Coincidences, Chance Meetings and Good Luck

BRIAN O’DOHERTY DISCUSSES ISSUES RELATING TO HIS ART CAREER WITH BRENDA MOORE-MCCANN IN HIS FIRST INTERVIEW SINCE HAVING OFFICIALLY BURIED ‘PATRICK IRELAND’ – THE PSEUDONYM /PERSONA THE ARTIST HAD WORKED UNDER SINCE 1972 IN PROTEST AT BLOODY SUNDAY. (1)

Brenda Moore-McCann: The Visual Artists News Sheet focuses on artists approaches to the development of the various professional, administrative and organisational aspects of their careers. Examining your art practice over the last 50 years indicates quite a different attitude to such a systematic approach. One might even say it demonstrates a subversive attitude that also appears in your critical writing. For example, in the 1986 Afterword to Inside the White Cube you noted that the economic system surrounding art was virtually unquestioned (aside from art of the 1960s and 1970s) by the key figure of the artist, so that we get the art we pay for rather than the art we deserve. Earlier in the 1960s when art critic of the New York Times, you wrote The Corruption of Individuality, in which you descried the erosion of artistic freedom in the face of the seductive spoils of a “hothouse, big-money atmosphere.” Finally, you once said about Orson Welles: “To separate Welles, Welles the director, Welles the actor, Welles the writer, Welles the magician, Welles in his various persona, from his work is a hopeless task, and eventually a dubious one. Like his films, he was his own fiction. He and his art interpenetrate in ways that some criticism finds unallowable. But who is making the rules here?” All these texts seem to me to reflect attitudes that appear within your art. Would you agree?

Brian O’Doherty: Everything seems so random, arbitrary and subject to chance that it’s a wonder we end up where we are. My own career, if you can call it that, is shaped by the usual coincidences, chance meetings, with nudges of good luck. I owe a lot to other people. To Thomas McGreevy, to a great woman named Nancy Hanks, to my wife Barbara Novak. Out of all that comes some sort of fiction you pass off as yourself, whatever that self may be. I never see the self as a stable entity, but as a fluid, multivalent series of accommodations to inward and outward pressures, giving birth to different personae. That’s everyone’s experience, I imagine. I’ve simply literalised some of mine—personae, I mean. Of course, all this doesn’t mean you don’t have your head together when you cross the road in traffic. I call that practical everyday person, who shops for groceries and pays the rent, ‘good serve’, a decent sort of fellow but not over-bright. I’d be lost without him.

BMMc: Your artistic strategies from the sixties on have deliberately sought to evade a consumerist approach. Probably the best representative category within your oeuvre is the ephemeral Rope Drawing installations of the last 36 years carried out by your recently buried persona Patrick Ireland. Can you comment on your main concerns as an artist?  

BOD: I’ve nothing against money, except when I don’t have it. But artists make things and things enter the turbulent economic money scape. Then odd things happen. Money becomes more important than art. Art becomes fetishised. Art fairs and auctions become verifiers of value. The magical powers of art depreciate. We are in the midst of great decadence. I can claim no moral or ethical superiority. I made temporary installations the main spine of my work for over forty years because that’s the art I had to make. It kept me outside the market. I supported myself – and my art – with other jobs. It helps to have a good wife who sees you over the impecunious bumps. All the installations were made by Patrick Ireland, who now has been laid to rest at IMMA, courtesy of Enrique Juncosa. All temporary, except for one in Kalamazoo. Temporary artworks, I think, sharpen the viewer’s perception. What you see is under threat of withdrawal. The mortal artwork already includes quotients of regret, anticipatory flashes of memory, including the memory of – in my case – yourself in the artwork. So, occupying a temporary installation can be a complex affair.

BMMc: Would you agree that your writings can often provide indicators of your strategies as an artist?

BOD: I used to write about other artists, but not so much anymore. I learn something when I write about other artists. I write about my own work in letters to friends. I do a lot of my thinking that way. The White Cube book obviously refers, in several indirect ways, to my own concerns as an artist. It came out of my installations. I was clambering all over those white galleries, attaching lines to ceilings, corners, etc. until ultimately I asked myself, “what is this white box I’m in?” Or rather the white box asked me, “why are you all over my virgin spaces?” I was astonished at the immediate reception of White Cube in Artforum. It seems to go on forever. More translations coming up – France, Italy. People now assume I have wise things to say about the gallery. I don’t. I said what I had to say. I’m no gallery guru.

BMMc: Now that your most prominent (and notorious to some)artistic pseudonym Patrick Ireland has finally been laid to rest,can you reflect upon the 36 year experience of living and working as Patrick Ireland?

BOD: Patrick Ireland as you know is a political creation. Bloody Sunday in Derry influenced me profoundly, as it did everyone else. I signed my work by that name until the Brits left Northern Ireland and all citizens were given their civil rights. Liam Kelly in Belfast and I stay very much in touch. He keeps me well informed. The time had come to abandon Patrick. I believe that taking another name is a serious business, nothing larky or funny about it. There are certain subtle effects on your own person. Patrick Ireland eventually became to me a distinct and visible person with his own thoughts and ideas. A separation took place. It has to do with the power of naming, with the power of the word. Words are intrinsic to my work. I suppose you could call Patrick Ireland a word, a signature. I must avoid any hokey stuff here. But a strange reciprocal exchange did take place, an interfusion, a shudder through your substance. I became used to working as him. When I was him, everything else dropped away. I was alone with the work, or with good helpers – in Dublin I was most fortunate to have Brendan Earley and Fergus Byrne, who think deeply about their work. Meeting younger artists is very necessary for me. Joe Stanley, who helped with Patrick’s coffin and effigy; Brian Duggan, who is indirectly related, and Jeannette Doyle who lent her shoulder to Patrick’s coffin. Now I have to get used to making art as myself again. I will miss the freedom and concentration that Patrick gave me. But he is joyfully abandoned. Irishmen are not killing Irishmen and women up North. By the way, Liam Kelly’s book, Thinking Long is full of images of artists responding to that conflict. It has produced some great works of art – Shane Cullen’s Fragments sur les institutions Republicaines. And remember Bob Ballagh’s powerful gesture at the Living Art long ago, in 1972?

Note

(1) After the events of Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972, Brian O’Doherty began using the pseudonym / personae Patrick Ireland in relation to his art practice; and as part of this strategy the artist ceased showing work in Britain. After 36 years working as Patrick Ireland, O ’Doherty formally ‘buried’ his alter ego in a ceremony at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (20 May 2008) as a gesture of recognition to celebrate the restoration of peace in Northern Ireland.

From the Archive:

“Temporary artworks, I think, sharpen the viewer’s perception. What you see is under threat of withdrawal. The mortal artwork already includes quotients of regret, anticipatory flashes of memory, including the memory of yourself in the artwork. So, occupying a temporary installation can be a complex affair.” – Brian O’Doherty (4 May 1928 – 7 November 2022)

Following the passing of pioneering art critic and conceptual artist, Brian O’Doherty, we are republishing an interview with Brian, originally commissioned for VAN July/Aug 2008.

Source

Cecilia Danell: How do you start a painting? Do you do any preparatory drawings? Do you have an idea beforehand or does it all happen on the canvas, as it were?  

Diana Copperwhite: I do a mixture of things. I’m always looking for information and I do use things stored up in my head; I also take photos and use found photographs. Sometimes I start a drawing as kind of a map for the painting, which evolves in its own direction. I never want them to be straightforward, so it’s mixture of pulling things from different places. For me, it is important that it becomes this completely separate thing that you can’t locate in any one direction. 

CD: I noticed your early work is more figurative. 

