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Jim
Buckley; Fall, 2000
see below for enlarged
image |
The
most important event of the Cork art scene this autumn took place
in Dublin. The seminar Public Art - Making it Work, organised
by Cork's National Sculpture Factory and held at the Royal
Hibernian Academy's Gallagher Gallery on 23 and 24 October generated
a high sense of excitement. Ideas were flying, and brain cells that
had been dormant many a month sprang to life.
However, for
those lucky enough to attend, listening to a succession of innovative
thinkers including the curator Guy Tortosa, the London-based architect
Ian Ritchie, and artists Cristo and Jeanne Claude, also led
to an increased awareness of how far Ireland is lagging behind the
international scene, both in attitudes to public art and the making
of it. One came back to Cork bursting with big new ideas, only to
find the Lavit Gallery hosting a show that seemed to belong
to a bygone age: The Tom Caldwell Gallery brings Artists
from Ulster. Christine Bowen, Liam B. de Frinse, John B. Vallely,
Neil Shawcross and Colin Davidson combined to present a room full
of large, confident paintings, primarily landscapes and still lifes,
which jostled each other for attention.
Of course we
in Cork are far more up to the minute than that, or are we just
becoming a little too complacent? The intensification of artistic
activity in the past year - the opening of the Wandesford Quay
complex, including Fenton Gallery, the unveiling of the
Crawford's extension, and the arrival of the Vangard Gallery
in Carey's Lane, has left the city on an apparently permanent artistic
high, but is it really justified? The gloom engendered by the artists
from Ulster was dissipated by Franck Allais' photographic exhibition
at the Triskel, where the new Visual Arts director, Valerie
Byrne is reversing the downward trend. Allais is a French artist
living in Cork. His large-scale photographs in a carefully graded
range of greys feature domestic interiors, with parts of a man -
knuckles opening a kitchen drawer, a hand holding a shower head,
a slice of foot descending a stair, the play of round heels on a
diamond-patterned bathroom floor. Allais has created his own pictorial
language, and explores it with wit and inventiveness.
 |
Franck
Allais; Untitled, black-and-white photographs, 112x72cm,
courtesy of Triskel Arts Centre |
The
National Sculpture Factory practised what it preaches by commissioning
a temporary art project, jointly with the Triskel and Cork
Corporation. Jim Buckley, a Cork-born artist now based in
Scotland, produced a large-scale projection of a waterfall, inaugurated
on 28 October, which was visible nightly from 6 p.m. to midnight
on the side of the R&H Hall Grain Merchants' building in Centre
Park Road. Buckley regularly uses abandoned buildings and sites,
exploring the issues of renewal and regeneration that they pose.
The site-enhancing projection was enjoyed by both local residents
and taxi drivers, who complained when it was taken down after four
weeks. For the local community it was a kind of farewell, as the
R&H Hall building is soon to be knocked down and replaced by
apartments.
Jim
Buckley; Fall, 2000,projection onto R&H Hall Grain
Merchants Building,
photo/ Paul Green; courtesy Triskel Arts Centre |
Fenton Gallery
continued an extraordinary run of exhibitions with Eilís O'Connell's
first solo exhibition in Cork since graduating from the Crawford
in 1977. Fenton Gallery is without a doubt proving to be one of
the most interesting galleries on this island, consistently producing
shows that can hold their own in the international arena. Appropriately,
Eilís O'Connell has a high international profile, with large public
works including the 1999 Pero's Footbridge in Bristol and
the 1998 Tower of Light at Bilston to her credit.
The Fenton
show gave a chance to see more intimate works featuring the same
elegant fusion of constructed, architectural elements with curvaceous,
organic shapes. Her use of colour is striking, while her mastery
of form and material is evident everywhere. Work included a series
of small bronze Venuses, private, quietly sensuous pieces, and coloured
wall-hung pieces. Carapace, a small work in stainless steel cable,
shows O'Connell's ability to fuse organic and constructed forms,
which is successful on both small and large scale, as the two large
outdoor works in the courtyard showed.
Cork Arts
Fest 2000, the eighth annual arts event at the Cork Institute
of Technology, is having a increased impact on the city. The visual
arts programme included a stimulating group exhibition at Tig
Filí, Exposure. Recent graduates from the Crawford and CIT showed
work that uses new technologies. Artists included Debbie Godsell,
Paul Green, Sarah Kelleher, Ailbhe Ní Bhrian, Elinor Rivers, Polly
Venn and Keith Kennedy. At the Sirius Art Centre in Cobh
Ben Reilly showed large printed images of figures that were floated
down the River Itchen in Winchester.
