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Clive
Murphy: Inflatable Cardboard Boxes, 2002,
City Hall, courtesy EV+A
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As
curator Apinan Poshyananda worked on EV+A 2002, he
found himself in the familiar position of wondering what art
can 'do' or 'be' in the aftermath of mass trauma. The title
Healers and Holies evolved out of the process, exploring
the idea that artists can perhaps offer us a "glimpse of the
present that reflects the horror and happiness to be found
in today's troubled world." It is a huge show with 73 artists,
and this is necessarily a partial response.
At the Limerick City Gallery of Art Aileen Kelly's Clowning
around is a memorable and humorous opener. Nine crudely
formed, four-legged beasts form a circle; their 'coats' are
brightly coloured, patterned cloths. Their feet are useless
flaps of material and their necks end abruptly. The headless
lead the headless, trapped in an unmoving, unending loop.
It's quite depressing and bleak, but funny with it. Their
predicament is a familiar one to many of us, which endeared
them to me greatly; I longed to be a hero and to rescue them,
to save them through relocation or rearrangement; anything
to break the cycle. However, to do so would individualise
them and create hierarchies; as obtains next door. Ali Omer
Krsma's projection, (Untitled), features another group
of unfortunate ensnared creatures that metaphorically reflect
a 'human condition'. The cycle begins with an image appearing
in the centre of the wall. It is a man on a TV screen. He
is spinning on the spot. Gradually more screens appear until
the entire wall is occupied by 21 people of all ages and a
dog. Each is alone on their screen spinning at varying speeds
throughout their short audio-visual existences. It reflects
a contemporary take on the family unit, in that although their
connectedness is apparent, nowadays their individuality and
distance from each other is even more striking.
Next door again is Marina Abramovic's beautiful video projection
Hero. She sits proudly astride a white horse holding
a large white flag. It is as though Joan of Arc decided to
surrender; it is a lonely and ambiguous image, an admission
of defeat made with defiance and accompanied by a song/anthem
(?) sung with great feeling. Abramovic is perhaps suggesting
that the hero is the person who knows when to give up.
In Iftikhar and Elizabeth Dadi's huge canvas 'billboard',
hung on Bridge Street, it seems unlikely that anyone will
ever surrender. The painting is literally of the eponymous
text 'Clash of Civilisations'. The text, painted to look like
it is carved in 3-D from rock, towers over the landscape;
it is sunset and at the base of the giant letters a fierce
battle (cowboys and Indians?) takes place. The image looks
like an old movie poster which evokes romantic notions of
'worthy' wars with 'good' heroes, but the letters will endure
long after the warriors are dead, another rift will replace
the last, and only prejudice and time will decide who are
the 'goodies' and 'baddies'. Cultural conflict is written
in stone and civilisations are doomed to war. It is a powerful,
witty and acerbic image of the contemporary landscape.
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Peter
Johanssen: installation; photo the author
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The chief
criticism I would have with the exhibition on the whole, is
that there are too many pieces that lead you by the nose;
heavy-handed works that have a tendency to overwhelm you with
their literalness. Paolo Carnevari almost ruined what
would have been a perfectly wonderful intervention (a gleaming
white lambretta scooter parked in a chapel of St. Mary's Cathedral),
by placing tyres extending from the bike to make a cruciform.
A succinct comment upon the notion of the sacred in society
today: but no trust is placed in the viewer. In contrast,
across the cathedral is a touching leap of faith, where Araya
Rasdjarmreansook reads poetry to corpses in a morgue. Unfortunately
the sound wasn't working when I visited; nevertheless the
beauty of the idea has stayed with me. By offering unrequited
companionship to dead strangers one wonders is she trying
to comfort them or herself?
The daddy of the heavy art is Vasan Sitthiket whose paintings
of famous men from Hitler to Bin Laden to Van Gogh emerging
fully grown and garbed from their mothers (hairless?) vaginas
shout at us: "Is 'genius'/'evil' nature or nurture???" Peter
Johanssen's impressive but over-the-top installation is another
contender: Set in heavy, dark-wood, museum-style cases are
over a dozen items of clothing: nazi uniforms, doc martens,
bomber jackets and a balaclava all heavily decorated with
colourful embroidery, tassels, baubles, brocade and painted
flowers. The work relies solely on the unusual juxtaposition
of fascism and folk (though arty/hippy-chick flower-print
docs have been around a long time). It is interesting because
the additions didn't really subvert the power of the Nazi
regalia as museum pieces; if anything I felt their
malevolence shone through; the other gear that is more quotidian
looked ridiculous and nonthreatening. An effective action
and simple point is driven home with a sledgehammer.