DC: Yeah, I think it started out that way because I’m really interested in the world, and in how things relate to each other. It wasn’t a deliberate decision but happened organically – sort of like translating music visually or dealing with memory and ideas of perception. It morphed from there to something more abstract. 

CD: In your paintings even nowadays, I can see spaces and figures – are they deliberate or is it my mind trying to interpret shape? 

DC: It is impossible to make a painting without making those relationships. If you’re looking at something in low light, or in a dark laneway, you don’t fully see it and your mind scrambles to try to give it meaning because we’re wired like that. You can’t put a mark beside another mark in a painting without it being read as deliberate.

CD: There is a sensory reality, a subjectivity, to the way we perceive things in the world. One of the things I love about your work and that I’ve been introducing into my own work more and more over the years, is the idea of arbitrary colour relationships – colours that aren’t really there, producing a kind of sensory experience.

DC: That comes from looking at the world. I always look at light, and light sources and how that works and how white light is made from the spectrum. Under certain circumstances, like an oil slick or a rainstorm, it refracts the light, and you start to see colour. That almost seems more real than white light, in a way. There can be gaps in perception versus reality, and painting is another reality that doesn’t have to correspond.

CD:  I get a chance to use colours from the other end of the colour spectrum, and shapes that aren’t there through drips and abstractions. 

DC: You introduce those ideas in a figurative way and then you break the figure-plane relationship. You might use drips of blue and pink in this idyllic landscape and it’s almost like a portal to another reality. That’s kind of what I’m interested in as well – taking these ideas about how one perceives things and opening up this huge space for the imagination.

CD: I sometimes work in a backwards way, where I retain the shapes rather than cover them up. The longer you work, you realise you can’t keep the background as it is, as it would look unfinished, and you have to work over it. 

DC: Then you see it’s not nature anymore, it’s a painting. That’s the fun part of painting – it’s of itself; it’s a painting. 

CD: John Berger said that a painting, unlike a photo, doesn’t capture a moment but contains all the time it took to paint it and all the future moments when it will be looked at – so it’s timeless, in that sense. In your work, we can definitely see that process; we can trace the edges of the painting and see the layers. 

DC: I think when I’m painting, I’m looking for something, but I don’t know what that is. I keep going and that’s why there are so many chops and changes, layers, starts and stops; I want it to be gravity-free, like another reality. 

CD: I used to get asked “when do you know a painting is finished?” I would say that it’s when nothing takes focus unduly; when the eye travels and doesn’t get stuck. Sometimes one colour can be just a fraction too intense and that takes the focus.

DC: Exactly, because the overall painting has to work! I find when I’m painting – and you probably get this as well – early on if it works really well, that’s not a good thing because you get kind of attached to something and you have to learn to let it go.

CD: It can be really daunting to take that step, because you can mess it up entirely. You know that if you don’t, it will be an okay painting but if you manage to do it and it works, you bring it to the next level. 

DC: Usually when it’s not a good painting at the beginning, you have to work really hard to make it better. You don’t go in for your dinner and think “that’s great, that’s working”. No – it’s a mess.

CD: In terms of scale, when you make smaller works, you call them ‘anti-portraits’ and they’re very close up and abstract at the same time. When I’m making small works, I do kind of close-ups of nature. This is a different way of approaching it and I would never personally make a landscape in small scale.

DC: Well, it’s a different thing, small paintings… It is kind of like a release from the large paintings because there’s so much going on in them – it’s such a balancing act. Smaller paintings are nice and succinct; it’s like making a sentence that keeps going, like punctuation with commas and full stops and adjectives.

CD: You can manoeuvre things within large paintings. When I work wet-on-wet, I can focus on a certain area and keep going without needing to let things dry, because I can move onto something else. I hate when you’re in the studio and you’ve got something you’re doing later that day, and you get really into it, and you’ve mixed all the paints up… 

DC: That is very frustrating, because you need to stop… I time myself. I have to really go at it, and I don’t know what’s going to happen. I have to be very alert, but you can’t sustain that level of alertness and focus for that long. I set my alarm for half-hour intervals, so I’m completely without distraction. Then I leave for ten minutes and come back and do the same thing. 

CD: I find it really hard to work in the morning; I really only get going around 2pm. Sometimes you feel like it’s a hard slog but then when you’re about to finish up, you just want to fix one little thing and the time flies. I photograph my work as I go along. However, I often look at my work in bed and then if something doesn’t work, I can barely sleep! It’s on your mind constantly.

DC: I do the same! If you look at images on phones or devices you can work out what’s wrong with them. You can see an overview, as if you were in a gallery standing back, instead of being obsessed with one area. The paintings are like people, following us around! That’s because they kind of just pervade life. 

Cecilia Danell is a Swedish visual artist based in Galway. Her current solo exhibition, ‘Tactile Terrain’, continues at the Luan Gallery until 3 April. She is also showing in the Hennessy Craig Award Exhibition at the RHA until 21 March. 

ceciliadanell.com

Diana Copperwhite is a visual artist based in Dublin. She is a member of Aosdána and is currently showing at Snite Museum, USA, as part of ‘Who Do We Say We Are’, an exhibition of Irish art, with an upcoming solo show at 532 Gallery Thomas Jaeckel, New York, in September. 

dianacopperwhite.net

Both artists are represented by Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin. 

kevinkavanagh.ie 

Source

Selma Makela: In many of your paintings, it seems as if you are both inside and outside. You repeat motifs, which I guess all painters do as a visual language, but you also pay attention to often unnoticed or overlooked things. The images of the parks are so familiar to me since, like you, I spent my childhood in those parks – my only sense of nature in London. I realise now that places like Hampstead Heath were constructed idylls. Your park paintings fill me with a memory of this idyll, but also, the idea that a painting can be a place in itself.

Fionna Murray: Yes, that notion of a painting being a place in itself was very strong when I was making the watercolours – the sense that the space that you create is a parallel reality. The painting is prompted into being by the world, but it also has a life of its own. The nature of paint as a medium evades certainties and of course that’s what makes the process unexpected and what makes you want to embark on another painting. Maybe the places that we first experienced as children have an essential influence on our visual vocabulary. Like you, the London parks formed my notion of a rural space, albeit a constructed one. 

I have a quote in my notebook by Albert Camus, who said that one’s life “is nothing but a long journey to find again… the two or three powerful images upon which his whole being opened for the first time.” It does feel like that sometimes, when I ask myself why I am painting. Is it a need to make sense of those powerful visual memories from those formative places? And I wonder is that stronger when you have moved to another country from where you grew up? The displacement makes you want to gather those fragments of that other place into the contained space of the painting. And you have to do it again and again because the idyll evades us. 

Does this resonate for you in terms of your paintings? There is a vastness of scale within your small works and your places often seem to be on the edge of somewhere. The figurative elements, whether human, architectural or animal, are a small but necessary part of the atmosphere of the painting. The weather is palpable as in say, Precipice, 2018. With an economy of means you seem to capture the experience of being caught in a snowstorm, physically and maybe metaphorically, out there on the ice.

SM: Place is such a huge thing when you have emigrated, and even more so when one’s parents also emigrated. I can relate to this relationship to place, and the idea of the painting as a place, having had to negotiate four distinct cultures whilst not being fully part of any. Formative images for me were childhood trips to visit family in Finland and up past the Arctic Circle. This experience of no night and expansive space has never left me and has definitely informed my visual language. These images are also muddled with car journeys across Europe to see family in Cyprus. 

I have often looked at weather and geological processes as a language to dissolve fixations on nations and borders, which become meaningless when facing a climate emergency – and dare I say, viruses! But as much as paintings can be a distinct place, I am always curious about the relationship of paintings to each other. The pigments are like capsules of time, often made from ancient earth minerals. So when I make a series of paintings, I see them as nuanced arrangements of multiple, oblique and entangled perspectives, rather than self-contained works. I think that’s why I never frame work; I think of them as fragments of time and images. 

