Reflecting in the Institution

Reviews of Dublin Graduate Shows at NCAD, DIT, and IADT, 2011.

Response by James Merrigan

Art and education are awkward but compulsory bedfellows. To be an artist you have to go through the institutional hoop, it is the ‘professional’ thing to do––NO COLOURFUL OUTSIDER ART HERE! Amateurism is not a default setting on the career path of the would-be artist. Art and professionalism are also untidy companions––it’s like wearing ‘eccentricity’ beneath the suit––you want to reveal your ‘individuality’, but you also want to ‘tie’ it in a professional curatorial bow at the end of the year show. The professional procedure goes something like this: deadlines, externes, supervisor marking, final coats of white paint, frustration, hands off, leave and wait for the response, if any!––and not to forget the Aidan Dunne overview/review in The Irish Times (who I saw by the way skulking [maybe and unfair description] through the National College of Art & Design corridors), and then it’s over, out in the real world of open submissions and expectant handshakes and emails. The hope is that your work will translate into gallery work, public art or independent projects; catch the eye of a gallerist or curator. So can we judge these claustrophobic displays of art so soon after the students’ torment to find an art identity amongst all the other identities within the institution, not to mention the art world identities that were force fed over the four to six years of critiques, and seemingly fugitive efforts of object making, summoned from the pedagogical well of knowledge that the artist learns within the eight foot high white corridors of the art college? Of course we can. Sometimes we discover artists that negotiate the art college parameter brilliantly, and make art that trumps the stuff in the galleries. In some ways there is more freedom in the art college, although it is a freedom that is coloured by your supervisor and fellow classmates, if they told you the truth! It is also coloured from the perspective of looking out onto the art world rather than being in it, although most have had skirmishes with the art packs at openings or Facebook! More importantly, without the room to reflect on what the final allusive art identity that you have displayed for the ‘outside’ world to see, the art student is left blindly to walk out into the real world of art making to reflect (almost too late) on what they have achieved, and most importantly, have they developed an art identity that gels with their own way of existing in the world. In other words, does their ‘final’ way of working have a life after art college, or is it just a light institutional coat. More specifically, is it too dependent on the art institution. The ones that stand out at these graduate shows don’t over-display the one idea in too many fashions. There is also an ease in their final output; a paring back of the ‘hoarding’ mentality that is part of the desperate need to search for this allusive formal identity.

The National College of Art & Design (NCAD)

On the top floor of the Granary Building at NCAD (where the painting department is located), I mistook Caitriona Rogerson’s video work for that of a male artist. I don’t know why gender came into it? Maybe it was the man made thread of her focus––the escalator, elevator, car; mechanical hardware that is necessary for our efficient movement through institutional, urban and rural space. Forgetting the case of mistaken identity, this confident, no frills output by Rogerson was more MFA than BA. In one looped video sequence the artist repeats a moment of expectant revelation when a large industrial elevator (found later in the design block of NCAD) opened and closed intermittently with the announcement: “door opening...door closing.” Although this may sound like a filmic cliché when described, this work was twinned with another video projection that showed a detail of the ‘workings’ of the elevator hoist cable located at the ceiling of the elevator shaft. The ‘rupture’ in this banal focus was envisioned by inverting the video (or upside down filming of the event) , so there was an unease created by the question: which way is up and which way is down? The eerily uncanny tone of Rogerson’s work was doubled up with the symmetrically beguiling twinning of a continually shifting rural landscape, seen through two adjoined side view mirrors of a car. I don’t like the use of the term kaleidoscopic, but it is merited here. The folding of the real image and mirrored image actually collapsed the idea of time based media into one continually reflective work, giving this video an objectness to it––a real parameter with no narrative end in sight.
Up in a hideaway ‘attic’ overlooking the other artists on the top floor of the Granary Building, Tom Boland’s stacked cardboard boxes with cut-out text of ‘stock’ cynical phrases, was a brave and confident way to end his term of college. Boland's recycled statements were interesting against the backdrop of learning; a space to make a ‘mark’ through some formalised art identity. I wrote above of the “hoarding mentality that is part of the desperate need to search for this allusive formal identity”; in Boland’s case, the hoarding of so-called ‘original’ formal and textual expressions that must have cluttered his studio, have been evacuated from the space, and replaced by cardboard boxes (that may have been better used to store whatever stuff he produced during the year), with cut-out empty phrases that have a political motivation, but will never amount to a cure. “Hoarding” is once again signified when the artist packaged the leftover letter cut-outs into a few free boxes. Out of the ‘stockpile’, one white box floated in the corner of the room with the word “REFLECT” excised out. I was told that you could put your head up into this specific box, offering the viewer a space to “REFLECT” on the phraseology before them. This ad hoc ‘moment’ says so much about the process of art making––and Boland’s work is an escape from all the usual ‘individuality’ on show. Although it must be said that this ‘empty’ output is a full-stop––there is nothing left to empty out of his studio when the graduate show ends, so it will be time to begin afresh after college.

