Ai WeiWei 'Chandelier' 236" x 165" x 165"
Terence Koh 'These Decades That We Never Sleep, Black Light' 2004
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Chandeliers
I was in Melbourne last week and in a great bookshop on Collins Street I found a book of interviews between Ai WeiWei and Hans Ulrich Obrist. Ai WeiWei's fame has transcended the artworld (especially of late given his problems with the Chinese Government/police force) but beyond the sunflower seed installation in the Turbine Hall and his project at Documenta 12 which brought 1001 Chinese people to Kassel I'm not that aware of the rest of his work. I was interested to read about his enormous chandelier which is hung at ground level (shown at Mary Boone amongst other locations), I wonder if it somehow prompted Terence Koh's extraordinary black chandelier which is patinated and embellished with a bizarre and somewhat scary array of materials (paint, lollipops, vegetable matter, human and horse hair, mineral oil, rope from a ship found after midnight, glass shards, stones, artist’s blood and shit). My wife just bought a photograph of a chandelier by the Irish artist Elaine Byrne which feels deliberately overexposed and takes on the flat quality of a painting, it's beautiful and it's nice to walk into your house to find something new on the wall.
Ai WeiWei 'Chandelier' 236" x 165" x 165"
Terence Koh 'These Decades That We Never Sleep, Black Light' 2004
Ai WeiWei 'Chandelier' 236" x 165" x 165"
Terence Koh 'These Decades That We Never Sleep, Black Light' 2004
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Pallas Periodical Review
A 'No Man's Land' print was included in this brilliant group show at Pallas Projects on Dominic St, Dublin 1.
Pallas Periodical Review
Selected by Ruth Carroll, Carl Giffney, Mark Cullen & Gavin Murphy
19/11/11—17/12/11
David Beattie, Morton Feldman, Bea McMahon, Seán Shanahan, John Smith, Mark Clare, Maeve Curtis, Gillan Lawler, Aidan Lynam, Fergal McCarthy, Not Abel, Cecily Brennan, Carol Anne Connolly, Emma Houlihan, Andreas Von Knobloch, Nevin Lahart, Joseph Coveney, Michelle Considine, Barbara Knezevic, Colm Mac Athlaoich, Maggie Madden
An artwork, like a book is not made up of individual words on a page (or images on a screen), each of which with a meaning, but is instead “caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences.” Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge
Pallas Periodical Review is not a group exhibition per se, it is a discursive action, with the gallery as a magazine-like layout of images that speak (The field talking to itself). An exhibition as resource, in which we invite agents within the field to engage with what were for them significant moments, practices, works, activity, objects, nodes within the network.
To coincide with our new gallery space, refinement of our name and identity, and highlighting our dual role as a programming and resource organisation, Pallas Projects/Studios presents Pallas Periodical Review – a unique, yearly survey of Irish contemporary art practices. Structured as an editorial review with a critical and discursive position, it will look at commercial gallery shows, museum exhibitions, artist-led and independent projects, publishing, and curatorial practices.
The format has PP/S invite two peers – artists, writers, educators, curators – at the beginning of each year to review and subsequently nominate a number of art practices, which at the end of that year will be selected via an editorial meeting. Such a review-type exhibition within Irish art practice will act to revisit, be a reminder, a critical appraisal and consolidation of ideas and knowledge within the field of contemporary Irish art.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Bomb Magazine
This article appeared in Bomb magazine in November 2011. Click here to read the online edition.
Who’s in charge? Michele Horrigan takes a look at art in a failing economy.
Fergal McCarthy, No Man’s Land, September 2011, Photographic documentation.
What’s going on with this country? is a question often heard in Irish streets and homes at the moment. Following a descent from the economic success of the Celtic Tiger, Ireland is now supported with financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). A controversial recapitalization of the Irish banks by the government has left many parts of society free-falling away from a high point of a decade of affluence. Many in the visual arts community have explored these instabilities, with emerging artists collectives such as Occupy Space in Limerick and Block T in Dublin programming events and exhibitions in empty commercial spaces in city centers, triggering a new verve into dormant spaces built through an extravagant property bubble that peaked in 2007. With larger state-sponsored art institutions only sporadically addressing these issues, more makeshift cultural initiatives have formed a focused collective consciousness and critical impulse around such immediacies. Individual artists are also tackling this topic with an ability to see beyond economy and find potential.