FM: These sentiments echo my own, in terms of how I see my paintings – as fragments that are in a kind of dialogue with each other. It is intriguing to see how pieces work together and set up their own narratives; how arranging the paintings at exhibition stage is an integral aspect of making a body of work. In terms of imagery, I too may start off with a general idea for a painting, possibly taken from a photo or a collage, but the process of making really does push you into accepting that certain imagery has to be painted over – even the bits that are working! – so that the thing comes together as a whole. In fact, over time, I prefer some of the slightly awkward paintings more than the ones that have a harmonious quality to them. Maybe it’s because they have struggled more, in order to be seen. In a small way, the act of embarking on a new painting, or any work of art, is an act of hope, that maybe we can do it better this time.

SM: I like the idea of painting being an act of hope. I rarely work on one painting at a time; I have a lot of paintings in process and just pick one up, work on it for a while and move on. I like to see them as scraps of paper – I mess them up and am not precious about any of it, in the hope that a freedom will be possible in the marks. Then sometimes, something amazing can happen: you get what I call a ‘gift painting’ – the one that falls through fully-formed in minutes, sometimes on an unused canvas but mostly after many other layers. Does that make sense? 

FM: Absolutely. However, those paintings that feel like gifts can only come about because of all the previous work; it builds up a flow. I remember Philip Guston saying in an interview about how boring it is to see yourself putting paint on, which I recognised, and thought was very funny. He said that at some point something grips on the canvas, and you have a few hours where there’s some kind of release – where your thinking doesn’t precede your doing. It does feel like a painting can form itself during such moments.  

SM: I do wonder sometimes, why we are bringing more objects and things into the world. But after this pandemic and the screen fatigue so many of us have felt, the fact that paintings need to be seen in the physical world is such a relief. Maybe they locate us to that moment and place for a while in the looking. 

FM: Yes, post-pandemic I am looking forward to seeing new exhibitions in actual places in the physical world! 

Fionna Murray is an artist based in Galway city and is represented by The Eagle Gallery, London.

@fionnamurray

Selma Makela is an artist based in Galway. She is currently working towards a solo exhibition at The Whitaker Museum and Art Gallery, UK, opening in October 2022.  

@selmamakela 

selmamakela.com 

Source

Salvatore of Lucan: So, how do you feel about us being paired together, as younger and older artists? 

Nick Miller: I’m happy. I’d seen your painting, Me Ma Healing Me, 2020, in the Zurich Portrait Prize before it opened, and it had an energy that interested me. I messaged you to say that if I was judging, I’d give you the money! That was our first contact. I like to jump cross-generationally, both ways. I mean, age doesn’t matter, but I am older. As we hadn’t met before, I thought the most real way to connect was by asking you to sit for a portrait in Sligo, then visiting your studio in Dublin for this conversation.

SoL: Did you enjoy painting me? 

NM: Yeah, I really did! Because of lockdown, I haven’t painted anyone new for a long time – it was curious and thrilling.

SoL: I only paint people I know and very rarely paint people I don’t. Do you have a preference? 

NM: As I get older, I worry less either way – if someone is willing to sit, anything is possible.  

SoL: Do you think you get to know people when you paint them?

NM: Yes and no. I’m a bit like Homer Simpson – I’m not sure what I learn, or retain beyond a painting. In portraiture, I am chasing a sort of alchemical transformation, a holding of life and energy in the materiality of paint. This is something I also sense in your work, but it is maybe driven more by composition, emotional intensity and a humour that you seem to embed in the material.

SoL: Yeah. My mate Glen Fitzgerald, who is a painter, was talking about alchemists and how he thought they were recreating the flesh or objects from paint. And I thought, “Oh that’s what I’m trying to do” and started looking into it. 

NM: To me, it’s an alternative art history, understanding how artists transform the energetic thing they’re trying to hold into inert material.

SoL: Do you think that’s the hardest part of painting, or do you think that’s a basic thing that painting needs? 

NM: It is just what it is. Personally I don’t know what art is without it; a way of approaching the world beyond yourself but also inside yourself at the same time.

SoL: When we were talking yesterday, I started thinking about the poem, Having a coke with you, by Frank O’Hara. There’s a video of him reciting it on YouTube, I’ll show you after. The question I want to ask is in the poem; there’s something kind of sad about the artist trying to capture this energy. Do you ever think about the act of trying to capture something as a sad thing? 

NM: Yes, we talked yesterday about melancholy in facing our awareness of a complicated and damaged world. A certain melancholy brings me to painting, but the activity itself can rescue me from sadness, towards joy. I’ve been reading a new book on the subject by philosopher, Brian Treanor, which felt like a homecoming.

SoL: You mentioned Melancholic Joy, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021 – that’s something I’m trying to get through as well, but also humour. If I could make a painting that could make someone laugh out loud, I would be so pleased. It’s very hard to do with a still image. Do you have an impossible dream for your paintings that spurs you on? 

NM: Well I guess alchemy is an impossible dream. I feel most alive when painting, and I hope I leave that in the work. I sometimes worry that I don’t care if a painting ever sees the light of day. My father was like a hermit; he spent 40 years in a studio and barely showed any work, so I have that in my genetics. He was only interested in what happened on the easel. 

SoL: For me, that’s the bit I don’t enjoy as much. I really like coming up with ideas and composing pictures, but when it comes to the painting, I’m always terrified and sort of sulky, or stressed about how much work there is for me to do, to realise this idea that I’ve come up with. 

NM: I really get that. I’ve had to learn to let painting do me, more than me do it. You spend a lot of time composing in preparation of painting. I find that very interesting. Why and how do you do that? 

SoL: My earliest experiences of painting were by my uncle, who painted from the age of 17 to 25 but never pursued a career as an artist or exhibited – they were all essentially surrealist paintings on the walls in my house growing up. My family are not huge on talking about emotions, but when I looked at his paintings, I’d always be trying to read into them and get some kind of clue to an emotional state, or some meaning or insight as to what was happening in the family, or some sort of secret. So, when I come up with a composition, part of it is trying to give someone the feeling that something has happened before or is going to happen after or that there’s a little secret. I like paintings that strike my imagination. 

NM: Do you literally embed meaning and secrets in them?

SoL: I do yeah, a bit – the idea that someone could read something into it that isn’t there. On one hand, I’m trying to illustrate it and on the other, I’m trying to conceal something in it. 

NM: I don’t often like illustration in painting, but I really admire the dangerous path you tread with narrative in your work. 

SoL: I know when I’m bad, I’m really bad. Because of this, I feel I can miss by a long way. 

NM: Missing is good; there are new ways forward with everything, including painting. Wasn’t this conversation supposed to be about our materials?

SoL: Ah yes, so is there a colour you can’t paint without?

NM: Probably Old Holland’s Scheveningen Purple-Brown, often mixed with Old Holland Blue Deep and flesh ochres. In portraiture, it is to do with the recesses of the face, like nostrils or ear holes – it helps make flesh that’s alive but disappearing. And for you?

SoL: Similar in painting flesh. It’s the Quinacridone Gold-Brown from Williamsburg. I use it for the bits that aren’t shadow but don’t hit the light and I mix it a lot with the Payne’s Grey-Violet by Williamsburg too, which is a similar combination to the ones that you use, actually.

Salvatore of Lucan’s new solo show opens at Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin, on 31 March. 

@salvatoreoflucan

Nick Miller’s two-person show with Patrick Hall opens at Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin, on 9 June, followed by ‘Still Nature’ at Art Space Gallery, London, in 

September.

nickmiller.ie

@nickmiller_studio

Source

RACHEL MCINTYRE INTERVIEWS ELEANOR MCCAUGHEY AND RICHARD PROFFITT ABOUT THEIR EXHIBITION IN EAST WALL, DUBLIN.

