paper visual art journal –

“The unified quality of the thing is not noise at all, but is the sensual object itself…[T]he existence of a unified quality of things means that the sensual realm is already home to a certain ‘I do not know what’ that makes the marble a steady focus of my attention…we do not say je ne sais quoi in a spirit of gentle mockery, but as a true statement about sensual objects.”[1]

I recently joined art.sy. I had read about the site a few months back in Artforum and duly signed up to receive an invite when they were being sent out, forgetting all about it until a few days ago.[2] For those yet to learn about it, art.sy presents a new online facility for the viewing and buying of art. The intriguing thing about the site is not that it heralds a new way of appreciating art, or even interacting with it. The Internet has changed the way the world is apprehended, art notwithstanding: to point this out seems oxymoronic almost. Rather, what interests me is the manner in which the art presented on the site is sorted and categorised, in so doing being inserted into unforeseen contexts and arrangements: that is, by means of what art.sy calls ‘The Art Genome Project™’.[3] This system allows for the categorisation of some fifteen thousand works of art by three thousand artists on the website, according to the application of roughly eight hundred “genes”. Most artworks exist as a melange of some thirty to forty genes. These genes, in art.sy’s estimation, rest on the conceptual, art-historical or formal data that is deduced from the artwork itself, by a team of art historians and other professionals. So, presumably there is a “collage” gene and a “Fauvism” gene; but also, in all likelihood, a “green” or even a “cat” gene.

Screen shot from art.sy in a search for artworks related to “cat”, 07/02/2013; Website: art.sy.com

The categorisation of a work of art can thus be enacted not only by virtue of it belonging to a certain school or era, but also, somewhat arbitrarily, by whether or not a cat resides within the frame. Indeed, on entering the word “cat” into the search box at the top left of the screen and pressing enter, I get forty-one results, which can then be sub-divided into twelve further categories; flatness, primary mark, geometry, contemporary graphic realism, etc. Clicking on “flatness” to get, presumably, some flat pictorial felines, I am faced with a motley crew of six results, Manet’s Olympia sitting in a grid formation alongside works by Romare Bearden and Leland Bell, amongst others. The cat truly does appear as the sole unifying factor here. In this way, art.sy really is the place for collectors with unusually specific tastes: “A contemporary hard-edged colour field painting, predominantly magenta and with dimensions of at least nine by nine? No problem!” And while there are advantages to this specificity of approach, the Art Genome Project™’s system does seem to work hard to break down the actual specificity – better still, singularity – of the individual artwork. The work of art is reduced to a relation – between you, the viewer, your wishes and desires, and furthermore, between the artwork and the sum of other artworks that encroach upon this primary relation. Olympia becomes just one picture with a cat in it, rather than a singular aesthetic representation irreducible to genes. In other words, the ‘in-itself’ becomes the ‘in-itself-as-it-relates-to others’: the artwork becomes a code to be cracked.

Recently I had a conversation with an artist about the prospect of getting her work wrong. A child of post-modernism, prone to harbouring a kind of wistful, Adorno-esque residua modernism, I was quietly delighted to hear her say, yes, you definitely could. Not all readings are correct, she said, the work is not a space for projection; rather, there is a wrong and a right way to read the work, the right way following that of the artist’s intent. Now, I am not quite sure I agree fully with this position, but I do hold a great deal of sympathy towards it. All too often, a viewer or critic (myself included) approaches the work of art with already too much in mind, too many expectations, hopes or desires. Thus the work becomes the place where such tendencies are acted out, a catalyst if you will. The result is that the work of art becomes just one factor in a broad field of relations, its singularity utterly broken. However subscribing totally to the artist’s intent is not possible for me; the truth of the artwork is not reducible to the artist-artwork relation, either. If this were the case, an artwork would be seen once, the artist’s statement read, and the work immediately assimilated; there would be nothing to gain from the second, fifth or twelfth encounter. Going even further than that, arguably the artwork wouldn’t have to be experienced at all: depending on how articulate the artist was, his or her textual or spoken explanation might well be enough.

The question lingered on, and so shortly after the above conversation I asked an artist friend the same question: is it possible to get your work wrong? Her reply was in a manner completely divergent from the first, emphasising the open-endedness of her work, and indeed even welcoming this potential multiplicity of interpretation. But I cannot, after consideration, subscribe fully to this view, either. For me, then, the artwork is shaded by a relation, but does not exist solely as a product of one: something else subsists outside of any relational binary.

Edouard Manet: Olympia (detail), 1863, oil on canvas, 130.5 cm × 190 cm (51.4 in × 74.8 inches, Collection of Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Art.sy, like the first artist, views the artwork as a puzzle to be solved, a code to be cracked. More than this, both put forward a notion of this code as (a.) solvable, and (b.) stable. Once an artwork has been assigned a specific make-up it remains this way: both artist and website imbue the work with an ‘inner’ intransigence of taxonomy that no person or context can engender. However, art.sy does not share this code; the essential qualities or traits that make up an artwork are pointedly not divulged. The artwork may well change in relation to other contexts and artworks, but the “essential” qualities (to which other things bear a relation to) remain fixed, and secret. The first artist, on the other hand, forcefully articulates and transmits this code, “only this is what it means!” no longer unnamed, yet cordoned off from the dual influence of interpretation and context. And so it appears both positions hijack the artworks’ supposedly essential qualities or ‘in-itself’; the only difference being their respective positions on these qualities’ disclosure or transmission.