Fergal McCarthy’s project No Man’s Land made an impact on Dublin this September. A fabricated desert island appeared overnight in the midst of the river Liffey, complete with sand, a tent, and palm trees. The intervention was sited in the regenerated urban area of the Docklands, within view of banking headquarters and the International Financial Services Centre. McCarthy, barefoot and dressed in a business suit, lived on the island for nine days, leaving only once during that time due to high winds from the tail end of Hurricane Katia. His consideration of a detached island life, located paradoxically close to the big city, attracted the attention of many passers-by and featured prominently in the Irish media. McCarthy spent his time tweeting about island life, outlining what he ate for meals, encountering herons and swans on the river, and having the occasional conversation with passing boatsmen. Moreover, this temporary and unsteady colonization of the Liffey reflected many aspects of Ireland’s current crisis. McCarthy’s project evoked a subtle form of island romanticism and the maladies of the nation state within what could be perceived as a river of economic woe.
Elaine Reynolds, On/Off States, October 2010, Video still, Video documentation of live event.
An artwork by Elaine Reynolds produced in October 2010 dealt with the “Ghost Estate” phenomenon. This term was coined for over six hundred unfinished housing estates, with a total of 300,000 houses abandoned, unoccupied or uncompleted due to the financial meltdown of 2008. Seen as contemporary ruins on the suburban edge of almost every small town and city, these places were financed through a now-collapsed mortgage structure and built by private developers working with a mismanaged strategic spatial plan. A great deal of discussion has occurred about the future of these sites, with the prospect that many will be bulldozed in future years. Reynolds’ On/Off States confronts this situation, focusing in particular on the rural regions of the northwest. In one such location in Leitrim, lights were installed within the concrete shell of an uncompleted house, electronically programmed to turn on and off in a sequence that signified the S.O.S pattern in Morse code. For one night only, the temporal illumination highlighted an empty concrete husk, devoid of doors, windows, and inhabitants, inverting the notion that lights on meant someone at home. According to the artist, an important part of the work was that there was nobody present inside the building when the lights were flashing, encouraging an insight that the S.O.S was coming from the very structure of the house itself, implying a symbolism not only for this specific site, but to this entire housing construction system. Reynolds’ live event was visible to neighboring houses, motorists and passers-by and was documented and since exhibited as a video work.
Oswaldo Ruiz, Askeaton Idle, July 2011.
Mexican artist Oswaldo Ruiz has spent considerable time exploring Ireland’s landscape, economy and politics since completing a residency at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2010. The video and photographic project, Askeaton Idle, was produced by Ruiz during his residency in the Welcome to the Neighbourhood programme, run by Askeaton Contemporary Arts in Limerick. As a model for a series of nocturnal trips in the town of Askeaton and the surrounding countryside, Ruiz considered the fable and lament of Sweeney, an ancient Irish King who was cursed to be half man, half bird, forever to roam throughout the land. He spent his life leaping from place to place, mad and exiled, lamenting and composing verse as he travelled. In a resuscitation of the myth, Ruiz journeyed around West Limerick for two weeks, his camera moving amongst streets, fields, yards and inside an ancient ring fort with an eerie, often surreal direction. His wanderings led him to find the proverbial road to nowhere, a mile-long tarmacadam lane built for an unrealized industrial estate, ending abruptly into a field. One night Ruiz constructed a sculpture there with a variety of found objects. Formally akin to a tree, upon a countryside road and in the evening, Ruiz’ piece evoked a place for Sweeney to finally perch and rest. Moreover, his project, as with Reynolds and McCarthy, suggest that another drama might be played out in these places: a provisional, live version of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, where whatever might happen in the future is replaced with the need to establish an environmental consciousness of the present.
Michele Horrigan works as an artist and a curator and is based in Berlin and Ireland. She was educated in the Stadelschule, Frankfurt and the University of Ulster, Belfast. Recent exhibitions include Project Space, Frankfurter Kunstverein and Gallery of Photography, Dublin. She is founder and curatorial director of Askeaton Contemporary Arts. For more information about Askeaton and their programming, please click here.
Who’s in charge? Michele Horrigan takes a look at art in a failing economy.
Fergal McCarthy, No Man’s Land, September 2011, Photographic documentation.