Rachel McIntyre: Your two-person exhibition, ‘What Remains of This Place?’ was temporarily installed around East Wall, Dublin in November. I’m interested in why this area was chosen, beyond the necessity of staying 5km from home.

Richard Proffitt: Although close to the city centre, East Wall is only recently seeing the effects of gentrification. It retains an essence of what old Dublin would have been like, but there’s a slight infiltration of newcomers, and more visibly, corporations like Facebook. But what I’ve found interesting since the onset of the pandemic is how the influence of these changes has waned, as though the area is returning to itself. I felt I was able to see the place again and to take in its texture.

RM: The works were situated in forgotten edges, where the old and new are patchily knitted together. Motifs and patterns in your works were echoed in the environmental backdrops – the graffiti, the damp patches on pebbledash or brickwork walls, the weeds poking through. It allowed the works to blend in, becoming at home in their surroundings. Eleanor, your painting Wizard comes to mind.

Eleanor McCaughey: I first expected to situate my work in the IFSC, so began taking photographs there. Although the buildings are mostly empty, there are still security guards patrolling. You’re being watched, which is eerie in such an abandoned setting. There had been so much noise, construction and energy from the many large building complexes, it was never quiet, never dark. The sudden silence during lockdown was unsettling. I began setting my works up on pristine picnic benches outside office developments but immediately it didn’t work. Like Richard mentioned, the texture in the older part of the neighbourhood was perfect.

RM: Richard, I’m also thinking of your work, Daydreamin’ Dude / If I Was in L.A. – a shrine-like installation with sound, documented through video as well as photographs. Electrical cables run along the wall; there’s a sense of ambiguity as to what is part of the artwork and what isn’t.

RP: Yes, that was deliberate. That piece was installed in a derelict loading bay that Eleanor and I came across. There’s so much construction in various stages of completion and for purely practical reasons this lent itself to the installations. It’s very easy and quick to add a nail and hang work from makeshift wooden hoardings.

EM: When I took my work out of the studio, it looked so different. I had felt there was a sense of absurdity to the sculptures and paintings, but this completely changed in this new context, which grounded them and brought out their earthly qualities.

RM: You both often create structures to house your works, either intrinsic to them or that contain them in some way. Did this experience feel very different?

RP: I’m comfortable with showing my work in non-traditional spaces. What I look forward to is not trying to fit the work in but adapting the work to the environment. I want it to blend in and become part of its surroundings, like the objects had gathered or built up over time.

EM: It was very exciting. In my studio, I meticulously set everything up – lighting, reflective backgrounds and specific material. This experience made me think about my work differently and to reconsider the extent to which this is necessary.

RP: It was beneficial, especially now that most exhibitions are being cancelled or postponed. The process of installing allows me a sense of distance from the work that is impossible in the studio. There, my peripheral vision is clouded by the other artworks and materials I have around.

RM: Some of the installations reminded me of roadside shrines or memorials. Was this at all a response to the ongoing pandemic? Could you both speak about spirituality in your work?

EM: It’s interesting, my family are religious and their response to the pandemic is to wonder why this is happening, which does lead me to consider it from that angle too. One of my installations, If there is something, a vase sculpture with plastic flowers, comes to mind. I had been thinking about the ritual of those type of memorials, like bouquets tied to lampposts. I often think about the value we assign to objects.

RP: I used to have a collection of photographs of desert shrines in Mexico, built in the middle of nowhere. References to spirituality have been embedded in my work for so long, I’m not sure where they come from anymore. I’ve always been interested in attributing meaning to everyday objects, often using items I find while walking, like using broken old earphone cables to make a dreamcatcher.

RM: Returning to the start of the project now, where did the title come from?

RP: For some time, I’ve toyed with the idea of an outdoor exhibition, with a set of coordinates as invitation. Then, in October, Eleanor posted one of her sculptures on Instagram, which looks like a leg with a tealight balanced on the foot. As soon as I saw it, I thought we should work together on a two-person exhibition. Standing in my back garden, I immediately sent her a message with the title of the show. I was thinking not only about what will happen when we emerge from the pandemic, but also how East Wall itself might change.

EM: When you messaged me, I had just finished watching the documentary, Notes on Rave in Dublin, about the dance scene in the city in the 1990s and early 2000s. After seeing footage of illegal raves in the deserted docklands, just around the corner, the title – especially posed as a question – really resonated.

‘What Remains of This Place?’ unfolded on Instagram from 9 – 15 November 2020.
@whatremainsofthisplace

Rachel McIntyre is Gallery Manager at The Douglas Hyde Gallery. Her background is in the history of art and she has written about art for the gallery and independently.

Source

John Rainey: In your latest series, the ‘Breakdown Works’, the stone we know from your previous sculptures interacts with a cast of other material characters, creating conversations between the precious and the industrial, the found and the intentionally sculpted. How were the material elements for this work sourced?

Kevin Francis Gray: I made some very clear decisions around the ‘Breakdown Works’, for example, that I wasn’t going to be taking any stone from the mountain. Having worked in Italy for so long and seeing the scars that the quarries are creating in nature, it’s really brutal. As a result, I discovered a lot of new stones, because I was buying old stone that had been lying in the back of marble yards for decades. That’s how I started using Irish stone as well. I’d been in contact with a few quarries in Ireland, and one of the stones I got was a Kilkenny marble. Similarly, all of the wood that I chose was wood that was dying or had died, or was found in the back of wood yards. Working in this way tied an environmental aspect into the idea of breakdown.

JR: The work in your two concurrent shows – at Museo Stefano Bardini in Florence and Pace Gallery in London – have at least in part been developed amid global uncertainty and restrictions. How have these conditions shaped the exhibitions? 

KFG: Getting lost in the material became a means of controlling my internal anxiety about what was going on outside the studio. It gave me the freedom and the ability to experiment. I was paring down my practice, using whatever I could get my hands on – that raw material. The nucleus of the idea for the ‘Breakdown Works’ started before the pandemic – it was very much to do with my own personal breakdown, the age I am in my life, the shift into mid-life. It was a very intrapersonal experience, and then what happened globally became very salient. The idea around societal breakdown became really key. For years I’ve been trying to build enough confidence as an artist to move away from realism. It takes time but I feel like the bravery and loss of control around the ‘Breakdown Works’ have guided me into that space where I’m able to engage confidently with abstraction – using the immediate, the unconsidered, the ready-made. Even the stool in my studio became part of one sculpture. In a way, making this type of object just as important as the other elements challenges the sorts of historical precedents put on stone sculpture.

JR: There are references to the celestial and Paganism in these new works. I wonder to what extent Ireland may influence your interest in these themes? 

KFG: Recently, I’ve been able to lean back in on my experiences of being an Irish artist – of where I was brought up and how that impacted on me. I have been using direct references to Irish Gods like Cáer and Óengus with certain pieces of work, but also a personal self-analysis of religion and Paganism, of being brought up a very strict Catholic before developing my own sense of religion that was more suitable for myself as a human being. The idea of young gods has really stuck with me over the last few years. Seeing my 14-year-old son’s strength but also that raw vulnerability – bringing that combination together, those subtleties are what I’m really trying to pull out with the ‘Breakdown Works’. I’m trying to create something that represents a young god, male or female, as a powerful marble sculpture that on closer examination is quite fragile and tense. 

JR: Many of them seem androgynous. 

KFG: Something that I feel I’ve tried to do with a lot of these works is to try and un-specify. Abstraction is beautiful for that; it allows you to take away a lot of those labels and identity markers.

