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C105 review
Dublin:
Axel Boesten at Gallery of Photography
Together,
the past and the contemporary create a complex composite.
People come to Ireland as much for its present as its
past - international call centres, stag weekends, golf
trips, all exist alongside heritage trails, coastal walks
and trad sessions. To the observant outsider, such a mix
is surely distinctive and noteworthy. Axel Boesten's work
at the Gallery of Photography has all the objectivity
as well as the natural curiosity of the observant outsider.
Neither wholly impassionate, nor wholly emotive, his practise
is a knowing, sophisticated one. The exhibition of his
small-scale photographs of contemporary Ireland is a 'slow-burner',
made up of small notes and queries on Irish life, sets
of photographs which give rise to relationships between
disparate elements of contemporary Ireland: but notes
and queries without conclusions or answers.
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Axel
Boesten: Cliffs of Moher, 2000, colour photograph;
courtesy
Gallery of Photography
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The monitor
of a high-tech radar/radio device at the wheel of a trawler
in Killybegs: this image is the first of the show, and
is coolly emblematic of Boesten's work, embodying as it
does the understated vision of that mesh of the traditional
and the modern. In the central space of the gallery, the
photographs were on display in small sets of two or three.
A (classic, instantly knowable as German) shot of distant
ant-like pilgrims ascending Croagh Patrick is displayed
next to two images of international generic business-park
landscaping and architecture (Croagh Patrick, Co. Mayo,
2000, Citywest Business Park I, Dublin, 2000 and
Knock Airport I, Co. Mayo, 2001). The set prompts
a consideration of the multiple, unfixed relations in
contemporary Ireland between the monumental, the banal,
pilgrimage, work, and time. Boesten, however, makes no
markers towards, nor gives any signals for reading any
specific sociological or cultural reflections. Rather,
over time, one recognises the formal, visual relations
within the images. There is a recurring motif of curves:
the rise of Croagh Patrick, the slopes of the landscaping
in the business park, the grey-white tyre marks traced
along the tarmac at Knock airport. Similarly, in a separate
set of three images there is a formal relation in the
motif of receding space (Rosses Point, Co. Sligo,
2000, Deserted Village, Achill Island, Co Mayo,
2001, Dublin downtown, 2000). And the subject matter
of the images again evolves into relations between disparate
elements of contemporary Ireland. The international urban
style of a downtown Dublin bar is seen alongside the deserted
village: the three young men of the Rosses Point photograph,
perhaps acting as a link between them. The figures who
occupy several of the photographs are figures of contemporary
Ireland -"I don't think of myself as Irish, I think
of myself as European" - and Europe, and in which
one initially recognises an apparent Irish physiognomy,
and then immediately corrects oneself and foregrounds
an international Adidas/Coca-Cola/MTV style.
As well
as the photographs working powerfully together, there
are works that individually embody such tensions and paradoxes.
One photograph features four standing stones - not standing
alone, majestic, replete with Celtic heritage, but rather
standing subtly placed with contemporary landscaping prowess
and, one imagines, full health and safety considerations,
at the entrance to a business park (Citywest Business
Park II, Dublin, 2000). Reconsidering the piece, with
its four central forms, it has a clear resonance with
the photograph Dooagh, Achill Island, Co. Mayo,
2000, in which four young women stand smiling in a group
portrait, dressed up for a weekend big-night-out. Each
photograph, with its four figures, prompts cool re-consideration
of contemporary Ireland, and contests the stale certainties
that often make up an image of the state.
Declan
Sheehan is Director of the Context Gallery, Derry.
Axel Boesten:
Traffic Island, Gallery of Photography, Dublin,
July/August 2003
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