SARA BAUME INTERVIEWS DOROTHY CROSS ABOUT HEARTSHIP AND OTHER RECENT ARTWORKS.

In February 1999, the ghost of a small ship appeared in Scotsman’s Bay. It returned every night for three weeks, glowing on into dawn, fading as the hours passed and revealing itself, in daylight, to be a decommissioned lightship called Albatross, which had been covered in phosphorescent paint and moored to the spot. Its protracted presence off the coast of Dún Laoghaire has since become one of the defining works of contemporary Irish art, as well as the stuff of urban folklore.

Twenty years later, on a glittering afternoon in September 2019, a different kind of haunted ship set out from the naval base on Haulbowline Island and sailed hesitantly up the River Lee. Strange, soulful music radiated from its top deck and out across the waters and shores of Cork Harbour. It appeared to be carrying a sole passenger – a figure wrapped in a sparkling foil blanket sat huddled against the grey steel. Below deck and out of sight, a human heart in a lead box was being returned to the place from which it had been stolen over 150 years ago. On a quayside in the city, a crowd had gathered to meet it.

Dorothy Cross isn’t resistant to Heartship being called a sequel to Ghost Ship, though the two-decade anniversary is a coincidence. Mary Hickson, director of Cork’s Sounds from a Safe Harbour Festival, first approached her with the offer of the use of a naval ship in 2017, and the project had been planned for last year. “It has not been smooth,” Cross says. I meet the artist the morning after the event. She is in exuberant form, if not a little overwhelmed. Now that Heartship has finally been realised, Cross is keen to praise the hard work of Hickson, as well as the foresight of Captain Brian Fitzgerald of the Irish Navy, but she also despairs of “the calcification of imagination” that she encountered repeatedly along the way.

“I think of the project in terms of an isosceles triangle…” Cross says, “… the heart, the voice and then the ship as a container, a reliquary – this vessel which is about both protection and destruction.” The voice is that of Lisa Hannigan and the song, Prayer for the Dying, is drawn from her 2016 album, ‘At Swim’, though it has been rearranged, pared-back and coupled with the music of Alasdair Malloy playing the glass armonica. Cross knew she wanted music that “originated from water” and she had already worked with Malloy on her ‘jellyfish films’. As soon as she heard Hannigan’s song, with its agonising refrain of my heart / your heart, she was besotted – “… it just seemed to sum up everything I was trying to do.”

The stolen heart is a remarkable object – a blob of wizened, colourless gristle which has been nestled in tissue paper and encased in a lead box in the battered shape of a heart. It might be as much as five-hundred years old, but nothing is known of its owner, nor of the circumstances which led to its being placed in the crypt of what was once Christchurch and is now the Triskel Arts Centre. It was discovered in 1863 and later acquired by General Pitt Rivers – an English officer, ethnologist and archaeologist whose collection of artefacts ended up in the University of Oxford. Cross had first encountered the heart in an exhibition in the Wellcome Trust in London in 2007. “It’s been in my consciousness for a long time…” she says, “… that the last heart I might work with would be human, after the snakes, and then the shark.” But securing permission to borrow it was the main source of the project’s delay and she found herself exploring other options: “I contacted all of the universities where hundreds of hearts languish on shelves; I spoke to surgeons about maybe getting a diseased heart which had been taken out in a transplant. I knew I was dealing with sensitive territory, but at the same time it was with such great respect that we were going to be treating the organ.” She went back, again and again, to pursue the Christchurch heart specifically because of its origin, and her tenacity, in time, paid off.

The anonymous, Corkonian heart finally sailed home to its harbour. “Part of me wanted to take it and throw it in the River Lee…” Cross says, “… and its lead box would draw it right down to all the silt and rubbish on the bottom and that would be the end.” Instead it disembarked, safely, in the sunshine to a military salute. “There was no attempt at any point to theatricise the process. I didn’t want any fireworks or fakery, but only what the navy would normally do – their own daily rituals and theatrics.” The heart was taken directly to a glass case in The Glucksman, while simultaneously in Crawford Art Gallery, a short film (also entitled Heartship and made in collaboration with Alan Gilsenen) played on a loop in a darkened lecture hall. 

Cross is still surprised that the film came together in time for the festival. “In my head,” she says, “it had become too complex, but Alan had the faith that I lacked at that point.” The film is elegant and understated. A wind-buffeted Hannigan roams the decks, the camera following her but also wandering off, settling momentarily on the metal-ware and military equipment, panning across the ashen horizon. “We just went out into the harbour one day, as the navy did their routine manoeuvres,” Cross says. “At first I was afraid of Lisa’s beauty in a funny way – afraid that it would take away the essence of the project and turn it into a pop video. But I didn’t want to bring in the notion of the refugee too much either, to dress her in something which would suggest that. Essentially, I wanted to neutralise Lisa – to just have her voice as much as possible – the heart as the heart; the ship as the ship and Lisa as the energetic conduit between the whole thing, and that was what Alan managed to create.”

In spite of its understatement, it’s impossible to watch these scenes without calling to mind the Irish navy’s humanitarian role in the Mediterranean migrant crisis. When I ask the artist about politics, she speaks instead about her exhibition at Dublin’s Kerlin Gallery, ‘I dreamt I dwelt’ (6 September – 19 October). “It’s very much about human presence on the planet…” she insists, “… about demise and decay; time and extinction.” The exhibition presented three significant new sculptures. Listen Listen comprises a pair of carved marble pillows with a right and a left ear rising, as if sprouting, out of their indented centres. ROOM – “as in the verb…” Cross explains, “to give room…” – is an expanse of marble floor from which a small shark emerges; its position makes it difficult to tell whether it is struggling to the surface or being dragged down. “And then the third piece is quartz stones found on the beach which have been rolled by the water over centuries. Twenty-six of them have been carved with the letters of the Roman alphabet. It’s our language just thrown – scattered.” The artist’s choice of material is intrinsic to the meaning of the exhibition. “Marble should be humble and organic, but it has been glorified throughout history. There’s something unifying in its nature; there’s lots of subtraction but absolutely no addition; there’s the purity of it but also – it is so connected to death. Marble is both the tomb and the domestic dwelling; this is where the title comes from.” The title is from a line in a popular 19th-century aria: I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls, with vassals and serfs at my side. The line, like the exhibition, is full of darkness and longing.

On show concurrently at the Irish Museum Modern Art is another new marble sculpture by Cross, Everest Erratic, in the group exhibition, ‘Desire: A Revision from the 20th Century to the Digital Age’ (21 September 2019 – 22 March 2020). Speaking of this new work, she states: “I wanted to make a thing which was like a glacial erratic – a miniature representation of the pinnacle of our planet, which for most people is inaccessible, and yet at the same time, recently we’ve watched people queuing up to climb Mount Everest as if they were just waiting for a bus.” This kind of stirring contradiction has often been at the core of Cross’s work – her ability to marry elements which seem, at first, to be at odds has never waned throughout her career, now spanning thirty years. Each new work falls effortlessly into a continuum – branching from the last and stretching on – and yet when I ask her the dreaded question “what’s next?” she winces and insists that “… Heartship does feel like a bit of an ending. How can you ever get anything more powerful than those three elements? You can’t go past a human heart. It’s the essence of everything.” 

After our interview, she will go to The Glucksman and visit the stolen heart before driving back to Connemara. “Heartship is gone now…” she says, “… it’s never going to be seen again. Maybe it just becomes narrative.” Maybe, in twenty years, people will still be telling the story of how they were there on the quayside in Cork harbour on a sunlit autumn day, as a haunted ship sailed up.

Sara Baume is a writer based in West Cork. 

Based in Connemara, Dorothy Cross is one of Ireland’s leading contemporary artists. She is represented by Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, and Frith Street Gallery, London.

Heartship was presented as part of the biennale festival, Sounds from a Safe Harbour (10 – 15 September 2019). Heartship was made possible through support from Cork City Council, The Irish Naval Service, The Glucksman, UCC, Crawford Art Gallery and participating artists.

Feature Image:
Heart (unknown origin); image courtesy of General Pitt Rivers Museum.

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AILVE MCCORMACK INTERVIEWS TURNER PRIZE NOMINEE, TAI SHANI, ABOUT THE THEMES IN HER WORK.

I visited Tai Shani in her studio at Gasworks in south London, as she was preparing to send work off to Turner Contemporary, Margate, for the Turner Prize 2019 exhibition.¹ Her studio is a bright, light-filled space, ram-packed with objects and creations. Upon entering, I made my way past some giant cardboard pillars. Looking to my right, I noticed some dripping, jewel-like puddles, set out on a table in front of which sat a giant hand, cupping in its palm a tiny 3D-printed face. It’s like entering a deconstructed magical land, on the cusp of forming itself into something recognisable. It’s quite wonderful.

