“Pantone 2685 and Leopoldville” tackle part of a complex history around the (post) colonial contradictions of humanitarian work within the context of Roger Casement who was executed in 1916. The work is an installation of several elements both inside and outside the galleries. Focused around the word “Leopoldville”, the former colonial name for Kinshasa, the word is rendered as graphically to mimic the Cadbury chocolate confectionary corporate logo. “Leopoldville” then appears as an outdoor illuminated sign, made by shop sign fabricators.
This piece conflates the benevolent financing of humanitarian work – William Cadbury’s funding of Casement’s investigations into human rights atrocities in the former Congo – with the collision of private and corporate interests which often counter such work, e.g. the tens of millions who were revealed to have died under (King) Leopold who treated the Congo as his private fiefdom to be exploited for personal gain. The piece offers a counter-factual critique of big business and humanitarian crisis, wrongly aligning good and bad to speak of the complicit nature of the nation state and multi-national corporation.
The short video Pantone 2685 brings the various elements together with a series of questions put to the CEO of a noted NGO – namely Colm O’Gorman, from Amnesty International Ireland. The conversation aims to tease out the humanitarian legacy of Roger Casement compared with international human rights activism now. The video is rapidly cut to mimic a rather frantic documentary head & shoulders interview style.
The works were made for: “Still (the) Barbarians”, curated by Koyo Kouoh, the 37th edition of EVA International Ireland’s Biennial 16 April – 17 July 2016
The film “Our Kind” was screened at the EVA Symposium 13 July, 2016
Associated text
“Pantone 2685 and Leopoldville” tackle part of a complex history around the (post) colonial contradictions of humanitarian work within the context of Roger Casement who was executed in 1916. The work is an installation of several elements both inside and outside the galleries. Focused around the word “Leopoldville”, the former colonial name for Kinshasa, the word is rendered as graphically to mimic the Cadbury chocolate confectionary corporate logo. “Leopoldville” then appears as an outdoor illuminated sign, made by shop sign fabricators.
This piece conflates the benevolent financing of humanitarian work – William Cadbury’s funding of Casement’s investigations into human rights atrocities in the former Congo – with the collision of private and corporate interests which often counter such work, e.g. the tens of millions who were revealed to have died under (King) Leopold who treated the Congo as his private fiefdom to be exploited for personal gain. The piece offers a counter-factual critique of big business and humanitarian crisis, wrongly aligning good and bad to speak of the complicit nature of the nation state and multi-national corporation.
The short video Pantone 2685 brings the various elements together with a series of questions put to the CEO of a noted NGO – namely Colm O’Gorman, from Amnesty International Ireland. The conversation aims to tease out the humanitarian legacy of Roger Casement compared with international human rights activism now. The video is rapidly cut to mimic a rather frantic documentary head & shoulders interview style.
These works were made for Still (the) Barbarians curated by Koyo Kouoh 37th edition of EVA International – Ireland’s Biennial, 16 April – 17 July 2016 http://eva.ie/still-the-barbarians
The film “Our Kind” was screened at the EVA Symposium 13 July, 2016
Curatorial Statment:
2016 is a meaningful year for Ireland as it marks the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, a moment of great significance in the struggle for liberation from British colonial rule. Responding to the context of the centenary, EVA International 2016 curated by Koyo Kouoh will be entitled Still (the) Barbarians and will investigate the post-colonial condition of Ireland as a point of departure from where artistic reflections, critical redefinitions and political transformations are articulated.
The biennial programme will address artistic, architectural, literary and critical positions that interpret colonial effects on the psyche, landscape and imagination, and that continue to shape our present condition. Diasporic dispersions caused by invasive disruptions of social, cultural, religious and political orders have long been subject matter for artists, writers, filmmakers, architects, scientists and activists. Coinciding with the centenary of the Easter Rising, Still (the) Barbarians aims to draw a concentric artistic and political cartography, mapping the conflations and confines of the global post-colonial typology with Ireland as its central starting point.
The convecting discourses on racism as a foundational and enduring system for exclusion and exploitation will appear throughout the biennial as the framework on which to build contemporary fictions and future utopias of togetherness. Still (the) Barbarians will further examine the relationships between the various forms of mental, physical and institutional decolonization across the world in comparison to Ireland as the primary testing territory of Western colonization systems before their expansion to the global map. Informed by the longstanding and persistent unease with forms of subjugation, alienation, humiliation and dispossession and their inevitable result in war and terror, the curatorial project wishes to engage with practices displaying aesthetics of subversion, transcendence and reappropriation.
Commenting on her appointment and curatorial approach to Still (the) Barbarians, Koyo Kouoh said: “Ireland, which I consider the first and foremost laboratory of the British colonial enterprise, has always been a fixture in my thinking on the psychological and political effects a system designed to humiliate and alienate can have on peoples’ souls. The coincidence of EVA 2016 with the centenary celebrations of the Easter Rising provides a welcome opportunity to engage artists and thinkers in this exciting discussion.”
Outdoor video projection, 7 minutes duration, looped 18 September 2015 from dusk to 21:30 Commission for ‘…the lives we live’, Grangegorman Public Art
A site specific projection for Culture Night 2015, this video projection onto an exterior stairwell of animated text that references the rich historical context of the site using records of the former mental health institutions that were in the Grangegorman area are now mostly held in the National Archives. With the strict accessibility conditions to this material, the work presents streams of institutional and bureaucratic words and phrases that reveal the changing sensitivities in language that have described the people occupying the site then and now into the future.
Sources stem from column headings of historical registers as well as keywords from the professions of mental health, education, and archive administration. Together the animated texts present possibilities, or rather the difficulty in the representation and use of such material.
There is a contradiction in an archive without records which this site and work now presents but this incredible history is embedded in this part of the city and is not forgotten. With the development of the new university campus there are just too many connections between education and mental health to explore for artists. The potential of a long term engagement through careful negotiation, consideration and sensitivity should provide for a rich outcome in future projects around this site.
Outdoor video projection, 7 minutes duration, looped 18 September 2015 from dusk to 21:30 Commission for ‘…the lives we live’, Grangegorman Public Art
Original Press Release:
‘…the lives we live’ Grangegorman Public Art is very pleased to present ‘The Possibility of an Archive’ by the Irish artist Alan Phelan.
Phelan’s site specific projection is a special commission for Culture Night 2015 and coincides with the launch of a new phase of public art commissions arising from per cent for art as part of the redevelopment of this new urban quarter in Grangegorman. The piece is a video projection onto an exterior stairwell of animated text that references the rich historical context of the site.
The records of the former mental health institutions that were in the Grangegorman area are now mostly held in the National Archives. With the strict accessibility conditions to this material Phelan has created a work that presents streams of institutional and bureaucratic words and phrases that reveal the changing sensitivities in language that have described the people occupying the site then and now into the future.
Sources stem from column headings of historical registers as well as keywords from the professions of mental health, education, and archive administration. Together the animated texts present possibilities, or rather the difficulty in the representation and use of such material.
As Phelan discusses, “there is a contradiction in an archive without records which this site and work now presents but this incredible history is embedded in this part of the city and is not forgotten. With the development of the new university campus there are just too many connections between education and mental health to explore for artists. The potential of a long term engagement through careful negotiation, consideration and sensitivity should provide for a rich outcome in future projects around this site.”
Phelan also works in the archive sector and more recently this has influenced several projects that have looked at institutional histories and art collections within a gallery and museum context. It is from this perspective that he has developed this new work which offers a prospect of a history that is not forgotten, but temporarily unavailable, a subtle and sombre reflection on a complicated and troubled history.
This work is typical of Phelan’s his wider practice where he often uses language and text in approaching complex and sometimes conflicting ideas around history, politics and culture. This can result in an organisational structure, like his use of only the italic words from a philosophical book to configure a large mixed body of work; or the playful pun of selecting artists to work with whose name sounded similar to his own; or using the random occurrence of text embedded graphically in a collection of images to create dialogue for a film.
Thanks to the many who helped over the short lifespan of this work including Jenny Haughton, Nora Rahill, Jonathan Sammon, John Beattie, Fran Quigley, Brian Donnelly, HSE Art Committee, and Noel Kelly.
About ‘…the lives we live’ Grangegorman Public Art
Arising from the Grangegorman Arts Strategy (2012), a new phase of commissions supported through the Per Cent for Art Scheme considers the potential for public art and the vision for commissioning. A Public Art Working Group comprising representatives from community, Health Services Executive (HSE), Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) and the Grangegorman Development Agency and chaired by Ciaran Benson will oversee a series of commissioning pathways during the period 2015-2017.
For press inquiries, please contact: 01 402 4140 or email public.art@ggda.ie for information on ‘…the lives we live’ Grangegorman Public Art.
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Essay from ‘…the lives we live’ Grangegorman Public Art Book, published March 2021
Alan Phelan
“The Possibility of an Archive” was a special commission for Culture Night 2015, a large outdoor video projection on the covered stairwell of a utilities building on the emerging TU Grangegorman campus. The piece became visible after dusk on the perforated metal sheeting enclosing the stairs, with animated words moving up and down the four storey structure. The text was culled from historic records, as well as current education and health professional glossaries (1).
The piece was planned as a monumental projection for this large blank surface which would eventually be closed off by adjacent new structures. As a services building, it looked like an anonymous records storage facility, possibly even an archive, as they are often blank and windowless. The utility of my descriptive artwork seemed appropriate and yet this location proved uneasy. There is a new mental health facility (2) nearby, which maybe walled off from the university campus but some patients watched from balconies during the set up. The line of slight prevented them from seeing the work later that evening however, so again remaining problematic because of exclusion.
