as created by sources such as rumours and third party accounts, that would bear consequence on evolving relationships in, and the continuation of, a participative project.

Reading the Self, Reading the Others (7)

Ni Hao – Dia Duit has continued to take shape, one outcome being the formation of the Irish Chinese Cultural and Sport Association.  I continued working with collaborators from the Chinese community while also carrying out activities such as mentoring, evaluation and the mediation of art and development projects in Ireland. Ni Hao – Dia Duit, which is still ongoing, has become my longest-running project in Ireland to date.

Reading the Self, Reading the Others (RSRO) was the most recent event associated with Ni Hao – Dia Duit. I collaborated with Thomas O’Connor, whose participation in the project dates back to 2007. For this project, we encouraged the Chinese community in Ireland to submit images of themselves to be viewed and interpreted by others.

A series of articles [R1] published (November – December 2009) in the Sun Emerald, the largest Irish Chinese weekly newspaper (8) functioned as informal workshops ‘on the page’ and covered various topics such as the construction and reading of meanings through and in photographs and interactions in karaoke rooms in Chinese restaurant. These newspaper pieces served to motivate members of the Chinese community to participate in the project. Submitted images were exhibited in a photographic exhibition that became part of Dublin City Council’s 2010 Chinese New Year Festival (12 – 21 Feb. 2010, in different locations of the city). The photographs in the show portrayed the various ways in which the Chinese viewed themselves and the Irish.

Encounter 3

During its one-week exhibition run, (14 – 20 Feb. 2010, 15 West Essex St.) RSRO featured daily talks organized around various themes. In one of the talks on dating practices, a young Chinese participant responded to a question by an Irish teenager on how one would ask a Chinese girl out, by going into a long lecture on the responsibility associated with dating a Chinese girl, including a list of duties to be observed / performed (such as protecting the girl, anticipating her anxieties, fears etc), and expectations to be met before courting should begin. These sentiments were, however, not totally shared by the other Chinese present. To someone brought up in a ‘western’ cultural background, these sentiments would appear as conservative, patriarchal (a view affirmed by at least one Irish member of the audience), perhaps even overbearing and oppressive. However, for the Chinese, a foremost consideration in life – a message drummed in from a young age –  is a sense of responsibility, to one’s parents and family; one’s self or one’s country. Thus someone from a similar cultural background would likely interpret the sentiments expressed by the young Chinese man as showing responsibility; consideration and care for others – something akin to chivalry.

Intersubjective meanings as the building blocks of relationships

From this encounter we see that meanings are made based on ‘subjectivities’ in play – along with judgments based on a person’s received values, experiences and background.

In my practice, I place a great importance on giving enough time and space for positive inter-subjective meanings to form between participants. Rash judgment would foreclose the development of further engagement. For example, individuals viewpoints are not only closely linked to one’s cultural context, but also to the economic and social conditions that creates certain expediencies – such as when a Chinese female participant expressed that she is less likely to date for fun, due to the fact that she feels she has the responsibility to care and provide for her parents and siblings.

Conclusion

To some extent my approach can be related to the type of ‘dialogical aesthetics’ Grant Kester has set out in texts such as Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art (9), which stress a sensitivity to the role of inter-subjective meanings in creating collaborative relationships.

However when working across cultural differences – both in terms within and between cultures – there are some difficulties in relation to the application of this theory. This is due to the extent of the differences of knowledge and viewpoints internalized by an individual’s subjectivity. These differences –such as in ascribing meaning to a particular term or type of behaviour – can be revealed during the process of communicating across social and cultural groups.

In my case, I found that in order to communicate with the Chinese community in Dublin – a group who I found had no previous knowledge or experience of participation in cross-cultural art activities, that it was not sufficient for me to merely initiate conversations with them. I also had to supplement these with supportive visual and textual materials and contextual experiences. To be effective, these activities needed to build upon continuity – therefore acting as a capacity building process, producing inter-subjective meanings that would in themselves allow further inter-subjective understandings and relationships to evolve.

Overall, my art-led creative process aims to encourage participants to question their own viewpoints and subjectivities; and encourage the envisioning of alternatives and new possibilities. This experience-based process is informed by interdisciplinary (communicative and anthropological) methods and a cross-sectoral approach and not by a ‘modernist’ approach that often employs avant-garde acts of intervention and top-down communication. The interventions in my process are negotiated after an introduction to and explanation of my intentions during the initial phase of encounters.

Jay Koh

Notes

1. A longer version of this text can be read under this link http://ifima.net/IFIMA/personal/Introduction%20to%20a%20Dialogical%20Practice.htm

2. Parnell Street, Dublin used to be a neglected area connected to drug trade in the 90s. Migrants begin to move in attracted to the low cost infrastructure and since the mid 2005 evolved into a vibrant and unofficial Chinatown of Dublin.

3. ’Fronts’, is a sociological term coined by Goffman, Erving reprint 1990. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Penguin Books (Chapter 1: Performances) to denote the everyday performance put forth by individual and group to create meanings for the others

4. Uncertainty Reduction Theory is put forth by Berger, C.R. And Calabrese, R.J. to deconstruct the communication stage of the initial socialization process between strangers.

5. Gemma Corradi Fiumara, The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Language, translated by Charles Lambert (London: Routledge, 1990), p.9, 23, 26.

6. Haggard, E. A., & Isaacs, K. S. (1966). Micro-momentary facial expressions as indicators of ego mechanisms in psychotherapy. In L. A. Gottschalk & A. H. Auerbach (Eds.), Methods of Research in Psychotherapy (pp. 154-165). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts

7. This project is a collaboration with ICCSA with support from the Artist in Community scheme from the Arts Council managed by CREATE – Ireland

8. Sun Emerald, the largest Irish Chinese weekly newspaper, articles can be viewed under this link http://ifima.net/IFIMA/personal/Reading%20Self,%20Readin