On the bottom floor of the Granary Building, Tom David Watt used similar methods of avoidance and disassociation from the usual mediums or forms of expression per se, by using the college and its contents to create “hidden and inaccessible spaces.” This process is obviously from the Mike Nelson handbook of fabricating in-between spaces behind the institution, but whereas Nelson adds his own thematic to the banal makeup of the everyday, with an admixture of fantasy and institution, I could not discover anything of ‘Watt’ in these fabrications that expanded a narrative for the audience that went beyond the walled parameters of NCAD. Watt’s ‘closed tutors’ office’ on the bottom floor of the Granary Building offered a closed narrative at first. For a viewer who isn’t aware of the existence of this office they would assume it was constructed by the artist. A flashing red light on the phone, a ceiling prop, along with the cluttered messages and objects, didn’t offer an open narrative but closed it down. But it was the subtle glimpse of a space above the false propped ceiling that gave you an inroad into what Watt was presenting––chance spaces that were devoid of personality, except for the treble barreled name printed ‘professionally’ on a foam board label; “Tom David Watt.” I was left wandering back into the bowels of the institution to find the access point for this work. I found it behind an ajar sheet of timber rather than a door, which led to a crawl space with three televisions with CCTV footage of other ‘Watt spaces’.

What is certain, the majority of the audience that visited NCAD didn’t discover the spaces, and “Tom David Watt” was just a label. Watt’s efforts remind me of a group show entitled The Power of a Negative Remains Between Us at thisisnotashop in 2007, when Ciarán Walsh (who was an MA student at NCAD at the time), took over the basement of the art project space on Benburb Street, and not only utilised the piles of miscellaneous objects and rubbish that you would likely find in a basement, but also added subtle elements of his own design, such as an audio of undetermined ‘noise’, a Tarot table setup and other objects that provoked narrativity. We could defend Watt’s work by saying that the viewer doesn’t know where the institution ends and the art begins. It is also a work that negates identity, and in the context of an end of year art college show, this is a brave move. In the end, I will be waiting to see what “Tom David Watt” does next. The question is can the work emerge from the institution?[1]

The graduate show continued outside the NCAD campus proper at what was a primary school building on St. John’s Lane, just off Thomas Street. This is the home of the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (Gradcam). The building has also been used as art studios for the fine art graduate programmes since 2006. This is the first year that the end of year practice- based graduate shows have been housed at this location. Stepping down into the basement-like ground floor I was met by a black and white soiree of new media expressions. Black and white film always has a reflective affect on the viewer. I am not thinking of the potent history of black and white film such as the pretentious ‘newness’ of the Avant Garde, or the psychological suspense of Hitchcock, but more in how it affects the temporal environment, and dare I say it the ‘mood’ of the space. In the case of NCAD graduate Claire Duffy’s photographs and video, you could say there is a bit of the existentialist concerns of French New Wave Film, and Bruce Nauman’s ‘60s videos of the artist “mapping” the studio. What I liked about Duffy’s work was the uncanny element brought on by the physiognomy of her protagonist––a tall, skinny, all dressed in black, mime-like character, who was caught in moments of ‘suspension’ and movement as he negotiated white walled rooms and a white ladder. It was all very theatrical without being over dramatic. The photos, especially of her “mime” hanging from a ladder that was visibly wedged into holes in the floor, uncovered the ‘act’ and prop-like environment that the artist presented to us, and in some ways the photos were enough, while the video gave away too much of the back-story behind the photos.