The possibility for offensive exposure was therefore close, of expressions too close to the reality behind nearby walls. Maybe this is why “The Possibility of an Island” (3) 2005 novel by Michel Houellebecq served as an appropriate kind of inspiration for the title of the work. It just happened to be a book I had recently read and yet its bleak post-human dystopia was not something I directly inferred. The book does offers an interesting analogy of a future plight for a cloned humanity riddled with residual memories, unable to break from history or personal memory.
Grangegorman will always have its history and that will be carried though the historic architecture as well as folk, local and national records. The task of representing this in an artwork is all but impossible, and could only be a possibility. The potential is monumental, the history so tragic as to be unrepresentable. The twenty-two tons of records transferred to the National Archives represent this history.
Access to any of these records is however difficult. It is strict and appropriately respectful (4). Meetings with representatives from the health authority were even necessary to explain my intentions. The sequence of words between the historic register admission headings were a result of this process which are also synonyms for control (5).
This rendered the whole piece devoid of people, stories, conditions – of any recorded information at all. Regulations protect identity, yet eliminated the possibility of human detail in this work. Only the categories survive the process, the classification headings that in themselves describe the medical science of the time. Through each era, cultural and societal prejudice is revealed; secular or religious power and morality that was given, accepted or in charge.
The glut of terminology offered no judgement, hierarchy or authority; no success or failure of various heath systems and institutions. The spectacle of this was important to present. The contrast of languages was active, obviously because the words were moving but working against each other, in opposite directions. A basic visual device to represent the huge changes that time has brought and see different systems emerge.
A more obvious French intellectual to ground the piece would have been Michel Foucault but I did not want the work to depend on anything but the missing detail from the records. His controversial and contested book “Madness and Civilisation” offers many insights into mental health over centuries, laying the framework for institutions like those at Grangegorman. And so to end with a quote from him. “Confinement hid away unreason, and betrayed the shame it aroused; but it explicitly drew attention to madness, pointed to it. If, in the case of unreason, the chief intention was to avoid scandal, in the case of madness that intention was to organize it (6).”
Footnotes:
(1) On the left side moving up were keywords or terms from education, learning, and teaching; on the right side keywords associated with mental health, including clinical, diagnostic and treatment phraseology. Both accessed the massive contemporary professional vocabularies, found through online resources. This filled the sides with a random stream of words and terminology. These were contrasted by the centre texts, which moved downwards in small sections. These were headings from registers for patient admissions from 1814-1827; 1863-1868; 1947-50; and 1971-72. Only four ledger books were used from the many held in the National Archives, with the title and date remaining visible for the sequence while the various different and changing categories unfolded. In between each sequence was a list of words which expressed the restricted access to detailed personal information.
(2) The Phoenix Care Centre is located on the North Circular Road and shares an entrance with the TU campus. This is in effect the legacy mental health facility at the original location, open however only since 2013, with a small 54 beds in comparison to what was there before. As the HSE describes it, there are beds of varying intervention requirements for service users of the Dublin North City Mental Health Services.
(3) “The Possibility of an Island”, Michel Houellebecq, translated by Gavin Bowd, originally published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005 (ebook version Phoenix, 2014).
(4) See the “Report on Historical Mental Health Records Seminar”, held at Royal Irish Academy, 16 May 2019, specifically the paper by Brian Donnelly outlining access parameters. The seminar marked the beginning of a partnership between the Royal Irish Academy, the Grangegorman Development Agency, the Health Service Executive, Technological University Dublin, Dublin City Council and the National Archives, Ireland to develop a 3-year project on the history of Grangegorman. Report available on ria.ie
(5) For a broader overview of hospital archives see, “Survey of Hospital Archives in Ireland”, funded by the Wellcome Trust, undertaken by the National Archives, available at https://www.nationalarchives.ie/what-we-do/publications/
(6) See page 81, “Madness And Civilization: A History Of Insanity In The Age Of Reason”, Michel Foucault, Vintage Books Edition, 1988, Random House 1965.
I would like to thank the following for their assistance in making this project: Jenny Haughton, Nora Rahill, Jonathan Sammon, John Beattie, Fran Quigley, Brian Donnelly, HSE Art Committee, and Noel Kelly.
Powder coated aluminium, mirror polished stainless steel, cast EPDM rubber with painted lines, paint, fixings, wall paint. Commission for St Michael’s House Special National School, Raheny, Dublin
The images show development of a work through several different configurations, from mousepad through to permanent installation.
The work was developed for a special needs primary school to function in the playground as a multi-sensory artwork with several textures and abstract shapes to engage with.
The work functions as a piece of abstract sculpture and as a play zone for the pupils. Cast rubber EPDM on the ground provides a safe surface for play while also signalling that the sculpture can be interacted with as the material is used throughout the playground.
Commission for St Michael’s House Special National School, Raheny, Dublin
The work was developed for a special needs primary school to function in the playground as a multi-sensory artwork with several textures and abstract shapes to engage with.
The work functions as a piece of abstract sculpture and as a play zone for the pupils. Cast rubber EPDM on the ground provides a safe surface for play while also signalling that the sculpture can be interacted with as the material is used throughout the playground.
Within the history of public artworks for schools there has been an abundance of modernist murals type works and indeed abstract sculptures. These have mostly dated quite badly and draw little attention from the pupils visually or conceptually. I wanted to reference this history but make the geometry of modernism into something really practical, not rejecting the historical aesthetic completely but having some fun with it given the context of a primary school.
In 2009 for an exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin I had a work that was a painted abstraction – in some respects out of kilter with the rest of my practice to date. I described the work however as a “performative painting” as it was initially painted on the wall of my studio, then cut from the plasterboard wall and placed in the museum resting on top of a fireplace. The installation played with the idea of abstract painting, turning action painting into a precise geometric composition (instead of the usual splatter and splash approach). The hole is in the wall was also re-created nearby to give the impression of the action occurring quite recently and on site.
The piece was titled, Fragile Absolute #9: Hungarian Italian Abstraction (vertigo blue temporal event), 2009. The work has many reference points as it also began as part of a Process Room piece at IMMA in 2008 which used a photograph of a painting shot in a youth hostel during a holiday as a mouse-mat. This was the beginning of my irreverent play with the modernist painting tradition. I have also recently used the geometric pattern for a large photographic work which is positioned on the floor, with additional circles added to act as placeholders for seven marble sculptures. I hope the design can be used in the future in another configuration.
The bright colours and invitation to play with the work are obviously derived from the context of a primary school. I would also be keen to work on other aspects of the design within the school environment.
The design was used for several sculpture competitions and proposals as well as used in other works including the base for the marble animal sculptures as well a development of this work called “Psychic Football from Liberica” 2018 [Vinyl, used coffee cups and lids with marker, 230 wide x 300 long x 30 high cm].
The first incarnation of it had a large vinyl floor photo which made it’s way back from Shanghai where it was used as a base for the marble sculptures when exhibited first. The quality and condition of it after it’s travels meant that I have not used it again. I cut out the photos of broken glass just to leave the lines.
The Seven Oracles was a piece made in response to the psychic animals that predicted the scores in the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Paul the octopus being the most famous, but there were many more.Children’s toys carved in marble were placed on a white vinyl adhesive lines on the photo and then plywood in it’s second showing. This design originally came from a painting I came across in a hostel canteen in Italy and went to several reconfigurations to become a wall piece for a special needs school playground.
You know how I like to recycle ideas and works into new contexts well this is another such moment. I do however want to include some new elements, specifically some hand drawn coffee cups which bear the word “Liberica”. This is a coffee company from Indonesia which uses the name of a coffee bean brought back by Roger Casement from Congo for the National Botanical Gardens, Dublin. I have been drawing the logo on used paper coffee cups for the last few months. Part of residual Casement works I poke at occasionally. There are a dozen or so of these cups done, 4 in the pix but more if necessary. They are very hand drawn up close, but from a distance look corporate or printed.
Oonagh Young Gallery, 2015 Detroit, Stockholm, 2014
At Oonagh Young Gallery, this was the second solo exhibition in the gallery by Alan Phelan. The show was the first Dublin presentation of the 2014 film “Edwart & Arlette”, after exhibitions of the work in Belfast, Stockholm, Treignac, France and the Bonn Kunstmuseum “Videonale.15”.
The film “Edwart & Arlette” was developed from Phelan’s first project “Handjob”, exhibited in Oonagh Young Gallery (2013), which acted like an open notebook of ideas from which the script for the film was developed. A revised version of this installation is currently on view in “Selective Memory” at the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork until 15 March 2015.
The exhibition also included a photographic work that used images of the many actors who have played Sherlock Holmes arranged with push pins through their eyes.
At the exhibition for Detroit, Stockholm, an artist run space and studios, curated by Sheena Malone, the film was shown alongside a mock-up of what was to become Our Kind called “Morelli Pages 2014”. The piece projected images onto A3 page print-outs of the time-coded English subtitles from the film Wer War Edgar Allan.
Associated text
Oonagh Young Gallery, 20 Feb – 20 March, 2015 Detroit, Stockholm, November, 2014
Oonagh Young Gallery is pleased to present “if you aren’t all mine”, the second solo exhibition in the gallery by Alan Phelan. The show will be the first Dublin presentation of his 2014 film “Edwart & Arlette”, after exhibitions of the work in Belfast, Stockholm and Treignac, France; as well as the prestigious Bonn Kunstmuseum “Videonale.15” which opens later this month. The film “Edwart & Arlette” was developed from Phelan’s first project “Handjob”, exhibited in Oonagh Young Gallery (2013), which acted like an open notebook of ideas from which the script for the film was developed. A revised version of this installation is currently on view in “Selective Memory” at the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork until 15th March 2015.
As an adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Cardboard Box”, the narrative has been reworked considerably with shot design and dialogue originating from photographs of hands collected by Phelan from self-harming social networking websites, shown in the original “Handjob” project. Words and sentence fragments found on these images were developed into dialogue and remain in the order they were found, forcing the narrative and characters to take some unexpected turns.
