JOANNE LAWS REFLECTS ON THE CURRENT EXHIBITIONS AT DUBLIN PORT.
Liliane Puthod, Beep Beep, 2024, installation view; photograph by Ros Kavanagh, courtesy the artist and Temple Bar Gallery + Studios.
Yuri Pattison, dream sequence (working title for a work in progress), 2023–ongoing. Generative and mutable game engine motion picture/play and score affected by local atmospheric conditions. Duration variable, dimensions variable, looping; photograph by Ros Kavanagh, courtesy the artist and Temple Bar Gallery + Studios.
Clearly building on the momentum, scale and ambition of Ireland at Venice in 2022,1 the curatorial team at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios has partnered with Dublin Port Company to present ‘Longest Way Round, Shortest Way Home’ – a pioneering offsite project in the context of a working port. The title draws on James Joyce’s Ulysses (Shakespeare and Company, 1922), specifically a quote from the novel’s protagonist, Leopold Bloom: “So it returns. Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.”2
Travelling by boat for the press preview on 2 July was a novel and embedded way to experience the city from the river. We set off from Temple Bar along the quays, through the towering Financial District and sprawling Docklands, with the Liberty Hall ‘CEASEFIRE NOW’ banner as backdrop. This journey served to highlight the seaward expansion of the once compact, pre-suburban Dublin, chronicled in Ulysses. Cranes and shipping containers ushered our arrival into Dublin Port – the site of transit and the convergence of logistics on a global scale.
TBG+S is presenting solo exhibitions by Yuri Pattison and Liliane Puthod in The Pumphouse on Alexandra Road until 27 October. Though aesthetically and materially distinct, these site-specific works share several points of convergence – and some unexpected synchronicities – not least in relation to the perceived ghost status of mechanical systems in the digital age.
Installed in the disused Pumphouse No. 2 – among the 1950s machinery that once controlled the flow of water to the graving docks, where old boats were repaired or dismantled – Pattison’s work expertly harnesses digital technology, while also alluding to its precarity. Mounted on the wall inside the entrance, clock speed (the no more) conceptualises relations between time and labour in the workplace. A looping sequence of clockfaces morph into images produced by a now obsolete Artificial Intelligence generation tool. Although cutting-edge a few years ago, this software proved unstable and difficult to scale, apply to new domains, or train on small datasets; it would collapse without carefully selected hyperparameters. For me, this artwork highlights a dichotomy between the tangible labour of the mechanical age (memorialised in the dials, levels, gears, and pumps of obsolete machinery) and the disembodied, virtual nature of work in an era of digital acceleration.
The main element is a video installation, Dream Sequence, presented on a cinematic scale via a large LED screen. Rendered using gaming software, the video follows the course of an imagined river (based on a conglomeration of real rivers) from its source in a remote forest, through post-industrial landscapes, towards a harbour and ocean sunset. The work channels the symbolic qualities of water as a carrier of history and folklore, as well as data – in this instance, drawn from monitors in Dublin Port that record atmospheric changes such as water quality, temperature, air pollution, and light levels. This live environmental data is then processed to influence aspects of the installation, perpetually connecting it to external realities. It also informs the fluctuating water levels of a model landscape – its miniature buildings periodically submerged – as well as the composition of a live musical score, being delivered by an automated player piano.
This instrumental soundscape offers points of connection with Puthod’s installation, Beep Beep, which, during my visit, emitted French melancholic music, interspersed with radio static. Echoing a Joycean-style epic journey to a place once recognised as home, the artist travelled across her native France to bring her late father’s car to Dublin. This iconic Renault 4 from the 1960s required year-long restoration by specialist mechanics to become roadworthy, and its subsequent 900km road trip was live-streamed via Twitch. Upon arrival by ferry into Dublin Port, the car became the main component of Puthod’s installation within two conjoined shipping containers. Encountering the vintage car in this context, one feels nostalgic for a time when things were made by hand, or skilfully repaired with diligence and care.
Though touched by the work’s tender backstory, I was not prepared for the emotional impact of entering the space. Passing through a threshold of industrial PVC strip curtains, the smell of oil and bitumen transported me to my own late father’s shed. There, he could be found among DIY detritus – paint tins, epoxy resin, buckets of creosote, varnish, turps, and other pungent liquids. Hands almost permanently stained with oil, he was happiest dismantling mechanisms, spilling forth sprockets and springs, or lubricating engine parts to keep them running beyond their time. He is gone eight years now, and the signs of his enduring presence around me have slowly begun to fade.
If the vehicle’s journey is ongoing, as suggested by its loaded roof-rack, then the handmade and found objects populating this cenotaph may well be votive offerings – small relics and mementos expressing dedication to the deceased that will aid their journey into the afterlife. Further illuminating this passage are a series of neon works that emanate a blueish glow. For me, they conjure the atmospheric ghost lights of Irish folklore, said to be encountered on marshland by lone travellers at night. These cartoonish light drawings variously depict a puff of air escaping from a back tyre, or a speech bubble exclaiming “No Pressure!” On the radiator grille, we find a single neon teardrop.
The impulse to journey through familiar landscapes can be overwhelming when we lose someone. There, we hope to find evidence of their existence that will somehow hold past, present, and future together in energetic confluence. The artist’s journey of reclamation resonates with me for these reasons. In constructing this temporary repository, she has created a kind of multi-dimensional portal – an in-between space, where fathers can always be found, mending broken things.
Ambitious artistic projects such as these form part of Dublin Port Company’s broader plan to create a heritage zone at The Pumphouse. It is one of three cultural venues that make up the ‘Distributed Museum’ – a concept featuring in the Port-City Integration programme, aimed at increasing public access and awareness of maritime heritage. Dublin Port is clearly a space of potential, particularly when one considers the cultural regeneration of docklands in other cities, including London, Liverpool, and Glasgow. I recently attended the launch of Edinburgh Art Festival in Leith – once an industrial port for shipbuilding and manufacturing that fell into dereliction in the 1980s. Four decades later, the area has been rezoned for residential, cultural, and commercial purposes, attracting a younger and more affluent demographic in its latest phase of regeneration.
Visible just beyond Pumphouse No. 2 are the grain silos of the former Odlums Flour Mills – the site of The Arts Council’s proposed new artist campus, comprising 50 artist workspaces. Such infrastructure is badly needed in the city, particularly if these studios can be subsidised, or include a residential strand that would help counteract the exodus of artists, due to spiralling housing costs. In my opinion, direct investment in commissioning and production is also urgently required. As superbly demonstrated by ‘Longest Way Round, Shortest Way Home’, given sufficient supports, the sector can capably deliver biennial-quality projects to augment and sustain the professional practices of artists.
‘Longest Way Round, Shortest Way Home’ continues until 27 October. The Pumphouse is well sign-posted, and is located a ten-minute walk from The Point Luas stop. For details, visit:
templebargallery.com
1 The TBG+S Curatorial Team, Clíodhna Shaffrey and Michael Hill, curated Niamh O’Malley’s exhibition, ‘Gather’, for her representation of Ireland at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022.
2 James Joyce, Ulysses, with introduction by Declan Kiberd (London: Penguin Books, 1992) p.492.
