Her latest
discovery is He Yi Fu, a master of traditional Chinese art and calligraphy,
who also paints in the western abstract mode. He Yi Fu is Professor
of Art History and traditional techniques in the Art Institute of
Yunnan. In the early 1990s, he spent three years teaching at the
Institute of Fine Art in Paris, and returns to Europe regularly
to continue his studies of western art. He explained the principles
of traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy through an interpreter
in a lecture for the Friends of the Crawford Gallery, illustrated
by his own work. Returning to that work, hanging in Tig Filí, after
the talk, it became apparent how his application of traditional
skills and the principles of yin and yang enrich the abstract works
he paints in the western tradition.
The annual
open-submission at the Crawford is now in its second year, and a
third show is scheduled for December 2002. This year's selectors
were Valerie Byrne of the Triskel Arts Centre, Cork, Suzanne Woods
of the Model Arts and Niland Gallery, Sligo and Peter Murray, curator
of the Crawford. Once again, video and photography were much in
evidence.
The artists
selected were very much from the mainstream of international contemporary
art. If much of it felt derivative, it was probably deliberately
so. Ellie Rees's video Art Must be Beautiful is subtitled
A Tribute to Marina Abramovic, so one knew what to expect.
Bernard Smyth's video and soundtrack of the top half a smoking tap
dancer (you only know he is tap dancing because of the soundtrack
- or is he?) immediately recalled Bruce Naumann's work. The other
videos lost my attention within seconds. It is an unforgiving medium;
nobody has time to waste.
Painting was
not entirely neglected, with striking minimalist landscapes by Oliver
Comerford and Brendan Grant. Three-dimensional works included Tamiko
O'Brien's kinetic conveyor belt in white felt, and a free-standing
piece by Peter FitzGerald, Rachel Rachel, a kind of portable
studio that spoke volumes about painting and artistic obsession.
It was wonderfully messy, compared to the clinical hard edges of
the rest of the show. Cian Donnelly's Paint Slices were perhaps
the most truly innovative pieces, delicious lollipops of colour,
somewhere between painting and sculpture.
The strongest
piece in the show was also the simplest. Birthdays by Anthony
Noel Kelly consists of dual slide projections of full-frontal black-and-white
photographs of naked people (not nudes in the usual sense, definitely
naked people) of various ages, female on one side, male on the other.
The subjects do not pose; they just stand there. The sight of these
plain, lived-in bodies, stretched and wrinkled by time, or in a
state of youthful perfection, is hypnotic, provoking self-interrogation
about ideals of beauty, definitions of ugliness, the vulnerability
of nakedness, the right to privacy and the practice of voyeurism.
A similar voyeuristic
unease accompanies the first look at Martin Wedge's installation
of paintings, Human. The show, which has previously been
seen at the Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast, came to the Vangard Gallery
at the invitation of the organisers of Art Trail 2001. Human
is an installation consisting of small portraits, painted from
photographs in medical textbooks and journals, taken to illustrate
genetic disorders and malformations of the head and neck.
The paintings,
all 30.5 cm square, are hung at eye-level. They are intimate portraits,
focusing on deformities that we usually flinch from: bulging eyes,
nasal malformations, face tumours and the ravages of skin disease.
There is no medical information provided; that is not the point.
The emphasis is firmly defined by the show's title: Human.
The portraits
challenge our image of what is normal, and our conventional ideals
of beauty, in the same way as Kelly's slide show. Feelings of revulsion
are quickly replaced by empathy. The artist's paintings of the clinical
photographs reveal a fundamental vulnerability and fragility in
the subjects. The eyes that face the camera, reinterpreted by the
artist's firm, expressive brush-strokes, and coloured by his imagination,
provoke first pity, then admiration. Looking at the little ear-rings
and the fresh white sweater on the girl with a malformed nose, one
starts to feel affection, then awe at her courage and her apparent
acceptance of her lot.
Evelyn Montague's
show Onward, at the Alliance Française, consisted of one
magnificent quilt, Multi Story, completed shortly before
a disabling stroke in 1995, and twenty new collages. Montague was
born in Paris, and has lived here since 1972. Her work, which has
been shown internationally, has helped to raise the profile of quilting
from domestic and community art to the realms of fine art: a collage
which is sewn rather than glued.
Montague mastered
the techniques of traditional American quilting in the 1970s, and
in the 1980s she encouraged many women to take up this activity,
which is generally carried out in groups. She quickly became aware
of the therapeutic and healing values of quilting, the emotional
power of colour and pattern, and the links between art practice
and emotional life.
Montague is
currently a student in the Art Therapy Department of the Crawford
College of Art. Her decision to train in art therapy is a direct
result of her work with quilting. She made the unusual decision
to show work that she has produced in the course of her own therapy.
The bright, cheerful fabric and paint collages show the same true
eye for colour and pattern that make Montague's quilts so outstanding.
She uses mainly primary colours, chosen for their symbolism, and
fast intuitive brush strokes.
The quilt's
title, Multi Story, refers to the tall Georgian house in
which the artist lived with her husband, and also to the different
stories associated with the participants and those affected by their
marriage break-up. The piece incorporates fabrics screen-printed
with private letters and drawings, and can be read as narrative
- if you can stand being so close to someone else's pain. It is
like a psychological version of Anthony Noel Kelly's naked people
and Wedge's case histories. According to the artist, all the pain
and rage that attended her break-up has moved from herself into
the quilt, leaving her free to move on. It is an impressive piece
of work, but for the viewer so much pain is a heavy load to handle.
The Fenton
Gallery is playing an ever more high-profile role in bringing the
best of contemporary art to the city, while also showcasing local
talent. This autumn saw shows by Clare Langan (cleverly coinciding
with the film festival) and by Grace Weir and friends, both of which
were unusually adventurous for a commercial gallery. Michael Quane's
stone carvings of human and animal figures provided an earthy counterpoint
to the high-tech metaphysics of Langan and Weir.
Quane graduated
from the Crawford School of Art and Design in 1987. His work was
much sought-after in the early days of the Percent for Art scheme.
His heroic horse and rider on the Mallow roundabout, for example,
is a reminder of what high standards can be achieved in 'road art'.
Quane has stopped taking on large commissions for the time being,
and the show celebrates a return to smaller, studio work, in which
he feels freer to try out new ideas.
Quane works
either in polished marble or in Kilkenny limestone, which he textures
with a claw chisel. His traditional stone-carving skills are used
to produce figures, both real and imaginary, which combine strength
and grace with a touch of quirky humour. The show contained some
fine examples of the heroic horses and riders for which he has become
so well known, and a new series of swimmers, divers and large, duck-like
figures with buoyancy aids.
In these Quane
continues the exploration of gravity which underlies all his work.
The show also contained his first female figure, a large limestone
piece, punningly entitled a-shebuoyed. As Nuala Fenton commented
in a catalgoue note,