Now to the second artist: where is she situated within this horizon? For her, the code is constantly in a state of remodelling or flux, her interpretation of the artwork far from sovereign, even as its creator. If the work of art’s essential quality is sketched at all, it is as aporia: interminably slipping from comprehensive understanding, it eludes even its creator’s grasp. In such a way, even the denial of an ‘in-itself’ permits a fetishisation, albeit of a relation. Although the work exists ‘in-itself’, it appears as though this is constantly being altered and remade as it pertains to a relation, not only the ‘artist-artwork’ relation but also the ‘artist-artwork-receiver’ (critic/viewer) triad. This positioning, although diametrically opposed to that of the first artist, paradoxically holds much in common with that of art.sy, also. Both share a ‘correlationist’ perspective of the work of art, in that the work of art’s essential quality is fundamentally that of a relation (between the viewer and the artwork; between the artwork and others on the computer screen, etc.). The ‘in-itself’ of the work of art, if there is one, is a product of this relation; it is neither fixed nor essential, but constantly in flux, a product of overlapping entities and contexts.

This viewpoint, of course, will be a familiar one to anyone with even a passing interest in contemporary philosophical thought, particularly that of French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux, and the speculative realism school more broadly.[4] Meillassoux’s Après la finitude [5] (2006) acts as a riposte to the legacy of phenomenology, which Meillassoux predominantly blames for the contemporary dominance of what he terms ‘correlationist’ thought. This mode of thinking emphasises the pre-eminence of the subject-object correlation, and as such negates the possibility of the ‘in-itself’ of any object. Contra this position, Meillassoux and speculative realism broadly put forward the notion of an ‘in-itself’ independent of the subject-object relation; that is, indifferent to language, consciousness, etc. This Meillassoux does by using the example of the ancestral fossil (‘arche-fossil’): dating from a time anterior to human ‘givenness’, this fossil proves an irrefutable challenge to the correlationist: how can she think of this object as existing only by virtue of a relation, even though it exists as remnant of an era prior to all (human) relatedness? This object, in short, has qualities that subsist – and indeed have done so – outside of the subject-object correlation. These qualities, for all intents and purposes, are actually indifferent to that relation.

Meillassoux argues that such properties are those given only by mathematics, which alone can be thought in absolute terms by being able to function outside the remit of human relatedness. Thus speculative realism in effect absolutises mathematics, for it alone remains unaltered (and humanly unalterable) in the absence of human givenness. Which, in a strange roundabout way, brings me back to art.sy. Through its idiosyncratic classification, the artwork is reduced to a code: more than that, a secret, absolute code – one that remains intransigently static irrespective of context.[6] However, art.sy’s is an absolutely correlationist code, born only of an impartial and finite human relation. What art.sy effectively achieves is the formulation of a pseudo mathematics, the illusion of infinity where there are only the short-term gains of economy and reputation. After all, who are the individuals responsible for the assignation of genes? Where do their allegiances lie if not with profit?[7] Tangentially, and taking a wild example: say the cat population of the world becomes infected with a deadly and wholly unaesthetic virus, the net result being a universal and irrevocable aversion to felines. In every other regard, remarkably enough, the world is virtually unchanged. Now, would the value of imbuing a work of art with a “cat” gene be a constructive thing to do in such a scenario, hypothetical though it is? No it would not: no one would want to look at, let alone buy, a depiction of a cat, and so the feline gene would become inevitably debased. Similarly, in the wake of 9/11 any depiction of a skyscraper would necessarily suggest a plane crashing into it – that would have been a morbid, but wholly natural, thought progression. Now with this any depiction of shiny metropolis, skyscrapers gleaming in the sunlight, would have been unsavourable to the point of insensitivity; in short, the ‘skyscraper’ gene would slip drastically down the scale of desirable genes, most likely dragging other related ones down with it. Thus two structural hierarchies of genes exist with regard to art.sy’s system; one that makes artworks less or more desirable by virtue of their most defining genes; and another, which pertains to the genes’ specific arrangement within a certain artwork, which is dependent on how relevant each one is with regard to it. Both hierarchies are neither stable nor neutral, but instead always in a kind of relationary flux: imagining a stock exchange of genes comes close.

Aleana Egan: Room after room (2012), Steel 170 x 140 x 2cm; Image held here.

This may all seem a bit obvious, like it almost doesn’t need to be said. For me though, the art.sy conundrum neatly articulates a paradoxical desire accompanying any consideration of the art object: a petulantly divergent two-pronged desire, that is, furthermore, absolutely crucial. Two incompatible breeds of expectation are at work here, the art object thus becoming the site of a virtual tug of war. For the thought of art.sy being an apt vehicle for the systematic treatment of art remains an aberration; “‘Olympia’ cannot be reduced to a configuration of so-called genes!” Indeed there is a real vehemence present when the art object is couched in such reductively comprehensive terms. But curiously this intensity can also be matched when art is described by virtue of its ineffability or elusiveness: “For Christ’s sake, it’s just a painting – a configuration of line and shape in pigment on canvas – with a cat in it!” This dual nature is why the thought of speculative realism heralds not only a kind of ecstatic, nihilistic freedom (from relativism, from anthropocentrism, etc.), but also a kind of ontological dread: the object is indifferent to me; to language, and human mastery: that a certain something else simply doesn’t need me. This applies to all objects; dead, inert and separate, not only those described as ‘art’. A Moebius strip in-itself, the object forbears any attempt to exhaustively subdue it. For if I had full mastery over it, it would no longer fascinate; at the same time, if the potential of mastery was not present, neither would it hold me there. In it there must be present a promise, but one whose deferral is neither relational nor symbolic, but structural.