JR: Your working of marble makes it appear almost malleable. You’re able to capture feelings of the ephemeral and the transitional in a material more associated with permanency and the eternal. 

KFG: I’m trying to take away that almost godly reverence that people have towards stone. I’ve been trying to break that down, and make it more raw, more layered and more brutal. People often talk about the stone; how it looks as if I’ve sculpted it with my hands. I’m aware of the skill that takes, and I’m comfortable with the fact that I can do that, but it’s more than just trickery, more than a gesture. It’s a deeper analysis of trying to represent something and make my experience of it more irreverent, less romanticised. 

JR: This seems especially pronounced in the show at Museo Stefano Bardini, where your works are sited amongst revered classical sculptures and historical artefacts. 

KFG: The Bardini show was about a new, irreverent presentation of stone and a comment on where the conversation in contemporary societies should be around stone. Of course, I felt an intense amount of intimidation beforehand because I was surrounded by masters – not only in the museum but also in every corner of Florence – but it felt like the time was right for those works to be shown in that context. Particularly with Young God Standing – rather than competing with the masters in there, I think that sculpture had an arrogance and a confidence. It was in control of its own position, in its own room, and it felt great to see the sculpture take on its own identity amongst the giants. 

JR: Many of your sculptures appear to be caught resisting specific shape-taking. The young god in the Bardini show is a good example of this. To what extent does the idea of resistance play out in your work?

KFG: I’ve always felt that as an artist it’s really important to resist, to push and pull, to develop and expand your practice. I’ve made some very conscious decisions throughout my career to try and resist lots of things – like commercial temptations, for example. For me, the ‘Breakdown Works’ are almost political in terms of their resistance and defiance – they are so raw and without constraints. It’s intertwined around this idea of the young god – the protest, the pushing back, the standing up, the confidence, but also that sensitivity, that tenderness and vulnerability. Resistance is a really lovely word because it can be a positive or a negative, passive or aggressive. I feel the ‘Breakdown Works’ really eat into that or discuss that. The idea of open, fluid resistance rather than a binary – that’s where I’d like the works to be. I’d like the works to be listening. 

John Rainey is a sculptor based in Belfast. He is a current studio member of Flax Art Studios. 

johnrainey.co.uk

Kevin Francis Gray is a London-based Irish sculptor, currently represented by Pace Gallery, London.

kevinfrancisgray.com

Two concurrent solo exhibitions of Gray’s work were presented at the Museo Stefano Bardini, Florence, Italy (2 June – 21 December 2020); and at Pace Gallery, 6 Burlington Gardens, London (25 November 2020 – 13 February 2021).

pacegallery.com

Source

JOYCE CRONIN INTERVIEWS LAURA NÍ FHLAIBHÍN ABOUT HER RECENT EXHIBITION IN LONDON. 

Laura Ní Fhlaibhín sifts stories, materials and traces associated with site, memory, myth, narratives of care and the casting of spells, creating complex but pithy material scenarios. These may incorporate condensed sculptural images, mineral deposits, instructional texts and formal gatherings of elements that serve also as ritual artefacts. Her recent body of work examines the nurturing relationship between her cousin Róisín, a teenager with autism, and Róisín’s horse, Rockie.

Joyce Cronin: I was first introduced to your work at your recent solo exhibition, ‘Roisín, Silver, Rockie’ at Palfrey Gallery in London (22 January – 22 February). Can you tell me about that particular work and how it came about? 

Laura Ní Fhlaibhín: It came about through an invitation from one of my tutors on the MFA at Goldsmiths, John Chilver, who co-directs the space. I became aware of the association with horses in that street. Palfrey are a breed of horse, bred in the middle ages to be particularly dainty for women! There was a possibility that there had been stables in number 8, which is the gallery.

JC: Had you already started working with your cousin, Róisín? Was that project already underway? 

LNF: No, it wasn’t, but the focus or preoccupation with working around horses had been on my mind through my MFA. Charred horse reins were an element of my MFA show, and I could see a visual language becoming evident. When I char them, they gnarl and curl and twist; the shapes can be quite calligraphic, symbols appear. I was interested in connecting these codes with ways of communicating – cross-species, interspecies or allegiances. I was witnessing and experiencing the support and the kinship between my cousin and horses in her equine therapy and saw her comfort and ease around horses.

JC: I am interested in the context of working at Palfrey and how you responded to that – both the space itself and the street’s history and its relevance to the work. I think the interesting thing is how you responded to the space internally but also externally. 

LNF: The gallery does feel quite stable-like – it’s a tall, unusually shaped and very compact space. I was imagining that a horse could potentially walk in and somehow lick the walls and gain nourishment with the horse lick all over it. Horse licks are salt blocks consisting of a range of vital minerals, and the horse can lick it when they please; usually in the stable or field. There’s a nod to the exterior space, in that a horse’s tail pokes through the letterbox, swishing around the street, owning the space. It’s a typical white cube space, but I’m playing with a different reading, as a space of nourishment. It commemorates the horses that were once there. The charred reins are placed there in remembrance and I imagine them as ghosts as well, reappearing on the walls. 

JC: Can you talk about your different approaches in the studio and in the gallery and how those processes overlap? What sort of changes take place, when you’re thinking about how people will encounter the work? 

LNF: I was working on the drawings in my studio and was excited and nervous as to how that would translate in the gallery. I hadn’t worked in that way before – immersive drawing. I played with the symbols and shapes and developed a language of codes that were based on my cousin’s drawings. I reproduced, enlarged and realigned them to different shapes. The large steel frame was constructed specifically for that space. I wanted to play with the architecture and the dimensions because I wanted to mirror the attention to detail in the space. For example, the steel round bar is the same material used in the door handles, and the frame is two metres squared, echoing the dimensions of the window. There are other points of connection in the work, playing with ideas of reappearances, ghosts or portals in various manifestations, and the potential communication that can exist.

JC: I think there’s something about the scale of that structure as well. Everything else is quite small and focused, making you aware of your own physicality, in the way that encountering a horse can. 

LNF: I was imagining the steel bar going across the frame might be where the horse would lean over the stable door. I was also thinking of movements through things, like a portal. It’s a bodily object, very physical – I enjoy that play between the miniature and a more giant scale. 

JC: There is an element of alchemy and ritual present in your work – where does this come from?

LNF: I’m interested in the apparatus and aftermath, as well as the whole function of a ritual as partly celebratory, but also protective and caring. During the MFA and being away from Ireland, I’ve become interested in rituals from my childhood, thinking about my grandparents in particular, and the West of Ireland rituals around interacting with land. This talismanic potential of materials – an alchemic reaction or fusing of various objects to bring a ritual of sorts into being – seems prevalent in my work. I enjoy exploring that in a gallery space, with some of my beliefs or memories becoming part of the language of exhibition-making. Ideas around care feature too, rituals of care and support. 

What’s passed down feels important. I use these little jesmonite eggs a lot; my grandad was convinced of eggs’ double function, benevolent and malevolent – they can protect the land but are also curse. I placed some eggs in the Palfrey letterbox as a barrier, as a seal to protect the space. Alongside the horsehair, there’s this kind of affinity, a braiding together of ways of being. My grandad grew up in a blacksmith’s in Aughrim, County Galway – the site of the bloodiest battle in Ireland. There is a belief in the weight and history of the land; this was very much shared by my grandfather. He passed on beliefs in fairies, ghosts and spirits, which I view as an animist way of being in the world, while also offering us ways of living more ecologically and harmoniously. 

JC: You are creating your own language and your own relationship to the places in which you are showing your work. In a sense, you’re carrying on inherited traditions in your own way. This leads on to storytelling in your work, which is also quite an Irish trait, in terms of an oral tradition. Yet sculpturally, the work manifests in the relationship between objects and their materiality. How do these formal aspects interrelate? 