Probably the biggest shift is the removal of the Sherlock Holmes character entirely. The audience now must piece together the evidence presented, a play on the detective quandaries of much contemporary conceptual art with its tendency to present riddles. Instead, the central characters are modelled on a photograph of a French art critic and museum curator, doubling up as a gendershifting brother/sister, with locations merged to make a more succinct yet different story. As in the original Conan Doyle text, murder and unrequited or misunderstood love remain key to the revised plot which is bleakly acted out through hand gestures and attention-seeking garbled dialogue. The installation of the film in the gallery is within a series of fabric hangings, resembling a staggered clothes line of sheets, in this case sail cloth which alludes to the Michael Haneke TV film 1984 “Wer war Edgar Allan”. The Haneke film references Giovanni Moreilli. In searching out and possibly murdering an Edgar Allen character, he follows Allen in one scene through the rows of washing hanging in the alleyways of the city. The dialogue from the Haneke film provides the basis for Phelan’s next project about Roger Casement.
Just as Conan Doyle was inspired by Giovanni Moreilli in his construction of the Holmes character, so too is Phelan, in demanding that we look at the small detail for clues. The Moreilli technique was a mid nineteenth century identification technique for paintings – by following the unconscious traces left behind by the artist, in this instance the rendering of ears or hands, which tend to have a unique identity, a lot like fingerprints at a crime scene. But as grand narratives and notions of authorship have been shattered and moreover diffused, the shifting parameters of meaning are now mandated to embrace chance and intuition in connecting to a real world of possibilities where meaning is not so pre-determined.
Overall the work interrogates the nature of the narrative in script format, analysing the written word through the post-appropriation technique of re-narrativisation. As is often the case with Phelan’s practice, this only encourages conflicting viewpoints through choreographed systems of chance that, at random moments, move in and out of synch. Like many artists of his generation he has embraced the hybridity and all-consuming nature of the internet to extract his own story, one that pushes the original away, yet rooted still in the ‘copy and paste’ culture that surrounds us.
The exhibition also included a photographic work that used images of the many actors who have played Sherlock Holmes arranged with push pins through their eyes.
At the exhibition for Detroit, Stockholm, an artist run space and studios, curated by Sheena Malone, the film was shown alongside a mock-up of what was to become Our Kind called “Morelli Pages 2014”. The piece projected images onto A3 page print-outs of the time-coded English subtitles from the film Wer War Edgar Allan.
Press Preview: Friday 7 November, 11am Vernissage: Friday 7 November,6-9pm with artist talk by Alan Phelan at 5pm
Opening Hours: Daily 2-6pm, 8-15 November or by appointment.
Detroit Stockholm Roslagsgatan 21, Stockholm, 11355 Sweden
PRESS RELEASE:
“What is the meaning of it, Watson?” said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. “What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable.” The final paragraph from “The Adventure of the Cardboard Box”, a short story by Arthur Conan Doyle, published in 1892
Detroit Stockholm is pleased to present “if you aren’t all mine”, the first solo exhibition in Sweden by Irish artist Alan Phelan which includes his new 2014 film “Edwart & Arlette”, alongside graphic and text works.
The film is an adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Cardboard Box” which has been reworked into a stylish whodunit with shot design and dialogue originating from hand photographs collected by the artist from self-harming social networking websites. Words and sentence fragments found on these images were developed into dialogue and remain in the order they were found, forcing the Sherlock narrative to take some unexpected turns. In fact, there is no Sherlock, as his character has been removed. Instead, the central characters are modelled on a photograph of a French art critic and museum curator, doubling up as a gender-shifting brother/sister, with locations merged to make a more succinct yet different story. As in the original tale, murder and unrequited or misunderstood love remain key to the revised plot which is bleakly acted out through hand gestures and attention-seeking garbled dialogue.
Phelan’s work often begins with language – taking a particular text and re-conditioning it for a different context, generating works that occur in a variety of mediums. The transformative trail is often made evident or incorporated into the work – revealing the process, as the artist describes it. The text piece “Morelli Lectures 2014”, on view in the lower gallery, is a developing work which uses the subtitles from the film that inspired the upstairs installation. This text will now form the dialogue for the artist’s next film project which is an imagined future for the Irish humanitarian and nationalist rebel, Roger Casement who was executed in 1916.
Together both galleries interrogate the nature of the narrative in script format, analysing the written word through the post-appropriation technique of re- narrativization. As is often the case with Phelan’s practice, this only encourages conflicting viewpoints through choreographed systems of chance that at random moments move in and out of synch. These fall into the artist’s interest in provisional parataxis, hypothetical intentionalism, and discursive narcissism, which are otherwise only elusive fluxes of memories, shifting identities, open-ended narratives, contrapuntal dialogues, diffused authors, and other circulations.
Detroit Stockholm has been located at Roslagsgatan 21, Stockholm since 2007. The gallery is an artist-run, member based gallery with adjoining studios hosting 21 artists. The gallery works as a free, open platform for experimentation, embracing diverse creative and aesthetic disciplines and media, which includes everything from film screenings, experimental music, performance programmes, visual art exhibitions, and also conceptual fashion shows etc. Over the last year Detroit Stockholm has invited artists from the USA, Mexico, China, Ireland, Japan, Belarus, Scotland and Australia (amongst others) to exhibit at their space in Vasastan. Additionally, Detroit Stockholm has hosted the Swedish leg of the Non-Grata performance festival and has collaborated with Fylkingen, Sweden oldest experimental music institution. Since its participation in the Supermarket Art Fair for artist-run initiatives in 2014, it has been attracting a lot of attention within the Swedish national and international art world.
The film Include Me Out of the partisans manifesto, 2012 was shown for the first time as part of the IMMA Collection exhibition “Fragments”. The show had a diverse range of works that were shown under this title curated by Christina Kennedy and Marguerite O’Molloy.
A section of the exhibition was hung/arranged by Alan Phelan. The works were mainly from the Gordon Lambert Collection and Phelan responded by placing plants and flowers adjacent to groupings which were arranged by material. This is discussed further in a blog written during the show now accessed at: https://imma.ie/magazine/artists-voice-alan-phelan-on-fragments/
Alan Phelan’s film Include Me Out of the partisans manifesto, 2012 is being shown here for the first time. This film resulted from a solo show and project with the artist in 2009, titled Fragile Absolutes.
Phelan’s film began as a catalogue essay; the script is from a text by Tony White about Phelan’s work. This text took the form of a short fictional story for the book Fragile Absolutes, published on the occasion of Phelan’s solo show at IMMA.
This portrait of an artist as a domestic drama was created by re-cycling non-fictional references to Phelan’s practice and project, shown here as footnotes displayed at the entrance to the work.
The film’s seemingly ordinary narrative is complicated by an intense internal monologue, which shifts the tension to address the cyclical nature of ideas and how process implicates content. Additional photomurals accompany the work for this installation, these also reference source material; the Picasso painting mentioned in the final lines of the film and a photograph of two American soldiers doubling up as Partisans.
Commissioned by IMMA, and subsequently donated by the artist, the film marked the end of the Fragile Absolutes project, which unfolded over three venues in Dublin, Cardiff and Limerick.
Alan Phelan was resident on IMMA’s studio programme in 2007 – 2008, he is represented in the IMMA Collection by four works including a limited edition commissioned by IMMA.
IMMA statement:
This exhibition borrows its title from Philosopher Walter Benjamin’s comparison of the work of translation to re-assembling fragments of a broken vase – the individual fragments must come together, but need not be like each other. This could also be taken as an allegory for exhibition making, or collecting.
The exhibition includes the first-showing since their acquisition of a number of recent works by Irish artists, including The sky looks down on almost as many things as the ceiling, (2013) a wall based sculpture by Aleana Egan and commissioned works by Ronan McCrea and Alan Phelan. The latter two are lens-based works titled Medium (Corporate Entities) and Include me out of the Partisan Manifesto, which resulted from IMMA’s programme of temporary exhibitions. McCrea’s photographic enquiry into spaces where corporate art collections are hung, took place before the economic collapse.
Caoimhe Kilfeather’s newly acquired lead sculpture Abbreviation, (2011) joins works by Michael Warren, Shirazeh Houshiary, Brian King and Kathy Prendergast selected from the IMMA Collection. These works have an aesthetic and historic affinity with the sculpture and drawing of Gerda Frömel – whose retrospective, will be running concurrently in IMMA’s Garden Galleries.
Gilbert & Geoge’s large-scale photowork Smoke Rising, (1989), Nigel Rolfe’s Dance Slap for Africa, (1983) and will be shown along with other activist works or works with emphasis on performance including a film by Phil Collins and historic works by Marina Abramović.
Fragments will include a number of Subjectivist works by WW II imigrès, the White Stag artists, bequested by the late artist Patrick Scott to IMMA in 2014. Scott exhibited with the White Stag from 1941 and the group swopped each others paintings. The donation is particularly rich in key works by Kenneth Hall who was a close friend of Scott.
Now in her 85th year, Camille Souter’s works included in Fragments are among some of her finest works of the 1950s and 60s and show her interest in Miró, Klee, Jackson Pollock and Arte Povera. In 1958 Lucio Fontana bought two of her paintings.
A pioneer of Conceptual Art and author of the renowned Inside the White Cube, Brian O’Doherty / Patrick Ireland’s enduring obsession with themes of language, perception and identity are represented by a selection of his works from the IMMA Collection dating from 1954 onwards and include a major new Rope Drawing which is a recent gift to IMMA by the artist, entitled: The doors to good and evil and the windows to heaven – Christina’s World, Rope Drawing No # 124, 2015.
“Fragments between subjects, objects, histories and house plants” Alan Phelan on ‘Fragments’ Wed Jul 8th, 2015
As the IMMA Collection show ‘Fragments’ enters its final weeks, artist Alan Phelan reflects on his involvement in the layout of the exhibition.
