C106 review
Dublin: Dearcadh: Visionaries of
1791-1803 in Kilmainham Gaol
What's
with this strange faith in anniversaries, this hazy, quasi-numerological
belief that neat, rounded numbers can localise meaning in
some useful way?
Certainly, anniversaries
can help stoke the publishing industry, offering a little
sustenance to a different sort of numbers. And anniversaries
can be invaluable, too, for media workers of all flavours
seeking a substitute for actuality, a grateful-received hook
on which to hang something, anything, to fill up the endless
cataracts of pages, the numberless minutes of 24/7 air.
No newspaper,
magazine or broadcasting unit worth its weight in zonked consumers
is without a bible of such events. Seventy-five year's since
the death of this minor academic playwright, fifty-five year's
since the first performance of that now-canonised play. A
quick thumb through it and that nervous gap late next week
is plugged.
And then, after
a sigh, there's hardly time to calibrate relative worths -
is two hundred years ago a good distance in time, substantially
more significant than a hundred? Or do those extra hundred
begin to dim the celebratory impulse? - before a new anniversary
swells over the horizon.
But do art workers need
that kind of aid? The question bobs to the surface from time
to time in Dearcadh: Visionaries of 1791-1803, a group
exhibition held in the jail at Kilmainham this autumn. Curated
by a stocky committee featuring Brian Cleary, Pat Cooke, Anthony
Cronin, Catherine Marshall, Máirín Murray, Alanna
O'Kelly and Seán Sherwin, the show features commissioned
artworks "re-examining this period in Irish history"
as part of a larger anniversary initiative, Emmet 200.
These days, getting
into Kilmainham jail can be the problem. There are no posters
or signs referring to the exhibition to be seen, making it
unlikely that any casual tourist will have joined in the re-examination.
But once visitors have requested information near the entrance,
a helpful member of staff leads on though dark and cold corridors
into the prison's main cellblock, offering a quick run-through
of the locations in which one will find art.
Inside, the artists
have taken over individual cells and used them as the frame
for their work. It is a pretty straightforward approach but
works well enough, even if the acceptance of this confinement
becomes one of the works strongest flavours; only Brian Hand's
La puissance spills out and makes its halting bid for
freedom.
Inside the cells, the
work sketches a line from gag-orientated pieces, to slow-release
painted interventions and chunky (and chunky knit) installations.
Most seem to have chosen to work against, or perhaps ignore,
the building's mood, sidestepping angry grimness in favour
of more personal interests.
John Byrne takes a typically
adroit approach to the question, offering not to interpret
the historical issues literally, but instead to lift one salient
point of the Emmett story bodily into the contemporary era.
Would you die for
Ireland? is the title of Byrne's little hand-held sparkler
of a work, and also the question the artist poses to a cross-section
of people in Ireland captured on projected video. Sometimes
the respondents are glib, sometimes thoughtful and sometimes
- in the case of waylaid Bertie Ahern - extremely careful
in their answer. Despite the verbal dance the wrong-footed
Ahern attempts to perform, he shares, it seems, a viewpoint
that several of those caught in front of Byrne's proffered
mike express: perhaps it's come time to live for Ireland instead.
The witness who passes up the opportunity to die for any nation
state remains a lone voice.
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John
Byrne: Would you die for Ireland?, video still;
photo Sam Gallagher; courtesy Artworking
|
Sarah Durcan hangs her cell with small works,
finding the folds of history melding with the folds of garments
rendered in a brusque style in oil on canvas. Brian Maguire
too turns to painting within the cell, offering to make concrete
the nightmarish atmosphere that lingers in the prison through
a graphic image of execution. Robert Ballagh in typically
direct - or is that 'un-nuanced'? - style offers three worthy
historical documents from Irish history splattered with red.
The words Liberté, Fraternité and Egalité
also feature, but the word geddit? (which does not) hovers
most strikingly over the work.
Also floating in a cell is Ursula Kavanagh's
Here come the redcoats, the terrible redcoats, three
hessian, fibreglass and resin coats. Painted a fresh, bloody
red (that colour again) they hang from fine threads in a little
group, their owners absent but their garments still holding
their swollen proportions. Though the finish on the work is
a little disappointing - up close, the redcoats become more
cartoonish than seems productive - it still neatly encompasses
a surprising examination of military manifestations of power.
A more subtle approach to semiotics has clearly taken hold
in military circles in the intervening years, though perhaps,
given the taste for neo-fascist stylings in the current US
administration, loud red (along with white and blue) regalia
may yet enjoy a resurgence.
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Ursula
Kavanagh: The terrible redcoats (detail); photo
Sam Gallagher; courtesy Artworking
|
Another fascinating
set of historical threads, this time linking showjumping with
the mechanic of imperialism, is at the heart of Brian Hand's
installation La puissance. A small TV monitor in one
crumbling corridor shows a loop of the Dublin Horse Show and
is accompanied by some explanatory text (cheers, mate) while
outside in the execution yard, the daunting red (again) and
white showjumpers' fence has been erected in the execution
yard.
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Brian
Hand: La puissance (detail); photo Sam Gallagher;
courtesy Artworking
|
Woollen threads fill
another cell in Austin McQuinn's strangely familiar Aran sweater-based
work, United. Here the artist has converted the austere
chamber into a warm, barnyard-smelling 'padded' cell by covering
the wall with knitted blankets of the off-white wool in an
array of patterns, offering a paradoxical sense of protection
within the prison, suggesting perhaps an easy sentimental
refuge.
Although Philip Napier's
Spectre does not sit nearly as snugly in its cell as
McQuinn's work, it maintains a spare, nasty and unimpeachable
directness. A black-painted period door, mounted on an inviting
low platform and wired up with a hidden motor on a timer,
dominates the quite space.
And then it comes, the
thunder from the door's leonine knocker as, we imagine, the
police come, perhaps in the smallest hours of the morning,
to remove another dissenter.
It is a sound that resounds
across continents and centuries, a sound with no anniversary
to celebrate, but a booming future to contemplate.
Luke Clancy
Dearcadh: Visionaries
of 1791-1803, Kilmainham Gaol, September/October 2003