LNF: As the exhibition continued, you could see crystal growths appearing on the walls, which hadn’t happened in my studio. I guess that was to do with the temperature, and a range of things that synergise to cause transformation and magic! The horse braid was presented in my Nana’s steel bowl, with the saltlick in it, turning crystalline very slowly. I’m displaying gratitude towards horses for supporting my cousin; I’m feeding them and telling that story. 

JC: In another space, perhaps something else could have happened, depending on the heat, time of year or different kind of light? 

LNF: Yeah, it’s an unknown and open-ended process – you don’t know exactly what will happen. I’m already thinking of the possibilities for outdoor drawings and wondering what the effects of the elements would be on the minerals, especially on the copper, and the process of oxidisation.

Joyce Cronin was born in Dublin and lives and works in London where she is Co-Director of The Bower.
thebower.org.uk

Laura Ní Fhlaibhín is an artist from Wexford, who works there and in London. 
lauranifhlaibhin.com

Feature Image: Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, Spirited rail, 2020, stainless steel, charred horse reins, wheels, 200 cm² frame; photograph by Damian Griffiths, © Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, courtesy of Palfrey Gallery, London

Source

AVRIL CORROON INTERVIEWS KATHY PRENDERGAST IN HER LONDON STUDIO. 

Kathy Prendergast: I know you’re here to interview me, but can you tell me about your work as well? I’m curious.

Avril Corroon: I work with quite a varied mix of mediums, which have been changing more frequently since going through the MFA programme at Goldsmiths. My last major project, called ‘Spoiled Spores’, was presented at The LAB Gallery (14 November 2019 – 9 January 2020). I took swabs of mould from rental accommodation, including my own, and I used these samples to make around 30 large artisanal cheeses, which I named after the participating tenants. They have individual colours, textures and scents, and are quite sick, abject bodies. I also made a film which documents the provenance of these moulds and the cheese-making process, with menus outlining rental fees and ingredients lists, which includes black mould.

KP: Wow… Black mould is very toxic and dangerous stuff. So, is food a big thing in your work?

AC: Sometimes. I’ve done a few other works that include food, but they’re used to reference class dynamics and labour politics. For Latte Art, I used hidden-camera footage of me serving in a gallery café – effectively working on the edge of a world I aspire towards.

KP: Do you mean operating as a service worker, while not being recognised by the art world? 

AC: Yes. I documented the kitchen areas, showing really common behind-the-scenes practices, such as eating leftovers because you can’t bear food waste or because you don’t have time for a proper break. I’m interested in those kinds of backstage tactics. Can you discuss your approach towards found materials? Often, you’re altering the surface through a system of erasure – why is that?

KP: Most recently, my work has focused on using atlases and maps as raw material. In the ‘90s, my ‘City Drawings’ were pencil drawings on paper, transferred from maps of cities. Since then, I’ve been using actual atlases and maps as the support, working directly onto their surfaces. As you can see on my walls here, I’m using a road atlas at the moment and thinking about roads as a metaphor. There is a road atlas of Minnesota which I’ve become slightly obsessed with, in particular the flat areas and regular grids. I just started colouring them in different configurations, to see what different patterns the roads can make, finding a system to reveal something about us in the world. I’m doing a very long linear project called ‘Road Trip’, working on those maps. I do have some rules – like highlighting every square mile with black infill, which looks like a form of coding. Conceptually, I do like the idea of a road atlas, because you bring it with you when you’re travelling, so the map travels the roads it contains. I’m also thinking about the human impressions we leave on the landscape.

AC: I was wondering how the intensity of current politics affects your work? From what I’ve seen, you leave the work quite open-ended, so that people can make their own interpretations. Is this non-didactic approach important to you? 

KP: Although politics do affect me, I wouldn’t want my work to be seen solely from a political point of view; more a human perspective. Migration, identity, loss – all those things have affected me really strongly throughout my career. I started the ‘Atlas’ series when I was messing with Google Earth. The toolbox at the top shows the stars above your location, and I thought I would try that out on a map, blocking out everything but the white dots. I use one particular brand of maps because of their white borders which have adjacent places written in red – I do think about borders a lot. When the maps are blacked out and only the dots remain, they show how we’ve historically moved across the landscape settlements; how a city evolves and grows over time. Those ‘stars’ contain all that history. After I made lots of Black Mapworks for the walls, I decided to make a whole atlas that could spread out. I made 100 map works of an opened motoring atlas – which become 200 pages when you open them up – containing the whole of Europe. When displayed on tables, people can walk through, as if navigating these invisible European roads. 

AC: Some of your works seem to resonate with current anxieties around climate change. Are there references to places that might actually disappear?

KP: Yes. I have also worked with places that are named ‘Lost’, which is a common place name in America, possibly named by the pioneers who moved from East to West.  I also had reworked a compass with ‘LOST’ written on it, instead of NESW. I like the idea of this instrument, which is meant to help you find your way, making you realise that it can’t. Writers such as Rebecca Solnit have written about getting lost and the importance of not knowing where you are all of the time. 

AC: I guess this brings up your work, End of the Beginning II (1996)?

KP: I made End of the Beginning II at home. I remember asking my mum: “Can I have a bit of your hair for a piece of work?” So, there was her hair, my hair and hair from my son, who was probably about eight months at the time. It’s funny talking about that piece now, because my mum isn’t alive anymore, and I feel like when I made that work, I didn’t think about those kinds of things. But certainly, that piece was about continuity. Her hair is in the centre and my son’s is on the outside, so in theory, if he has children, their hair could be added, so it could continue forever – as with life. 

There’s quite a bit of my mum in other works, including a piece I made while studying at NCAD called Waiting (1992), which is in the Hugh Lane Gallery. At home we had photographs of my mum and dad when they were in their 20s. They were both working in the Dublin Corporation and that’s where they met. In those days when a woman got married, she could no longer work. My mum was really smart. She got something like tenth in the country in the Leaving Cert and was the first in her family to complete secondary school education. Her parents couldn’t afford to send her to university, so she went to work in Dublin Corporation. She said that they were the best three years of her life. In the photo, my parents were the same age I was, when studying in NCAD in 1979. For me as a 20-year-old in the late-70s, feminism was a big part of our thinking, and I was conscious that my mother ended up as a housewife because she couldn’t work. 

AC: What was it like being included in a museum collection while still in art college?

KP: I do think I was very lucky. It was kind of extraordinary times. I made that piece for my NCAD degree show and then put it in the ‘Irish Exhibition of Living Art’. I was working in RTÉ, training as a cameraman, and then I got a phone call from the head of the college, Campbell Bruce. He said: “There’s something going on about that piece – you need to ring them up and tell them how much it is, better do it now”. So, I rang them from a public payphone in RTÉ. I didn’t even know how to price the work – no one knew in those days – it was really quite extraordinary, looking back on this now. 

AC: As an expanded discussion on Irish sculpture is the running theme of this issue, I was wondering how you feel about your work being described as ‘Irish sculpture’?

KP: I do always think of myself as an Irish artist, even though I’ve lived here in London longer than I’ve lived in Ireland. I feel a certain amount of loss from not living in Ireland, but I go back quite a lot and I’m still very close with a lot of my college peers in Dublin. I often wonder how visual arts organisations in Ireland feel about the Irish diaspora and how willing they are to acknowledge us as being part of Irish artistic culture. I do think there’s a gap there.

AC: Your work Mittens shows the effects of decay and time passing, yet it is still quite beautiful.

KP: Those Mittens were emotionally very loaded. They were knitted by someone and given to me as a present, when one of my children was born. They were so beautiful I put them away, and when I found them, they were barely holding together from the moths. So, I took a photograph before I moved them, because they’d disintegrated. I was trying to hold onto some semblance of them.