What’s going on with this country? is a question often heard in Irish streets and homes at the moment. Following a descent from the economic success of the Celtic Tiger, Ireland is now supported with financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). A controversial recapitalization of the Irish banks by the government has left many parts of society free-falling away from a high point of a decade of affluence. Many in the visual arts community have explored these instabilities, with emerging artists collectives such as Occupy Space in Limerick and Block T in Dublin programming events and exhibitions in empty commercial spaces in city centers, triggering a new verve into dormant spaces built through an extravagant property bubble that peaked in 2007. With larger state-sponsored art institutions only sporadically addressing these issues, more makeshift cultural initiatives have formed a focused collective consciousness and critical impulse around such immediacies. Individual artists are also tackling this topic with an ability to see beyond economy and find potential.
Fergal McCarthy’s project No Man’s Land made an impact on Dublin this September. A fabricated desert island appeared overnight in the midst of the river Liffey, complete with sand, a tent, and palm trees. The intervention was sited in the regenerated urban area of the Docklands, within view of banking headquarters and the International Financial Services Centre. McCarthy, barefoot and dressed in a business suit, lived on the island for nine days, leaving only once during that time due to high winds from the tail end of Hurricane Katia. His consideration of a detached island life, located paradoxically close to the big city, attracted the attention of many passers-by and featured prominently in the Irish media. McCarthy spent his time tweeting about island life, outlining what he ate for meals, encountering herons and swans on the river, and having the occasional conversation with passing boatsmen. Moreover, this temporary and unsteady colonization of the Liffey reflected many aspects of Ireland’s current crisis. McCarthy’s project evoked a subtle form of island romanticism and the maladies of the nation state within what could be perceived as a river of economic woe.
Elaine Reynolds, On/Off States, October 2010, Video still, Video documentation of live event.
An artwork by Elaine Reynolds produced in October 2010 dealt with the “Ghost Estate” phenomenon. This term was coined for over six hundred unfinished housing estates, with a total of 300,000 houses abandoned, unoccupied or uncompleted due to the financial meltdown of 2008. Seen as contemporary ruins on the suburban edge of almost every small town and city, these places were financed through a now-collapsed mortgage structure and built by private developers working with a mismanaged strategic spatial plan. A great deal of discussion has occurred about the future of these sites, with the prospect that many will be bulldozed in future years. Reynolds’ On/Off States confronts this situation, focusing in particular on the rural regions of the northwest. In one such location in Leitrim, lights were installed within the concrete shell of an uncompleted house, electronically programmed to turn on and off in a sequence that signified the S.O.S pattern in Morse code. For one night only, the temporal illumination highlighted an empty concrete husk, devoid of doors, windows, and inhabitants, inverting the notion that lights on meant someone at home. According to the artist, an important part of the work was that there was nobody present inside the building when the lights were flashing, encouraging an insight that the S.O.S was coming from the very structure of the house itself, implying a symbolism not only for this specific site, but to this entire housing construction system. Reynolds’ live event was visible to neighboring houses, motorists and passers-by and was documented and since exhibited as a video work.
Oswaldo Ruiz, Askeaton Idle, July 2011.
Mexican artist Oswaldo Ruiz has spent considerable time exploring Ireland’s landscape, economy and politics since completing a residency at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2010. The video and photographic project, Askeaton Idle, was produced by Ruiz during his residency in the Welcome to the Neighbourhood programme, run by Askeaton Contemporary Arts in Limerick. As a model for a series of nocturnal trips in the town of Askeaton and the surrounding countryside, Ruiz considered the fable and lament of Sweeney, an ancient Irish King who was cursed to be half man, half bird, forever to roam throughout the land. He spent his life leaping from place to place, mad and exiled, lamenting and composing verse as he travelled. In a resuscitation of the myth, Ruiz journeyed around West Limerick for two weeks, his camera moving amongst streets, fields, yards and inside an ancient ring fort with an eerie, often surreal direction. His wanderings led him to find the proverbial road to nowhere, a mile-long tarmacadam lane built for an unrealized industrial estate, ending abruptly into a field. One night Ruiz constructed a sculpture there with a variety of found objects. Formally akin to a tree, upon a countryside road and in the evening, Ruiz’ piece evoked a place for Sweeney to finally perch and rest. Moreover, his project, as with Reynolds and McCarthy, suggest that another drama might be played out in these places: a provisional, live version of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, where whatever might happen in the future is replaced with the need to establish an environmental consciousness of the present.