I became involved in Fragments after the Collections curators Christina Kennedy and Marguerite O’Molloy came to my place to discuss the installation arrangements for my film Include Me Out of the partisans manifesto.
We discussed possible rooms, light-lock designs, adjacent works, exhibition flow and sections. In the subsequent weeks Marguerite asked me to get a little more involved, as I seemed a little too keen to know what was where in the show. I was asking too many questions.
Marguerite had made an initial selection of about 37 works that were to be hung in the main corridor space gallery. These works mainly came from the Gordon Lambert Collection and were chosen in response to the Gerda Frömel retrospective and Karla Black exhibitions, as many were from a similar era or style as Frömel, and others dealt with materiality linking to Karla Black.
Originally many of these were hung in Lambert’s home, and in the early days of IMMA Marguerite had visited several times and remembered how they were positioned, but moreover the special and sometimes unusual contexts and juxtapositions that occur in a home. One story that struck a chord was of the Bird of Paradise flower that Lambert often had in a vase beside the Deborah Brown Glass Fibre Form (1971), which has an orange section that the flower compliments. When I was asked to suggest a possible layout and design, I began here – thinking about how to reference the domestic settings without turning the gallery into an extended living room installation.
With the greater sensitivity in recent times for installation, this convention became less favourable as everything in a gallery became part of “the work”. I thought it would be interesting to revisit this tactic, but as a way to draw a diverse collection of artworks together. My other suggestion was to break another convention of responding to content and favour a more modernist trope of form, but specifically materials.
Oddly enough, grouping sculptures by metal type and wood provided a fantastic initial breakdown which made the wall pieces easier to position. Marguerite colluded with this process by adding and subtracting various pieces. What was exciting for me was then making further suggestions for the other works in the gallery; I placed a Brian O’Doherty felt-tip drawing beside Kathy Prendergast’s denim fabric sculpture Stack; as well as breaking up the grouping of smaller Kenneth Hall paintings, placing the small ones near my film installation and the larger opposite Aleana Egan’s wall sculpture The sky looks down on as many things as the ceiling.
Colours matched but the juxtaposition of the works opened up a dialogue across generations, enhancing each other brilliantly. This repeated, in some ways, a lesson learned hanging a photography show at the George Eastman House in Rochester New York while on my post-graduate work experience. I had the task of hanging a Stephen Shore exhibition that was a typical mix of street and landscape images. I was advised to follow tonality and forget about the content. This worked so well. Narratives emerged from the hang in so many unexpected ways and gave a visual consistency to over 100 framed works.
My intervention or collaboration with Marguerite fell into more regular territory with my request to use an image of a Picasso’s painting Deux Femmes courant sur la plage (La course), 1922, which is referenced in the last few lines of my film. I thought the addition of two photo murals would help shift the black box setting a little. Getting permission to use a Picasso image is no simple task however. There is a large machine taking care of all things Picasso, but eventually Marguerite found the right size at the right price to use. I love the way the image, bare, flat, and oversized, hidden in the light-lock connects to the gilded Kenneth Hall outside and also to the photo mural of the “Partisans”.
These extra characters function to broaden the understanding of the film, to expand the narrative beyond the couple arguing about the destruction of their DVD collection. Then, in the final hours of the hang, we were looking at the wall pieces and realised a figurative work was needed to balance both sides of the gallery and the mix of works. Marguerite remembered there was a Picasso etching in the storage on site and ran off to fetch it and rapidly complete the paperwork. This swift response countered beautifully the torture of getting the other Picasso which had taken several months. The piece slotted into the arrangement perfectly, rounding off a really good mix of figurative and abstract pieces.
The reaction to ‘Fragments’ has been mainly really positive. Many of my peers have complimented the hang, but some visitors more familiar with the works have not liked the positioning and indeed all the house plants. My response was rooted in the need to refresh the works by honouring their past but negotiating the present. Artists have been making interventions in museum collections for many years now and ‘institutional critique’, which was so dynamic and radical in the 1990s, is now commonplace within many museums. Artists are now part of the fabric of museum exhibition making with the curator no longer the gatekeeper or display designer.
The fact that my role began after the works had been selected by Marguerite created a different challenge for me and as did making connections to the other rooms and indeed the other exhibitions currently on in the museum. I believe artworks also owe it to their audience to be generous. This means that artworks have to be shown differently to illicit a fresher response, to create a new narrative around the work. A collections show like Fragments that tries to deal with so many artworks and topics has no simple solution. Instead there are several modes of display that inter-connect to show how fluid that making of meaning can be, how interpretation so difficult to control, and how a sense of humour is sometimes what you need when looking at art.
IMMA Royal Hospital Kilmainham Dublin 8, D08 FW31, Ireland Phone +353 1 6129900
8 May – 14 June 2014 Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast
“What is the meaning of it, Watson?” said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. “What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.” The final paragraph from The Adventure of the Cardboard Box a short story by Arthur Conan Doyle, published in 1892
This quote opens Alan Phelan’s exhibition of new, recent and re-configured work, centred around an adaptation of this Sherlock Holmes story in a new film titled “Edwart & Arlette”. With characters, dialogue and settings all reworked, this stylish whodunit hands over the detective work to the audience, since Sherlock himself has been removed from the narrative. With the central characters modelled on a photograph of a French art critic and museum curator, the film shifts into a different range of references, stemming from a collection of hand photographs which the artist used to determine the shot design and dialogue. The words and sentence fragments found on the images were developed into dialogue and remain in the order they were found, forcing the narrative to take some unexpected turns.
Re-configuring works, his own and other artists, has become an important element in Phelan’s practice. Works are not just re-contextualised, but re-named, spun, and connected to different ideas. All together the show explores through various objects and installations “a circle of misery, violence and fear” as with Sherlock’s plea above but thankfully negotiated through humour and inventiveness.
Other reference points and works include the Michael Haneke TV film 1984 “Wer war Edgar Allan?”; Serbian karaoke mashed-up which the 1980s pop band The Sparks; former Taoiseach Brian Cowen; graphics from Jim Larkin’s “Irish Worker” newspaper; as well as a selection of works which are remakes of others artists’ multiples. Together they do indeed explore the object served by a circle of misery, violence and fear but thankfully negotiated through humour and inventiveness.
The topography of “But what end?” takes an initial cardboard route, re-presenting recent works using screens and boxes or card. Re-configuring works, his own and other artists, has become an important element in Phelan’s practice, where works are not just re-contextualised but re-named, spun and connected to different ideas. The 1998 installation “Self-Rescue Mechanism #1” is now presented as a stack of boxes with headphones which play the voiceover by RTE radio presenter Joe Duffy as he reads the chat room script of two artists discussing how to approach auto-erotic asphyxiation from a sentimental perspective.
Just as Conan Doyle was inspired by Giovanni Moreilli in his construction of the Holmes character, so too is Phelan, in demanding that we look at the small detail for clues. The Moreilli technique was a mid nineteenth century identification technique for paintings – by following the unconscious traces left behind by the artist, in this instance the rendering of ears or hands, which tend to have a unique identity, a lot like fingerprints at a crime scene. But as grand narratives and notions of authorship have been shattered and moreover diffused, the shifting parameters of meaning are now mandated to embrace chance and intuition in connecting to a real world of possibilities where meaning is not so pre-determined.
