C106
review
Dublin: Superbia at 11 Coultry
Gardens, Ballymun
The show's
official title, Superbia, was impossible
to miss, given that it was splashed in milky lettering
across an outsized vinyl banner designed by artists Jay
Roche and Anthony Kelly, which was draped across the front
of 11 Coultry Gardens. The local kids, however, clearly
knew it as 'the spooky house'. We arrived by taxi to an
unprepossessing terraced house in the shadow of Ballymun
flats, clutching an invitation card disguised rather pointedly
as an estate agent's leaflet. All over Dublin, no doubt,
there were Saturday-afternoon househunters doing the same
thing for real. The scene that greeted us was rowdy and
good-humoured. This off-beat exhibition, organised and
curated by Stephen Brandes and Brigid Harte under the
auspices of the Breaking Ground commissioning programme
and Ballymun Regeneration Ltd., had clearly made an impact
on one section at least of the local community, a number
of whom were back for a second or third viewing with additional
friends in tow.
Isabel
Nolan: installation shot, Superbia,
2003; photo/courtesy Matei Bejenaru
|
According
to the curators-cum-estate-agents' patter, the artists'
brief had been to deal with this recently vacated family
home "as a living organism" in order to explore the "mythical
dimension" of our everyday domestic environment. The result
was a decidedly 'unhomely' home in that the most instantly
arresting works traded in the uncanny disruption of domestic
harmony. The 'spooky house' most probably owed its nickname
primarily to Nick Laessing's decorative chandelier, which
hung in the stairwell, periodically rocking and juddering
in classic haunted-house fashion. In the upstairs master
bedroom Malachi Farrell's installation of a suspended,
jigging metal mannikin cowed by a mechanized crucifix
added to a general sense of the macabre. In the adjacent
nursery Joyce Pensato's daubed walls featured a number
of children's comic-book characters as they might be reimagined
by a slightly disturbed neo-expressionist graffiti artist.
Gentler and wittier in tone was Isabel Nolan's bathroom
installation of scores of wall-hung towels with hand-sewn
button-eyes suggesting a benign congregation of cartoon
spooks.
Malachi
Farrell: installation shot, Superbia,
2003; photo/courtesy Matei Bejenaru
|
In a show
that had everything including a kitchen sink, Samuel Rousseau's
intervention was mildly disconcerting and highly entertaining.
Peering down the plughole one spied a tiny, trapped man
pleading for assistance. Though well-executed and enthusiastically
received, this work perhaps owed a little too much to
Swiss art-star Pipilotti Rist's well-known Selfless
in the bath of lava (1994), a work shown in ev+a
some years back that features a pint-sized Rist on
a tiny monitor screaming up at the viewer from a hole
in the floorboards. While Matei Bejenaru's 'film-portrait'
of the Romanian city of Iasi highlighted certain similarities
between that city's physical landscape and social history
and that of Ballymun, it seemed somehow misplaced, as
if it had wandered in from a worthier and less playful
show. Hans op de Beeck's animated mantelpiece portrait
of a family going nowhere fast was more in keeping with
the general atmosphere. Also featured in this thoroughly
engaging show were Brendan Early's portraits of various
members of his family commissioned from Garda Special
Branch 'photofit' artists, some sweetly unnerving kitchen
decorations by Laura Gannon, Darragh Hogan's incongruous
upstairs wishing-well, Shane Cullen's wall-based tribute
to classic '70s' German electronic music (with a nod to
artist Christian Marclay), Ruth Shaw's architectural peep-show,
Sarah Mangan's drawings, and various contributions by
the pupils of Ballymun Senior Comprehensive School and
Gaelscoil Bhaile Munna.
Caoimhín
Mac Giolla Léith
Superbia,
11 Coultry Gardens, Ballymun, September 2003
