C90 Columns
VISUAL ARTS/NORTH
"Ian, Gilbert and George"
Belfast Festival at Queen's is in full swing as I write. The various studios, galleries and artists have all made excellent individual efforts to contribute to Belfast's most important cultural event. However, as I trekked around the city, something seemed to be missing. There were no links or overlaps that have made recent festival so interesting, so much more than a sum of the individual parts.
Two years ago I wrote optimistically about the works on show in the Ormeau Baths Gallery overlapping with other elements of the Festival. Last year it was rock stars turned visual artist and a talk by Brian Eno. In contrast, this year's Festival lacks direction. Ian not-normally-known-for-investigative-journalism Hill wrote an open letter in the News Letter to the Queen's Universiy Vice Chancellor about the programming. The letter highlighted the creative talents of Sean Doran who had been the festival's artistic director. It pointed out that after Sean Doran left for Perth, no artistic director had been appointed. Obviously he took with him those overlaps and links that I had missed when going round this years Festival. Hill's open letter flushed out a response from the Vice Chancellor, George Bains, the last paragraph of which reads: We know it can also deliver more. And it will. But let us not get too depressed about the 1999 event. Goethe said: "In art the best is good enough." This Festival is presenting some of the best there is. Hardly the stuff to get one out into Belfast on a cold November day.
So does the visual art in this year's festival lack excitement? Does it hell. Come in DUP. What threatened to be a damp squib became a wonderful festive firework display. Someone cleverly sent Dr Ian Paisley an invitation to the Ormeau Baths Gallery's Gilbert and George exhibition. The card showed Gilbert and George in the nude. The match was struck and the fireworks were alight. Local papers gave coverage to an art exhibition that a political party's spin doctor could only dream of. The nationals move in and gave Belfast the sort of coverage to make the Edinburgh Festival green with envy. The Guardian, Scotsman, Irish Times, Daily Telegraph and Independent fell over themselves to get in on the act and make comment. The Free Presbyterians kept up their PR by singing hymns outside the Ormeau Baths Gallery on the opening night. So this headless chicken of a festival was saved from its own mediocrity.
But what should be done for next year? Could the Free Presbyterians be given the PR for the complete Festival programme? What is certain is that a new artistic director needs to be appointed. Could the charismatic Dr Ian Paisley be asked to take on the role? Certainly he is a man of strong opinions who is not scared to speak his mind.
Finally, what about the Gilbert and George show? Normally this show would have been seen as the work of two artists who made a statement twenty years ago and with only some changes of imagery continue pretty much in the same vein. Just think of the wealth of imagery they will have taken back with them from Belfast – hymn singers, white collared ministers, churches, in fact a wealth of religious imagery. I can just see a portrait of Ian, his large head in the centre of a canvas between a naked Gilbert and George. Psalm xvii will flow from between green teeth. Perhaps it could be hung behind him as he opens next year's festival as its new artistic director.
Brian Kennedy