There is no set way to describe the work of Tai Shani. Her practice encompasses performance, installation, film and photography, but still, it’s hard to say exactly what to expect when encountering her work. Tai is friendly, softly spoken and very open about discussing her practice. She had an unconventional childhood; her parents were part of a counter-cultural left-wing collective called The Third Eye in Israel before she was born, and as a child she lived in a commune in Goa in India. She didn’t start formal school until she was 10 years old. 

Ailve McCormack: Do you feel that your upbringing has impacted your work?

Tai Shani: My work doesn’t necessarily come from having had an exotic or unconventional background; however, I’ve never had to battle with expectations, so in that regard it gave me space to explore my creative side. In terms of how it relates to my work, there are certain areas of interest that have emerged. Growing up in Goa, there were a lot of philosophical conversations that took place and I think my upbringing aligned me with a particular ethic of life – an experimental approach and an openness to the world.

AM: You’ve said before that you had a realisation of what you wanted to achieve as an artist when you were only 14 years old. What was it?

TS: It was mostly a feeling. I remember my mother gave me a postcard of a painting of Ophelia and I cried because of the sheer beauty of it. I remember thinking: “how is it possible to move another person in that way?” The impossibility of what’s created in an artwork at that particular moment is very fleeting but very powerful. Something about that was very appealing to me and on an abstract level, I wanted to be able to create this feeling in my work. 

AM: What is a typical day in the studio?

TS: I don’t have a traditional studio practice, in the sense that I don’t often come in without a reason. I don’t come to the studio to experiment. Most of the early work happens in my head, and when I come to the studio it’s a process of execution and production. My work happens in different ways and my ideas often emerge quite slowly. For example, a song or a particular tone can suddenly be very present and I will try to create something around that. Writing is often the first step and from these texts, images emerge, which I then translate into the objects I make.

AM: Your practice stretches across many media, including performance, film, installation, photography and text. Can you describe how all this works?

TS: For many years, performance was the main output of my work and within the performances there were texts. It’s funny, my early performances were all women casts, but I hadn’t realised at that stage that I was interested in feminism. I didn’t have the language and I wasn’t plugged into the discourse in a way that I could properly develop my ideas. I’ve long been interested in ideas of subjectivity and identification and about how temporary realities are constructed. Years ago, I started to create these characters for every new work I made – almost like a never-ending play. I also began to adapt existing texts. This is when I came across Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies (1405), which I find very interesting. I’m interested in the structure of the book; the fictional city with all these different characters. It enabled me to start writing my own characters and to populate my work with them.

AM: Many of these characters appear in your ongoing work, Dark Continent. Can you tell me a bit about that?

TS: ‘Dark Continent Productions’ is an ongoing feminist project, iterated through character-led installations, films, performances and experimental texts. It’s an expanded adaptation of The Book of the City of Ladies and takes the shape of an allegorical city of women. This city is populated by composite, symbolic protagonists that embody excess, and examine ‘feminine’ subjectivity and experience, as well as the potentials of a realism defined by excess and the irrational – qualities traditionally surrounding notions of ‘femininity’. This project articulates the feminine not as female, but as a kind of ‘radical otherness’ to any conception of the real. The Turner Prize exhibition will be the last time I show this work. A lot of the writing in it was very personal and even though it was ventriloquised through different characters, it was still an unravelling of my insides. It’s not that it was therapeutic, but a lot of it was looking back, kind of processing, and once I finished, I wanted to move on.

AM: Can you expand on this term, ‘radical otherness’?

TS: Over the course of making Dark Continent, my politics have changed. Definitely in the beginning, there was a big emphasis on giving a voice to a very interior feminine subjectivity, but it’s really not about women in a conventional gendered way. I was interested in otherness and writing about experiences that are linked to femininity, but this evolved into a post-patriarchal city, rather than a city of women, and that’s how I define it now. I’m not interested in it being a binary city at all. When I started the project, I began a journey in terms of my own engagement politically. The discovery of feminism, for me, was about finding a language to describe my experience and where I was situated in the world. Through research, I’ve become aware of a lot more discourse and my thinking has evolved. I’ve learnt a lot from intersectional feminism, and it’s changed how I see what this city or artwork could be. 

AM: Your upcoming show – ‘Tragodía’ at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios (20 December 2019 – 15 February 2020) – will be some people’s first encounter with your work. What would you say to them upon entering?

TS: I don’t think that people need to be prepared for my work in any way. This work is a bit different than Dark Continent, which draws on so many references. This is quite reference-free. It’s a tragedy and has a devastating tone. It’s also very much about love – about how love situates us, and the loss that’s completely implicit within that. 

Ailve McCormack is an arts producer and consultant who has recently returned to live and work in Dublin. She is founder and writer of the ongoing blog, From the Studio of… 
fromthestudioof.com

Tai Shani is an artist based in London and a tutor in Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art. Her multidisciplinary practice revolves around experimental narrative texts. 
taishani.com

Feature Image:
Tai Shani, DC Semiramis, installation view, Turner Prize 2019 at Turner Contemporary, Margate; photograph by David Levene, courtesy of Turner Contemporary.

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LILY CAHILL INTERVIEWS EIMEAR WALSHE ABOUT A RECENT COMMEMORATIVE PROJECT, COMMISSIONED BY ROSCOMMON COUNTY COUNCIL.

Eimear Walshe was awarded The Margaret Cousins Commission by Roscommon County Council, funded through Creative Ireland, to “celebrate and commemorate our extraordinary citizens through exceptional and unexpected visual art projects”¹. Margaret (‘Gretta’) Cousins (1878 – 1954), theosophist, nationalist and suffragist, was born in Boyle, County Roscommon. Eimear’s commission resulted in a radio play, I Know Why Women Cry at Weddings, and a supporting publication, Gretta. The publication was launched, along with a live immersive performance of the radio play, in the historic King House, Boyle, in August 2019. The publication will be available at the Dublin Art Book Fair at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios (21 November – 1 December).

Lily Cahill: You are a cross disciplinary artist working in sculpture, publishing, performances and lectures. When might it be best to sculpt and when might it be more suitable to talk? What kind of projects might dictate a certain kind of response?

Eimear Walshe: I have different relationships with all of these materials, and I am probably trying to never give any of those relationships a primary status or romanticise them. Speaking can be enjoyable, frightening, alienating, persuasive, politicising. Sculpting is generally expensive but extremely satisfying to watch people interact with. Publishing, especially online, is disorientating and exhilarating because you don’t know whether you’ll make some profound unexpected connection, or get doxxed. The kind of encounter you produce is the result of an estimation based on what your current priorities are, what resources are available, where the work is going, and what kind of exposure you can make or take at a given point in time. Getting to learn something along the way is always a significant priority. 

So, for this commission with Roscommon Arts Centre, curated by Linda Shevlin, working through radio and publishing made sense because of the kinds of local distribution and intimate encounter they allow for. Myself and Margaret Cousins are/were big ‘talkers’. And radio is kind of phantasmic. It felt like the right way to write and present a dialogue between myself and a historic person who has since passed away, and allow others to listen in. 

LC: How important is collaboration in the generative aspects of your work?

EW: To give you a sense of its role in this project, firstly my grandmother Maisie Gately wrote a text about the intricacies of arranged marriage in Roscommon pre-1950, and Dyuti Chakravarty – who is working on a PhD regarding feminist mobilisation in India and Ireland – wrote a more academic study of Margaret Cousin’s sexual politics. These were both hugely inspirational for my written contribution to the project, a radio play which creates a dialogue by citing from Margaret Cousin’s own writing, where her aspirations are being tested against the present moment. 

Then within the radio play, I worked with three other performers – Holly Moore, Phoebe Moore and Ailbhe Wakefield Drohan – respectively acting as Margaret Cousins, my interjecting grandmother, and the narrator. I was also very glad to get to work with the sound designer Christopher Steenson for the live and radio versions of the play, the graphic designer Paul Guinan, who designed the publication, and Sinead Kennedy, who played a live score on the fiddle for the performance in King House. So safe to say, the project wouldn’t exist at all without all these brilliant collaborators. 

LC: What led you to focus on marriage in the play, via the representation of Gretta’s archival thoughts on the matter, and your own – that “marriage ought to be outlawed rather than incentivised. If you really must be married, you should be willing to go to prison for it!”²? 

