The Visual Artists’ News Sheet
July – August 2014
7
Column
ROUNDUP
Emily Mark-FitzGerald
(9 May – 27 Jul). In the press release,
explored the contexts in which children
The Butler Gallery, Kilkenny exhibited a
Gorman said of his work: “I paint alone in
learn, and the psychological and
series of works by Felicity Clear (14 Jun
Constructing Migration
my studio where I solve problems that
physiological transformations that take
– 27 Jul), which included wall drawings,
did not exist until I began painting. A
place through different methods of
structures and animation. In her previous
painting is a conflict with disorder. A
learning.
work, Clear was interested in structures
Few nations bear a history so marked by migration as Ireland, and perhaps few countries have so enthusiastically embraced the opportunity to publicly commemorate and explore the creation of diaspora in recent years. Yet the proliferation of ‘diaspora engagement strategies’ (such as The Gathering) and the ‘cherishing’ of Ireland’s immigration history (to borrow Mary Robinson’s phraseology) can also be situated within a worldwide trend that has seen phenomenal acceleration in the last decade. This is the growing number and scale of migration / diaspora heritage initiatives, not only in Ireland, but across the world, and the close entanglement of these public projects with broader social and political agendas. What distinguishes many of these ventures are two significant developments. The first is a shift away from presenting migration as a nation-building enterprise towards new ‘transnational’ perspectives. Transnational history takes into account interrelationships between diasporic countries, and the back-and-forth impact of migration on multiple communities and across time. Such an approach presents migration as a fluid social experience, and problematises (rather than declares) relationships between national and personal identities. Second, it is to contemporary art that migration museums have increasingly turned as a means of exploring migrant and diasporic identities, both historical and contemporary. Museums such as the Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration in Paris, opened in 2007, have made such features core (and not peripheral) aspects of their interpretative strategy. Following the recommendation of its planning commission, the museum is structured using a three-pronged ‘hybrid’ design: a historical approach (comprising the collection and presentation of archival information documenting two centuries of migration to France), an anthropological approach (collecting and presenting migrants’ own views and oral histories of their experiences) and the artistic approach (where contemporary art is marshaled to evince what its director has called “a subjective, aesthetic, even emotional interpretation of the migratory event”). Thomas Mailaender’s photographic series Voitures Cathedrales (Car Cathedrals) (2004), featured at the museum, is one example of this third approach. Mailaender worked for a summer at the Société Nationale Maritime de la Méditerraneé in Marseilles, photographing the immigrants arriving at the port with cars heavily laden with the material possessions and commercial goods of their occupants, often with considerable ingenuity and feats of balancing and compression. As the artist noted in his account of the work: “The title given to the series underlines the monumental aspect of these vehicles and confers the status of an icon upon them. It renders homage to these heaps of merchandise which defy the laws of gravity .... In constant transition between two territories, North and South, these containers on four wheels are the evident materialisation of a concept of the frontier or border and the cultural proliferations that result there.” Increasingly such ‘hybridized’ approaches are common to new migration museum designs, for several reasons. In the first instance, they allow for a de-centred interpretative approach that diverges from older migration museum models (such as Ellis Island, opened in 1990), which tended to rely on monolithic concepts of the nation and static ethnic identities, and portrayed migration as a ‘natural’ rather than constructed form of experience and process. Furthermore, such ‘hybridized’ designs accord with the values of ‘new museology’ that has influenced museum practice particularly since the 1990s: the desire of museums to reflect non-elite culture, encourage direct participation by their visitors and, as institutions, that museums should adopt a more self-reflexive and transparent approach to collection and display. The inclusion of contemporary art in migration exhibition design is therefore one means by which such engagement is proctored, and institutional subjectivity foregrounded. What does this have to do with how migration is narrated in Ireland and elsewhere? Dynamic approaches to exhibiting social history are rare within the Irish heritage sector, where passive consumption of static exhibitions or simulation remain the norm. In the Republic and in Northern Ireland – despite active and extensive historical research into Irish diasporic assimilation and social mobility, including contentious debates on Irish ‘whiteness’, racial identity and intra-community division – such issues and tensions are still rarely visualised within heritage settings, let alone connected to present domestic racial and migrant politics. Although to date there is no substantial engagement with immigration or diaspora histories in a national cultural institution (at least in the Republic), some domestic initiatives are currently in development. One such project is ‘The Exchange’, a diaspora attraction proposed by Dun Laoghaire Harbour Company as part of the redevelopment of Carlisle Pier. However this project’s proposition to include visitor DNA testing to calculate proportional Irish ancestry – to be 3D printed as a visitor souvenir – suggests that outdated (and deeply problematic) framings of Irish identity and nationhood persist. We have much to learn from international dialogues, and experiences concerning the production of public migration histories, and the possibilities that contemporary art and other means of visitor engagement hold for recognising that cultural citizenship of an imagined Irish nation should bear contradiction as well as celebration. Dr Emily Mark-FitzGerald, School of Art History & Cultural Policy University College Dublin
painting is not a message to anyone. It
www.belfastexposed.org
may not tell a story, it may not even represent an idea. It means only that it
such as high-rise modernist building schemes, suburban parking lots, and ghost cranes hovering over building sites,
Real & Imaginative Worlds
signifies what I spend my time doing – it
but has shifted her focus. The works in
is the outcome of that process of making
this show examined “abstract ideas of
and remaking on the flat surface in search
structure, stability and failure,” the press
of a precarious balance.”