Associated text
But what end? Alan Phelan at Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast
“What is the meaning of it, Watson?” said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. . “What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.” THE FINAL PARAGRAPH FROM THE ADVENTURE OF THE CARDBOARD BOX A SHORT STORYBY ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, PUBLISHED IN 1892
Gallery 1 1. Blind Private Party Outtake, 2010-2014 video projection, hanging cloth and sculptures in cardboard boxes: Sweet, 2011 video projection, 4:48 minutesduration A Skull Perhaps, 2011 Leftover papier-mâché, glue Cabbage Shade, 2011 light fixture, rubber leaves, wire Protest Polar Bear, 2010 archival paper, EVA glue, toner, varnish, plastic cheese, motor, acrylic, wood, paint (papier-mâché made from an article from the Irish Times about the street paper collectors called Cartoneros in Buenos Aires, April 2010)
2. Red Handed Larkin Man, 2014 adhesive black and red vinyl
3. Self-Rescue Mechanism # 1, 1998-2014 cardboard boxes, headphones, lining cloth, string, metal, voice-over of IRC script conversations between Alan Phelan and Jim Dingilian by Joe Duffy, 39 minutes duration
4. Parts of Edgar Alan, 2014 Borrowed plaster statuary, light fixture, courtesy of the RHA, Dublin
Back Space 5. Portrait of the probable founder of Harcourt Home oil painting courtesy of Broadstone Studios
6. The re-Birth of a Nation (without Brian), 2011 papier-mâché reading glasses; digital video enabled photo frame, 3:24 minutes duration
7. just-a-hand, 2013 digital photoframe of hand images collected online, approx. 1,400 images. 70 minutes duration
Gallery 2 8. Edwart & Arlette, 2014 HD video projection on sailcloth, 15 minutes duration
10. 50.2.1, 2013 remade multiples by: Linsay Seers, Gerard Byrne, Kathy Prendergast, Pádraig Timoney, Alun Rowlands bear with ear head cast in modelling wax; acrylic, paper, ink, glue; shoe brush, polish; ceramic tile, paint, lacquer, paper; notebook with woven cover
11. Handjob elements, 2013 selection of works from the Handjob show in Oonagh Young Gallery: Brenda Moore McCann Medical Semiotics, 2013 bespoke hardback, ink; les mains dans l’art, 2013, inkjet prints, glass; stump warmer, 2013, faux fur
12. 50.3.2, 2013 remade multiples by: Dermot O’Brien Mike Minnus Walker & Walker David Shrigley Matthew Higgs wind-up toy dinosaur, varnish, flock; paper, toner; plastic nose, steel wool; notebook, paint; custom printed mouse mat
13. Moreilli Lectures, 2014 toner on paper
14. 50.1, 2013 remade multiples by: Eoghan McTigue, Ciaran O’Cearnaigh, Alice Maher, Elizabeth Wright, Mac Dermot & Mac Gough, Gary Coyle, Shane Cullen display case roof, trestle legs, light bulbs; Latin American hardwood wood, blue transfer ink; black heavy duty latex glove and artifical hair; Readers Digest Universal Dictionary, ham sandwich; shirt collar, wire; jar, lid, Liffey water, stamped addressed envelope; apples
Edwart & Arlette, 2014 Written, directed and produced by Alan Phelan
Cast Andrew Bennett Mikel Murfi Stella Godmet Stephen Mullen
Music Michael Fleming
Cinematography Luca Rocchini
Editor Alan Phelan
Casting Maureen Hughes
Dramaturge Gina Moxley
Costume Grace O’Hara
Hair and Make-up Bridge Lucey
Hair and Make-up Assistant Anna-Leah Rackard
Production Co-ordinator Paul Hallahan
Production Assistant Cormac O’Brien
Focus Puller and Camera Assistant Tommy Fitzgerald
Gaffer Ela Gas
Lighting Assistant Ultan O’Conner
Sound Hugh Fox
Boom Oisín Callinan
Runner Emily Strong
Post-production co-ordination John Beattie Fire Station Artists’ Studios
Colourist Michael Higgins
Locations thanks to: Office of Public Works National Concert Hall, Dublin Irish Architectural Foundation Broadstone Studios, Dublin Justin Kinsella
With special thanks to: Noel Kelly, Anna Rachard, Wendy Judge, Gabhann Dunne, Stephen Loughman, Molloy & Dowling, Patricia Kelly, Liam O’Callaghan, Sarah Jones; Jimmy Eadie; Clodagh Kenny, Trish Perrott, Jerry Organ, Gallahad Goulet, Con Dempsey, Ken O’Shea, Sean Lawlor, Gareth Ball; Nathalie Weadick, Jacinta Lynch, Angela Rolf, Hugh Bonar, Barry Walsh, Ronan Fogarty; Oonagh Young, Peter Richards, Deirdre McKenna, Matt Packer, Sam Basu, Charlotte Bari
Funded by a Project Award from: The Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon
Golden Thread Gallery PR:
Artist Statement (Short: approx. 50 words):
“What is the meaning of it, Watson?” said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. “What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.”
The final paragraph from The Adventure of the Cardboard Box a short storyby Arthur Conan Doyle, published in 1892
Artist Statement (Long: approx. 150 words):
“What is the meaning of it, Watson?” said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. “What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.”
The final paragraph from The Adventure of the Cardboard Box a short storyby Arthur Conan Doyle, published in 1892
This quote opens Alan Phelan’s exhibition of new, recent and re-configured work, centred around an adaptation of this Sherlock Holmes story in a new film titled “Edwart & Arlette”. With characters, dialogue and settings all reworked, this stylish whodunit hands over the detective work to the audience, since Sherlock himself has been removed from the narrative. With the central characters modelled on a photograph of a French art critic and museum curator, the film shifts into a different range of references, stemming from a collection of hand photographs which the artist used to determine the shot design and dialogue. The words and sentence fragments found on the images were developed into dialogue and remain in the order they were found, forcing the narrative to take some unexpected turns.
Re-configuring works, his own and other artists, has become an important element in Phelan’s practice. Works are not just re-contextualised, but re-named, spun, and connected to different ideas. All together the show explores through various objects and installations “a circle of misery, violence and fear” as with Sherlock’s plea above but thankfully negotiated through humour and inventiveness.
Additional Press text for show (the gallery may edit text according to the target audience)
Other reference points and works include the Michael Haneke TV film 1984 “Wer war Edgar Allan?”; Serbian karaoke mashed-up which the 1980s pop band The Sparks; former Taoiseach Brian Cowen; graphics from Jim Larkin’s “Irish Worker” newspaper; as well as a selection of works which are remakes of others artists’ multiples. Together they do indeed explore the object served by a circle of misery, violence and fear but thankfully negotiated through humour and inventiveness.
The topography of “But what end?” takes an initial cardboard route, re-presenting recent works using screens and boxes or card. Re-configuring works, his own and other artists, has become an important element in Phelan’s practice, where works are not just re-contextualised but re-named, spun and connected to different ideas. The 1998 installation “Self-Rescue Mechanism #1” is now presented as a stack of boxes with headphones which play the voiceover by RTE radio presenter Joe Duffy as he reads the chat room script of two artists discussing how to approach auto-erotic asphyxiation from a sentimental perspective.
Just as Conan Doyle was inspired by Giovanni Moreilli in his construction of the Holmes character, so too is Phelan, in demanding that we look at the small detail for clues. The Moreilli technique was a mid nineteenth century identification technique for paintings – by following the unconscious traces left behind by the artist, in this instance the rendering of ears or hands, which tend to have a unique identity, a lot like fingerprints at a crime scene. But as grand narratives and notions of authorship have been shattered and moreover diffused, the shifting parameters of meaning are now mandated to embrace chance and intuition in connecting to a real world of possibilities where meaning is not so pre-determined.
Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast, 2014 Mammoth, Treignac Projet, France, 2014 Oonagh Young Gallery, Dublin, 2015 Videonale.15, Bonn Kunstmuseum, Germany, 2015
“Edwart & Arlette” is an adaptation of the Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Cardboard Box”, published in 1892. With characters, dialogue and settings all reworked, this stylish whodunit hands over the detective work to the audience, since Sherlock himself has been removed from the narrative. The central characters are modelled on a photograph of a French art critic and museum curator which is where the film shifts into a different range of references. The shots are all designed from a collection of hand photographs which Phelan used to determine the framing and dialogue. Some 1,400 hand images were amassed over a year mostly via social media. The words and sentence fragments found on these images were developed into dialogue and remain in the order they were found, forcing the narrative to take some unexpected turns. The film has been made for a video installation but also functions in the festival setting with it sharp narrative and smooth styling. Just as Conan Doyle was inspired by Giovanni Moreilli in his construction of the Holmes character, so too is Phelan, in demanding that we look at the small detail for clues. The Moreilli technique was a mid nineteenth century identification technique for paintings – by following the unconscious traces left behind by the artist, in this instance the rendering of ears or hands, which tend to have a unique identity, a lot like fingerprints at a crime scene. But as grand narratives and notions of authorship have been shattered and moreover diffused, the shifting parameters of meaning are now mandated to embrace chance and intuition in connecting to a real world of possibilities where meaning is not so pre-determined.
Edwart & Arlette, 2014 HD video, 14:52 minutes duration
Funded by a Project Award from The Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon
Associated test
Edwart & Arlette, 2014 Written, directed and produced by Alan Phelan
Cast Andrew Bennett as Edwart Mikel Murfi as Arlette and Sam Stella Godmet as Mary Stephen Mullen as Alec
Music Michael Fleming
Cinematography Luca Rocchini
Editor Alan Phelan
Casting Maureen Hughes
Dramaturge Gina Moxley
Costume Grace O’Hara
Hair and Make-up Bridge Lucey
Hair and Make-up Assistant Anna-Leah Rackard
Production Co-ordinator Paul Hallahan
Production Assistant Cormac O’Brien
Focus Puller and Camera Assistant Tommy Fitzgerald
Gaffer Ela Gas
Lighting Assistant Ultan O’Conner
Sound Hugh Fox
Boom Oisín Callinan
Runner Emily Strong
Post-production co-ordination John Beattie Fire Station Artists’ Studios
Colourist Michael Higgins
Locations thanks to: Office of Public Works National Concert Hall, Dublin Irish Architectural Foundation Broadstone Studios, Dublin Justin Kinsella
With special thanks to: Noel Kelly, Anna Rachard, Wendy Judge, Gabhann Dunne, Stephen Loughman, Molloy & Dowling, Patricia Kelly, Liam O’Callaghan, Sarah Jones; Jimmy Eadie; Clodagh Kenny, Trish Perrott, Jerry Organ, Gallahad Goulet, Con Dempsey, Ken O’Shea, Sean Lawlor, Gareth Ball; Nathalie Weadick, Jacinta Lynch, Angela Rolf, Hugh Bonar, Barry Walsh, Ronan Fogarty; Oonagh Young, Peter Richards, Deirdre McKenna, Matt Packer, Sam Basu, Charlotte Bari
Funded by a Project Award from: The Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon
Script (version 3, Jan 2014)
Edwart & Arlette by Alan Phelan
Dialogue derived from Tumblr images with words from www.just-a-hand.tumblr.com and the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 1893 Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Cardboard Box”. The story will be told visually through close-ups of hands making various gestures and poses. Dialogue is assigned to each hand position. Camera shots are to be structured and symmetrical – Ozu style – characters when speaking or making movements should be facing camera in the centre of the frame – low tripod height. As a starting scene, the film cuts back to here while the story is revealed as flashbacks. Edwart does not exactly confess as the dialogue is not specific. He does not realise that Arlette is in fact Sam maybe this is patently obvious with the make-up and hand close-ups. The conversation between them is tense. The package which contains two severed ears, evidence of a violent act that they are both implicated in differently.
SCENE 1 Arlette’s house, sitting room
INT EVENING
Edwart is sitting beside Arlette in her darkened living room, large and largely empty. In front of them is their collaborative book, Les Main dans L’Art, the result of shared research, shared pain and stress, now just a book for a coffee table. Arlette’s work as a curator in the museum gave Edwart the access he sought in tracking the pattern of hands across vast art collections. Edwart’s drive for public recognition gave Arlette the motivation to make her mostly private research public. They developed a close yet strained relationship. His celebrity television pop art criticism was always hard for Arlette to accept as serious opinion, let alone anything close to the academic excellence she demanded. But she had to keep him on her side. And he needed her even more. But they shared a history he was unaware of, one that he only now was on the verge of untangling.