EW: Well the social, economic, labour, emotional, sexual and domestic politics of marriage pull up a lot of problems for me for sure. But I suppose I’ve treated the ‘Myself’ character in the play the same way as I’ve treated Margaret’s character, citing both of our own most emphatic politics accurately, but strategically, to create moments of dissonance and accord. She’s clearly got more wisdom and experience, but I’ve got the benefit of hindsight, and the even greater advantage of still being alive. So it felt important to make a kind of fool of Myself, by asserting that marriage and prison are alike – a fairly bold claim in context, considering I’ve experienced neither and Margaret had been through both (Margaret was imprisoned in Ireland, the UK and India for her suffragist and nationalist activism). 

Anyway, the suggestion in the play text about the criminalisation of marriage is mainly a polemical proposition and a paradox. If marriage and prisons are alike, and by implication should both be abolished, imprisonment then wouldn’t be available as a viable deterrent to marriage. Introducing this kind of boneheaded logic signals a point in the play where the sparring gets messy and disjointed; her dialogue becomes more sentimental, whilst Myself gets more zealous. 

LC: You were a Research Fellow at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, on the Deviant Practices Research Programme. Was Margaret Cousins a deviant? What drew you to her? 

EW: In 2017 and 2018 I ran public workshops in the museum. In the first case, the ‘deviance’ in question was queer and feminist separatisms in the arrangement (or self-organisation) of society and of knowledge. I had a critical-but-sympathetic attitude to this kind of deviance. Then in the more recent iteration, The Department of Sexual Revolution Studies, we looked at popular types of ‘deviant’ sexuality, such as cuckolding, dogging, or hook-ups, that are fuelled or fed by more complicated libidinal economies. The media we looked at and our role-play games kept highlighting this idea – deviance isn’t a morally stable category. There are so many sets of orthodoxies which, at every step, you’re aligning yourself with or distinguishing yourself from. 

So Margaret Cousins was deviant in a load of ways, and in other ways was very much a woman of her time and class background. For example, her sexual abstinence in marriage was strongly motivated by the will to preserve her personal freedom and resist reproductive imperatives. At the same time, her arrival at this position seemed grounded in a judgement of others, in her duography with her husband she writes: “I found myself looking on men and women as degraded by this demand of nature”.³ I’m not sure it’s for me to say where that definitively falls. Especially since what exactly this ‘demand of nature’ even constituted was materially different then, I imagine. 

Eimear Walshe is an artist from Longford.

Lily Cahill is an artist and writer based in Dublin. She is a co-editor of Critical Bastards Magazine. 

Notes 
¹ See: roscommonartscentre.ie
² Eimear Walshe, I Know Why Women Cry at Weddings, Gretta, p.101.
³ Margaret E. Cousins and James H. Cousins, We Two Together, (Madras: Ganesh & Co., 1950) p.108.

Feature Image:
Eimear Walshe, GRETTA, 2019, publication excerpt, designed by Paul Guinan.

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PÁDRAIG SPILLANE INTERVIEWS THREE VISUAL ARTISTS WORKING IN PHOTOGRAPHY.

Pádraig Spillane: Each of you maintains what could be described as a ‘hybrid’ practice, engaging with both analogue and digital photographic techniques, while pushing the parameters of image-making and display. Perhaps you could introduce some of your working methods?

Roseanne Lynch: I am living in Leipzig temporarily and making new work with the Bauhaus Foundation, Dessau. Initially this new work was a response to the Bauhaus school building (designed by Walter Gropius and built in 1926), as well as the Buildings and Materials Research Archive. However, the work has progressed. Now, I am bringing my practice to the principles of the Bauhaus school’s preliminary course, which emphasised starting anew and experimentating with materials. For this, my main medium is the photogram. I place objects on light sensitive paper in the darkroom, shining light onto them to create traces, rather than photographs of the objects. Geometrical forms and materials associated with the Bauhaus architecture and the medium of photography are my subject matter. I am looking to understand the grammar of materials. 

Darn Thorn: For me, the idea of hybrid practice means utilising particular media, as a means to issue a provocation or elicit a response in the viewer. My work often engages with historical subject matter: ideas of utopia and the impact of cultural trauma. By combining traditional and contemporary processes in my practice, ambiguity is created, where the image is neither ‘old’ nor ‘new’ but something less classifiable – perhaps even something mutant. Also, for this reason, the choice of media I employ changes with each project. 

Róisín White: I describe my practice as primarily lens-based, using archival and found photography, combined with collage and sculptural techniques. Photography is the jumping-off point – be it images I have created, or images I have found in magazines, online auctions, or in life situations. Each circumstance of finding sparks something different in the work. I’m never satisfied when it is ‘just a photograph’. I use collage to change and intensify the image. I reproduce images on different papers and materials, to see how they respond to these surfaces. I am looking for supports that give an interesting edge, once torn. I like to print multiples, rip them up, move and fix them. This intimate and tactile engagement with the materiality of images is vital to my working process. I am trying to expand my practice into sculpture, by incorporating photography with 3D objects, without it just being an image on an object. 

PS: Expanded photographic practice highlights how images act – how they are created and consumed; how they can be altered by networks of dissemination, storage and access; while also addressing the power structures that intersect via images. By taking on a performance-based role, images can transcend categories, or render them permeable. How do you approach image-making within these porous boundaries?

RL: My practice connects different territories of the medium. Although I work mainly in the darkroom, I am not puritanical with regard to analogue photography. I scan my negatives and photograms to make larger digital prints than my body physically allows. I use whatever strategies the work needs. My interest is in leaving questions unresolved, while allowing active exchange between work and viewer. For this reason, I have been printing on aluminum and using reflective surfaces in installations, which reference the viewer’s gaze and bring attention to the image structure in unexpected ways. The photographic print as sculptural object is another expansion I am working with. In the darkroom, I apply the standard fold of an architectural blueprint to a sheet of photo paper. I unfold the paper and light it with a torch. What is produced is a representation of itself. It is evidence of the situation of its own making, nothing else.

DT: I think it’s this very capacity – this other life that expanded practice creates for the image – that interests me. One power structure that can limit the remit of the image is the institutional categorisation of photography and what constitutes expanded practice. For example, there are excellent institutions and publications here in Ireland that focus on photography, but don’t really have the scope for moving image or installation content. Expanded practice can eschew the parameters of the conventional photographic series. It doesn’t always work in the photobook format and, in many cases, needs to be encountered as an installation. 

RW: I am benefiting from these permeable boundaries. However, I still dread that question: “so what kind of photography do you do?” My practice is so varied, it can be hard to explain as an ‘elevator pitch’. It is rarely a single image work. When I work on projects, a central pillar of research will inform the production of all of the artwork. I may work on sculptures for a few weeks, then go back to images, and see how they can cross-pollinate. This process-based approach to image-making is liberating and productive. While most of the work in the studio never sees the light of the gallery, or even my website, I enjoy being able to share snapshots of my process on Instagram. This has allowed me to test pieces and share behind-the-scenes shots with people from all over the world. Equally, I get insights into their work. While many things I share do end up being exhibited, there are versions of work that only survive on Instagram. I use the platform as a public notebook that is open to critique. I find it a useful way of keeping my peers in the loop with my practice.

PS: Images (and our relations to them) are entangled in a complex array of competing and affecting influences. Can you discuss how your work takes shape and manifests?

RL: My works offer viewers insights into my inquisitiveness regarding photographic processes. My interest in photograms is that they only concern themselves as a surface, object and material. A new approach to my photogram work is drawing geometric shapes with graphite onto the surface of exposed and processed semi-matt photographic paper. I then apply a wet paintbrush, changing the surface of the graphite and the print again. It reflects light differently, depending on the angle of view. Like my previous works printed directly onto aluminum, what a viewer sees depends on where they are positioned in relation to the work. 

DT: In the theatre, a director can make the decision to use a conventional stage, where the action happens behind a proscenium arch that operates as a frame for the drama. In this situation the audience is a passive observer. In photography, the parallel is the photobook or the framed image. As a display format, both can work well, mostly because they conform to our idea of what a photograph is. However, what if the work demands us to activate the audience, proposing that they have a different physical interaction? What if we consider the photographic image in three-dimensional space? I think that this has influenced me to use unconventional media – wallpaper, commercially-made vinyl banners, 3D glass etching, and so on – as a way of questioning our assumptions about what a photographic image can be.

RW: I have recently been working with the idea of how an image can be built. I design and construct sculptures, with the intention of photographing them, so that the photographs act like subjects or stage sets. I am interested in how this can create surreal and uncanny images. While the viewer may just see a ‘photograph’, what takes place with the image-making is so much more. Perhaps it is the physical labour required in creating an image that is rewarding; or knowing that a photograph consists of more than meets the eye. 