Michele Horrigan works as an artist and a curator and is based in Berlin and Ireland. She was educated in the Stadelschule, Frankfurt and the University of Ulster, Belfast. Recent exhibitions include Project Space, Frankfurter Kunstverein and Gallery of Photography, Dublin. She is founder and curatorial director of Askeaton Contemporary Arts. For more information about Askeaton and their programming, please click here.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
No Man's Land Prints
The printers have finally finished my new edition of prints of two images of No Man's Land. Both photographers captured the essence of the project brilliantly from wildly different angles. If you would like to order a print or would like more information about the work please email me directly: mccarthy.fergal@gmail.com
No Man’s Land (River View), Image: Andreas Pettersson
Signed Giclee Print, 68 x 50cm (Framed), Edition of 20, €550.
NoMan’sLand (Liberty Hall View), Image: Johnny Savage
Signed Giclee Print, 68 x 50cm (Framed), Edition of 20, €550.
No Man’s Land (River View), Image: Andreas Pettersson
Signed Giclee Print, 68 x 50cm (Framed), Edition of 20, €550.
NoMan’sLand (Liberty Hall View), Image: Johnny Savage
Signed Giclee Print, 68 x 50cm (Framed), Edition of 20, €550.
Monday, October 24, 2011
The Swimmer 4
Artist proves Dublin’s a real dive
Sunday Times October 23 2011
Fergal McCarthy echoes Joycean journey by swimming through the Irish Sea, the Liffey, the Grand Canal and five pools to highlight city’s aquatic side
Leopold Bloom crossed Dublin by foot in James Joyce’s Ulysses. More than 100 years later, an Irish artist has made the journey by water. Fergal McCarthy has made a film documenting his odyssey across the capital, which involved swimming through the sea, waterways and pools.
McCarthy, 38, who lived on an island on the Liffey as part of this year’s fringe festival, began at the Martello tower in Dun Laoghaire, which was also the starting point for Ulysses. He swam through the Irish Sea, four private pools, the Grand Canal, the Liffey and a public pool before finishing at the Martello tower in Sutton.
The journey took more than 14 hours and was completed on a Saturday last month. It was shot by Still Films, which made Pyjama Girls and Build Something Modern, and is currently showing as part of an exhibition about water at the Science Gallery, Dublin.
McCarthy was inspired by The Swimmer, a 1968 American film in which a man travels home by swimming through his friends’ pools. “Immediately after watching the movie, I thought I would love to do something similar in Dublin,” he said.
“We’re so land based. When you think of Dublin or Los Angeles or any city in the world, you don’t think of the water. Especially in Dublin we don’t think of the Liffey or the coast. There are so many opportunities to engage with water and most of us don’t take them.
“By doing this, I’m challenging people to rethink Dublin from an aquatic perspective rather than as a land base.”
McCarthy, who lived on the man-made desert island on the Liffey for two weeks last month, started by searching for private pools on Google Earth, a virtual globe created with satellite imagery. He identified nine suitable locations and went knocking on homeowners’ doors. All were willing to participate and three were used in the final film.
“It was like they were waiting for me to turn up, like they were dying to tell their story. I didn’t expect all of them to welcome me, but they did,” he said.
“The first one was across the road from the Martello tower in Seapoint at a beautiful Georgian home. [The owner’s] husband had died and he had been a fanatical swimmer. The daughter of the family had got married in a marquee by the pool.
“She then rang ahead because she knew all the other pool owners. The pools were probably all built in the 1960s and I guess there was a certain moneyed section of Dublin society that knew each other and had dreams of California-type lifestyles and built these pools.”
McCarthy began the trip at 6am by swimming from the Forty Foot at Dun Laoghaire to a beach at Sandycove. He then ran to a nearby home with a swimming pool before travelling to pools at houses on Ailesbury Road and Shrewsbury Road. Sean Blake, a cardiologist, and his wife Frances, who features in the film, own the Shrewsbury Road home. It was also used as a location in Far and Away, a 1992 film starring Tom Cruise.
McCarthy then swam across Grand Canal Dock and up the Liffey before diving into the Markievicz public pool in Townsend Street. He ran to the men’s bathing area in Dollymount, swam across to Sutton, and mimed swimming in an empty pool at Sutton Park school. He reached the Martello tower at 8.30pm, just in time for sunset.
McCarthy wore a pair of swimming shorts, and put on trainers to run. He was frequently towel-dried and advised to drink a can of Coke after swimming in the Liffey in order to kill the bacteria.