release noted, describing structures that are “untenable, and ambiguous as to their
www.themaclive.com
beginning, middle and end”. The Workers
www.butlergallery.com
We Live by the River
Jonathan Sammon, from ‘Real and Imaginary Worlds’
Work by Hilary O’Shaughnessy, Jonathon Sammon ‘The Workers’, Roscommon Arts Centre
and
Vivienne
O’Byrne
comprised the exhibition ‘Real and Imaginative Worlds’ at Highlanes Gallery,
‘The Workers’, held at Roscommon Arts
Drogheda (2 May – 21 Jun). The press
Centre (24 May – 18 Jul), comprised work
release described how the show was
by past participants in the art@work
inspired by video game culture and the
scheme, which was developed by
“multi-faceted nature of playing games”.
Roscommon Arts Office and connects
Several of the featured works were
Selected members of Backwater Artists
businesses and artists. The exhibition
interactive and explored concerns about
Group collaborated on an exhibition
examined how each artist’s practice has
communication, isolation and identity.
exchange with three artists from Gedok
developed since taking part in the
www.droicheadartscentre.com
scheme. The artists featured were: Michelle Browne, whose two channel
Image from ‘We Live by the River’, CIT Wandesfor Quay
Cologne as part of the Cork Midsummer Festival 2014. The exhibition celebrated the 25 year twinning relationship
This Attentive Place
film Risk engages with the risk takers in
between Cork and Cologne and drew on
society who invested their lives and
themes of coming and going, specifically
family’s future in property and precarious
in relation to the river, a landmark feature
business transactions; Gareth Kennedy,
which dominates both cities. Anjelika
whose IKEA Butter Churn for Gneeveguilla
Wittek, Beate Gordes and Hiltrud Gauf
considers traditional working processes
exhibited at CIT, Wandesford Quay
and relationships to work; and Elaine
Gallery (15 Jun – 6 Jul), while Susanne
Reynolds, whose video Fuzzy Aggregates
Leutenegger,
brings together the voices of multiple
Fitzgerald, Jo Kelley and Maureen
migrant workers seeking their fortune in isolated, barren, mining regions of
Caoimhe Kilfeather, ‘This Attentive Place’, TBG+S
Tony
Magner,
Tracy
Considine presented their work in Rathaus / Spanischer Bau, Cologne from
Western Australia working in harsh and
Caoimhe Kilfeather’s solo show of
(28 May – 9 Jun). Both shows were curated
physically difficult conditions.
sculptural work, ‘this attentive place’, ran
by Tina Darb.
www.roscommonartscentre.ie
at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin
www.backwaterartists.ie
(19 Jun – 20 Aug). In this exhibition, the How We Learn
press release stated, familiar materials are
Where there are people ...
used in unexpected ways” and the gallery
Eamon O’Kane’s exhibition ‘Where there
becomes a place “where elements of
are people there are things’ ran at CCA,
artworks are arranged and rearranged,
Derry (7 Jun – 19 Jul) that centres around
privileged or overlooked … Kilfeather is
a derelict plant nursery in Odense,
interested in how the characteristics of
Denmark, where the artist lives and has a
habit and familiarity, memory and
studio. The exhibition comprises an
observation,
installation of photographs of the interior
can
be
captured
sculpturally”.
of the nursery, displayed on light-boxes www.templebargallery.com
made from recycled light components that were once used in the greenhouses
Wendy Ewals, images from ‘On Reading’, 2003
Drawings, Plans, Projections
to help plant growth. The photographs,
The multidisciplinary group exhibition
taken over a period of several months,
‘How We Learn’, held at Belfast Exposed
depict details of the place in a state of
(3 Apr – 24 May), featured work by
abandonment. The press release noted:
Wendy Ewald, Julian Germain, James
“We see subtle signs of human
Russell Cant, Wendy McMurdo and
interference. The photographs represent
Marysa Dowling, who collaborated with
these different and overlapping rhythms
pupils at St Malachy’s Primary School,
of change”.
Meadowbridge Primary School, Sacred
www.cca-derry-londonderry.org
Heart Primary School and Loughshore Educational Resource Centre. The work
Felicity Clear, from ‘Drawings, Plans, Projections’