C105
review
Dublin: Garrett Phelan
at Pallas Heights
Writing
about the late German writer W.G. Sebald, the critic James
Wood observes that "an annulling wash of contradictory adjectives"
is in many ways the most appropriate response to the "agitated
density" of this much-mourned writer's extraordinary style.
Sebald's work, Wood suggests, is at once "anxious, daring,
extreme, muted"; it is writing invested with "scrupulous uncertainty"
and as such 'uncertainty' must be an important part of the
reader's response.
Something similar
could be said to occur with Garrett Phelan's Now:here,
a self-consciously confusing reflection on "collective belief
systems" which was recently shown at the Pallas Heights spaces
on Dublin's Buckingham Street. For this work Phelan spent
several weeks drawing and writing over almost every inch of
wall space in one of the "semi-derelict apartments" which
Pallas have chosen to reconfigure as "alternative art spaces."
Phelan's work combined complex technocratic terminology with
other still more arcane or peculiar material, each of the
run-down rooms featuring scrawled scientific diagrams alongside
mysterious signs and symbols, religious references and statistical
data. While at certain points a pattern linking the diverse
material seemed possible, for the most part the abstruse content
of Now:here seemed designed to frustrate the possibility
of reading the work in terms of a connecting or coherent narrative.
|
Garret Phelan: Now:here, installation
shot; courtesy the artist
|
The condition
of uncertainty, then, is partly a consequence of being presented
with such an assortment of esoteric material: the significance
of many of the figures and marks on the walls is only readily
accessible to those with detailed 'insider' knowledge of a
particular 'belief system'. It is also important, however,
to acknowledge the way in which Phelan juxtaposes references
to particular belief systems or ideologies which are entirely
incompatible, a strategy which seems designed to play on broader
cultural uncertainties. In Now:here subjects which
might be associated with the legacy of Enlightenment rationalism
and technological progress are placed alongside messages or
symbols which relate to atavistic, superstitious cultural
tendencies. Certain drawings in this regard are vividly, distressingly
topical - within close proximity to each other, for instance,
it is possible to encounter a representation of a commercial
jet's cockpit, a rough sketch of the Abraham Lincoln monument
in Washington D.C., and a list noting the populations of the
world's major religions. Inevitably, this combination of disparate
information creates a mounting sense of competing certainties
or a 'clash of fundamentalisms'. The presence of a large area
on a nearby wall which has been densely spray-painted in black
perhaps gives an added, more abstract, emphasis to this idea;
its effect, for some reason, is wholly chilling.
Garret
Phelan: Now:here, installation shots; courtesy
the artist
Yet for all the interest in 'collective
belief systems' there remains something stubbornly individual
about Phelan's work. Ultimately it is not the references to
dominant ideologies and discourses which tend to stick in
the mind but the clues that point to the presence of distinct
human identities. Partly this is a matter of content: Phelan's
drawings of airline pilots, for instance, in this context
bring to mind Bertold Brecht's comment that every tank has
one crucial flaw - its driver. More importantly, though, there
is something in the manner of presentation which allows the
work to move beyond the somewhat austere nature of the stated
agenda. Given that the location of the work is a relic of
a belief system which sought to elide individuality and difference
- architectural modernism - it is vital to note how Phelan's
aesthetic brings carelessly hurried handwriting and an idiosyncratic,
imperfect drawing style into the foreground, both offering
abundant evidence of individual personality. Indeed, this
abundance of personality could even be darkly interpreted
as a troubling excess of 'self', in that there is a marked
crime-scene feel to Now:here, the obsessive wall-drawings
at times evoking the paranoid jottings of the sociopathic
conspiracy theorist. But as this association is primarily
derived from cinematic cliché, questions concerning
the influence of collective belief systems are once again
inevitably raised. Perhaps it is this potential for exposing
the 'false consciousness' of collective belief which is the
crucial 'uncertainty' prompted by Phelan's remarkable work.
Declan Long is a writer and
Education Manager at Temple Bar Gallery and Studios.
Garrett Phelan: Now:here,
Pallas Heights, Dublin, May - July 2003
Article reproduced from CIRCA
105, Autumn 2003, pp.96-97.
