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Summer 2001 - on the other side of open C97 Article Now that the show's up and running, how does the Republic of Ireland's commissioner for Venice view the experience?
Previously, a subcommittee of the Cultural Relations Committee, under the able Chairmanship of Peter Murray, had selected the artist from a shortlist solicited from curators, and they subsequently chose an individual to act as Commissioner. I am indebted to the Committee for appointing me Commissioner with the permission to choose the artists that I would serve. I had three objectives in acting as commissioner. One to secure a venue closer to the Giardini which offered more facilities than the previous smaller and more distant venue of Nuova Icona. Secondly, to choose artists that would stretch our ambitions further than they had previously been challenged, and thirdly, to promote that exhibition to create greater opportunities for the artists involved. Last October, I remember sitting at dinner with Siobhán Hapaska and Grace Weir on a reconnaissance trip to the venue and giddily speculating on just what we could achieve. This of course was predicated on raising the necessary funds to make it all realisable. What I wanted for the artists was to go to Venice on a thoroughly professional basis. I sought to create the resources that would fully service their participation and provide them with a real sense of national representation. There had been a policy within previous Venice projects not to financially assist the artists with the production costs of new work for the show, something I was not in agreement with and sought to rectify. Building a the budget for a project from the ground up is never easy. Your initial funding dictates how much you can increase it. So a £250,000 project can grow to £350,000 but a £75,000 won't get much further than £150,000 with gargantuan effort. I am sure there is some technical term for this equation in professional fundraising argot. Anyhow, alongside the negotiation of venues, apartments, and the curatorial discussion of space, content and interrelationships, I was constantly composing requests for funding. (At times the conflict-of-interest issue did arise in regard to my position as Director of the Academy versus Commissioner). While the final figures are not yet available and we can never quite accurately estimate all of the help and assistance in kind that we were given, Ireland's participation this year will come in around IR£200,000. Initially, the CRC provided a fund of IR£50,000 and the Arts Council addressed the artists' travel, expenses and fees with IR£23,000. The project nearly floundered thrice. Once back in February when it did not seem that we were going to secure a major private sponsor, but then IONA Technologies then came through with cash and the purchase of a 40" plasma screen. Later in April as we desperately tried to raise production costs for the Hapaska film. After a number of defeating refusals and just before the commencement of post-production with no funds left we secured the support of the Felix Trust. In the middle of May we finally received the much-requested quotations from the Venetian firm that were constructing the walls and the hanging grids. It was twice what we had allocated, and we were generous in our allowance. I am thankful to the CRC and the Arts Council who swiftly responded to that emergency with a shared additional fund of IR£10,000. Even with IR£200,000, we went to Venice without producing a catalogue, relying instead on existing publications and binding the project conceptually together with a brochure (this had a large print run to facilitate wide promotion). Previous openings at the pavilion had been evening affairs and were overcrowded and somewhat chaotic. They were also curiously Irish affairs. We decided to have two openings. The first was at 12:30pm which avoided the larger countries' evening openings and gave us the opportunity to offer lunch to a selected range of opinion makers. We had a good response with curators from the U.S., U.K., and Europe and collectors and gallery owners from London, Dublin and New York. Later at 2:00 p.m. a broader audience was invited to join the festivities. While I consider that the project was artistically successful we must await the reviews to see how it was received critically and, more keenly, we must wait to see what successful introductions we have made for Hapaska and Weir. I cannot express enough my appreciation and admiration for the dedication that both artists brought to the endeavour. My recommendations for future participation would be that the selection for the Venice Biennale should be by open competition solicited from all venues on the island; that would knit the production into an institution and allow the Commissioner/Curator to craft their own presentation and facilitate a showing in Ireland following the Biennale. The Scuola San Pasquale should be reserved now for future presentations. And a base budget of at least IR£200,000 should be provided through the cooperative efforts of Foreign Affairs and the Arts Council. (Perhaps we can't afford to go to both Venice and São Paolo, just yet.) There are two undersung participants to this years project. The OPW agreed to aid us in equipment back-up and extended that brief beyond our expectations, including providing a technician to assist us install the show. And a week before we departed an individual made a gift of IR£5,000 in response to a request I made on the basis that we had no contingency funds if and when things went wrong. That act of faith in the project cannot be adequately acknowledged. Patrick T. Murphy is Director of the Royal Hibernian Academy and acted as Commissioner for the Irish Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2001.
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