PS: Photographs are part of our everyday exchanges and interactions, produced frequently and habitually on devices that are almost part of us. How do you see your practice operating amidst this abundance of democratic image-making? 

RL: Photography is mostly understood as a medium for documenting the external world. However, I use the medium self-reflexively to express internal abstract feelings that come through making strategies – fragility, uncertainty and other emotional resonances. My practice investigates historical discourse, tracing the impact of photography on our interpretation of images, and on our lived experiences. I use the process of making photograms to disassemble the photographic process into its component parts: light, time, light sensitive surface and object. I am questioning how we perceive what we recognise, when we look at photographic surfaces. 

DT: By using the pseudonym, Darn Thorn, the idea of authorship in my work is automatically called into question. It’s a joke, made at my own expense, about the notion of ‘artist as singular genius’. Technology has made the production of high-resolution images easier; what was previously only possible with specialist equipment and professional training is now, at least theoretically, accessible to many. In our present moment, news media prefers amateur footage to the photo essay. In this context, I wonder what a conventional photo series has to say? Self-published photo books are a democratising phenomenon; but there is a tendency for the associated photo festivals and publications to lean towards an editorial approach. They often promote a type of photography that shares the continuity of narrative that we see in photojournalism. I respond to these considerations playfully, by making works that only survive one installation, or are too awkward to be easily sold. I want the audience to question what is going on. In this sense, there is a performative element to my practice. By making large-scale images of monumental architecture or landscapes, I’m proposing something slightly absurd to the viewer. These works carry a sense of drama and significance but are deliberately hard to decode. They invoke ideas of the sublime, partly invoked ironically: How can something so big and apparently significant be so hard to read? 

RW: My practice draws on pre-internet printed matter, from a time when images needed to be an object to exist. I use the abundance of printed images that exist from a past when we used to print our photos to share – or when we bought magazines, newspapers and illustrated encyclopaedias, to see other places and things from around the world. What attracts me to found images is the appeal of different aesthetics, as well as the lure of a time when I was not present – with these images becoming a repository of meaning. With the advent of camera phones, we are now collectively producing more images per day than we used to in a year. These digital images are so fragile. They exist on devices that are not built to last more than five years. I wonder how will we find images in twenty or fifty years’ time?

Roseanne Lynch is currently based in Leipzig making work for a group show at Ballarat International Foto Biennale, Australia, and a solo show at Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris.

Darn Thorn works with photography and installation. Recent exhibitions include EVA International 2018 and ‘2116’ at the Glucksman Gallery (Cork) and Broad Art Museum (USA). He teaches at CIT Crawford College of Art and Design.

Róisín White is a visual artist based in Dublin. She works in lens-based media and found materials, with recent exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland, and the Finnish Museum of Photography. 

Pádraig Spillane is an artist, curator and educator, teaching at CIT Crawford College of Art and Design. He works with photography, appropriation and object-based assemblages, with work featuring in an upcoming group show at The Complex, Dublin.

Featured Image: Darn Thorn, Aggiornamento, 2018, still from 16mm film, black & white; courtesy of the artist.

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CHRIS CLARKE INTERVIEWS RICHARD PROFFITT ABOUT HIS RECENT INSTALLATION FOR CORK MIDSUMMER FESTIVAL.

Chris Clarke: Your recent installation at University College Cork was entitled May the Moon Rise and the Sun Set. Can you tell me about this title and its significance to the project?
Richard Proffitt: I was thinking about this recently. The main overriding theme of the exhibition was this idea – both theoretically and physically for a viewer – of creating a space to where you can escape. It’s this immersive environment within which you can acquire some degree of solace. So, May the Moon Rise and the Sun Set was a kind of narrative device, suggesting that you can escape to a new place, a kind of non-descript landscape or environment that exists within your own consciousness or psyche, rather than a physical place. The title also recalled the idea of blessing a place, of wishing a place well for the future. 

CC: Your work mixes different materials, references, codes, symbols, and you’ve previously talked about spirituality and subcultures as informing this approach. What about the visitor who is unable to decipher some of these associations? Is that decoding important to you, or do you consider the general, overall effect to be the predominant feature here?
RP: There are always going to be references within my work to particular forms of subculture that I’m interested in, whose origins may not be initially apparent to the viewer. But I don’t envisage that as being a problem. I guess the viewer often acts as somebody who stumbles across something; they can then decide whether they want to piece the different elements together. These ideas might be familiar to some viewers – who might have a passing or a keen interest in some of the themes – but I think the more interesting stance is when a viewer approaches the work as if it is purely alien to them. It becomes this combination of codes, symbols, signs, slang, different types of language, that forms a puzzle.

CC: The use of sound played a significant part in the installation. Can you tell me about your process of composition and how you see its role in creating an immersive effect?
RP: My composition of music uses a technique that is very similar to the way in which I make visual work. It is a collage technique, using pieces of sound sourced from a variety of places, including old and degraded cassette tapes that are specifically selected and cut up, looped and distorted. In some instances, they’re unrecognisable from their original form, becoming ambient, trance-like snippets of music and voice, repetitions and drones. The sounds sourced from tape loops are often collaged with field recordings and improvised instrumentation, to create this fluid, mournful, drifting soundtrack that appears to be from a time period that couldn’t have occurred, and, in this way, it has certain hauntological characteristics. The combination of sound and lighting is crucial, in generating an atmosphere which leads to immersion. I think sound is the most emotionally immediate of the senses; it changes the place it inhabits instantly, while also altering a person’s perception of that place. It functions like the idea of a ghost – it’s there and it’s felt, but it’s rarely seen.

CC: The installation was situated in the very particular site of St. Vincent’s Church – which has been taken over by UCC’s Music Department – with the main installation happening in the basement space of O’Riada Hall. How did the context and the physical architecture of that building inform your choice of materials, effect and layout?
RP: I don’t know if this relates to the place itself, or if it comes from my experience of being immersed in Irish culture, but there were more references than usual to Christianity in that work. A lot of the stuff that drives the work is the accumulation of materials and often these are selected for their purely aesthetic condition. So, if you’re sourcing materials in Ireland that reflect upon or have reference to faith or belief, then 90% of the time, they’re going to be Christian in their appearance.

CC: But a very particular Christianity – there is that sense of ritual or mystery that seems inherent to Catholicism. 
RP: That’s something that I have become more interested in. I grew up as a lapsed Protestant, so I had no idea of the ritualistic aspects of Catholicism – the whole smoke and mirrors, the sense of theatre and occasion. So perhaps that fed into the work but, essentially, it was still embedded in this ongoing quest to restore elements of spirituality to contemporary art, in a way that doesn’t only use those references ironically. I’m not trying to make light or to joke about these things. It’s trying to emphasise their good qualities.

CC: There was a real sense of trajectory from the upstairs entrance and corridors, into this crypt-like basement, where the artwork was installed. Could you expand on this sense of passing over or descending into the work? Is this primarily a means of creating anticipation, or a ritual in its own right – a way of initiating the visitor into this ‘other’ space?
RP: Well, the building has this very strong sense of character anyway, but yes; the entrance doors and corridors, with the pattern-tiled flooring, gave way to a feeling of being in an ‘other’ place and I guess the visiting public are not usually privy to this building. It has a feeling that, once all the students and lecturers go home and it’s just the caretaker left, it could well be home to many spirits, returning to the building’s religious origins. But before entering the O’Riada Hall – a magnificent space in its own right, with its huge neo-gothic windows and ceiling arches – I think it was necessary for this gradual descent into the main space to occur. It relates to that feeling of discovery, of something being amiss, of a ritualistic entering of a tomb, if you will; a space with a very determined atmosphere, an experience encouraged by the presence of the sound work, which reverberated along the corridors leading to the O’Riada Hall.

CC: You mentioned the installation as something that the visitor surrenders or escapes to. Does this connect in any way with your strong interest in contemporary popular music and the specific sub-genres and subcultures around music?
RP: Subcultures become religions for a lot of people. They obtain or acquire their own set of rituals, beliefs, props or ways of dressing.

CC: There was a suggestion of entering something otherworldly, transcendental and beyond the prosaic rituals of everyday life. Was there a sense that the installation – as an enclave or a site of refuge – allowed one to step away from the mainstream world outside?
RP: I think that aspect of the work comes from the way that I personally expect to experience art. I want it to take me somewhere else; I want to feel like I’m somewhere else when I’m in an exhibition. Paintings can do that when you’re transfixed on a work – the same with sound or a video piece – and I think that all the best art does achieve that. It takes you away from where you’ve been, and you forget that you’ve just stepped in from the street. I want the viewer to experience something that they weren’t expecting or haven’t felt before, a way of experiencing objects or materials in a way uncommon to them. 