Featured artist
of the festival was Tom Climent. Since leaving the Crawford in 1994
he has receive the Victor Treacy Award (1996) and the Tony O'Malley
Travel Award (1998). His recent work, shown at Gallery 44
in MacCurtain Street, employed a more expressive, less figurative
style. Climent works well on a big scale. Worship, at 244
x 183 cm the largest of five big canvases, uses paint directly from
the tube in impasto to suggest the outline of a red kneeling figure
and a blue lectern. The whole canvas is primed in acrylic in earthy
tones, which are then painted over in oil, creating a background
of considerable depth.
Many people
have expressed reservations about the Crawford Gallery's
new extension, in particular the shallow steps across the floor.
An edging of raised studs will soon solve that problem. The space,
which some people found too big, was perfectly suited to the
Crawford Open (until 27 January). This was chosen by open submission
from works already in existence. Photographs and videos abound,
as do irony and ambiguity. It looks new and hard-edged, and provides,
as they say of simple toys "hours of harmless fun." A major exception
to the light-hearted tone was Laura Gannon's enigmatic 16mm film
Underswim, on the third floor, reached via a staircase featuring
a haunting sound work by Danny McCarthy.
Art
Trail, the all-inclusive artist-led initiative, designed to
promote the visual arts in Cork, took place from November 25 to
December 3. This is the fifth Art Trail, and a timely symposium
co-ordinated by Sarah Iremonger was held to discuss its future.
The speakers, after some fruitful discussion, came out strongly
in favour of keeping the event much as it is - curated and organised
by artists, generously inclusive (in spite of the resulting fluctuation
in quality), and a true reflection of the practice of Cork artists.
The organisational
burden this year once more devolved on Suzy O'Mullane, Lorraine
Cooke and Harry Moore, all of the Backwater Artists Group,
who performed miracles with a budget of less than £5000 from the
Arts Council, Cork Corporation and Cork County Council. Five sets
of studios were open to the public, including, for the last time,
Cork Artists' Collective, which has come to the end of its
lease.
Tig Fili
was the venue for out of town artists, who included Esther Balazs,
a strikingly original German abstract artist working in Allihies.
Tim Goulding's
Stone Poems at the Vangard Gallery suggested that he
is about to move on from these highly textured mixed-media meditations.
Several works featured a stripe or a streak of unadulterated oil
paint in earth tones, which acted like a signpost, away from stoniness
and islands and gritty surfaces
This year's
non-gallery venue, the Exchange Buildings, sponsored by the
Ivory Tower restaurant, was smaller than previous venues and crammed
with work. Preferences can only be personal: I liked Peter Morgan's
photographic series, Teresa Collins' street scenes, the spontaneity
of Noel O'Callaghan's landscapes, Orla Clarke's pillars containing
doll's heads, Chris Clarke's installation Untitles and Stefanie
Jaax's Lacan-inspired installations. UCC's contribution to Art
Trail was Drawings 1982-2000 by Samuel Walsh. A representative
selection of drawings shows the evolution of Walsh's visual language
from the grid-like lattices of 1982, through the complex interplay
of solid and void in the later '80s, right up to more recent works
which relate more closely to the physical experience of the world,
as in Drawing 251 which appears to show a pair of vessels
on a plinth.
As part of
the Art Trail, Walsh agreed to create a charcoal drawing
in situ on a wall of the O'Rahilly Building. Having completed this
task, which took some four hours, he then participated part in a
Forum on drawing, chaired by the editor of CIRCA. It was
organised by Katherine Beug and Collette Nolan, who were responsible
for Art Trail's Outline initiative. This consisted of events and
temporary art works by 16 artists in various location around the
city, designed to bring drawing, which is normally an intimate,
hidden aspect of the artist's work, into the public domain.
Some of the
most exciting moments of the Art Trail were Outline projects - Suzy
O'Mullane's Hanging Out in Corporation Buildings,
a drawing on a sheet on a washing line, Niamh Lawlor's posters of
sound recordings, Danny McCarthy's sound installation in Tobin Street,
Billy Foley's drawing in the Physics Building UCC, and Irene Murphy's
Three-Ply, a performance-installation with thread and wire
which took place on a balcony on the new facade of the Opera house.
In fact, the
best moments of Art Trail were every bit as exciting as the NSF's
high-powered seminar on public art. The peripheral is becoming ever
more central, and the term 'provincial' as we understand it will
soon be a thing of the past.
Public
Art - Making it Work, National Sculpture
Factory event at the Royal Hibernian Academy Gallagher Gallery,
October 23-24, 2000
The Tom Caldwell Gallery
Brings Artists from Ulster, Lavit gallery, October/November
2000
Franck Allais,
Triskel Gallery, October/November 2000
Jim Buckley, projection
onto R&H Hall Grain Merchants' Building, October/November
2000
Eilís O'Connell,
Fenton Gallery, November 2000
Arts Fest, Cork
Institute of Technology and various venues, November 2000
Crawford Open,
Crawford Muncipal Gallery of Art, November 2000-January 2001
Art
Trail, various venues, November/December 2000
Alannah
Hopkin
is a journalist based in Kinsale.
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