In the adjoining space, unlike Duffy’s work, which provoked me to step up close and investigate, Louise Croke’s projected black and white films were setup so the viewer stands back to watch a serial spectacle of ‘process-ional’ death. The artist’s dramatic documentation of animals dying and dead, came across more like a ‘research project’ into the process of death, due in part to the amount of videos on show in such a small space. I was almost wishing away the ‘wing’ video projections, because the central ‘keyhole aspect’ video projection of a fox tied to a tree––in moments of panic and ease, had enough ethical and emotional baggage to ‘test’ the viewer. I don’t know whether Croke’s work is an objective commentary on death or an ethical statement about the ‘poor animals’; I am going with the former. Although the artist revealed too much in the packed video installation (to my mind), I am left with the image of the fox and a desire to know more about this artist, her ‘drive’ to make this work, and where she will go next with this ‘personal’ project; which could be viewed as the most important result from a end of year graduate show?
Upstairs in the same building, MFA graduate Dee ‘O Shea gave the viewer moments of aesthetic luminosity in her vent-like peephole video projections. Surprisingly, the peepholes didn’t come across as voyeuristic––unless you were watching the viewer peeping! In this cleverly subtle installation the viewer had to strain to look into narrow vents, the kind of things where your eyelash gets in the way. The aesthetic was architectural and domestic, from red and white tiles to red and white wallpaper borders. The video projections (if that’s what they were–I suspected mirrors also?), showed still or panning evocations of light passing across the artificial landscapes. Walls seemed to shift and not always fluidly, sometimes scuttling, giving a welcome handmade aspect to proceedings. I kept on going back to see if anything had changed in the intimate climate that ‘O Shea offered, but it was always subtle. In one instance a floor seemed to open up and there was an innate desire to imagine what was beyond, or what the artist was intimating below. I was given eclectic referential moments to ‘50s film such as the opening credit sequence to North by Northwest, where the glass face of a New York skyscraper reflects the colour and movement of the city in daylight. There was also a type of carnival ‘funhouse’ and Vaudeville theatricality in the staging, combined with the Burlesque-like stripping of the architecture by the manufactured light. The work definitely invites language.

In a second room ‘O Shea changed things around and gave the viewer an easier platform to view another series of video projections though trompe l’oeil wall inserts; one of tiles, the other of ‘wallpaper’. These works were more inviting. In a sense the artist was literally stripping back her process––photographs and what could be read as an architectural section of one of the filmed sculptural ‘models’, was left on the floor. There was no real medium specificity in ‘O Shea’s output and the work not only alluded to film but also to painting––the abstract monumentalism of American Abstract Expressionism. Taking a leaf from the “Aidan Dunne” review handbook, this artist is “one to watch.”

Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT)
Although lacking in a broader range of new media works and painting (albeit not short of ‘expansive painting’, a trend experienced throughout all the colleges), Dublin Institute of Technology’s Art Departments presented a mesh of politics and humour where tight formalism wasn’t needed.

Hair was the only item on the menu of Gráinne Bird’s work, who collected mounds of human hair and made it into fashion. I presume the main contributor to this work of art were hair salons around the country. The best moment of this installation was realising that the shelved glass jars containing hair were archived by “Breed” ( such as “Monaghan Adult Female”), and “Price” (“€2.50/lbs”).

Patrick Walsh’s “ARTISTS....NON-ARTISTS” ‘booths’ invited the viewer to choose a group that you may feel part of; I chose “NON-ARTISTS.” Behind this curtain there wasn’t much to see except for a fold-out information leaflet entitled Art & You: A short, introductory guide to getting your money’s worth. I was eager to see what was behind “ARTISTS” curtain two. Low and behold, it was less didactic and more tongue and cheek. An art event ‘opening table’ was dressed with the obligatory white sheet with bottles of Sol (the cheap equivalent to Corona). A comic strip layout with Robin Hood as the protagonist––a symbol for the fight against corruption, presented a humourous narrative around the thematic of greed. Walsh focused on key words and terms within the art world institution vernacular where art viewing has a policy of “Free Admission,” whereas the artist is shortchanged, even devalued. In the centre of the room the artist was ‘granted’ a chance to stroke a ‘ball’ of fur...you can make of this what you will?