When I was young, I was always a child that would stupidly travel across the railway tracks, if it was the quickest route somewhere, or wander along the embankments, where you weren’t supposed to be and where you would see all kinds of discarded and forgotten things – I’ve always been like that. I was interested in the idea of great discoveries, like the tombs in Egypt and this idea that, behind this locked door, or behind this gate or fence, lies an entrance point to something that people have not experienced before or didn’t realise was happening. It’s like stepping into a cave in the south of France and discovering paintings from thousands of years ago or stumbling upon a burnt-out car on a wasteland. These are experiences that have always fascinated me.

Richard Proffitt’s installation, May the Moon Rise and the Sun Set, was curated by Chris Clarke for the Cork Midsummer Festival. It took place from 14 to 23 June at University College Cork’s Department of Music, Sunday’s Well, Cork.
richardproffitt.net

Feature Image
Richard Proffitt, May the Moon Rise and the Sun Set, 2019, installation view, University College Cork Department of Music; photograph by Jed Niezgoda, courtesy of the artist and the Glucksman.

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PAUL MCAREE DISCUSSES THE EVOLUTION OF LISMORE CASTLE ARTS AND INTERVIEWS NIAMH O’MALLEY, WHOSE EXHIBITION IS CURRENTLY SHOWING IN ST CARTHAGE HALL.  

Lismore Castle Arts (LCA), a not-for-profit gallery, was founded in 2005 in Lismore, County Waterford. We are committed to the presentation of contemporary art across two separate exhibition venues. The main gallery space within Lismore Castle hosts one major exhibition of international art per year. In 2011, a second venue opened in St Carthage Hall – a former Victorian church hall in the heart of Lismore town – which presents a diverse programme of contemporary Irish and international art and graduate work, as well as learning and community projects. LCA has also developed an offsite programme, including partnered exhibitions in Ireland and overseas. We seek to be a major contributor to the cultural and visitor economy of Lismore and the region, offering unique experiences with contemporary art. 

In 2005 the long-derelict West Wing of Lismore Castle, the private family home of Lord and Lady Burlington, was transformed into a state-of-the-art contemporary gallery. To date, LCA has commissioned and presented unique projects by Gerard Byrne, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Anne Collier, Dorothy Cross, Rashid Johnson, Richard Long, Wilhelm Sasnal and Pae White, amongst others. We have also occasionally invited national and international curators to lead our main gallery exhibition programme, including Aileen Corkery, Polly Staple, Mark Sladen, Kitty Anderson & Katrina Brown, Allegra Pesenti and Charlie Porter. Lismore Castle Arts’ main gallery exhibition for 2019, ‘Palimpsest’, is curated by Charlie Porter and features Nicole Eisenman, Zoe Leonard, Hilary Lloyd, Charlotte Prodger, Martine Syms, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Andrea Zittel, many of whom have created new work for the show.

The unique location of the castle gallery within a seven-acre site means exhibitions can spill into the castle’s gardens, offering the potential for outdoor work. Almost every exhibition we have hosted has seen work extend into these gardens, with the most notable instance being Rashid Johnson’s exhibition in 2018, involving the presentation of seven outdoor sculptures, which were gradually overcome by plants as the summer progressed. Luke Fowler also presented a new sound work in a tower in the gardens in 2017 – a unique work researched and developed across multiple visits to Lismore and presented in collaboration with the Nasher Sculpture Centre, Dallas, Texas. 

In 2013, Dorothy Cross exhibited Eye of Shark at St Carthage Hall, an installation of nine reclaimed cast-iron baths which had their scum-line painted gold, along with a tabernacle embedded in the wall containing a shark’s eye. The work subsequently toured and expanded to include 12 baths. The installation is now permanently housed at Lismore Castle and will be open to view on 6 July and 3 August. Core funding for Lismore Castle Arts programmes is provided by Lord and Lady Burlington, with additional funding sought from the Arts Council of Ireland and Waterford City and County Council. Going forward, LCA will continue to present evermore exciting and ambitious contemporary art, while expanding the offsite, learning and events programmes. For LCA’s 15th anniversary in 2020, our main gallery exhibition will be multi-sited across Lismore town. 

The following is an interview with Irish artist Niamh O’Malley, whose solo exhibition is currently showing in LCA’s St Carthage Hall (1 June – 25 August). 

Paul McAree: Perhaps you could discuss your current areas of interest – what are you working on and what materials are you using?
Niamh O’Malley: There is a current compulsion in my work to make something still and to make something solid. I think perhaps this comes out of anxiety; a sense of a rapidly changing, unreliable planet. I’m not sure what it means to be absorbed and to scrutinise – to give attention to making in this circumstance – but that is what I’m finding myself doing. In terms of material, I’ve been stretching lines in steel, making polished wooden handles and sanding the edges of slivers of glass. I’ve also been working on a film which feels quite fidgety and agitated – but that’s for later in the year.

PM: Your solo exhibition for Lismore Castle Arts is currently showing in the small chapel-like space of St Carthage Hall. Later this year, you will exhibit in the large space at the RHA. How does the contrasting scale of exhibition spaces affect your approaches and thinking?
NO’M: I really enjoy the challenge of working with different kinds of architecture, and solo shows offer you a particular opportunity to position the viewer. St Carthage Hall feels very intimate, as a space. It is a building which was evidently conceived to contain thought and reflection. There are windows but you can’t really see out and, perhaps because you step down to enter, it also feels very grounded and calm. It has definitely impacted on my decision to focus on mostly floor-based sculptural works. Because the development of a large body of new work has coincided with invitations into these contrasting spaces, I have been thinking a lot about what it means to occupy the volume of a room. In both venues, I am using steel as an obvious component for the first time; its structural capacity and strength will hopefully allow me to create complex delineations within both venues. I’m trying to find techniques to choregraph and locate the viewer, without building or relying on the walls.

PM: You recently used the phrase ‘furniture’, when discussing your new work, which incorporates beautiful pieces of wood; can you explain this idea of artwork as furniture, or vice versa?
NO’M: I’m mostly interested in the idea of furniture because of its relationship to the body. While obviously taking in a wide variety of objects, the term connotes positioning, touch and a sense of habit. My works won’t necessarily provide the functionality of a chair or a table, but I like the idea that they might feel familiar; that you will know how it feels to run your finger across the surface. There is also a stillness and stability to furniture: it produces place from space; gives you handles to facilitate your encounters with the world.

PM: How do you balance your interests in film and sculpture? How do they work together and how do you think about an exhibition that doesn’t contain any film work?NO’M: Recently when I have presented video in gallery spaces, it has been displayed on monitors, occupying a similar physical status to the sculptural objects and flat work – except that moving image produces a different kind of activation in the viewer. I’m interested in the idea that in a show made up of many different materials and things, the insertion of movement and time can activate the solidness and stillness of the others. I decided early on not to show any film in St Carthage Hall – the space seemed too small, in a way, and a video would always be too present and distracting. There is also the proximity to the street – the door opens onto the village. I think that that closeness of life and movement is operating as the film in this show.  

PM: Over the last few years, you have experimented with handmade glass. How has this developed within your practice, as a material, tool or symbol? 
NO’M: Glass is of course a very ancient material, somewhat magical, produced from sand. It is a molten translucent liquid caught in solid form. I began using it as an optical filter in front of the video camera and it gradually made its way in front of drawings and into sculptures. Having the glass lying around the studio, I became more aware of it as an object with edges and depth and form – not just something which directs us to look through, but something which we can look at.  

PM: You are from Mayo, live in Dublin and have two solo exhibitions this year, in Dublin and Lismore. Does the setting and location of a space matter?
NO’M: The setting and location definitely affect the encounter. I was invited to show as part of the ‘Mayo Collective’ exhibition in 2013. It’s a really innovative exhibition initiative, curated in my case by Patrick Murphy, which involves five visual arts venues in the county working together. (Áras Inis Gluaire, Customs House Studios & Gallery, Linenhall Arts Centre, Ballina Arts Centre and Ballinglen Arts Foundation). In that situation the work’s relationship to the landscape became heighted; the journey between the venues inevitably formed part of their reading. In Lismore, the village and gardens and the journey (if you’ve made one) will also reframe the work. Preparing for the RHA, I have the luxury of developing an exhibition in the city I live in, so I can call in regularly and terrify myself with the scale of that room. I can also remind myself of how it feels to walk into the venue from the busy city centre. This is all more difficult with a single site visit to an international venue. I think different kinds of venues in a diversity of places all add to the wealth of our potential experiences with art. 