In conclusion, I wish to say that I had previously considered writing another essay, much different from this one. That essay would have served as a guide to the one you read now, if it had been written, and it may be yet. Using the form of a paragraph, the essay would comprise perhaps five or six of these condensed essay forms, and each would deal with the same work of art; the intention being to practically elucidate questions begged by speculative realism and, in a different way, art.sy. Both appear to take up the artwork’s challenge, or at least attempt some semblance of a re-evaluation. But to spend time with the work or art is always a question of its continued re-evaluation. Truly engaged consideration inevitably enters the same endgame as speculative realism, whilst at the same time negating any claims made by art.sy as to the essential, intransigent – but ultimately graspable – properties of the work of art. The work of art I was to write about is by Aleana Egan, that recently rested, slender and calm, on the walls of the Douglas Hyde Gallery.[8] Its title is Room after room, and it has stayed with me, somewhat inexplicably, from the first time I saw it.[9] It is complete in that it dictates nothing: about it, or me, or how that relation should be performed. It provides the open place for a thought, but a thought that attempts to think it through materially, as an object. For although it means something, the artist’s intent being most likely the strongest guide for figuring that out, even that is not enough: “I hear you say what it means, but…” This openness of the work is that of an ill-defined promise, but a promise that always remains a promise of something. And though the artwork’s promise might be deferred, necessarily and structurally, its fulfillment is always tangible, necessarily and structurally, too.

Rebecca O’Dwyer is a writer and researcher currently based in Dublin.  She holds a BA Fine Art Sculpture (2008) and MA Art in the Contemporary World (2010), both from NCAD, Dublin.  In 2012 she commenced a doctorial research at NCAD, focusing on the figure of transcendentalism in contemporary art.

* This essay was originally published in Paper Visual Art Journal’s Limerick hard copy edition last August. We will be shortly making the PDF of the hard copy available on the site.

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[1] Graham Harman (2007) On Vicarious Causation in Collapse Vol. II Speculative Realism. London: Urbanomic, pg. 214

[2] The article where I first learned about the project was Michael Sanchez Pandora’s Black Box, Artforum, March 2012. Available at: http://www.artforum.com/inprint/id=30331 (Accessed June 2012)

[3] Presumably, that ™ is there to supplement the system with even more gravitas.

[4] Speculative realism takes its name from a conference held at Goldsmiths College, London in April 2007. The conference featured presentations by Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman, and Quentin Meillassoux, and was chaired by Alberto Toscano.

[5] This then appeared in English translation as After Finitude (2008), trans. Ray Brassier (London: Continuum)

[6] The choice of the word gene, also, is very interesting. For me there is a kind of odd religiosity present in the equivalence between the biological and the aesthetic domain. The artwork, like the person, is formed and bound by this configuration of genes, but the primary aesthetician/biologist remains absolutely out of the frame.

[7] Although art.sy claims pedagogy as a crucial motivation of the venture, a quick look at some of its main investors makes it difficult not be cynical: they include Dasha Zhukova, founder of Moscow’s Garage Center for Contemporary Culture; Wendi Murdoch, film producer; Peter Thiel, founder of Paypal, board of Facebook; Josh Kushner, managing partner of Thrive Capital; and Jack Dorsey, creator of Twitter.

[8] Egan’s solo exhibition day wears at the Douglas Hyde Gallery ran from June 1 – July 18, 2012.

[9] Room after room (2012), Steel 170 x 140 x 2cm.  An image of the work available here: http://www.marymarygallery.co.uk/index.php/gallery/category/C2/aleana_egan/P3/ (Accessed: 4 July, 2012)

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Something Thrown and Caught presents us with a body of work using painting, installation, and drawing. Bennie Reilly expands on an already established interest in the natural world, reintroducing familiar motifs such as deer, owls, trees, and actual tree branches. There is also a new interest here in magnifying and investigating the intricate forms and patterns encountered in nature, portraying an altered visual interpretation of these. The title of the show stems from a passage from an essay by John Berger titled “A Professional Secret”, which suggests that drawing is a two way process: once our viewing of an image reaches a certain intensity we begin to ‘receive’ something from this image, as well as taking something from it, allowing us a new form of perception which goes beyond what is immediately decipherable. This theory surfaces in Reilly’s approach to creating her work and, in turn, we as viewers find ourselves stepping in close to scrutinise the images. This immediate sense of engagement draws us in from the first work we encounter.

Bennie Reilly: Ural in Flight, oil on canvas, 60×70, 2012; Image courtesy the artist.

Bubble Beard is a beautifully executed painting of a polar bear underwater. Bubbles escape from the bear’s nose and mouth, but in this interpretation the amalgam of bubbles takes on a form of its own, resembling a beard of sorts. Closer inspection reveals the laborious line work that went into this detail. Our perception too is altered; the pattern becomes de-contextualised and our eyes become lost in it, following the intricate lines as they twist and curl. The closer we look, the stranger and more abstract this ‘beard’ becomes. Ural in Flight and Ural in the Snow take a similar approach; the particular patterns of the owls’ plumage seem magnified or exaggerated, and become as important as the owls themselves. Reilly’s visual interrogation of the natural world creates rhythm and order out of something so intricately and precisely composed; after a sustained period of scrutiny, these patterns become almost geometric in their boldness.

Bennie Reilly: Dead Horse, whittled branch and thread, 2012; Image courtesy the artist.