“I was training all summer. I literally ran every day for an hour and swam for an hour. I was ready to run a triathlon. That was the level of fitness that was required,” he said.
“They found a shower that you can attach to a cigarette lighter in a car to heat up the water, so I had a hot shower after being in the Liffey.”
McCarthy, a primary school teacher, is considering another project at a lighthouse in Dublin bay, where strangers would be invited to a dinner party each night.
Eithne Shortall
Sunday Times October 23 2011
Fergal McCarthy echoes Joycean journey by swimming through the Irish Sea, the Liffey, the Grand Canal and five pools to highlight city’s aquatic side
Leopold Bloom crossed Dublin by foot in James Joyce’s Ulysses. More than 100 years later, an Irish artist has made the journey by water. Fergal McCarthy has made a film documenting his odyssey across the capital, which involved swimming through the sea, waterways and pools.
McCarthy, 38, who lived on an island on the Liffey as part of this year’s fringe festival, began at the Martello tower in Dun Laoghaire, which was also the starting point for Ulysses. He swam through the Irish Sea, four private pools, the Grand Canal, the Liffey and a public pool before finishing at the Martello tower in Sutton.
The journey took more than 14 hours and was completed on a Saturday last month. It was shot by Still Films, which made Pyjama Girls and Build Something Modern, and is currently showing as part of an exhibition about water at the Science Gallery, Dublin.
McCarthy was inspired by The Swimmer, a 1968 American film in which a man travels home by swimming through his friends’ pools. “Immediately after watching the movie, I thought I would love to do something similar in Dublin,” he said.
“We’re so land based. When you think of Dublin or Los Angeles or any city in the world, you don’t think of the water. Especially in Dublin we don’t think of the Liffey or the coast. There are so many opportunities to engage with water and most of us don’t take them.
“By doing this, I’m challenging people to rethink Dublin from an aquatic perspective rather than as a land base.”
McCarthy, who lived on the man-made desert island on the Liffey for two weeks last month, started by searching for private pools on Google Earth, a virtual globe created with satellite imagery. He identified nine suitable locations and went knocking on homeowners’ doors. All were willing to participate and three were used in the final film.
“It was like they were waiting for me to turn up, like they were dying to tell their story. I didn’t expect all of them to welcome me, but they did,” he said.
“The first one was across the road from the Martello tower in Seapoint at a beautiful Georgian home. [The owner’s] husband had died and he had been a fanatical swimmer. The daughter of the family had got married in a marquee by the pool.
“She then rang ahead because she knew all the other pool owners. The pools were probably all built in the 1960s and I guess there was a certain moneyed section of Dublin society that knew each other and had dreams of California-type lifestyles and built these pools.”
McCarthy began the trip at 6am by swimming from the Forty Foot at Dun Laoghaire to a beach at Sandycove. He then ran to a nearby home with a swimming pool before travelling to pools at houses on Ailesbury Road and Shrewsbury Road. Sean Blake, a cardiologist, and his wife Frances, who features in the film, own the Shrewsbury Road home. It was also used as a location in Far and Away, a 1992 film starring Tom Cruise.
McCarthy then swam across Grand Canal Dock and up the Liffey before diving into the Markievicz public pool in Townsend Street. He ran to the men’s bathing area in Dollymount, swam across to Sutton, and mimed swimming in an empty pool at Sutton Park school. He reached the Martello tower at 8.30pm, just in time for sunset.
McCarthy wore a pair of swimming shorts, and put on trainers to run. He was frequently towel-dried and advised to drink a can of Coke after swimming in the Liffey in order to kill the bacteria.
“I was training all summer. I literally ran every day for an hour and swam for an hour. I was ready to run a triathlon. That was the level of fitness that was required,” he said.
“They found a shower that you can attach to a cigarette lighter in a car to heat up the water, so I had a hot shower after being in the Liffey.”
McCarthy, a primary school teacher, is considering another project at a lighthouse in Dublin bay, where strangers would be invited to a dinner party each night.
Eithne Shortall
The Swimmer 3
A trailer for 'The Swimmer', showing at The Science Gallery, Trinity College until january 2011.
The Swimmer from Still Films on Vimeo.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
The Swimmer 2
Some behind the scenes photos of 'The Swimmer' shoot from Saturday September 2, 2011. All images by Andreas Pettersson.
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