Parr’s Ireland: Communal Observances Joanne Laws
A text in response to: Parr’s Ireland: 40 Years of Photography in Ireland by Martin Parr
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© Martin Cover: Above:
Parr / Magnum Photos A drive-thru McDonald’s, Nutgrove Shopping Centre, Dublin, 1986 O’Connell Bridge, Dublin, 1981
Parr’s Ireland: Communal Observances Joanne Laws
A text in response to: Parr’s Ireland: 40 Years of Photography in Ireland by Martin Parr Roscommon Arts Centre 17th September - 29th October 2021
Joanne Laws
Parr’s Ireland: Communal Observances
Below are the disenchanted holidaymakers, who have little time to bother with the enigmatic young swimmers, gliding over their heads. Above are the weightless bathers in motion who, through the refraction of light in water, appear magnified and larger-than-life. This feature wall transcends the kitchen hatch in your suburban terrace; it is a vignette, a microcosm – a luminous window into a parallel cinematic world. Above are the mermaids of the Silver Screen, enacting a silent film, a subaquatic melodrama – a water ballet, recalling Hollywood’s poolside vintage glamour. Below are the dispirited matriarchs, hunched stiffly in dark overcoats, unconcerned with the agile, heavenly bodies, floating overhead.
© Martin Parr / Magnum Photos Butlin’s Holiday Camp, Mosney, County Meath, 1986
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Joanne Laws
Parr’s Ireland: Communal Observances
What kitchen sink dramas are enfolded within these nomadic rolls of carpet? As upright as towers, they echo the vertical townships, whose interiors they are destined for. Soft furnishings to thaw shuttered concrete; Chintzy patterns at odds with the stark unpainted exterior. Uniform in height and design, they afford each neighbour little capacity for deviation. Row upon modular row stands the brooding, rectilinear, multistorey, high-rise; its raw materials banishing all unnecessary adornment. Outwardly, the tower blocks are aspirational monuments to post-war urban dwelling; Inwardly, residents are displaced from condemned tenements and inner-city slums. Tightly rolled and bound together, they are a thousand zoned homes, encircling a roundabout – off-cuts to describe Dublin’s most marginalised suburb.
© Martin Parr / Magnum Photos Ballymun, Dublin, 1986
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Joanne Laws
Parr’s Ireland: Communal Observances
Upon every available surface, spectators perch and lurch and stoop, each concrete post or ramshackle fence a more than ample podium, at a time when locals are still prone to lingering on stone walls, even beyond the communal observances of Race Day. The viewing platform heaves like a loaded freight train; Sentinels peep from corrugated huts, surveying the odds through binoculars. Small children straddle high overhanging ledges, perhaps a parental strategy to curtail wandering, lest they stray under the feet of adults – or spook the galloping horses.
© Martin Parr / Magnum Photos Dingle Races, County Kerry, 1983
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Joanne Laws
Parr’s Ireland: Communal Observances
At the entrance to the Mayflower, moving figures vapourise, rendered phantom-like through long exposure. Neither present nor absent, these amorphous bodies recall the Irish púca – a supernatural shapeshifter, who lingers in the rural imagination. The most feared of all the fairies, this darkling conjures mischief in the dead of night; its nebulous spirits are at once menacing and pleasing, malevolent and protective. Through the alchemical fusion of time and matter, these half-life forms are etched onto film, to remerge later in semi-darkness, like some moon-lit apparition. The slow shutter speed causes a spectral glow to emanate from the ballroom exterior; electric lighting spills between ineffective drapes as winter draws in. Joanne Laws is an art writer and editor based in County Roscommon.
© Martin Parr / Magnum Photos Mayflower Ballroom, Drumshanbo, County Leitrim, 1981
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Parr’s Ireland: Communal Observances
About Roscommon Arts Centre's Visual Art Writer In Residence
Visual Art Writer’s Sue Rainsford and Joanne Laws are the Roscommon Arts Centre’s Visual Art Writer’s in Residence for 2021. During this time, Joanne & Sue are invited to write critical texts on selected exhibitions and projects happening across the county. The intention of this residency is to allow writers to experiment with their writing style and explore new ways of disseminating their work. Their writings will be available at Roscommon Arts Centre and online as they are published. Joanne Laws is a visual art writer, editor and researcher based in county Roscommon. She is Editor of The Visual Artists’ News Sheet, where she commissions and develops new writing for an Irish arts readership. Joanne is a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) and a regular contributor to international arts publications including Art Monthly, Art Review and Frieze. Joanne was Assistant Editor of the monograph Derek Jarman: Protest!, published in 2020 by IMMA and Thames & Hudson. Among other professional commitments, Joanne currently serves on the board of directors of Leitrim Sculpture Centre and is programme extern for the Fine Art Department at Sligo Institute of Technology. Martin Parr is one of the best-known documentary photographers of his generation. The author of more than 90 books and the editor of 30 others, he has firmly established his photographic legacy. He has also curated two photography festivals: Arles in 2004 and the Brighton Biennial in 2010. More recently he curated the Barbican exhibition, Strange and Familiar. In 1994 he became a full member of Magnum Photographic Cooperative. Between 2013 – 2017 Martin was president of Magnum Photos. In Autumn 2017 the Martin Parr Foundation opened in Bristol. In 2013 he was appointed visiting professor of photography at the University of Ulster. Parr’s work has been collected by many of the major museums, including the Tate, the Pompidou, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
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Joanne Laws
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