The term ‘Magic Realism’ has been associated with Reilly’s work. The collection of images and objects assembled in the gallery support this association by exploring an overlap between the believable and the extraordinary. In Creeping Cloud, a cloud assumes the shape of a tortoise. This vision is reinforced by the title of the work, which compares the cloud’s movement across the sky to a tortoise’s laborious progress. By drawing on forms we are familiar with, our mind’s eye can fashion clouds into shapes of animals or objects, echoing one part of the natural world in another. This phenomenon explores the fine balance between intense visual analysis of what lies before one’s eyes and our mind’s potential to adapt what we see to feed our imaginations.  Here, the multi-layered possibilities of perception rooted in everyday reality is awakened. The title of the show Something Thrown and Caught implies a transition, a precise moment of realisation or understanding, and this collection of works together rouse in the viewer a sense of experiencing such a realisation; an acknowledgment of the power of the mind to transform.[1]

In a similar fashion, Dead Horse – a partly whittled tree branch – resembles the head of a horse in a position of some discomfort. Strings curl out from the ‘horse’s’ head, which in turn reflect the lines of the adjacent drawing of an old tree. Following a prolonged inspection, almost human features appear to emerge from the finely detailed lines, knots, and twists of its bark. Placement of the branch here lends tangibility to the drawing; a sort of link or stepping stone from the gallery space into these scenes from nature. This reoccurs in Antler Branch, where the antler-shaped tree branch tightly bound in green thread emulates the work next to it titled Deer Oh Deer. This painting intrigues us and we find ourselves stopping in our tracks to stare back at this animal, wondering about this knotted mass of netting and other debris tangled up in its antlers.

Bennie Reilly: Deer Oh Deer, oil on canvas, 90×70, 2012; Image courtesy the artist.

Reilly is an artist whose attention to her craft and process is very much apparent in her work, whether it be the meticulous precision with which lines and contours are executed, the care taken to reflect the textures present when portraying animals or the way in which the found objects are adapted to complement other works. Taking real life imagery as her starting point, she explores philosophies of subjective viewing experiences and how there can be more to the world than first meets the eye.

Roisin Russell is a writer based in Dublin.

[1] A noteworthy feature of Reilly’s drawings is the decision to feature a background sheet of paper behind the main sheet, adding a sense of depth to shading but also alluding to the concept of visual layering and that which lurks behind the initially visible. This technical measure supports the thematic celebration of the potential depth of visual experience.

Brendan Earley and Kevin Cosgrove’s Nor for Nought, at mother’s tankstation, is a show in which very little happens: directly counteracting the desire for action or stimulation, the work explicates a space wherein such properties are stopped dead in their tracks. The two very different kinds of work – Cosgrove’s modestly sized, figurative oils, and Earley’s sculptural assemblages, which act almost like thwarted readymades – exist in a relationship jointly informed by the language of making both in and of itself. The objects in Cosgrove’s paintings – a car, a tractor, a small dumper truck – are both created from something, by people or other machines, and furthermore are proponents of creation; they are created for the purpose of further creation. Here, however, they lie dormant, and oddly so. The paintings appear almost as portraits of these objects, studying them in unproductive cessation. Adjacent to Cosgrove’s studies of the things and places of making, Earley’s sculptural forms thwart traditional expectations of productivity or usefulness. The materials used – aluminium, plasterboard, fibreglass, a reassembled IKEA kitchen, workbenches, and so forth – all point to an interest in making as process. There is a sense of incompletion, however; the workbench, typically used as a prop for the creation of something, becomes the final resting site for that which it creates (Pieces of the City are Forming like Islands (2010), and Workbench (2011)). Function breaks down as the work ceases to be passed on to another locale, and thus put to use. Instead, it gathers the site of production – the workbench – to itself, and realigns itself as useless, aesthetic. In both bodies of work, the site of non-creation, where function or purpose breaks down, is viewed productively, and enacted upon to make something new.

Brendan Earley: They Bedded Down for the Night, woolen blanket, foam, plastic ties, melamine, 2011; Image courtesy mother’s tankstation and the artist.

The title of the exhibition, Nor for Nought, also gives some shading to the pairing of these two artists. The title cites a passage from the Bible, a tract in which Paul puts forward to the Thessalonians the value of earning, and working for sustenance; it is a reward in itself, once it has been earned. Recompense exists in such a scenario, regardless of what form it takes. There is value, he suggests, in the simple process of work. As previously mentioned, both Cosgrove and Earley appear to share in this view. Both, through their varied depictions in the breakdown of function or usability, negate a dominant demand for an end result that is finalised, or useful. In such a way, they glean a view of working that accepts the half-done, the static or abandoned, as befitting the labour that precedes its formation. The pleasure in working is its own reward; it does not stipulate a clear and defined outcome or product. That is not to say that the artworks contained in the exhibition are neither finished nor complete – they are – but rather that they use a breakdown in function or activity as a starting point in productively giving rise to a product that diverges from both.

Kevin Cosgrove: Workshop (with cardboad), oil on linen, 2011; Image courtesy mother’s tankstation and the artist.