PM: How do you feel artists are resourced in Ireland (regarding fees, production and technical support) compared with our international counterparts?
NO’M: Over the years my practice has been generously supported by Arts Council bursaries, studio awards and residencies in places such as MoMA PS1 (New York), Fire Station Artists’ Studios, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, HIAP (Helsinki) and IMMA. I think, in many ways, I have been privileged to work in Ireland. Most of the public institutions I have worked with in Ireland and abroad are genuinely working hard to resource the artists they work with – within their limited means. The reduction in funding post-crash continues to hurt everyone but I am relieved that galleries, in the main, recognise that to pay artists means to support the wider artistic ecology. Without artists there will be no work and even if we had a rich commercial environment, I would not like to see us relying on it as barometer or funder. Who gets to make art, show art and to look at art, matters and I do worry that the opportunities I have had – such as free education, Arts Council grants (to help me to live, work and pay childcare), free access to galleries and artists’ fees – are not something we can take for granted. It is important that we continue to talk to each other and advocate for each other. 

Paul McAree is Curator at Lismore Castle Arts. Niamh O’Malley’s exhibition continues at St Carthage Hall, Lismore, until 25 August. ‘Palimpsest’ continues at Lismore Castle Arts until 13 October.
lismorecastlearts.ie

Feature Image
Niamh O’Malley, Production Still, 2019; courtesy the artist and Lismore Castle Arts.

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CHRIS HAYES TALKS TO GRACE WEIR ABOUT HER CURRENT EXHIBITION AT THE INSTITUTE OF PHYSICS, LONDON.  

Fight with Cudgels (c.1820–23) is a painting by Francisco Goya that depicts two men duelling, and with each step, slowing sinking further into the mud below them. Their supposed opposition is a misreading; their struggle is not between two distinct forces, but a situation which they create together and for each other. “With every move they make,” wrote French philosopher Michel Serres, “they are gradually burying themselves together.” The image appealed to Serres as a metaphor for a relationship between two things, in this instance, that of people and the threat of climate catastrophe, which he discusses in his book, The Natural Contract (1995).

“So, it’s this point that I like very much,” Grace Weir says about Serres and Goya, “how he says that the differences are moot. As we’re dealing with ideas of our potential distinctions, this image throws the relationship between these things.” We’re discussing Weir’s solo exhibition at the vast new gallery in the Institute of Physics in London. Her filmic installation, Time Tries All Things, is characteristic of much of Weir’s work –reflecting on complex scientific and philosophical ideas about time, and emerging out of collaborations with notable figures, on this occasion, Professor David Berman of Queen Mary University of London and Professor Fay Dowker of Imperial College London. For Weir, Serres’s analysis of the Goya painting suggests not just a model of ethics – people and their environment entangled, dependent – but a useful understanding of knowledge. She states: “you can’t have a concept of history without a concept of time.” Any means of understanding the world has multiple starting points; just as the struggle of the two men brings them together, any disciplines, ways of working or communicating are inescapable from each other.

But don’t describe this as ‘art meeting science’. Weir tells me: “I should say, I hate ugly hybrids. I’m very, very critical of sci-art, or whatever they call it.” She goes on to explain that she is “a little bit tired of the art and science conversation”. It’s a cultural conversation she’s been actively involved in for over 20 years. After completing an MA in New Media in the late ‘90s, an interest in concepts of time naturally emerged out of her work in film. This relationship between time and moving image has been central to the work of countless artists, from Warhol and beyond. It seems that Weir’s important contribution here is to go much, much deeper.

“I’ve been following a particular train of thought for ages – and it was really about wanting to understand time better. In the late ‘90s, new media and film were thought of differently than we think of them now. I wanted to understand the nature of time because I was working in film. And that’s what led me to want to meet a physicist, to want to understand relativity. It took about 18 months of talking to the physicist before I understood it. And really, coming to understand that had a transformative impact – it changed me. I always say it’s not something you can recover from, and I don’t want to either.”

And this pivotal moment has reverberated through her practice ever since. One of the most significant manifestations was her retrospective at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, titled ‘3 Different Nights, recurring’ (7 November 2015 – 28 March 2016), which comprised some 30 works, including three major film commissions. This new commission at the Institute of Physics continues and elaborates upon many of her central concerns. Densely packed with elaborate scientific and philosophical ideas – such as space-time illusions and quantum mechanics – the video’s focus is resolutely personal and material, centring on a number of individuals who are drawing and carving from stone.

There’s a connection to the physicality of the drawing and stone carving depicted on-screen, and how Weir is directly involved with the camera work and the editing. “Editing is about time,” Weir explains. “How it’s cut up, how the film is paced. You’re controlling when shots are coming, when they’re not. Things don’t need to be sequential, they can loop back into each other. They don’t have to follow a beginning, middle and end. These are all choices.” Cleary, time, control, authorship and the fundamental basis for these scientific concepts is reflected by what happens, how it happens and how it’s shown – it’s as layered and elaborate as these ideas are complex. 

Time Tries All Things comprises two films, presented as a dual-screen installation. As explained by Weir, one film is more linear, while the other one is cut up, with each film having “a completely different sense of time.” This dual format is reflective of the physicists she’s collaborated with and how differently they conceive of these ideas. The artist is telling this story through scripts, camera work, voiceover and a heavily involved installation process. And while Weir mentions how important it is to have a budget to collaborate – to bring in people with different skills and to finalise the piece in different ways – she’s clear about her role and responsibilities as the editor. During our conversation, it becomes apparent how important the process of making the work is. Just as she took control during the extensive editing process, Weir also worked for several days on the installation, taking a hands-on approach to everything necessary for this show to come together.

But for Weir, to place too much emphasis on the outcome is to miss the whole picture. “As I’ve become more familiar with the field of science, when I hear the word ‘science’ now, it’s a bit like I would hear the word ‘art’ – this could mean everything, from opera to concrete poetry. So, if someone’s going to talk about art, and they mean all of this and more, I’m a bit perplexed; what are you talking about? And specifically, what are you talking about? Even within the field of physics, there’s applied physics, theoretical physics. And they’re all very, very different. Different in their approaches and in their outcomes.”

“I find it very difficult. The more I’ve engaged scientists the more, actually, I find it difficult to make a statement on it because… I suppose, fundamentally, I don’t know what we can really obtain here. I’m sceptical of it, this pitting one generality against another. Having said that, of course I don’t think all things are equal and all things are the same. There are, of course, strong divergences in the field. I don’t go out to engage with scientists. That thought never comes to me. When I’m talking with David [Berman], it’s not like I’m there with my artist hat on and they’re there as scientists. We’re people, sitting in a space discussing something. It’s not about the outcome – there may even be no outcome. It’s the desire to be in that space with somebody, when you’re both engaged with the topic, that drives me to collaborate. I very much like that space – before things are art, or before things are science.”

Chris Hayes is an Irish writer based in London and the founder of The Emotional Art Magazine. 

Grace Weir is an artist and filmmaker based in County Leitrim. ‘Time Tries All Things’ continues at Institute of Physics, London, until 29 March 2019.
graceweir.com

Feature Image:
Grace Weir, Time Tries All Things, 2019, installation view, Institute of Physics; photograph by Thomas Skovsende, courtesy Institute of Physics.

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MELISSA O’FAHERTY AND KIERA O’TOOLE DISCUSS THE IRISH CONTEMPORARY DRAWING COLLECTIVE, DRAWING DE-CENTRED.

Diverse-nomadic-open-provoke-interim-decenterd-trail-liminal-sift-provisional-testing-scratch. 

Drawing de-Centred is an artist collective and online platform for exploring contemporary drawing practice and research. In 2016, six professional Irish artists, whose practice is rooted in drawing, first met at a peer critique event, organised by Visual Artists Ireland and chaired by Arno Kramer. Kramer is a visual artist, curator and founder of Drawing Centre Diepenheim in The Netherlands, who champions contemporary drawing in all its diversity. One of the many outcomes of this serendipitous encounter was the establishment of a drawing-focused platform, titled ‘Drawing de-Centred’ (DdC). The title of the collective originated from the geographical diversity of the group, which extends to the north, south and west of Ireland. 