Another piece also dealing with World War 2 is David Dunne's
The Memory of Water. In addressing the Holocaust, perhaps
still the 'ultimate' topic, one operates in the wake of many
extraordinary and famous cultural moments, in literature,
film, TV and in the visual arts - for example, the series
The World at War, and Christian Boltanski's trademark
use of discarded clothing. Hence a wardrobe opening into a
larger, but still cramped 'hide-out' space with a monitor
showing stock WW2 footage, which is always horrifying, seems
a touch second-hand. For me the piece is too illustrative
to capture the imagination. The artist does a disservice to
his own sincerity because the potential to be moved by works
is often deadened by any feeling of familiarity. Moreover
the piece would have worked much better if the structure of
the 'hidden' space accessed through the wardrobe had been
concealed behind a proper false wall rather than being visible
in the gallery space: all sense of surprise was lost.
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Clockwise
from bottom left: Chio Jeong Hwa: Funny
Game ,2002, City Hall, installation shot;
Aileen Kelly: Clowning Around, 2002, installation
shot, Limerick City Art Gallery; Torbjorn Rodland,
Church Gallery; Iftikar Dadi: Clash of Civilisations,
2002, installation shot, façade, Bridge Street
Motors; photos the author
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The aesthetics/appearance
of good and evil, and more pointedly a collapse or ambiguity
in the distinction, is a recurring feature of the show. Martin
Healy's handsome triptych, Little Divils, is of child
actors from horror movies. They chart the way in which the
aesthetics of a decade dictate how an 'evil' child looks;
inevitably 'evil' children are good-looking, their appearance
reminds us of our natural proclivity to think of children
as innocents and to rationalise their behaviour in terms of
external forces, the devil or aliens. Breda Lynch presents
two quite beautiful and interesting drawings that are markedly
different in the way two pairs of young twins are depicted:
two girls whose faces are blurred and barely articulated seem
both sad and defiant, and two girls with distinctly drawn,
happy, cheeky, uncomplicated expressions. A relationship between
being unhappy or troubled and being withdrawn is posited.
The piece is either complicated, unchanged or over-simplified
by the fact that the former two girls are black and the latter
are white.
In City Hall two very different guards are on view: Chio Jeong
Hwa's huge identical policemen are dotted around the hallways.
Their uniform, stature and indifference puts one in a totally
powerless position; you cannot ignore their hulking officious
presence; their weight and their objecthood is almost akin
to early minimalism. Helen Killane's security guards couldn't
be more different or rather more human. She brings to our
attention the names and faces of a profession we often fail
to register while passing in and out of buildings. In the
top row they pose straight-faced, in the bottom row the same
six men smile, or at least they try to: it is odd to see how
some of them seem unable to smile and others fail to
look serious.
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Clockwise
from bottom left: Chio Jeong Hwa: Funny
Game ,2002, City Hall, installation shot;
Aileen Kelly: Clowning Around, 2002, installation
shot, Limerick City Art Gallery; Torbjorn Rodland,
Church Gallery; Iftikar Dadi: Clash of Civilisations,
2002, installation shot, façade, Bridge Street
Motors; photos the author
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In one
respect the fun of EV+A is that you get to see so much
art, some of which one finds exciting and some dull; some
of which shines in the larger context and some of which gets
lost. It is always a sensory overload. One could endlessly
find connections between the various works and the exhibition
had many more interesting pieces than I have space to mention.
Overall, I left Limerick with the impression that EV+A
2002 is a strong and stimulating exhibition that is very
broad in its scope: when you're thinking of 'happiness and
horror' in the contemporary world almost anything can seem
relevant.
The experience of the opening and the following day was marred
slightly by the absence of wall labels in many of the venues;
apart from knowing who made what, titles are often an important
part of a piece. On the other hand, one of the best things
about EV+A this year is the palpable sense of excitement
in the curation which makes for an interesting and enjoyable
experience. This enthusiasm is reflected in the hang/layout
which in general is tight and coherent, with interesting relationships
and juxtapositions in most of the rooms, and a discerning
use of the differing atmospheres of the various venues.
Isabel
Nolan is a writer and artist based in Dublin.
EV+A,
venues around Limerick, March-June 2002
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Ronan
Sharkey: Billboard, corner of O'Curry/Henry
Street, March-June 2002; courtesy EV+A
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Article
reproduced from CIRCA 100, Summer
2002, pp. 68-71.
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