The exhibition itself contains paintings by Cosgrove and a collection of sculptural forms by Earley, which quietly intersperse the painterly depictions of the things and places of making. An unoccupied yellow workshop, emitting that too-bright fluoro-hue common to offices everywhere, hangs above Earley’s The Lights Are On (2011). This floor-based assemblage combines a thwarted IKEA kitchen, plastic ties, foam, and fluorescent tubes. The exchange between object and image on traversing the gallery is intriguing; one might imagine the objects being made in such spaces as Cosgrove’s, but the question of function creeps interminably in – just what kind of space would this be if given over to the creation of objects such as these? Do such spaces make any sense once the prerequisite condition of function has been abandoned? There is an almost belligerent celebration in the subversion of the object’s expected uses and narratives in Earley’s work, for example in his alternative, counter-intuitive usage of flat-pack constructions. Furthermore, another piece, Don’t Look Back (2010), uses mahogany – generally seen as an almost precious wood – in such a way as to render it virtually invisible. This wall piece comprises an aluminium form perching above a sheet of mahogany affixed to the wall, over which a sheet of black glutinous perspex is overlaid. It is infuriating both formally and ergonomically. And yet it is here that the work is interesting: to hide away that which is most valued is to run counter to economic expectations. Function does not come into the equation, but rather a dominant expectation founded on the consumerist predicate; in any case, to use mahogany here simply seems wholly function-less – MDF would have done the job just as well. It is not dissimilar to the approach taken by Cosgrove in his paintings, as he meticulously paints, pointedly in oils, spaces in which nothing is happening, or machines which at the moment he paints them, have ceased to function. A prevailing disinclination towards light and contrast – most of the works are of a similar breed tonally – further iterates the humdrum quality of these spaces and things. And yet he works towards representation of these scenes, running counter to an expectation of what, really, a painting should be. This is still life in the truest sense, empty of people, devoid of activity, and thus still yet a site of possible creation or epiphany. Another work, Workshop (with cardboard) (2011), shows a grimy workshop, all gnarled shapes and forms seeping out from a soot-black darkness. Sheets of cardboard are haphazardly thrown onto these surfaces, and out of the darkness jumps a luminous gold shade; so extravagant it appears as almost baroque. There’s an excessiveness present here that seems out of place, and it is this that holds the viewer. In other works, a swath of light serves the same purpose, pointing to a resonance which supersedes that which is represented in the work. As with Earley’s work, these paintings present us with a moment of resistance or intransigence.

Kevin Cosgrove & Brendan Earley: Nor for Nought, installation view, 2011(Foreground: Brendan Earley: All the Lights are On, reassembled IKEA kitchen, plastic ties, foam, florescent tubes, 2011); Image courtesy mother’s tankstation and the artists.

It is not for nothing that this exhibition appears to say little, or to deny a sense of finality. It is in this repudiation of a normative cycle – work, progress, completion – that both artists celebrate the process of making as an activity in itself. In offering an alternative finality, dependent on moments of inactivity or subversion, both Cosgrove and Earley put forward an alternative notion of finality. This is something that exists in a symbiotic relation to incompletion, and finds its own resting place – in time and space – through the simple acts of making, and of working.

Rebecca O’ Dwyer is a writer currently based in Sydney. She holds a BA Fine Art Sculpture (2008) and MA Art in the Contemporary World (2010), both from NCAD, Dublin. She plans to commence doctoral studies at NCAD next year, focusing on the role of transcendentalism in contemporary art. O’Dwyer is also co-editor of the publication Not Drowning but Waving,and compiles a personal blog at:

www.rebeccaodwyer.wordpress.com.

Saidhbhín Gibson’s works in the Éigse Carlow Arts Festival at first present an innocent, almost quaint experience; innocent, in that the works seem naive at first glance. The difficulty in viewing her pieces – Evensong, a video installation showing portraits of trees; Rufous, a mixed media bird drawing; and Overhang in Oak, an acrylic on paper silhouette of a leafy branch – is that nothing immediately arrests the viewer’s attention unlike Susan Connolly’s piece Unexpected Logic, which shows a deconstructed canvas. Gareth Jenkins’s The Object of Painting as an Intuitive Process of Recollection is equally arresting with painted sculptural wooden pieces jutting assertively out from the gallery wall, encouraging the viewer to manoeuvre their position to view all visible sides of the pieces. Gibson’s work seems shy in comparison. Therein lays the difficulty in making art with the everyday natural landscape as its subject. There is an innocence in the assumption of presenting nature as something that is aesthetic in itself.

Saidhbhín Gibson: Evensong, (still no.2),  2011, colour video transferred to DVD 9′ 51″; Image courtesy the artist.

Curator Emma-Lucy O’Brien threads a group of disparate practices together from an open submission under the title Constellations. This show takes over the Studio Gallery and Link Gallery of VISUAL, Carlow. [1] Other artists showing include Magnhild Opdol and Margaret Madden. The work by Opdol and Madden are located along the same trajectory as Gibson’s. A Tree Like Network by Madden explores the fragility of intricate constructions while Opdol’s pencil drawing Paradiso is a testament to the possibilities of drawing. Opdol is an artist who gives great weight to the idea of life being circular and in situating Gibson and Opdol on adjoining walls, O’Brien doubles the contemplative quality of each artists’ work. All three artists engage the topic of nature as artistic subject, but here I will focus on Gibson’s work.  I focus on Gibson in this group show because her presentation of her subject matter works in a very subtle way which I found attractive. I also wanted to explore the idea of bringing a familiar, yet perhaps neglected nature – that of the everyday unspectacular kind into the gallery, therefore making it a subject for aesthetic critique.

In an essay titled “Art, politics, environment” written by Paul O’Brien in Circa issue 123, he divided artists taking nature as their subject into three categories – Promethean, Critical and Integrative. [2] He gives an example of Promethean art as Walter de Maria’s Lightning Field – a work using nature as the raw material, yet avoiding commentary on the ‘humanity/nature split’. Promethean art tends to focus on the spectacular or sublime in nature. Critical environmental art then, as the name suggests, strives to raise awareness about environmental issues. A notable example of this is the work of Hans Haacke. And the Integrative approach models its practice on healing the perceived ‘humanity/nature split’.