The collective is brought together by a shared understanding of contemporary drawing, characterised by openness, embodiment and present-ness. We also have an interest in advocating drawing practice in Ireland. Our aim as a collective is to share knowledge and resources and to encourage a collaborative and public approach to drawing, with a particular focus on flexibility, liminality and impermanence. In practice, the group meet online via video conferencing technology and in person, whenever project decisions are made. DdC member Felicity Clear states that the collective “allows for testing and trying out, entering a collective space where the total responsibility for the work is somewhat relinquished and an open conversation can take place. It can be nimble, flexible, playful and economic.” Our diverse drawing practices range from traditional pencil on paper, to three-dimensional drawing in the expanded field, using neon lights or found, natural and manmade materials. The collective share a keen interest in encouraging critical thinking around drawing, questioning what drawing is, but also what drawing can be. 

Our inaugural project, titled ‘Drawing as Interruption’, developed the idea of how drawing might act as a form of disruption. Individual artists responded to this proposition through site-specific drawings in rural, urban, public or private spaces. This methodology served as a testing ground for creating dialogue between drawings and in relation to site. Our initial iteration was curated by Kiera O’Toole and Felicity Clear and installed in O’Toole’s studio in The Model, Sligo. The second iteration was curated by Felicity Clear, Melissa O’Faherty and Mary-Ruth Walsh in the Independent Studios, Temple Bar, Dublin. This exhibition ran for one week in a temporarily vacant artist studio. For this iteration, some of the artists developed new work and installed these alongside existing works to form fresh configurations, allowing for new visual dialogues. DdC gathered momentum from the positive response we received from peers, the public and the many curators who visited this exhibition.

In keeping with the notion of ‘de-centering’, the collective’s third iteration, curated by Melissa, was installed on the grounds of a historical farm and buildings in County Wicklow. Melissa made new drawings and videos in response to the other artist’s work insitu. Melissa states: “I enjoy the notion of de-Centered, in that the work is non-reliant on gallery spaces. In this way, there can be more freedom over the placement of work which, in turn, can activate interesting outcomes”. Similarly, Kiera O’Toole’s practice and research engages in the phenomenology of site-specific drawing. Kiera states “I’m interested in drawing’s capacity to bring forth the essence of a phenomena, while making connections that arise between the aesthetic experience and the surrounding environment and/or society”. However, Kiera could not visit the site, so Melissa and Kiera decided to simultaneously draw their lived experiences by recording elements of their perceptual experiences. Given that Melissa was located on the farm and Kiera was in Sligo, both artists agreed to a timeframe to start and finish the drawings. By taking a phenomenological approach, drawing becomes a device for perceiving and understanding the world as it appears. As described by DdC member, Mary-Ruth Walsh, drawing can be used as a “thinking tool”, which variously considers: “drawing to communicate, drawing as a physical act, drawing as writing, drawing to familiarise yourself, drawing’s relationship to material, performative drawing, contemplative drawing encounters and drawing that re-frames a space”. 

In 2019, Kevin Killen will host the next iteration in Belfast, followed by Mary-Ruth Walsh in Wexford and Rachael Agnew in Wicklow. Like Kiera, Rachael explores a philosophical underpinning of phenomenology in relation to site-specific drawing. Racheal’s practice and research explores “the fundamental ontology of interstitial space”, referring to “in-between, empty, transitional, transient or non-places that are assumed and unquestioned”. The concept of space is also explored in Kevin Killen’s walking journeys. Kevin notes that although he known as a sculptural artist, drawing is an integral part of his practice. Kevin studies people’s physical space and the journeys that they make, noting: “I use traditional drawing tools to translate journeys into maps [and] recreate using neon. Initially, my drawings were part of the process to create the finished neon, but now I see them as works in their own right”. Space, place and the everyday is also explored in Mary-Ruth Walsh’s practice. Walsh focuses on architectural spaces and how they affect the way we move and behave, stating: “I make imagined, yet impossible proposals, realised through drawing [so that] we see the commonplace anew” (maryruthwalsh.org). 

Our themed project, ‘Drawing as Interruption’, is providing us the time and space to discover each other’s practice in deep and meaningful ways. Furthermore, it is providing the opportunity to reflect on various approaches regarding contemporary drawing practice, relying on the inner-workings of the group to further develop rich modes of collaboration. We envision DdC as an evolving and flexible collective and going forward, we intend to continue exhibiting both inside and outside the gallery space. We hope to work with curators and drawing practitioners for future projects in Ireland and abroad. 

For additional information on current projects and future exhibitions, visit drawingdecentred.com

Melissa O’Faherty is a visual artist based in Stylebawn Farm Studios, County Wicklow.
melissaofaherty.com

Kiera O’Toole visual artist, researcher and educator based in County Sligo. 
kieraotooleartist.com

The other DdC members are: visual artist and researcher Rachael Agnew, who lives and works in Dublin (rachaelagnew.com); artist and educator, Felicity Clear (felicityclear.com); Belfast-based visual artist, Kevin Killen (kevinkillen.com); and Mary-Ruth Walsh, a visual artist, curator and writer based in New Ross, County Wexford (maryruthwalsh.com).

Feature Image:
Felicity Clear, DdC Farm site; site curation/photography  Melissa O’Faherty, courtesy of DdC

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CURATOR DANIEL BERMINGHAM INTERVIEWS ARTISTS EIMEAR WALSHE AND EMMA HAUGH ABOUT THEIR RECENT EXHIBITION, ‘MIRACULOUS THIRST’, AT GALWAY ARTS CENTRE (5 – 25 MAY).

Daniel Bermingham: The exhibition title, ‘Miraculous Thirst’, is a totem for shameless desire, in the face of personal sexual trauma. During the development of your show, Ireland responded to a particularly violent period of national sexual trauma. Can you discuss the relationship between personal and collective trauma?

Eimear Walshe: Coming from the online lexicon, ‘thirst’ is a playfully condemning word for shameless displays of queer desire. I use ‘miraculous thirst’ to describe persistent, undisguised desire that has been suppressed, under whatever personal or systemic regime. Such desire should not exist – especially in the context of the dystopian legal, medical, political and sexual landscapes that we’ve been subjected to in Ireland – but somehow it still does. It’s painful to acknowledge how intertwined national and personal sexual traumas are. I think it’s appropriate to name a lot of the desire that I see around me in Ireland as ‘miraculous’. Personally, I’d beatify many of my friends and lovers for not just going on sex-strike over it.

DB: I’m curious how some of your artworks operate. You used gay men’s literature in the performance, Sex in Public, and incorporated the body in Clothes for Queer Cruisers, denoting a ‘dyky land reclamation’ of the male cruising area of  the Teufelssee in Berlin. Is this an intentional reclamation of queer history from cis gay men¹?

Emma Haugh: I would say that the borders here are quite amorphous; it’s a bit of a trickster move that marks desire and sexuality as a terrain that can be shared. It took me some time to unravel the implications of these appropriating actions for myself. I understand them more and more as a performative questioning of identity, ownership and spatial politics in relation to history. I don’t so much propose to reclaim history – or the future – from gay men; I propose that I am already there and perform an alternate narrative of visibility.

DB: How do you see the role of our individual queer histories (dyke, non-binary, trans, cripple, fag, poly, bi) and does this inform a certain hybrid futurity in your work?

EW: I think those histories were central; the show integrated and emphasised a set of united interests, without ignoring difference. There were a lot of shared motifs in the work and common reference points. Snakes were recurring figures, so, in a serpentine fashion, I think of our work as picking up where the other leaves off. For me, the exhibition facilitated a different type of thinking – thinking with agency around desire and thinking with hope – making space for futurity in queer discourse without centring reproductive futurism.²

DB: ‘Miraculous Thirst’ touched on the overlapping discourses of queer theorists, José Esteban Muñoz, Gloria Anzaldúa and Kathy Acker. Did these textual inclusions amount to a homage?

EH: I would say it’s more of a presence. The desire was to bring these people and their brilliant work together and to acknowledge, through dedication and remembrance, their importance in queer world-making practices. I would say it’s also a citational act of love, to stay close to the voices of those who inform our work.

DB: You have previously spoken about the “obviousness” of work that speaks for itself. Can you discuss your desire and intent?

EW: I think I’ve been using ‘obviousness’ as another way of speaking to what might be euphemistically be called ‘visibility’. Obviousness is a way of psychologically grappling with what’s implicit in an artwork, regarding the extent to which work reflects its author. In the same sense that ‘thirst’ implies some kind of ‘indiscreetness’, I wanted the sculptures to be flirtatious or wanton in some way. Take for example the word, ‘Middle Spoon’, which was rendered in pink cursive neon on the gallery wall. You can interpret that as a proposal, in the sense of a neologism, or as a proposition, maybe even a personal ad! Or as an idle fantasy, a threat to society – inclusion gone too far, or not far enough, depending on what you project. In the spirit of indiscreetness, I’d say the works are also a retort to two classic harassment slogans: “Do you have to advertise it?” and “Get a room!” The collective works answered “yes!” and “no!” respectively.

