VISUAL Carlow
6 June – 25 August 2024
There was a children’s workshop in progress at VISUAL, when I visited German artist Ulla von Brandenburg’s ‘Under Water Ball’, so the soundscape was punctuated with laughter and tiny feet running across the gallery floor, which seemed appropriate, as this exhibition was immense and brimming with joy.
Vast colourful assemblages formed huge fabric shapes, hanging aloft in the massive space. The installation began with a floor to ceiling purple triangle, whose lifted skirts welcomed me into the space. I followed the line of a massive yellow semi-circle, and a huge red pentagon floating upwards. Five enormous multicoloured tapestries hung ceiling to floor. These pieces created boundaries and routes for most visitors to navigate around (the small, shoeless, laughing visitors chose to run straight through the fabric walls instead). I had the impression that these spaces were scenic and could be hoisted up or down, like theatrical backdrops.
These ‘scenes’ were activated by white, sculptural ‘props’ – a long rope, an aerial hoop, a giant ball, and oars – each adding to a pre-performance atmosphere and charging the air with potential. Six neatly arranged benches demarked the space for a film screening, with the characters projected life-size. Flitting between German, French and English, the film was projected directly onto a large canvas backdrop, which looked like the sail of a ship. We saw a stage set with the same bench seating, creating a mirror effect. Throughout the film, the camera panned from front of stage to backstage and out again, like the tide. We moved from front of house to the greenroom before returning, taking in the empty benches, the pre-performance rehearsals, the performance build up, and the performance itself.
I was reminded of Luigi Pirandello’s experimental play, Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921), as I watched six actors sitting around a table, conversing abstractly about their relationship to their characters, with phrases such as: “I never go out without my character on,” and “I prefer to act with nothing on.” Lounging about, trimming their wigs with shears, trying on sea costumes, and practising their dance moves, there was an element of wonderful absurdity. Their conversations slid between the superficial and the serious, from their make-up preferences to their living arrangements. We also watched puppet versions of these actors sing in German about opportunities and resources for creative practitioners.
The drama continued under the sea, as the actors sang in French about their solidarity, making love, and bubbles. The sea itself may have been the seventh character, permeating the film in waves, surfacing through the theatrical backdrop, as well as in the soundscape and many scripted allusions. The show expertly expanded reflections on stagecraft and the performativity of the exhibition space, with a self-awareness treading a line between the poignant and the absurd.
The accompanying group show, ‘Behind the Curtain’, was the annual open-call exhibition, hosted by VISUAL as part of Carlow Arts Festival, with 18 artists presenting works that smartly expanded some of Von Brandenburg’s concepts. Playing with notions of scenography, Andreas Kindler von Knobloch’s In A Contrary Place (2024), presented a large modular sculpture of sliding screens, which partitioned the space to create different views and pathways. Wexford artist, Richard Malone, folds and drapes fabric to produce forms reminiscent of outstretched arms and bent bodies. From the corner of my eye, it seems as if these textile sculptures are swaying; though this could be influenced by Malone’s video, Knights, in which various characters, wearing similar garments, dance and jiggle.
Liam O Callaghan’s Another Day With Song (2005) teased by shutting off the video whenever I got too close, a very small screen (featuring a woman dancing alone) further limiting my proximity to the work. Kathy Tynan’s Brilliant Disguise (After The Reverse of a Framed Painting by Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts, 1670) (2024) has been painted to resemble the back of a canvas, creating a trompe-l’oeil. In a similar vein, Siobhan McDonald’s Silent Witnessing (2016) shows the reverse side of a tapestry lined with dust shadows, framing the space where now-absent butterflies were once pinned in place.
Kerry-based artist Julie Lovett discussed her professional and creative dilemmas in the must-see Success Strategy (2022) – a comic take on the tightrope an artist walks between her (sometimes obscure) practice and fawning to popular trends. Rachel Fallon’s The Assumption (2018) comprises a knitted ladder, extending upwards out of sight. The title references Middle Age European paintings of Madonna and Child that surprisingly depict the Virgin Mary knitting. While the ladder traditionally symbolises biblical connections between heaven and earth, in this handcrafted form, it may act as a metaphor for housing access, or a perceived lack of career progression after motherhood.
On reflection, this very strong double exhibition at VISUAL left me considering my position as viewer within the exhibition space – navigating behind the scenes, caught in conceptual currents, and submerged in the disconcerting everydayness of the deeply absurd.
Ella de Búrca is an Irish visual artist and lecturer at SETU Wexford College of Art.
elladeburca.com