Saidhbhín Gibson: Overhang in Oak, 2011, acrylic on paper, 6 x 11 cm; Image courtesy the artist.

Gibson’s video Evensong captures ‘portraits’ of trees. The camera lingers on a single tree at a time, as the evening light fades in the background. Thus each tree is centre stage, so to speak – presenting perhaps a clichéd stoicism. However, this stillness acts as a counterpoint to a flurry of birds, which draws the viewer’s attention further. Evensong is an invitation to contemplate the workings of everyday landscape.

The species of trees and bird life used in the work are interlinked – this, in turn, induces the viewer to reflect on their place in the order of things. The video piece Evensong (featuring a Scott’s Pine, a Pine, a Beech, and a Lime tree) and the lyrically named Overhang in Oak, and Rufous are in conversation. Rufous shows the artist’s visualisation of the wren heard in the video, while the video portraits bring to life the acrylic silhouette of Overhang in Oak, while also allowing for movement and song.

Saidhbhín Gibson: Rufous, 2011, paper, pencil, watercolour & acrylic paint on paper on wood, 10.5 13 x 5.5 cm; Image courtesy the artist.

The mixed media drawing/painting Rufous is reminiscent of 19^th century landscape painting. Here, a wren in pencil and watercolour is depicted making its way along a nondescript path hemmed in by clouds of black with yellow highlighting its delicate features.  The wren offers itself readily to allegory. The tiny bird has been hunted for centuries  - yet he is also ‘king of the birds’.[3] By tearing the paper that the wren is painted on, Gibson evokes its vulnerability. The wren may not be hunted in the traditional sense so much these days but its habitat is now under threat. This is a reading that could also be applied to Overhang in Oak. Gibson’s placement of the pencil drawing between the video shot at dusk, and the blacked out acrylic Oak branch offers the wren as the common thread between the trees.

Gibson’s work asks questions, with an ecological basis, in an unassuming and accessible way, while striving towards being an artist in the integrative vein of practice. By doing so she offers works that when contemplated upon, open up new habitats for thought.

Edel Horan is writer who lives and works in Kildare.

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[1] Artists included in the Link Gallery were: Maureen O’Connor, Brian Harte, Anne French, Selmar Makela, Remco de Fouw, Emma Houlihan, Mark Durcan, Sanja Todorvic, Hannah Breslin, Emily Mannion, Ciaran Hussey, Ramon Kassam, Damian Magee, Fergus Byrne, and Fiona Mulholland.

[2] See “Art, politics, environment” Circa, Issue 123, Spring, 2008.

[3] Persian poem by Farid ud-Din Attar. In the poem, the wren outsmarts the eagle in a flying competition by hiding in his wings and overtaking him – therefore becoming ‘king of the birds’.

Curated by David Mabb and Mary-Ruth Walsh, Utopia Ltd. is currently on show in the Highlanes Gallery in Drogheda until the 3rd August. The show, previously exhibited at the Wexford Arts Centre earlier this year, is a visitation to Utopian discourse, drawing largely on the ideological context of late-nineteenth-century pastoral Utopianism, as well as Modernist and corporate models. The title is taken from George Bernard Shaw’s favorite Gilbert and Sullivan musical Utopia Limited. Shaw preferred the opera because it had no plot. The exhibition too struggles with an unwieldy plot unified by a strong theme: that of interference. Each art work seeks to usurp presumption and strongly questions the aesthetics of utopian visions, hence nothing is quite as it seems. The curatorial collaboration by artists to present an exhibition inclusive of their own work demonstrates an agenda to contextualise their own work with the work of others. It could be greeted as opportunist, but in fact demonstrates a sensibility to the accumulate a body of work reflective of their own concerns.

David Mabb: Two Squares (Morris Fruit Relief), paint on fabric on mounted canvas, 2009; image held here.

David Mabb’s paintings demonstrate a control of surface, the thick, undulating texture of paint mimicks the tonal qualities of a William Morris fabric. Two squares (Morris fruit relief, 2009) marries the minimal colour of Kazimir Malevich’s white-and-black squares paintings, and Morris’s ornate renderings of nature. In Black square (Brer Rabbit) (2010), Mabb includes the selvedge fabric as a material clue – a source of provenance – that frames the black square in blue and white printed fabric. An aesthetic of design and pattern emerge from the symmetrical and thickly painted surface. Traces of colour peak through; a dim pink flower in Two squares (Morris fruit relief) softens the plane of white.

Mabb’s reworking of Morris’s fabrics, the subtle obliteration and reinvention of pattern, allows for Morris to be considered alongside the work of Malevich. The work of both men engaged with a unique sense of Utopianism. Morris’s idyll is seemingly bound up in agriculturalism and craft, however he also used this to describe the alienation of labour in industrial society. Malevich’s early influences included peasant embroidery. At the Second Modern Decorative Arts Exhibition in Moscow in the winter of 1917, he exhibited embroidered work. Charlotte Douglas describes Suprematist handwork in an essay titled “Suprematist Embroidered Ornament”:

“Just as in the paintings, the colored rectangles were meant to indicate an advanced  consciousness of the universe or to be emblematic of an unseen world. Not only did the Suprematists aspire to make completely objectless painting, but they also immediately decided to remake the entire visual world in the Suprematist mode, an idea that after the Bolshevik revolution would acquire political significance.”[2]

Blaise Drummond: La façade libre (Live forever in perfect health and happiness), oil, acrylic, collage on canvas, 2009; Image held here.

