CIRCA 111 review

Dublin: Eurojet Futures 2004 at the Royal Hibernian Academy

Ciarán Murphy: Untitled, 2004, oil on stretched paper, 20 x 24 cm; courtesy RHA

There have been many Irish group exhibitions and awards over the past few decades that have represented different political or cultural trends in contemporary Irish art practice. These have included major international multi-disciplinary shows like A Sense of Ireland during the 1980s or other national shows like The Peat Aviation Awards or The Glen Dimplex Awards during the 1990s. Eurojet Futures is the most recent exhibition series of this kind.

What is intriguing about this year’s show is the presentation of a post-national / international perspective by so many of the selected artists.

This is particularly evident in the work of Nevan Lahart whose satirical, religious and politically charged paintings and installations reference events in American politics, the Catholic Church and art history. Lahart’s works are executed in a variety of media from found objects to animation and web design. Smouldering Bush is an eclectic, engaging and comic mixture of animated images that conveys a powerful message of discontent with ideologies of control.

Ciarán Murphy also draws inspiration from found objects and collected imagery. His small, quiet paintings address Victorian notions of classification in the natural world. Hung together in seemingly random groups, Murphy’s landscapes and animal figures are difficult to identify. They are facets of real creatures and spaces, living in another time.

On the opposite side of the gallery, Sonja Suominen’s tonally rich images of empty spaces depict the dusty, forgotten corners of the RHA building itself. Ladders, blocks of wood and dustsheets huddle in abandoned groups, behind doors, and underneath stairs. They represent the shadowy dark, airless areas of public institutions. Suominen documents these spaces and materials in a cool, objective style. Large expanses of light are captured on film as they spill in from far-off windows and closing doors.

Martin Healy: Jersey devil incident (We knew that it was not human by the way it moved so one of the guys yelled at it), 2004, photographic transparency in lightbox, 76 x 102 cm; courtesy RHA

Martin Healy’s eerie photographic works of haunted New Jersey suburban landscapes are hung close to the work of Suominen. These images are primarily concerned with memory and psychology through the medium of film and photography. New Jersey devil is a blurred and brooding landscape film projected in the shape of a circle. The landscape in the projection passes by like pictures in a Victorian magic lantern. The density of the trees in this circular view conjures up unsettling images of beasts that seem to be hiding ‘out there’. The viewer could be searching through the lens of a telescope, or even the sight of a gun. The audio soundtrack played during the film describes the myths and secrets associated with the area. It is possible that the silent cinematic flickering of the film itself would have had an even more profound effect, because without the soundtrack the sense of unease still prevails from the strength of the imagery.

According to RHA director and co-curator Patrick Murphy, all artists chosen were already known to him from some of the major open-submission exhibitions taking place around the country. This year, as with previous exhibitions, Murphy selected artworks that offered, he felt, stimulating concepts presented with a high level of technical skill. This skill was particularly evident in the work of Julie Merriman and John Gerrard.

Julie Merriman: Dis-location: Block G, Fatima Mansions, Oct. ’03, 2004, carbon on paper, 125 x 152 cm; courtesy RHA

Merriman’s exquisitely executed carbon drawings of urban housing developments are reflections on the decline of modernist architectural ideologies. Along with the many delicately layered depictions of abandoned buildings in Fatima Mansions, Merriman included a drawing of a downy mound of scattered pigeon feathers. This poignant image echoed the mounds of rubble scattered around the new developments and acted as a metaphor for the cycle of destruction and development that is currently taking place in the city.

Gerard’s technologically sophisticated works experiment with the genre of portraiture using plasma screens and 3D media. The main work, a pair of interactive portraits, follows the movement of the sun and the moon over the gallery space. This work articulates Gerrard’s interest in connecting illusion with reality. When these two plasma screens are moved, the gaze of the models moves too.

The Eurojet exhibition has been held at the Royal Hibernian Academy for the past four years. Murphy sees the RHA’s traditionally conservative vision as just one of many perspectives. For this year’s show both he and co-curator Ruth Carroll attempted to create a “panoptical collection of self-contradictory elements"1 in order to reflect a more fluid and diverse expression of the human condition.

Materiality, materialism, post-nationality and virtual reality are some of the major concerns that emerged from this year’s show. It is evident that a new international awareness has developed in contemporary Irish art practice.

Ciara Healy is an artist and writer currently based at Pallas Studios; she is completing a research M. Phil. on curatorial practice at the Dublin Institute of Technology.

1 Interview with Patrick Murphy 6/1/2005.

Eurojet Futures 2004, Royal Hibernian Academy, November 2004 - January 2005

Article reproduced from CIRCA 111, Spring 2005, pp.88–89

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