DB: Your performance, Sex in Public, (which took place on 5 May as part of the exhibition) used self-described “theory poetry”, comprising the quite slippery use of language. I want to say this was an attempt to establish a future queer language, but what informed it?

EH: This was directly informed by Kathy Acker saying that she wanted to increase possibility and her own pleasures within her writing – a process that involved her use of reappropriated, plagiarised texts. I wanted to try this method as a means of loosening control and rigidity within my own writing practice, so that multiple voices and histories could be channelled through the avatar of my performing body. I find it interesting that an audience so easily ascribes the spoken experience to the speaking body – I enjoy playing with this device. The texts have been appropriated form literature written by gay men describing experiences of sex in public, and also from theory dealing with sexual politics and public space. They all come together with me as the channel, with my own desires being loosely woven between the reappropriated words.

DB: We have proposed a certain open-ended futurity for the show and artworks. Where do you see this afterlife enacting itself?

EW: The exhibition operated around the idea of an ever-expanding horizon of hope, I think. For me, that’s ongoing work – involving making and learning new vernaculars in language and images – and I see this already manifesting in the aftermath of the exhibition. I remember the first time I saw a show by Emma Haugh; it left a pressing question in the back of my mind, one that’s still unresolved. That’s a real gift. I’m really glad we got to show together, and hopefully these works meet again in the future, to perform some more miracles.

Eimear Walshe makes sculptures, writing and research with a focus on queer theory and feminist epistemology. Walshe is research fellow at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and will initiate The Department of Sexual Revolution Studies.

Emma Haugh is a visual artist and educator based in Dublin and Berlin. She is interested in reorienting attention in relation to cultural narratives and develops her work from a queer/feminist/working class questioning of what is missing? She is co-founder of the performative publishing collective, The Many Headed Hydra.

Daniel Bermingham is a curator based in London. Bermingham is interested in publicness, community space and pedagogy, particularly with regard to intersectional queer and crip audiences.

Notes
¹ As a prefix, ‘cis’ refers to the term ‘cisgender’, denoting people whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth.
² The term ‘Reproductive Futurism’ was developed by American academic, Lee Edelman, to describe the tendency to define political value in terms of a future “for the children”, insisting that the power of queer critique is in its persistent opposition to this narrative and, therefore, to politics as we know it. Edelman argues that to be queer is to oppose futurity. See – Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004).

Image Credits
Eimear Walshe and Emma Haugh, ‘Miraculous Thirst’, installation view, Galway Arts Centre, mixed media, dimensions variable; photograph by Tom Flanagan.
Eimear Walshe, Middle Spoon, 2018, neon, 130 x 30 cm; photograph by Tom Flanagan. 

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AIDAN KELLY MURPHY INTERVIEWS ÁINE MCBRIDE ABOUT HER EMERGING PRACTICE.

Aidan Kelly Murphy: Prior to studying art, you obtained a degree in structural engineering. Was this something you had planned or was it something that just evolved?

Áine McBride: It wasn’t some grand master plan. I dabbled in painting, knowing that there was something interesting there, but not knowing how to articulate it; being an artist was never framed as something I could realistically pursue. I was interested in looking at art and had friends who were artists so I had an idea of what was going on, but more from the periphery. About halfway through studying engineering, I knew that I wasn’t really interested in pursuing it professionally. Then I went to New York, where I went to a lot of galleries. When I came back, I applied to do an undergraduate degree in art and rented a small studio where I developed a portfolio myself.

AKM: Aside from the architectural and structural aspects of your work, what other influences do you feel this discipline has had on your practice?

ÁMcB: I didn’t have that much of an interest in architecture until I studied art, when it and engineering started to manifest in my work in interesting ways. The bigger connection is more to do with ways of piecing things together, in terms of modularity and layering, rather than, say, the physical capabilities of actual structures. In my sculptural practice, I continue to come back to this idea of creating some sort of landscape, and then occupying that landscape by building it up in iterative ways. In an abstract way, that’s the influence of my engineering background.

AKM: Your work can be described as ‘site-specific interventions’. With that in mind, how does your approach change when installing in gallery spaces or in the public realm?

ÁMcB: I tend to use the term ‘site-responsive’, because the setting helps to make the work, but when the work is made, it is mobile, so it can go elsewhere. ‘Habitat HQ’, an offsite project at The Douglas Hyde (13 – 24 March 2017), was a great exercise, in terms of acknowledging how a work operates in a space. When installing the work, I became aware that one of the places I wanted to install work was a spot where a homeless man came in everyday to read, and whilst the work would have looked well there, I’m not going to put in anything in such a way to disrupt how he engages with the space. It’s more about occupying spaces that were either empty or had had space taken away. A lot of these things come back to a political sensitivity or importance, but not in an overt way. Galleries deal with space in different ways; I’m interested in how they tether themselves back to something that’s outside that space, to consider what’s feeding the work.

Mother’s Tankstation doesn’t have a window to the outside, which lends itself to being more of an enclosed space. However, it’s not a clinical white cube; the space has architecture and a domestic aesthetic. ‘Work suite’ at MTS (21 February – 28 April) opened up a new way of working. Things that I thought were individual works, merged and moved towards being conceived as ‘clusters’. I knew they should be presented near one another, but it wasn’t until they were installed, that their proximity emerged and they fused into a singular thing – which was great, because now I’m more open to that prospect.

AKM: How do you feel about terms like minimalist or post-minimalist being attributed to your work?

ÁMcB: I don’t know how much artists can situate their own work, and even if it’s interesting for them to do so. I think you put the work out and it’s for other people to interpret it. I was reading a text by Liam Gillick, where he was talking about people being overly familiar with what’s going on and making work that very easily slots itself into the ongoing dialogue, and what ends up happening is that they slip stream and get immediately absorbed. Eventually you encounter people who are making art that just looks like other art.

AKM: You avoid sensationalising your materials and objects; is this to maintain the mundane aspects they exhibit in their normal usage?

ÁMcB: I avoid ornamentation, but I’m aware that design is nearby. Design is something that I think about, but I would be wary of making things appear too ‘nice’. I use a lot of trade materials that are fairly basic. It’s important to find a way of demarcating those lines where you let new materials in and use them, whilst also being careful not to fetishise them or rely on nice materials and finishes to do something for you – you don’t want it to look too tasty.

AKM: Do you think growing up in Donegal has made you acutely aware of the urbanity of cities, thus informing a different view on how these spaces work?

ÁMcB: I grew up just outside Letterkenny. I love cities, but I’m never really looking for the park in the middle. I prefer cities that have life in them; those that have a lot of development can actually be sterile. Cities or spaces within cities that are very pristine are denying their reality on a political level. They haven’t fixed things, they have just pushed people out that they don’t want, who occupy spaces elsewhere. Dublin is different, as these lived-in spaces are still visible, and as such we can become more engaged with the fabric of the city. In Donegal, I have a connection to the bog; my father was from Falcarragh and I would have gone there with him to visit my grandmother. I find that dark, barren, amber landscape really rich. The bog for me is about the flatness; you become more aware of your own body in relation to this space. I would have a stronger relationship to that terrain and think it’s more reflective of ‘Irishness’ than the rolling green hills.

AKM: The largest continuation of a landscape in Ireland is probably around the Meath/Westmeath area, with its flat bog land and marshes. Do you think those long straights show the possibility of a landscape?

ÁMcB: You hit on something there with ‘possibility’. I have been thinking a lot about this and I’ve been trying to figure out why I’m attracted to spaces in flux. It’s because they haven’t been completely defined in terms of what they are yet, so there’s still potential. For a while I kept coming back to the concept of ‘provisionality’, but I think it’s more about potential. Which again is political, because it could potentially be something for everyone or something we need before it’s finished, but once it’s complete and fully defined, there is no longer the space for possibility.

Aidan Kelly Murphy is a writer and photographer based in Dublin.

Áine McBride is an artist based in Dublin.

Image Credits:
Áine McBride, ‘Work suite’, 2018, installation view at Mother’s Tankstation.
Áine McBride, floor unit, 2018, plywood, timbre, formica, paint, mild steel fabric.
Áine McBride, t unit, 2018, plywood, timber, tiles, tile adhesive, grout, jesmonite, mild steel, paint; all images courtesy of the artist Mother’s Tankstation

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