On top of their book, is a box. Brown paper wrapping and string cast aside, the contents revealed, stunning them both into a silence. Two severed ears nestled on a bed of coarse salt stare back at them, mute.
EDWART I suppose it was about power raising his fist, muttering cryptically
ARLETTE Yes, you taking over snaps back, clasping her hands together, surprised yet knowing
EDWART Trust me, it wasn’t meant to happen shows his full arm, pulling his shirt sleeve to his armpit
Arlette moves to the other side of the table, a more comfortable chair or just a little more distant position. She looks down at the coffee table again, at the box, but averts her gaze to a pile of magazines and books instead. Opening one, she happens, annoyingly, on an amputation graphic and quickly drops the magazine back down, recoiling her hand.
Fig 62 – Amputation of the leg, V.: Sawing of the bones of the leg
ARLETTE You show her hand raised up to her mouth, then shielding her face, perplexed
And your sense of duty
Your’re … pulls her hand back as if to gesture stop
You’re just hard work As if pre-empting a physical reaction from Edwart she suddenly splayed out all ten fingers, either a calm down signal or an offensive, not defensive, reaction
Under her breathe An evil fucker shows her touching her forehead to shield what she is saying
EDWART I’m not something you can fix, take me as I am shows him reaching across and grasping Arlette’s pinkie finger
ARLETTE That blog is nothing but lies she ungrasps and picks up her phone, looking distracted and trying to change the subject – brings hand up to eye
SCENE 2 Day 1 Edwart and Mary’s apartment
INT DAY AFTERNOON
This first flashback shows the beginning of the Edwart and Mary’s relationship – starting when they move in together, carrying Mary over the threshold to enter apartment.
EDWART Remember what we always said, to keep reaching for the moon view from behind as Ed carries Mary into apartment over threshold with him/both reaching out
Mary looks down at Edwarts arm at his tattoo
– love will tear us apart
MARY Now I hear the laughter raising her had to her face looking out the window
EDWART No way! he insisted on pointing in some kind of melodramatic way, looking down at children below, he brings his hands together as if to pray – then turns them into a gun, pointing at them or playing game boy console
Fuck them Die die die die
MARY Well if I knew you hated kids, do I dare disturb the universe of my dearest Edwart? a little rattled but trying to make the most of their special day picks herself up and walks back to the door, as she reaches for the door handle to leave
EDWART 7, is not what I ever wanted holding his hand up oddly with elastic bands forming a star shape
MARY You’re going to lose me if you are not careful glumly she walks back to him, touching the tops of his fingers, caressing only slightly, then letting go.
Sometimes I get so confused with you, I hate myself and I want to die holding her hand out again, grining
EDWART Fuck you. You know I only play dirty giving her the finger, smiling SCENE 3 Day 2Edwart and Mary’s apartment
INT DAY AFTERNOON
Mary’s brother Sam comes to visit. The interaction between the three is strained. Edwart seems to be flirting with Sam and Sam is complaining to Mary about Edwart. There is a small confrontation between Sam and Edwart – which ends in him almost striking Sam.
They slowly furnished their place after moving in as the scenes in this room progresses. There was some strange reluctance to properly settle so the rooms only gathered more furniture when necessary. Mary’s older brother Sam finally broke the familial disapproval of Edwart and came to visit. Sam was measured yet camp. He and Mary were never that close and she knew only that he worked in a museum, but not really at what.
MARY I’ve always wanted a gay best friend she points at him as if holding a gun
SAM Darth Vader’s hand pointing back at her
EDWART Picks up magazine and asks What the hell is a solar ship guide sheet, some kind of horoscope, love and sex advice nonsense, to me it’s just a fuckfest, period pointing the slapping forehead
It’s all like “please don’t hurt me” don’t break my heart waving hands in air
These scars are a sign of your strength pulls up sleeve of shirt, points at wrist
MARY Hard luck Sam – I do still believe in supreme love is standing now in front of Edwart with her back to him, she touches his thigh, then turns her palm around
EDWART I’m a ro… I rock Edwart snuggles towards her, bring his left arm up to hold her neck and right arm down to hold her crotch
SCENE 4 Day 3Edwart and Mary’s apartment
INT DAY AFTERNOON
Sam brings his handsome friend Alec over for a visit and he flirts with Mary. Sam is jealous. Sam was getting worried about Edwart and his odd, aggressive behaviour. He had therefore decided introduce his friend Alec into the equation. Alec was straight but very good looking. He liked to flirt with Sam and generally confuse everyone as all good looking guys must be gay, right? Mary instantly hit it off and Edwart was instantly pissed off.
SAM Direct from the hand of a world famous novelist, or some such nonsense, I give you Alec… holding his hand up like stop
ALEC Thank you Sam, but really, nobody understands, I just want to disappear, and be a normal person he says making writing gestures in the air, feigning modesty, all Garbo-like
EDWART Odd, I thought you were a faggot like him stretching his hands
MARY I really worry about you honey. Are you close to insanity, but not insanity… is unsanity reaching towards him
EDWART Not Penny’s boat, bitch hand to her face
ALEC Ohh, Christain Lacroix, darling mimicking the same hand gesture, attempting to diffuse the moment
Please, give me a break I don’t like your vibes man same gesture again
SAM Get free shit here forming a fist
MARY “Assistant!” “Operator!” yes yes! 11 12 13 on the phone, held up with her shoulder to her ear, both hands now playing with an elastic band
You are not cool Looking over to Edwart and pointing
EDWART It’s you I want to be with hands in praying grasp
UNITE! showing a fist
ALEC CHANEL giving the finger
EDWART Hey you Mr Captain Americannibal, don’t make me want to me put you in a coma gestures as if to bite nails the covers eyes with hands
SAM Take my hand a run fast my dear grabs Alecs hand
ALEC Dice with the devil eh? palm of hand up as if to stay stop
SCENE 5 Day 4 Edwart and Mary’s apartment
INT DAY EVENING
All four characters are now in the apartment together. Mary has invited Alec for dinner thinking Edwart is away but the dinner is interrupted by the sudden arrival of Edwart. Edwart bans Alec from the house telling Sam that he will send one of Alec’s ears for a keepsake if he ever comes back.
ALEC So, classy is the original black, yeah? What shite! holding a black book from the corner – a Twilight sage book
I hate that bitch Demi Lovato tossing the book down onto the table and presenting two fists
All that vampire crap, my blood, your blood, our blood running a knife over his palm
This is cabaret again showing fists
SAM Keep calm darling grabbing his arm
We can kill him later taking an elegant exaggerated drag of a cigarette
MARY I’m so lonely with my selfish husband now kids have left walking over to the table, hiding behind a newspaper
SAM You wish!
MARY Promise me. Promise you won’t leave. interlocking pinkies with Alec
Edwart enters the room suddenly and sees the two holding hands
ALEC HELP! to Sam jokingly, dropping Mary’s hand and holding up his up to stop
MARY I’m so glad I met you holding Alec’s hand again
EDWART POLICE! Ice that! barging accross the room with hands up
ALEC Imagine a world in peace taking flight out back door, holding palm out
MARY I’d do anything to hold your hand. writes on a piece of paper
EDWART And then he was just like, are dust pressing finger into wrist
Mary Remember who you really are whispers putting palm to window
SAM In the heart in the head, there is a different world comforting Mary showing wrists
EDWART Hand to hand. It is the basis of all combat. If that I ever see that fucker again, I’ll be sending you his ears in a box to you swaggering across room, turning sharply
SAM Slap my hand now, I am to blame, it’s my fault for inviting him over, it’s nothing you fool, can’t you see that, you didn’t need to do that holding up left hand
ALEC Gnarly fucker exiting the apartment, shakes hand with thumb and little finger extended only
SCENE 6 DAY 5 Street outside Sam’s house
EXT AFTERNOON
Edwart is returning home from work only to see Alec and Mary leaving the house together hand in hand, heading out for a picnic by a tennis court. He follows and in a jealous rage murders them, slices off an ear from each victim.
Trust became an issue. Edwart could not understand Mary’s relationship with these two men. Yes he had had a drink problem and this did provoke extreme responses to normal stimuli but he had been dry since they married. Maybe that was the problem. His sober state was unnatural. Edwart went for a drink to resolve his head. A few whiskeys later a kind of clarity set in and he decided to pop home to talk it over with Mary. He should have been at work but needed to do this. Walking up the street he sees Mary and Alec leave the house, hand in hand, carrying a sports bag with some rackets. Ducking in an out of doorways and foliage, overhearing snippets of the conversation, he followed them.
MARY The spaces between my fingers are right where yours fit perfectly fingers interlocked with Alec’s
ALEC Someone like me… there’s no reason he would like… reaching out
MARY What was it again that I wanted to have? Or let it go? Slip away? tearfully brings hand to face in a fist
ALEC You’re a fighter, come on let’s get out of here, what’s on your to-do list – nothing! he takes out an imaginary notebook from his pocket and crossed off an imaginary list – makes gesture with two middle fingers down, then scribble on paper
Camera shows the Prada label on this coat sleeve as he reaches inside to produce a small bunch of flowers.
ALEC Here. Here is something simple and happy. giving Mary a small bunch of flowers
Edwart Yes, it is simple.