The white surface of Blaise Drummond’s La façade libre (Live forever in perfect health and happiness, 2009), interrupted by texture interspersed upon the primed canvas, speaks instantly of sparseness, separation, the found and unfound. A solitary cowboy moves across a landscape with a modernist building made of graph paper. The graphic-style fruit at the bottom seem to mock our appropriation of its wares. The splodges and splashes, the delicate moments of this painting, reflect upon nature’s strengths and weaknesses.

The artificial nature of our constructed space, in particular our communal space, is the subject of Lizi Sánchez’s sculptures. The drenching of faux marble and laminate surfaces with pompoms, gold ribbon and plastic pearls create whimsical structures that reflect upon artifice. The aesthetic construction of space is central to civil society and the flimsy nature of her construction is a calculated reflection upon the tacit nature of our civility. While the individual in Drummond’s La façade libre travels through a utopian dream, Sánchez’s work describes the infrastructure of civil space through the adornment of that space, drawing attention to the construction of artificial environments that we live and work in.

Mary-Ruth Walsh’s photographs reflect upon the design practice of Eileen Gray as well as the dynamics of objecthood. They imply the ideal of modern domesticity – the clean, uncluttered lines and moulded shapes from sleek materials. The fact that these delicately constructed images are made with found packaging materials offers a reminder that designs are bought and sold, a commodity of our own desire for modern living. Gray paid particular attention to the public and private spheres in her architecture designs, while Walsh’s photographs seem to emphasise the edges of structures. Such attention to the boundaries of living implies that these boundaries might affect the way we live.

Similarly Brendan Earley’s drawings appear to take the nature of encroachment as a source. The hovering felt tip marks that redraw an invisible and unseen boundary are perhaps a manifestation of formal elements. This sense of formal design in making is clear in Workbench (2009). The aluminum cast polystyrene acquires the new weight of metal while still mimicking its own featherweight appearance. The aluminum cast and plasterboard are placed on the workbench in a cruciform arrangement. At once there is weight and substance, a formal plan but nothing is realised; it is all under construction but the art work is finished. Echoing Walsh’s interest in the way in which objects exist in a gallery or museum context, Workbench is placed on the alter. The Highlanes being a deconsecrated church has the added task of utilizing its inherited architecture.

Pil and Galia Kollectiv. Co-operative explanatory capabilities in organizational design and personnel management, still, DVD, 2010; Image held here.

Co-operative explanatory capabilities in organizational design and personnel management (2010) is a slideshow presentation made by the Pil and Galia Kollectiv. It presents a fictional and bizarrely convincing account of a company whose sole operation is to place its employees under surveillance. The impact and relationship between output and creative labour, division of labour and collective labour were observed and recorded in statistical reports. The accompanying commentary describes the introduction of religious and ritual movements as a response to rumor and suspicion of surveillance which began to undermine the project. The still images, taken from documentation of an early computer company, are strung together and accompanied by an apparently reliable and trustworthy narrative, leaves you chilled by its believable nature.

The series of films made by the Pil and Galia Kollectiv titled The future series imagines a future that evolves from an incident in Ikea in Edmonton, North London in 2005 where six thousand people turned up to avail of a limited special offer that resulted in a riot. The trilogy looks at the potential for a society to be born from such an event and seems reminiscent of the Wat Tyler Rebellion. The future for less (2006) imagines the birth of a totalitarian state as a result of a similar incident. In Better future, wolf-shaped (2008), we see the ritualistic cultish worship at the hands of hooded figures, and in the Future is now, a choreographed reenactment of the riot in Edmonton, sees the beginning of a popular uprising. The slightly neo-dadaist performance, the black-and-white costume, and allusion of social strata through caps and sleeve ruffles make the reenactment become like an orchestration of shapes on the gridded lines of the Ikea car park.

Utopia Ltd emphasises the notion of Utopia is that of inversion and transformation. That social constructs, political dialogues and ideologies can be turned inside out from what they seem to be, to what they potentially might be. Appropriation is a fundamental part of this show, serving to describe the impact of Utopian thought upon the actual material world.

Kitty Rogers is an artist who lives and works in Dublin.

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[1] John Bushe Jones. Theatre in Review. “Utopia, Limited.” Educational Theatre Journal. Vol.28. No. 1. March 1976.

[2] Charlotte Douglas. Suprematist embroidered ornament. Art Journal, Spring 1995 v54 n1 p42(4)

http://arsnova.artinfo.ru/malevich/douglas.htm

The title of this show, despite its apparent simplicity, goes a long way towards explaining what this body of work is about. Phonetic transcription is the visual representation of speech sounds. It displays the relationship between symbol and sound more directly than orthography, and allows for an assessment of differences in pronunciation as well as the changes in pronunciation that take place naturally over time. Therefore, it provides the means for an examination of the processes behind language.

Jane Fogarty: PB15, (#1-16), 25kg skimcoat plaster, polybond, fungicidal solution, pigment; photo: Rachel McIntyre.

Jane Fogarty’s work is a visual representation of the processes behind painting.  In her own words, she is concerned with “exploring the ontology and materiality of the medium.”[1] Broadly speaking ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being. It asks what entities exist and how they can be related to each other within a hierarchy. In this exhibition, Fogarty’s study into the nature of painting goes to the very core of the medium and dissects its component parts. She dismantles the medium by separating the pigment and carrier from one another – their relationship becomes unsteady. By creating these sculptural layers of plaster, dusted with pure pigment, she allows “colour choices to be an entity in themselves, not to in anyway resemble the support they occupy.”

