C100
Review: How things turn out
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Isabel
Nolan: Now, 2001-2002, detail from Neither
one nor the other, acrylic on canvas; courtesy IMMA
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Dublin:
How Things Turn Out at the Irish Museum of Modern Art
How
Things Turn Out occupies two locations, the first floor
of the west wing and the ground floor of the east wing, a
layout that prompts reflection upon the museum's curatorial
practices. The exhibition is identified within the catalogue
as a "fresh look at current art production in Ireland," the
latest installment in the 'projects strand', which apparently
brings "cutting-edge international artists to Irish gallery-goers."
By situating the exhibition within the context of the low-profile
'projects' series1, the organisers are perhaps
attempting to distance How Things Turn Out from recent
survey shows of Irish art, such as Shifting Ground.
A reflection
on the museum as site and institution is also evident in several
of the works on show. In a series of video, painting, slide
and text works, Isabel Nolan explores the interconnections
between artistic practice, reading and writing, pointedly
contrasting fictional and national identities. Much of her
work is concerned with questions of address and certain pieces
even seem to recall the museum's own 'interpretative' materials.
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Gerard
Byrne: Why its time for imperial again, 1999,
16mm colour film transferred to DVD; courtesy IMMA
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Both
Eoghan McTigue and Garrett Phelan foreground the specificity
of IMMA as national cultural institution and relic of colonial
militarism, with McTigue's monumental images of national flags
also providing an obvious counterpoint to the feminine domesticity
of Ann Marie Curran's photographic essay Celibacy.
The text of Phelan's video installation, Scum of the Earth,
explicitly references IMMA's former role. It is composed of
clips from Johnny Got His Gun (1971), an anti-war film
about a wounded soldier who communicates his desire to die
by tapping out Morse Code through the movements of this head.
Previous adaptations of this narrative have included a Metallica
music video2 in which the soldier's anguish is
expressed in verse, but the message communicated in Phelan's
piece remains deliberately opaque.
Heather
Allen also disrupts expectations, closing off access to her
assemblage of projections, flyers, lights and sound equipment.
While handwritten diagrams and lists placed outside the barrier
seem to signal work in progress, the artist's absence is clearly
permanent. These materials are the residue of a live event,
a performance on the opening night, and the artist's 'notes'
are simply props.
Gerard
Byrne's installation, Why it's Time for Imperial, Again,
is characterised by a similar concern with the conventions
of display. Using a National Geographic 'advertorial'
for the 1981 Chrysler Imperial as a film script, Byrne stages
an open-air dialogue between Frank Sinatra and Chrysler CEO
Lee Iacocca within a post-industrial landscape of disused
factories, railways and scrap yards. His film is screened
on a monitor, set on a raised platform and surrounded by framed
photographs of the National Geographic on library shelves.
The interplay between exterior locations and museum interior
reinforces a possible subtext, the displacement of manufacturing
by the information economy.
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Garrett
Phelan: Scum of the Earth, 2002, video/dvd 24
mins; photo Brendan Bourke; courtesy the artist
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How
Things Turn Out is dominated by a concern with the transitory
and the ephemeral and this may account, at least in part,
for its undoubtedly fragmentary quality. Ultimately, however,
it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that a series of commissioned
projects, perhaps involving fewer artists, might have provided
a better insight into current art production in Ireland.
Maeve
Connolly is an artist, writer, lecturer and curator based
in Dublin.
Artists
in the exhibition: Heather Allen, Gerard Byrne, Ann Marie
Curran, Seamus Hanrahan, Eoghan McTigue, Isabel Nolan, Garrett
Phelan, Walker & Walker.
How
Things Turn Out, Irish Museum of Modern Art, February-May
2002
1Since
the first 'Projects' show in 1997 the strand has included
a range of group and solo exhibitions such as Hannah Starkey,
Vantage Point, Olafur Eliasson and Calum Innes, several of
which have taken place in ground floor rooms used in How
Things Turn Out.
2One,
taken from Metallica's 1988 album ...And Justice for All.
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Ann
Marie Curran, Untitled (Celibacy series), 1999-2000,
Lambda print, 76 x 76cm; courtesy IMMA
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