Like Walsh, Lisa Ronan used the comic strip layout as a way to wear the ‘old hat’ of Feminism. Once again, the formal properties were almost invisible, while the message was bold and didactic. This term Feminism is something that is avoided, but the issues are still visible in the the male/female ratios in art colleges which Ronan amounts to 71% female–– “whereas only 10% of the artists on show at IMMA are female.” I have spoken to female artists regarding this issue without using the term “Feminism,” and the opinions are varied and unsure, but surprisingly not on the offense––a trait that seems to be part of our provincial politics. There is the field of curation which is held by a female majority, and you have to wonder has this choice of artistic direction made potential female artists into ‘professional curators’? Or is that a completely different game?
Antoinette Milne’s witty manipulation of readymades offered a political message through the casual manipulation of household objects. Three identical chrome clocks hung on a length of decking––references to Felex Gonzales Torres’ Perfect Lovers came to mind. However, Milne’s clocks are corrupted rather than melancholic or romantic; the second-, minute-, and hour hands were divided up into the three clocks. This could be viewed as a novelty item found at one of those gadget shops, but there was a thread within the artist’s work that spoke of the boom years and the cyclic events of recession. Maybe I am reading too much into the use of decking behind the clocks, but the product was a ‘must have’ item during the good auld times.

Trade unions, Bobby Sands and especially the ‘80s “miners’ strike” were resurrected in the mind when you read the title of Milne’s wall hung bed sheet with sewn multicoloured coat buttons from an imagined ‘power suit’ ensemble, entitled “Thatcher’s Bedsheet.” A ‘hill’ of buttons were also piled up on the floor. There is a formal subtly in what Milne presents to the viewer that can be read in different ways. The buttons sewn to the bed sheet with small white labels hanging from each one by a short piece of thread read as shovel-like emblems––signifiers of labour posited by the decorative. On leaving the toilet-like space where the artist’s work was modestly located, I picked up a laminated card left by Milne for the viewer to take. On one side of the card there is a profile of Ireland with a “Sorry WE”RE CLOSED” sign––on the reverse a Limerick entitled “Fianna Fáiled” sums up the artist’s feeling toward the “fat cats of power,” and the “crimes...passed on to your average Joe.” Gemma Tipton wrote in a recent article for The Irish Times entitled Is Irish art on the money?, that “you’d be hard-pressed to find artists addressing the collapse of the banking system and the economic downturn.” If Tipton had of gone a little deeper, beyond the bigger institutions, galleries, and established artists, she would find a crop of younger artists who are actually effected by the current climate and responding appropriately.

Institute of Art Design & Technology, Dun Laoghaire(IADT)
IADT looked and felt like the now common vacant housing estate found in suburban and rural locations around the country. There were no invigilators or college porters, just art. So the experience of viewing the end of year graduate show had none of the climatic conditions of noise pollution and too much ‘other people’ experienced at the Dublin City colleges. One criticism was the disappointing fact that most of the digital and kinetic work were not turned on, so my experience was focused on the 2D Visual art practice, where in some cases I took the liberty of switching on whatever I could. Work not being turned on is something that is not just an epidemic in the educational institution but happens regularly at galleries and museums. In this specific case the responsibility falls on the student, who need to make sure their work is seen in optimum condition, not to mention seen and heard at all.
On the only 1st floor space location of the IADT graduate show, the 2D “Visual Arts Practice” was displayed like a curated group show rather than all the purposeful segregation at the other colleges. This is due to a lack of space at IADT in comparison to NCAD and DIT. The upside of this is that there was a cohesive whole and work that may not have been exciting by itself bounced off other work, creating surprising dynamic contexts.

