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C110 review
Belfast: Perspective
2004 at Ormeau Baths Gallery
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| Grace Ndiritu: The nightingale,
film stills; courtesy Ormeau Baths Gallery |
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| Grace Ndiritu: The nightingale,
film stills; courtesy Ormeau Baths Gallery |
Open-submission shows often fall between
a rock and a hard place when it comes to engaging with their audience.
If selection is on merit alone the result can be a bitty display
of individually good works, lacking in cohesion. The other option,
selection on a theme, offers a more coherent viewer experience
but can also produce a less than high standard across the board.
Somehow, this year's Perspective at Belfast's Ormeau Baths Gallery has managed to sidestep both potholes to produce an exhibition of strong works, all of which adhere to selector Vittorio Urbani's nebulous criterion: "the tendency of things and people towards joy."
A bit of a fudge on the part of Urbani, his theme has allowed him to present, without apology, works that simply appeal to him. Any art that make us experience life in a more intense way can be described as joyful if we take it that understanding leads to enlightenment. What the works in Perspective 2004 share is the ability to make viewers look at the world around them with new eyes.
Grace Ndiritu's The nightingale was the deserving winner of the £6,000 prize. In a show littered with good video art, her seven-minute film engages instantly, beginning with the slow movement of a piece of cloth, an action fraught with intense anticipation. A head emerges, tantalisingly revealing lips, half a nose. Ndiritu's eyes are closed for an exquisitely long time; it's sensual and trance-like, almost meditative. Then the beat of the African soundtrack changes, the screen flips into colour and the red cloth with white flowers becomes a dancer in the artist's hands as she wraps it around her head in a series of movements that transform it into a turban, a burka, a head scarf, a shawl. In the space of a few minutes she references everything from 1950s housewife to twenty-first-century rap artist, from Egyptian belly dancer to Irish Peig. In quick succession, her actions spark thoughts of the relationship between women and fabric: it constrains as a gag or blindfold, it enhances beauty as a fashion tool, it can be a weapon of oppression, it can preserve modesty, it's something to hide behind. Ndiritu's playful eyes, fast movements and various entanglements deliver a many-layered message. It's addictive viewing.
Other notable video works include Paul Howard's Restoration,
a modern remake of Holbein's Ambassadors painting; Pamela
Lynch's Dance in which a middle-aged couple demonstrate
the power-struggle between duty and love to the plink-plink sound
of a baby's wind-up lullaby player; and They spoke softly
by McCormac + Gent, with the two artists facing each other in
separate television monitors and speaking the words to three song
duets: The girl is mine, What a swell party this is
and Under pressure. The effect is laugh-out-loud hilarious,
and also offers some inspired observations on male communication
issues.
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| Ann Mulrooney: from Rorschach nation
series; courtesy Ormeau Baths Gallery |
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| Ann Mulrooney: from Rorschach nation
series; courtesy Ormeau Baths Gallery |
More subtle works like Tess Glanville's luminous
Scotch-tape wall drawings and Esther Teichmann's beautifully poignant
Still caught photographic series manage to make their presence
felt among the all-singing, all-dancing videos. As do Caitlin
Heffernan's broken and bandaged furniture pieces and Ann Mulrooney's
Rorschach nation drawings, in which dismembered geographical
portions of Ireland and the UK take on unexpected visual references.
There are effective one-liners from Laura Wilson, whose Plug one, plug two is a mini hay stack with an electrical flex too short to reach the wall socket nearby, and Teemu Hupli, whose 9 momentary paintings are photographs of the paintbrush-like patterns left on an oven tray as he washed up.
Urbani chose his theme because "joy is bold, excessive, energetic and surprising." The resulting show is all that and more. It is impossible to leave without a smile on your face, whether from McCormac + Gent's dead-pan interchange, Andrea Stanislav's fantastically kooky three-dimensional landscape The Forest of Bunktum Booger or Joanna Karolini's subtle use of a forgotten space in Swimming floor.
Acitore X Artezione is the only one whose contribution involved an outdoor intervention. The film 10,000 saw I at a glance documents how she stuck transparent labels with the word 'artist' printed in yellow in a breadcrumb-like trail around the streets leading to the gallery. A subtle act of civil disobedience (litter / graffiti), the artist was also marking her territory like an animal, or indeed the residents of Belfast with their murals. Leaving the gallery and pressing the button at the pedestrian crossing outside, I noticed three of Artezione's stickers on the walk / don't walk sign. As the light went green I found myself smiling again. This joy thing must be contagious.
Cristín Leach is Visual Art
Critic with The Sunday Times.
Perspective 04, Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast, September - November 2004
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