Computer love, eh watching Alec and Mary release hands
What a fucking loser holding up Mary’s not that says “I’d do anything to hold your hand”
Supreme love my shite muttering, holding hands up to eyes to shield
They depart, camera shows an A4 flyer for practical palmistry discarded by Alec on the ground
EDWART I may be down but not out raising his hands in the air as he watches them leave
ALEC We don’t talk of love we’re much too shy carrying the tennis racket bag, Alec mooched on Mary’s shoulder once more with his hand on her shoulder
EDWART Revolt! Bite the hand that bleeds you Nixon, Agnew, Laird, Hoover, LIARS watching them leave, muttering, biting his hand
Please applaud with hands only waving his hands at his side
Classic cigarette Gentry Twee Comfort Classic Cigar Chap Bounder Stealth Woman’s watching the couple smoke, he mutters
Mary and Alec walked down to a local park which had a secluded tennis court, hidden behind an urban woodland. They settled down at a bench, for a rest and an over due cuddle. Edwart snook in behind them quietly, weeping quietly. Picking up a tennis racket Edwart comes up behind them
EDWART These are the tears of neglected children tearfully, coming from behind, holding the racket
Blonde! redhead now! smashing Alec’s skull open with a tennis racket
I wish I’d known this from the start after Mary tries to embrace Alec, he kills her, slices off their ears
A tattoo is a lifetime “mark” have it done by an artist showing his wrists covered in blood over his tattoo
SCENE 7Arlette’s house, sitting room
INT EVENING
Arlette sitting opposite Edwart, looking, wondering, fearing. She knew him more than he knew. He sits there, numb but fidgeting, running is hand over his crotch. He seemed to be confessing, explaining possibly what he knew about those bloody ears in the box, but something else took her by surprise.
EDWART I can’t feel anything but sadness holding hand out to Arlette
I gotta confess, it’s not that I don’t dislike those guys which I sure as shit do! It is that I’m actually afraid of ‘em! That’s right. Actually fuckin’ afraid of ‘em! Well, maybe it’s more like I’m afraid of my own reaction to ‘em. You see, while I was in the Marines and in the SP’s, well, things can get pretty rough for some hot-cocked guys like me, and I had this guy who sucked my cock on a regular basis. I mean that fucker just pulled load after load of hot jizz outta my churing nuts. I didn’t just like it, I loved it! I mean, it was the best fuckin’ sex I ever had, ever! Anyway, he got caught and I just missed getting’ caught and thrown out myself. Since then, as I always knew I wanted to be a cop when I got out of the Marines, I played it pretty. holding crotch
This signal, accompanied by a jerking motion, indicates the guy’s availability. making jerk-off motion
ARLETTE The thought of anal penetration fills some men with fear. surprised by the revelation, showing a fist
Edwart So what do I do? Pray for Japan, this is the end hand makes stop gesture, he raises his hand to say stop and a tear rolls down his face. Arlette nervously acknowledged his pain with a slight grin
SCENE 8 Day 2Edwart and Mary’s apartment
INT DAY AFTERNOON
Back when Edwart and Mary were living happily yet awkwardly Sam had more than once been confused by Edwarts behaviour. It was like he was trying to hide something. His aggressive homophobic behaviour was too easy to re-interpret as the signs of some kind of conflicted sexuality yet Sam’s teasing drew often a different kind of reaction.
Not long after Sam had been introduced to the new husband he was over at their apartment to check in. Edwart was on the phone with someone called Mike and having a heated discussion. He quickly finished the conversation when Sam walked in.
EDWART Do not push this button, Mike on the phone then pressing off and blushing
SAM gay not gay, gay not gay, gay not gay says repeatedly flicking the light switch on the wall
EDWART My role was to support, to hold, to reach, to caress reaching down, rolling up sleeve like in SCENE 1
Sam holds a Wonka bar and unwraps it
EDWART She fucking… she… reject me flexes bicep
In that sales room, of all places, she didn’t want to know me points to the ground
SAM Did you ever hold his hand? reaching to hold hand
EDWART The truth is I miss you deer. tearfully, putting two fists together and reaching to embrace Sam, making a show of deer antlers on the wall
SAM Hollywood butts, hmm, nice freaked out by Edwart’s mood he walks away, picks up a magazine, flicking thru, stops at a page with a male torse, puts it down, then frames it with his fingers, then gives it the thumbs upSCENE 9Arlette’s house, sitting room
INT EVENING
Edwart and Arlette, still reeling from the marine revelation can’t seem to get the conversation going again. The box with the ears has still not been explained so Arlette tries to lighten the mood by making a number of hand gestures at the box, wanting it to reveal itself. Instead it is Sam who reveals himself to be Arlette.
ARLETTE The Teaser The Pleaser The Shocker The Spocker The Rocker The Showstopper Don’t take my word for it. try em for yourself. Have fun kids! making various hand gestures as per photo
Edwart Get your hands dirty making a gesture for each letter as if signing
ARLETTE Poltergeist sitting upright suddenly she raises the palm of her hand to her forehead and shrieks
EDWART There’s no hope, objects in mirror are closer than they appear The mark of the beast, eh? cryptically, mimicking Arlette’s stop gesture
ARLETTE The next day we will be blood brothers reaching under the newspaper on the table to get a knife, holding it in her fist
EDWART Oh, Talk to the hand Dong Jun picking up a glass from the table and teasing
ARLETTE Come with me reaches over, showing her wrist, taking the knife and running it over her wrist
EDWART I’m awkward and terrible and never know what I want confused, reaches to get package instead
ARLETTE Keep breathing showing wrist, rubbing her wrists, and then finally removing her wig to reveal Sam
SCENE 10 Day 2Edwart and Mary’s apartment
INT DAY EVENING
As per SCENE 2 but later in the evening. Edwarts developing relationship with Sam who rejects him, an unrequited love that leads to jealousy of Alec.
Sam and Edwart’s relation had begun to unfold toward Arlette before this. They seemed always surrounded by violence. Sam had tried to fend off the mild advances of Edwart through humour but his innate flirtatious manner backfired over the whole situation again, and again.
SAM No matter where you are in the world the moon is never bigger than your thumb with Ed showing him, with thumbs in the air
EDWART I promise love taking hold of Sam’s hand
SAM What the hell man, are you trying to provoke direction here? Good luck with that pushing him away
EDWART Take my hand and we’ll make it, I swear persisting and reaching back
But your hands show both hands intertwined
SAM This crap failed shaking out hands
Auto-stigmata pushing index finger into palm of hand until it bleeds
EDWART PEW PEW! pretend shoots him with fingers
These hands miss yours looking down on the palm of his hands
SCENE 11 Day 4 Edwart and Mary’s apartment
INT DAY AFTERNOON
Another day. More failed flirting with Sam and Edwart. Sam is serving green tea but the mood quickly changes and becomes darker again as he feels both threatened and victimised by Edwart. Same serves tea but the knife on that table becomes the key character.
SAM 1. Human 2. Yixing 3. Tea making Chinese tea for Ed, pouring it from a porcelain tea pot
Life… Me… pressing finger into the table to snub out something
EDWART You daft punk touching Sam on the cheek
SAM I want you, Doctor but this isn’t covered by your insurance touching his crotch who then removes his hand
EDWART People who are different are beautiful makes a stop sign with palm
SAM Breathe shows his wrist
EDWART Can I hold your hand? reaching for Sam’s hand
You don’t care a bit angry yet sarcastic, making a circle with finger and thumb raising it up to his eye Call me maybe? holding out a business card
Make art not friends flips card around where it says
SAM Gash the soul within, call 465 0360 takes the card and makes a knife gesture across his wrist, then reaching
I am Bradley Manning makes a talk to the hand gesture
EDWART Are you ok? – Yes? looking at Sam’s wrist
SAM I need something metal taking up a knife from the table
What’s the point in living if it’s all to die for laying his palm on the table
SCENE 12Arlette’s house, sitting room
INT EVENING
Arlette was fed up with these games. Fed up with pretending. Scared by the truth and just not sure what to do. Holding her head in her hands, she ran her finger threw his hair which had been matted down by the wig.
ARLETTE I want out… I just want out… holding head in hands
EDWART A hand throwing a ball A hand reaching for a doorknob A guy drowning at sunset God reaching to help the guy drowning at sunset absentmindedly drawing hands and circles on a piece of paper
ARLETTE Handjob! putting his fist in his mouth
The queer side of things, eh? A bit like a turnip resembling a human hand showing gnarled hand gestures
EDWART Bitch, give me your hand grabbing for her hand
You are the Love Glove yanking her splayed hand and shoving it into the box
ARLETTE Be your own hero, fuckwit resisting and making a fist in the struggle
EDWART It’s only a dream letting go of her arm
ARLETTE I’m fine. tearfully, wiping his eye
EDWART If you aren’t all mine, I can’t stand it realising that Arlette is Sam, holding down Sam’s arm and cutting his wrist
ARLETTE We all have scars, we all have stories reaching over and then also cutting Edwart’s wrist
‘Multiples’ was a series of six curated cabinet exhibitions that took place in TBG+S between 1998 and 2001 (with tours to other venues until 2004). Reasoning at the time sought to balance the presentation of accessibly priced objects that would make contemporary work affordable to a wide range of audience, whilst at the same time raising much needed funds for TBG+S. The various editions of the cabinets were curated by eight curators and showcased work by a range of over 150 artists. These were both well known and relatively obscure; some of whom would become household names, and others who changed from art making into other careers. This is the starting point for Alan Phelan as he recreates a synthesis of this cabinet of contemporary curiosities, revising 50 of the Multiples (with some originals included). It is normal for Phelan to take a wry jab at the original context and content of works, and with this piece the archive is negotiated through the Phelan’s own practice, functioning as part tribute and part critique.
as part of: “False Memory Syndrome” Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin 5-26 Sept, 2013 Curated by Rayne Booth
Associated text
50, 2013 Mixed media Dimensions variable
‘Multiples’ was a series of six curated cabinet exhibitions that took place in TBG+S between 1998 and 2001 (with tours to other venues until 2004). Reasoning at the time sought to balance the presentation of accessibly priced objects that would make contemporary work affordable to a wide range of audience, whilst at the same time raising much needed funds for TBG+S. The various editions of the cabinets were curated by eight curators and showcased work by a range of over 150 artists. These were both well known and relatively obscure; some of whom would become household names, and others who changed from art making into other careers. This is the starting point for Alan Phelan as he recreates a synthesis of this cabinet of contemporary curiosities, revising 50 of the Multiples (with some originals included). It is normal for Phelan to take a wry jab at the original context and content of works, and with this piece the archive is negotiated through the Phelan’s own practice, functioning as part tribute and part critique.