Jane Fogarty: PR108, (2/2), skimcoat plaster, pigment; photo: Rachel McIntyre.

The viewer is asked to reconsider his/her preconceived notions of painting and to consider it outside traditional associations. Objects are placed before the viewer in and of themselves; they are a product of their material and the time devoted to their creation, both physically and conceptually. Moreover, the sculptural nature of the work questions the idea of medium specificity. Consequently, Fogarty not only explores the medium, but also pushes the boundaries of the medium and the viewer’s concept of painting’s potential: “I call my work painting, but it often moves away from a flat plane and breaks into three-dimensional space, then becoming the language of sculpture.”

This progression from two-dimensions to three is best illustrated by a comparison with this show and Fogarty’s graduate show at the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) in 2010 titled Twenty-four hours where 1,440 pieces of cardboard were painted with a distinct colour, each piece taking one minute to complete.  Although Twenty-four hours was also an examination of process, it was concerned with mental processes rather than material. The artist herself has said that this body of work was a consideration of the “time and reasoning used in creating a painting.” Through application of this strict methodology, the installation laid bare the mental processes that inform painting, and questioned the ideas of spontaneity and chance.

Jane Fogarty: Pillar, plaster, pigment, installation shot, 2011; photo: Rachel McIntyre.

In contrast, Fogarty’s |’pānti NG| takes the materiality of the medium as its starting point. As noted above, the medium is dismantled into its component parts – the carrier is represented by layers of skim coat plaster that have been dusted with pure pigment. The physicality of the medium is all; these objects grow from the floor and emerge from the ceiling in an almost organic manner. For Fogarty, the relationship between painting and sculpture is closer than ever before: “Painting today is an indefinable medium, I find its liberation very exciting.”

Rachel McIntyre lives and works in Dublin.

Hugh Delap, 10-09, oil on canvas on board, 42 x 55 cm , image courtesy the Talbot Gallery.

Palimpsest, Hugh Delap’s solo exhibition currently on show at the Talbot Gallery, immediately projects the artist’s concern with colour. Upon entering the gallery space the viewer is met with a series of boldly, and predominantly brightly painted images where abstract shapes hover in their chosen settings. Although not blatantly representative of any objects familiar in our world, the artist does take images and events from his experiences and transfers them to paper in the form of drawings that subsequently influence the paintings. The subject matter of these images, however, takes a back seat when juxtaposed with with the process involved in their making, and the materiality of the works.

What emerges, particularly, is Delap’s decision to leave exposed, rather than cover, the progression of the painterly process. What appears from a distance to be brightly coloured objects set against solid backgrounds becomes, upon closer inspection, bold shapes protruding in the final layer, their predecessors still visible in earlier layers and at times only roughly covered over.

Hugh Delap, 19-10, oil on paper, 42 x 55 cm, 2010, image courtesy the Talbot Gallery.

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Enda O’Donoghue: In the Elevator (2009), oil on Canvas, 90 x 120 cm, image courtesy Enda O’Donoghue.

In the last couple of years, Berlin’s art scene has become a magnet for continuous stream of artists from all over the world. The city offers the perfect setting for major exhibitions, international art fairs, commercial galleries, studio visits and other events, as well as social and networking opportunities.

Berlin-based Irish artist Enda O’Donoghue discovered the city as a hot spot for contemporary art when he moved there seven years ago. Arriving in Berlin O’Donoghue first was only “watching and not actively looking for a place with a strong artistic scene.” Over the years, O’Donoghue has “been observing the city’s artscene thriving and gaining a rising international reputation”. He describes the vibe of the city as “quite unique,” particularly due to the number of ambitious off-site projects, discussion forums and live art and film events which invite artists to share and exchange ideas and expand their knowledge.

Gregor Stephan: Untitled (from 5 second cityscapes), 2007 – Gregor Stephan; image held here

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French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858)  once described society and the social structures within, as a “living organism.” In Northern Ireland, particularly Belfast during the peak of ‘The Troubles,’ the changing social and political situation affected the complex networks and relationships within the city.  The fragmentation, segregation, dislocation and corruption of the city caused instability.  These issues of corruption and decay that were, until the 1970s, romanticised or in many cases ignored by artists, have now been considered. [1]

Pakenham: Your Move, 1976.

Jack Packenham (b.1938) and Brendan Ellis (b.1951) responded  to the subject of the city and produced works which reflect the inside life. Both demonstrate the complexities contested when living in a divided, unstable society. These confessional works of everyday people are far from the motives of sectarian propagandist murals in Belfast.

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Damien Flood: Grasp, 2009, oil on canvas, 66 x 91.5 cm, image courtesy the Green on Red Gallery.

Counter Earth is an exhibition of twenty two new paintings by Damien Flood, currently on show at the Green on Red Gallery.  Counter Earth, as explained by the beautifully composed accompanying dialogical text between Mary Conlon and a fictional X (PhD Cultural Theory), is a second celestial body located somewhere in Earth’s vicinity.  This was originally hypothesised by Philolaus (c. 470-385) as a kind of cosmological anchor keeping all living things on our Earth from taking off into outer space.  Counter Earth is defined as “a place where everything is identical but opposite.” [1]

Antichthon (Counter Earth),From Dante and the Early Astronomers by M. A. Orr, 1913; image held here

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