AC: I guess I’m attracted to that because when I’m dealing with mould and different organic materials in the home, I’m also looking at how decomposing has its own aesthetic impression, as it takes away the look of the thing it’s spoiling.

KP: And also, there’s a time element which you’ve no control over, and that is important as well. I do have to ask you; did you have a cheese tasting session?

AC: Oh no, they’re poison!

Avril Corroon is a visual artist working between Westmeath and London. She is currently on residency at ACME Studios with the Goldsmiths MFA Award.
avrilcorroon.com

Kathy Prendergast is a London based Irish artist who represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 1995, where she won the Silver Lion Best Young Artist Award for her ‘City Drawings’ project.
kerlingallery.com

Feature Image: Kathy Prendergast, Atlas 4, SLIGO-BELFAST, 2017, AA Road Atlas of Europe, ink, 30.5 × 43.5 × 1 cm; courtesy of the artist and Kerlin Gallery.

Source

SAM KEOGH AND ANNE TALLENTIRE DISCUSS ABSURDITY, SECURITY AND AGENCY. 

Sam Keogh: Well, to prepare for our conversation, I was reminding myself of some of your work. I looked at the series of ‘Manifesto’ works you made with John Seth, where you collect things from the street and bring them to the studio and clean and arrange those found things, whilst documenting the process. Then you present the documentation with the arrangement of objects in the gallery space. And it made me think – and I don’t mean this in a derisory way – this is absurd. Because what you’re doing is trying to make meaning from scratch, which has to begin with meaninglessness. I feel that whenever I begin something in the studio, that kind of hollow feeling of absurdity. But then I’ll finally do something, and then do something else to that thing and eventually something unexpected will happen, some phenomenon which is pleasurable to manipulate and eventually through that manipulation meaning starts to blossom. But in the beginning, it always feels ridiculous or absurd!

Anne Tallentire: It does. I think it is about being engaged with a process of looking for something that you can recognise as being meaningful to an ongoing internal conversation or a set of problems or ideas. For me this process requires in part going into a kind of temporary amnesia or blindness that is then necessary to recover from, to find something not ever fully understood. A folly perhaps. You don’t want what you find to be too familiar, because if too familiar it can lead to mindless repetition. So, this thing that is recognised has also to be uncomfortable, strange and unknown. It is a slightly bizarre activity, yes.

I was in Belfast over the last few days researching for work that will be in a show there this coming summer. I’m originally from the north, so Belfast is familiar, but my relationship to the city has always been in relation to other people, my family or teaching duties. I’ve seldom made or shown work there, so I knew this would take me on a kind of fool’s errand that would necessitate recalibrating my past and present. So, as I often do when arriving to work in a place I don’t know, I walked around parts of the city to places I did not know, engaging a process of estrangement, that enabled me to think and experience the place differently. It was amazing. 

SK: What happened? 

AT: Well, I knew I wanted to find sites earmarked for or in various states development. Wasteland places. By total chance, I was given a room at the back of the hotel I stayed in, near the city centre, that overlooked a large derelict site. In the centre of the site, there was a black stain I assumed to be the remains of a 12th July bonfire. I then noticed along one edge a row of pushed over, temporary metal fencing panels standing in the most extraordinary configurations. It’s the kind of metal fencing you see at music festivals which sit in concrete blocks. This particular fence had been reinforced at key points with two more sections joining to form a triangle. But large sections had been pushed over, upended.

Simply, it was fencing, upended in that particular way, but it was doing something I recognised but had never seen before. I trespassed into the space, to take some photographs. Not long after an alarm began to beep which was, I think, triggered by a surveillance camera. Not wanting to deal with having to explain my presence, I walked back over the fallen section I had come across. When I came back a few hours later, it was all mended. All the fences were upright again. So, this may never go anywhere, it may never become anything. On the other hand, what I describe here is to do with a familiar process. What I recognised in this were certain tropes that have been used in my practice before. The kind of processes that I on my own, and when with John, have used for many years. Going to a place, throwing a dice more or less metaphorically, to take ourselves out of something that’s already prescribed and then looking for something with which to question what that thing was. 

SK: I’ve been thinking about fencing too. There’s another type of fencing which stretches for a number of kilometers along the entrance of the Eurotunnel in Calais called ‘Eurofencing’. I read the webpage of the company who make the fencing and the language they use to describe it is so calculated. They only really describe its formal qualities, the durability of its materials, how easy it is to install. The closest they get to invoking an image of a human in relation to the fence is when they describe the ‘aperture’ or the space between the metal rods, as too small to let fingers or toes get a purchase – so it can’t be climbed. But to be a deterrent there needs to be something in excess of function, it needs to spill into being a sign. So, whilst it does physically prevent people getting into the tunnel, its main function is to produce an image of itself. On one side, on our side, as people who have the ‘correct’ passports, it’s to produce an image of ‘something being done’ which both assuages and produces another image – a racist of ‘floods’, ‘hordes’ or ‘swarms’ of refugees coming into Europe. And on the other side of the fence, it’s to produce an image of the impossibility of getting to the other side. 

AT: So, there is no doubt that you cannot penetrate this, that it’s fool proof. 

SK: Yeah, and also the reason these are fences rather than walls is because you can see through a fence with a security camera. So if you’re trying to traverse it, it threatens you being seen by the police and not being able to hide, even if you do manage to get a purchase on the aperture (which is a word we’d be more familiar with as a part of a camera!) So, it has all of these aspects which are about a kind of carceral visibility, and its primary function is as a visual deterrent. But to be that, it needs to be in excess of its function to physically keep people off the tracks, a kind of maze of walls that you can’t hide behind. But to serve that meta-function, there has to be this ridiculous or absurd amount of fences. 

AT: In Belfast, I also noticed protective panels around pavement scaffolding. One in particular grabbed my attention, because it was so high-end and utterly overdesigned, paradoxically named ‘layer protect system’. This ‘protect system’ was doing two things; it was protecting people from walking into scratchy and sharp scaffolding but more so, it was protecting the status of the building. It looked like a section of a temporary wall, but it had an exaggerated level of durability that could be read as a fence but more so as something that was leaning towards a logic-related infrastructure. It had a strange abject quality in it’s over clean gleaming materiality. A polished and impenetrable finish which spoke to a whole other agenda related to ‘fencing’ that I hadn’t encountered before. 

SK: It’s kind of like the metal sheets they put on doors and windows of empty buildings to stop squatters moving in. Just a smooth seamless surface, without even a crack to jimmy a crowbar into.

AT: Yes, unlike the fencing that was upended, the disrupted open fencing. There it struck me that what had occurred was a wilful act of making something, not to do with the thing itself, but more an act of sheer pleasure that communicated something of that time and place. Through manipulating those objects the people involved were taking decisions not so far from what we (as artists) take too. This is about acknowledging the creative agency which draws our activity very close to the activity of the street. I’m very interested in that; in how people who are not thinking through the lens of art – any kind of sculptural activity or language associated with visual culture – do things that are extraordinarily informed about how to disrupt, or how to add to or subtract from daily life. 

SK: Yeah, and what do you think informs those decisions? You think it’s to do with pleasure?

AT: I think there’s an element of that. Yeah, that comes into it. Arrangement of stuff in the world is a kind of activity that most people engage with. Or trying to have some sort of agency in relation to the physical world to speak to the world we live in. 

SK: A kind of unalienated work. Which is what I would say, is the most open definition of what an artist is. 

AT: Yes. I think that’s a wonderful description.