On entering the upstairs studios I initially thought I was a week early to see the graduate show. The first studio space was cordoned off with hazard tape; with a ladder, miscellaneous tools and electrical cords left casually sprawling the space. Was this art in the making? No, Shane McCarthy’s installation could only be read in the context of the art institution and the art student making a ‘going away’ statement in the projected words Beautiful Expectation on the far wall of the studio. The projected sentiment was written in neon, a material that always brings us back to Bruce Nauman. However. so many artists after Nauman have either used neon as a reference to the American artist––Jonathan Monk's neon spiral without Nauman’s The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths, or unsuccessfully try and make it their own––Traci Emin’s painful art fair neons which are more Margate Funfair than art world glamour.
McCarthy’s installation wasn’t theatre, the daylight lighting gave the projected text the ethereal presence of an afterthought. I was really intrigued by McCarthy’s ‘setup’ and it set the stage for the confident tone of the majority of the work on show. I have to highlight that the badge of merit–– “Shortlisted for the IADT Collection”––found on some of the works at IADT is an odd addition and clouds the contexts that shape the student work. Especially in the context of Shane McCarthy’s installation Beautiful Expectation, where I ‘misread’ the merit badge as part of the artist’s intentionally false ‘expectations’ in his display.

Sarah Flynn’s uncanny antique furniture fabrications were missing the psychoanalytical chaise longue. Furniture and art has been used to its greatest effect in Brendan Earley’s modernist IKEA displays, or in Clay Ketter’s banal architectural displays of domesticated blue collar America. Flynn gets rid of all the white formalism of both and leaves the viewer with antique dark brown mahogany. If you investigate these pieces you will find quirky manipulations such as a chair permanently embedded in a desk and the hanging bushy tail and paws of some mammal found underneath a table. This work is all about scale and investigation––a whodunnit stage set. I usually veer away from any art work that has wallpaper or antique furniture, but this wasn’t a cluttered display, especially against the stark white walls of the upstairs studio. There are so many places where Flynn’s investigations can go, it will be interesting to see what form it will take in the future?

Minute in scale but big in wit and sentiment, Lily Cahill’s pencilled text gave form and meaning to her throwaway mixed-media minutiae. Although some of the artist’s societal and personal revelations were a little too “CATCHPHRASE,” there were moments of brilliant wit and humour.

I felt I was rummaging through a private diary as my eyes scanned over a playing card (the Joker of the pack), with Cahill’s personalised caption underneath-IBELIEVEDYOUTHOUGH. In another instance the joined words APOCALYPSELATER echoed the arc of a piece of corrugated card stuck to a wall with a minute clothes peg––a personally perceived shelter from our societal woes.

Ironically, the piece that had the most “charm” of all the college work was Cahill’s MYCHARMSHAVELIMITS, a piece of text that was positioned at the top of an eight foot partition in her studio. Cahill’s work has nothing to do with the conventions of art making and more to do with an unconventional personality finding a perfect match with the forms and expressive outlets that art offers the individual; a rare successful mix.

Niamh clark’s floor-bound set of compartmentalised ‘aquariums’ with closed end funnels containing colour, floated and bumped––their movement influenced by incongruous mechanics. The ‘clinking’ of glass foregrounded the work in the space. The adjoining glass compartments looked like a model of a vacant industrial office block––I am primed by Nama acquired glass office blocks. However, Clarke’s work takes an imagined leap out of the institute and into the gallery when I see corporate shades of Liam Gillick in the high production values. There is also something of Mondrian in her work, who it is said had a very ‘clinical’ art studio. You can imagine Clark in a white pristine lab coat. The ‘clinking’ glass also reminds me of a bit of sage advice I was given during my undergraduate studies at IADT, which was: “Sometimes it comes down to how you hold a wine glass.”

All in all, identity and the branding of that ‘art identity’, whether artist or institution, is a mixed bag when it comes to art colleges based in Dublin city. I use the phrase “mixed bag” in the positive eclectic sense. From the fighting words in the politicised work at DIT, the strong individualism at NCAD, and the quirky formalism at IADT, a stand-out art identity is the main vice (or virtue), in the goal to be seen and heard at the art institution.

Thanks to Susan MacWilliam, Robert Armstrong and all the artists who kindly forwarded images of their work.