14
The BCFE Bulletin
Edition 1
Entertainment An
Enchanted World By Lucy Watts Entertainment Editor
T
he overwhelming memory I have of the old wax museum when it was still up in Parnell Square is: dust. Since it has been re-housed and re-launched, it has acquired a whole new generation of fans.
It is rightly described a ‘kitsch’; frankly, any wax museum that takes itself seriously is bound to fail. After being greeted by Mary McAleese at the entrance of the building, you begin the tour at your own pace. Each room contains a green button, which you press to hear the audio guide to the characters and the context of the scene. The first room you enter is the ‘Writers’ Room’; some of the giants of Irish literature are in this space - Brendan Behan, Samuel Beckett and
Oscar Wilde, among others and because of the peculiar likeness to real people that most of them obviously possess, at times it can become downright unsettling. ‘The Time Vaults’ are located down in the basement. The history of Ireland is covered extensively and entertainingly, with real continuity between situations covered and the characters featured. ‘The Chamber of Horrors’ is also understandably situated in the basement. It is terrifying, particularly the leering recreation of Hannibal Lector. There is also a corridor in the basement that is one of the strangest sections of the wax museum; it contains models of an angry Black and Tan, Eamon DeValera, Edmund Hillary, Charles de Gaulle and Anwar Sadat. In fact, this slightly peculiar grouping style features through-
December 2009
Above: Entrance to musem Bottom left: U2 waxwork out the rest of the museum. In the ‘Enchanted World’ - which you reach alongside Jack climbing the Beanstalk - Batman is standing beside Bob the Builder, who is beside Harry Potter, Spongebob Squarepants, Leonardo and Michelangelo of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Santa Claus, in that order. There is a fascinating ‘Science Plus’ section, which is full of interactive gadgets and plenty of information about the often overlooked Irish link to many of the greatest scientific discoveries of the past. This area leads on to the ‘Hall of Fame’, at which point you encounter two Popes: John Paul
II and Benedict. Then comes the ‘Hall of Irish Legends’ (nobody could tell me why Gerry Ryan was in there, or why someone went to the effort of making a waxwork of him in the first place). That led onto ‘Irish Sporting Legends’, and then the ‘Grand Finale’ – as the sign on the door said – which contained U2, Phil Lynott, Boy George (I think) and Joe Dolan, resplendent in his white suit. In the same room there was also a model of Colin Farrell as Alexander the Great, and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr Freeze in Batman and Robin – does anybody remember that film? Some of the waxworks are
truly terrifying, very eerie and sinister. Sometimes the assemblage of figures was linked by only the finest of threads, but if anything, this quirkiness added to the charm of the place. If, like me, you are scared of mannequins, never mind statues that are created with the sole purpose of being as lifelike as possible, maybe this advice I was given by a little girl who was on her second circuit of the Irish history rooms ahead of me will be worthwhile to you too; “He’s the freakiest” - she was pointing at a figure of a strangely smooth-skinned Bertie Ahern. “None of the rest of them are as scary as him!”
Bombhouse art is light after dark By Lucy Watts
L
“
ocated at the end of a street flanked by redbrick, terraced houses, the Bombhouse gallery and studios are certainly not easy to find - even more so when the current exhibition is reliant on darkness in order for it to operate to its full effect. The gallery is only open between 6pm and 9pm, and to enter you must first duck under some barely lifted shutters and make your way through an unlit atrium.
The idea is that the public can enter the gallery while the sky is only beginning to darken, and witness a complete transformation in the mood of each individual art-piece, and the surroundings as a whole Bombhouse is an open-plan, disused warehouse, which has
been transformed into a gallery, and it also provides studio space for some seven artists in residence. The idea for Nightlight sprang from an interest several of them shared in the ability of light to transform a space physically and atmospherically - so dramatically. The idea is that the public can enter the gallery while the sky is only beginning to darken, and witness a complete transformation in the mood of each individual artpiece, and the surroundings as a whole. The only light comes from the installations themselves; there are thirteen physical art pieces, and four video projections. The type of installations vary greatly from ‘Tinted Spectacle’, which was made entirely out of materials found by the artist (including a broken umbrella, wooden crates, leaves from trees and all manner of plastic containers, stacked on top of each other and lit from the centre) to ‘Another World Coming Into Our Own’, which was a beautifully constructed, silhouetted miniature town made entirely from paper. It was hidden inside the parti-
tion between the gallery and studio space, and was only visible through a small lens at eyelevel in the divide. It was very interesting to see the broad variation in how artists interpreted such an expansive theme; however, a couple of the pieces did leave me a bit baffled. One such example is ‘I Was Here Now’, and is about “the fleeting nature of time.” It consisted of one thousand clocks in a metal dustbin, and was apparently what was left from a piece of performance art with the same title, but it just left me a bit confused as to how it made any statement, or how it was relevant to the subject of the exhibition. Without wanting to sound overly critical, I hope that a fault in the electrical wiring is to blame for ‘Flock’ not quite functioning particularly effectively; I have a feeling that there was more to it than two lengths of 2 x 4, a cardboard box and some fluorescent wiring. Nightlight makes a very worthy premise come to life in an extremely lo-fi, appealing way and is worth a visit.