In 2013, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios celebrates its 30th Anniversary. The organisation was founded in 1983 by Jenny Haughton, who invited a group of artists to claim space within a semi derelict factory building in Temple Bar. Through the vision and determination of a number of individuals, over the intervening years the building was transformed into a purpose built complex of artists work spaces and a gallery. TBG+S has been a site where countless new projects, practices, friendships and careers have been created over the last 30 years , and at the same time much has been lost. Memories remain in the minds of the artists who worked and continue to work at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. Paper files have been discarded, or archived at the National Irish Visual Arts Library. Computer files have been left on old hard drives, never to be recovered.
As part of the 30th anniversary celebrations, TBG+S is producing a book entitled ‘Generation – 30 years of creativity at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios’. In the process of researching this publication, many forgotten stories, images, objects and archival materials have been gathered together to tell a story of the organisation. This story is selective, and based on the material that could be found. There are many other stories that are not represented. While not telling a definitive story, by its publication, the book creates an official history for TBG+S.
In the exhibition False memory Syndrome, Four artists imagine alternative histories for Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. These artists were invited, because of their history with TBG+S, to exhibit art works that respond to the gathered research, and to their experiences of the building and its inhabitants.
Sabina Mac Mahon’s work takes the archaeological excavation of 9 Temple Bar in 1993, in preparation for the redevelopment of the building, as a starting point. The work undertakes a mini-exploration of the nature of collections and archives, and the variety of material that can be found in them – both the strange and the ordinary. Mac Mahon worked as the main researcher on the 30th Anniversary publication and has an intimate knowledge of the archival history of TBG+S. Her work for the exhibition describes the often frustrating nature of the TBGS Archive as well as looking at the relationship between TBG+S and Temple Bar.
Alan Phelan’s starting point for his work 50 came from the well-known Multiples project , a series of six curated cabinet exhibitions that took place in TBG+S between 1998 and 2001 (with tours to other venues until 2004). Reasoning at the time sought to balance the presentation of accessibly priced objects that would make contemporary work affordable to a wide range of audience, whilst at the same time raising much needed funds for TBG+S. The various editions of the cabinets were curated by eight curators and showcased work by a range of over 150 artists. These were both well-known and relatively obscure; some of whom would become household names, and others who changed from art making into other careers. Alan Phelan recreates a synthesis of this cabinet of contemporary curiosities, revising 50 of the Multiples (with some originals included). It is normal for Phelan to take a wry jab at the original context and content of works, and with this piece the archive is negotiated through the Phelan’s own practice, functioning as part tribute and part critique.
Michael Boran’s work ‘Far and Away’ is different in that it comes from the artists own archive. Michael Boran is an artist who has been a studio member at TBG+S since 1991. Two years before TBG+S opened its renovated building, the area was used as a stand in for Boston in the 1890s for the film ‘Far and Away’. Boran’s photographs are a curious mixture of document and fiction. In choosing this brief interlude from the history of the area Boran captures some of the architectural facts and sense of the area from which TBG+S emerged, yet it is overlaid with false clues to somewhere else, a more remote past which strangely prefigures touristic expectations and Mary Harney’s famous signalling of “Boston not Berlin” as a development model. As he points out, ‘false history was quickly to become the norm in Temple Bar, as pubs opened with signs proclaiming “established in 1870” , the installation of cobblestones and the general repackaging of the area as a themed destination’. In Boran’s photographs, past and present merge in a strange palimpsest. We get a glimpse of competing pasts and a nostalgia for a more recent time when the possibility of a new cultural quarter in the city was still a blank canvas.
On the opening night of the exhibition, Wednesday 4 September, Sarah Pierce will present a performance Artist or Superartist? based on material drawn from the TBG+S archive.
A round table discussion chaired by Sarah Pierce between the artists in the exhibition and the curator, Rayne Booth, will take place on Tuesday 24 September at 5pm. The discussion will hinge on the subject of institutional memory, fictional institutions, and the archive. Places for the discussion are free but limited, so please book your place in advance.
Oonagh Young Gallery, Dublin, 2013 Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork, 2014
HANDJOB began as a convalescence activity after a broken thumb, not some onanistic occupational therapy but something else entirely. Like many minor personal moments in the life of an artist it has now morphed into a more public presentation. For several months last year Phelan posted and re-blogged endless photos of hands on social media. These accumulated and formed the broad basis of a project inspired in part, it should be noted, by a trend amongst self-harming Tumblr kids who fixate on monochrome hand photos.
HANDJOB does not pretend to be an exhaustive archival, or encyclopaedic treatise on the subject of the hand. Nor does it pretend to engage in any curatorial games, or progressive public strategies. What it does pretend to do is present a range of clustered connections between what should mostly appear to be random images, people, and objects.
Thinking of the gallery space as an open notebook would be useful if it were not so trite. There are over thirty pieces on display in this proposition of an exhibition and thousands of images so it’s better to maybe think about circulation instead of appropriation. Source, author, and intent, are loose – diffused to an even greater extent as much of the work was produced by Phelan on instruction or collaboration with the others involved. The result should be completely makeshift, possibly provisional, imbued however with a tentative connectedness, and a bunch of contingent language games that have ensued.
Others involved in the project are friends whose various practices have co-incidentally involved hands in recent projects. This was probably, in part, a reaction to the anonymity of the net and the intense ubiquity of the hand not only in art but everywhere else as well. Distance then became no enemy and so it was great to be able to work with Douglas Rodrigo Rada from Cochabamba, Bolivia; Sascha Bolt from Franfurt/Berlin; Cut Hands/Not Abel (William Bennett/Ian McInerney) from London and Cork; as well as those closer to home like Brenda Moore McCann, art historian; and artists Lee Welsh, Sarah Pierce, and Roisin Lewis all living in Dublin.
In the end what is fascinating are the choreographed systems of chance that are sometimes in synch and then again not. When they do, they seemingly obliterate each other or maybe just quietly cancel each other out. Is this hedging towards an expanded sense of meaning or some semiotic collapse? Not sure anyone cares. Whether subjectivity can break free of the subject is only something that can happen when concept and material are absent. These are other people’s ideas. Cultural delivery systems seem to be central to the way things get understood when distribution not reception is key, or at least less relevant. For the moment there are only elusive fluxes of memories, shifting identities, open-ended narratives, contrapuntal dialogues, diffused authors, and other circulations related to the hand.
James Merrigan_JUNE_2013_It was the Butler with the Candlestick in the Library ALAN PHELAN_‘HANDJOB‘_14 March – 26 April_2013_Oonagh Young Gallery_Dublin_
Within any other context Róisín Lewis’s nicely rendered pencil drawings of monochrome hands holding high-coloured Jelly Babies would be passed over as overtly sweet and whimsical, even when you learn that the artist completed a channel swim from England to France in 2012 (Jelly Babies being a channel swimmers energy fix). However, considering Phelan’s history of using malformed sci-fi humanoids (‘Odo’ from Star Trek Deep Space Nine), along with mutant comic-book heroes (‘The Thing’ from The Fantastic Four), Lewis’s Jelly Babies take on layered meaning and resonance in a type of accidental homage to Phelan’s quirky aesthetic.
Interestingly, and perhaps appropriately, ‘aesthetic signature’ turns out to be the default thematic of ‘HANDJOB’. No more so than with the inclusion of the medical doctor and art historian, Brenda Moore McCann, whose gallery statement leads with: ‘Medical Semiotics and its influence on Art, Psychoanalysis and Sherlock Holmes’, outlining the [Giovanni] ’Morelli method’, whereby “hands, ears, noses, fingernails, the small part of the anatomy, became the basis … of connoisseurship in painting the the late 19th century.”
McCann’s thesis takes the form of a hardback notebook with handwritten text; at moments a hard task to read. On the same table, however, the conceptual dots begin to join with the placement of Phelan’s The Cardboard Box (2013), a delicately boxed pair of papier-mâché ears, with a photo album entitled Beckles Wilson’s Celebrity Hands (2013). Both artwork titles reference the subject of McCann’s Medical Semiotic treatise (The Cardboard Box was the title of a Sherlock Holmes story, the author of which, Arthur Conan Doyle, was rumoured to be Beckles Wilson).
Such ‘Who Done It?’ amusement and narrative knots by Phelan are extended into some very sticky puns. With the use of a stencil the artist has ‘stained’ the character seaman (semen) ‘Willy’—from the ’70s British animation series Captain Pugwash—on a sheet of plywood. Willy’s sailor neckerchief is a delicately folded metal ‘hand’; a (hand)kerchief perhaps…
Other works of note include Phelan’s faux fur Stump Warmer (2013) and framed tongue-in-cheek article on How to do a Hand Transplant (2013). However, the pièce de résistance is David Monahan’s delightfully casual readymade, a copy of the French daily newspaper La Libération from 2009, which, with sophisticated French humour, addressed the Thierry Henry’s ‘Hand of God’ moment in the World Cup qualifier against Ireland in 2009, by insidiously populating each page of the issue with hands.
Reading through the artists’ statements that accompany the exhibition, the dance between ‘meaning’ vs ‘image’ is rehearsed once again, but a question that is relevant when you consider the great potential to corrupt the ‘intentional’ meaning of the thirty-six artworks that make up ