A book appeared some years ago with the sublime title and eponymous premise, Cigarettes Are Sublime . ² The work looked at those 'cigarette moments' in both art and life, those scenes when a cigarette functions as the quintessential signifier or the quintessential narrative or conceptual device of an instant. Nothing else could suffice in certain key scenarios - a prisoner finds their freedom, a soldier escapes a battle, a victim nervously paces and anticipates their torture. A mental sketch of each of these scenes immediately jots down a cigarette on the props list.

Neill Shawcross: Still life with white cup and saucher , 2001, acrylic on paper; courtesy Cavanacor Gallery

Coffee serves a similar function - if cigarettes are sublime, then coffee is equally so. The coffee instant dominated the recent work of Neil Shawcross, on show at the Cavanacor Gallery. In a show otherwise made up of the artist's attractive still-lifes of fruit and flowers in acrylic, which followed the paths of Cézanne, Bonnard, Matisse, Shawcross presented a suite of beautiful small oils on canvas and board, with the coffee cup and saucer as their prime object. I've read recently a critic eulogizing that the "coffee cup scene" in Jean-Luc Godard's film 2 or 3 Things I Know about Her (a scene featuring a characteristically Godardian/philosophical meandering voice-over/commentary primarily over ever-closer big-close-ups of a coffee cup on a cafe table) is cinema's finest scene of metaphysical reflection. For now, aspects of the film's commentary provide a valuable lateral reflection on the function of still-lifes, of painterly studies by subjects of objects:

Utilizing the engrossing and singularly viscous "opulence of oils" ⁴ , utilizing the recognizably autobiographical, near omni-biographical, scenario of staring at a coffee cup, Shawcross creates studies of the coffee cup and saucer as icons of long meditative spells of reflection - transforming the objects stared at into shape and form, removing unimportant details, leaving the essentials, the vision as a meditative flash. In strong heavy blacks, bold reds, in vibrant yellows, greens, and whites, Shawcross fuses a personal painterly instinct for visual obsessiveness, with the natural conceptual framework associated with the coffee cup as object - those spells of reflection staring at a coffee cup, watching the sugar cube fizzle away, or reading and re-reading the branding on the cup, 'Illy', into a series of marks and variations in light and tone rather than a word. The works are made up as much of Shawcross' "painterly statement" - as the exhibition notes put it - as they are of this particular 'truth' of the represented object/instant. The works act as a combined aesthetic gesture of both Shawcross the painter as the functioning subject; and of those coffee cups and saucers as functioning objects. The still-life rarely manifests such a degree of internal logic.

Emma Donaldson: from Tst #2 VP , 1999/2000; courtesy Context Gallery

This social pathology of the urban was at the core of Emma Donaldson's work. Equally, the urban as an essential site, as the locus of image projection and inter-relation between inhabitants, played a vital part in Catherine Harper's show at the Orchard Gallery. Appearing as Queenie, an exaggerated cross of domestic goddess and drag queen, the artist had previously stood in Derry's local elections. Her show at the gallery transformed the space into ballroom and fantasy dressing room, specializing in crossing/blending gender roles. But the thrust of the show was Queenie's public appearance and media presence in the urban space: she was featured in newspaper articles and letters, school visits, local television commercials, hospital visits, days spent offering a free and instant ironing service outside Derry's Guildhall and cleaning the city walls with a kitchen sponge and domestic cleaning fluid. This intervention in public space and public life gave the artist's creation of Queenie a remarkably high profile, and opened a debate as to the artistic value of such heightened presence in the public sphere. The 'drag queen' costume ensured heads turning and lots of conversation, and near universal visibility: but the extent to which socially engineered and socially assigned gender roles were truly challenged is questionable. The number of questions that the exhibition and the public performances raised is only one indication of an exhibition functioning successfully: ultimately what outlives Queenie's physical presence is Queenie as an alluring and charming creation.

Catherine Harper: from Anatomical Drag ; courtesy Orchard Gallery

¹ Jean-Luc Godard, Two or Three Things I Know about Her : the script of the 1967 film as featured in Alfred Guzzetti, Two or Three Things I Know about Her: Analysis of a film by Godard , Harvard,1981 ² Richard Klein, Cigarettes are Sublime , Durham: Duke University Press, 1993 ³ Godard op. cit. ⁴ Mike Catto, Art in Ulster II , Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1977 ⁵ Godard op. cit.

Recent Work : Neil Shawcross, Cavanacor Gallery, Lifford, September/October Emma Donaldson : Tst #2 VP, Context Gallery, Derry, September

Catherine Harper: Anatomical Drag , Orchard Gallery, Derry, August/September

Declan Sheehan is a writer on art and film, and Director of the Context Gallery.

Reprinted from CIRCA 98, Winter Issue 2001, pp. 42-43