Sam Keogh is an artist based between London and County Wicklow. His exhibition, ‘Knotworm’, runs until 1 March at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris. Upcoming exhibitions include ‘Outer Heaven’ at Southwark Park Galleries, London, in June 2020.
samkeogh.net

Anne Tallentire was born in Northern Ireland and lives and works in London. She was a recipient of the 2018 Paul Hamlyn Foundation Awards for Artists and was on the selection panel for the 39th EVA International ‘Platform Commissions’. A major solo exhibition of recent work will run at The MAC in Belfast from August to November 2020.
annetallentire.info

Feature Image: Anne Tallentire, photographic research, image on studio wall, A4, relating to midstep_8 site one (working title) 2020; courtesy the artist.

Source

AOIBHEANN GREENAN TALKS TO ANDREW KEARNEY ABOUT THE EVOLUTION OF HIS WORK. 

Aoibheann Greenan: One of the first things that strikes me about your work is your use of kinetic technologies. When did your interest in kinetics begin?

Andrew Kearney: As an MA Sculpture student at Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, in 1991, I had a large studio space which paired up with meeting other international students, lecturing artists and great technicians. Being able to use dedicated workshops expanded my approach to the work I was developing. Up until then, most of my work lived on walls. But from this point on, it could become more physically engaged with the whole space it inhabited. For me, exploring movement was the way of expressing this newfound freedom. My brother, Erik, was also living in London at this time. He’s an electronic engineer. This proximity allowed us to discuss new technologies and for me to explore their expressive qualities in my practice.

AG: Looking back at one of your earliest works – Untitled (1992) at Serpentine Gallery, London – many of the concerns that have persisted throughout your practice are already visible, notably the theme of surveillance. Can you describe your thinking behind that piece?

AK: In Ireland, at the time of the ‘Troubles’, we grew up aware of surveillance and movement control. When crossing over the border from the south to the north, you encountered large concrete and galvanised steel structures that defined a threshold. Later on, being an Irish immigrant in London, I experienced first-hand the reticence of people and became aware of cameras watching; at this time there was a heightened fear of IRA bombing in the financial district. The castle-like structure of Untitled (1992) reflected on these earlier experiences of what you are or are not allowed to access, and of my personal experience as a queer man in an unfamiliar environment. The castle’s skin was made-up of the same familiar corrugated galvanised material, but this time put together without showing any external fixings, completely impenetrable. The walls were mounted on circular steel tracks, so that the structure could rotate randomly, blocking or unblocking the space that the visitors could occupy. Shifting control from the viewer to the artwork, people could look up to the ambiguous pink structure inside the castle’s walls but could not gain any understanding of what it was intended for. 

AG: Quite often your works integrate sensors that harness immaterial processes like sound or movement. In the case of Silence (2001/10), for example, you positioned a microphone outside Limerick City Gallery, which converted street noise into a light and sound composition within an inflatable orb in the gallery. What is the intention behind these translational gestures?

AK: These localised everyday phenomena have become a way of introducing unpredictable rhythms within the process of my art making. Live sound feeds, combined with lux levels, are used to score and introduce new synthesis within a given space, making the familiar unfamiliar. The same set of objects within different venues could change with the introduction of new and local rhythms. Material and immaterial compositions, developed in tandem, have become a fundamental part of my methodology.

AG: I’ve noticed that structural supports are generally hidden in your work. Suspended forms appear to be floating, lending them an autonomous presence. It makes me think about the way new technologies increasingly conceal the medium, to produce a heightened sense of immediacy. Is this something that informs your work?

AK: Yes, I’m very aware of the role of the audience or, rather, how I perceive their role to be, as unwilling volunteers within a sonic, lux happening. With Skylum (2012) in Toronto, for example, no supports were visible. All you could see was this 16-metre elliptical inflatable in the space. The work’s score used 100 sonic samples; music, spoken languages, song and animal sounds responded to the movement of the audience, which triggered the ever-changing sequence of sound and light. The installation became a medium and the activity below an integral part of the artwork. Nonetheless, the work conceals how this is achieved, heightening the ambiguity between the I and the other; between the artist and the public.

AG: These inflatables feature prominently in your work, along with other synthetics, such as PVC, aluminium and rubber. What is it about these materials that you’re drawn to?

AK: I’ve gone through phases with materials. I have made luminous inflatables with internal light-sources; silver foil inflatables, reflecting its ever-changing surroundings; now I’ve started making black orbs that are non-reflective, totally light absorbent membranes. They have similar connotations of weather balloons, listening stations, material fetishism and the blackness of outer space. Man landing on the moon, new ideas of modernity, science fiction’s representation and influence on our day-to-day has always intrigued me; that sense of otherness, that journeying beyond, out of oneself or from one place to another. Growing up, synthetic foods and fabrics were seen as a positive realisation of the new future we were entering into. Still nowadays these manmade materials allude to industrial processes, research and functionality that counteracts the historical character of the spaces that my work is often shown in. For me, the art of making an object always merges with the architectural space it inhabits, triggering various means and processes. Materials have their own inherent nature and histories. It is the act of making, that physical interaction with the material, in my case dovetailing new technologies with older traditional work processes, which is explored to reveal new narratives within the work and the place it is in.

AG: Can you talk about the relationship between place and memory in your work?

AK: Spaces have always been an important part of my practice, a place of new beginnings! Early on in my career, buildings became an intricate part of that making process. This led to ideas around the work inhabiting an environment, developing relationships within those places and their histories. My installations are developed within the context of scale, identity, sexuality, local history, location and the process of materials.

AG: This relates very much to the research project you carried out in Middlesex University, titled Spaces Buildings Make (2005–08), in which you proposed a more embodied approach to architectural historiography. Can you describe the impetus behind this research and how it has informed the work you’ve made since?

AK: These years were spent investigating ideas around the nature of the university and its intended usage, the architect’s methodologies and how the space was being developed for an ever-changing academic society. Sound scores were composed about building materials used in the construction of the campus; histories were documented and then randomly spoken through speakers in different parts of the building; historic images of the building’s construction were found in the library and reprinted on the refractory’s lampshades, images and text showing students and the building’s changing activities over the decades. Being part of an institution for three years allowed me time to develop interactions with the staff, students and building, which enriched the narrative of the work by layering up the current and the historical realities of the place, affecting and reflecting on our experience of those same everyday spaces within the university campus.

AG: There’s a sense that your research is physically permeating the fabric of reality, in a way that’s very different from more self-conscious modes of display, something that might entail a separation. Where do you situate the borders of your work?

AK: Beginning with the project A Long, Thin Thread (1997/98), which I did at Heathrow Airport, I became interested in making work that merged with a place’s architecture in such a way that you couldn’t tell where the artistic intervention began or ended. The brief for this project was to inhabit a corridor space in the airport, which I achieved by giving the artwork a sense of function, as it is perceived with most objects in an airport. I cast the elliptical corrugated wall surface of the space and mounted sixty black vacuum formed spheres, each containing digit counters linked to twin infra-red barrier beams which recorded the comings and goings of the passengers from Ireland to England over a period of a year. In other works, the borders are more tangible, for example in my recent exhibition at The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon, I used PVC industrial curtains to make the audience aware that they were crossing from one threshold to another.

Andrew Kearney is an Irish artist based in London. Through 2017 to 2019 his multifaceted installation, Mechanism, toured to Centre Culturel Irlandais (Paris), The Dock (Carrick-on-Shannon) and Crawford Art Gallery (Cork). 
andrewkearney.net

Aoibheann Greenan’s performance, installation and moving image works examine the mutability of cultural documents across time, probing their transformative potential in the present.
aoibheanngreenan.com

Feature Image: Andrew Kearney, Mechanism, 2019, installation view, Cork; photograph by Jed Niezgoda, courtesy of the artist.

Source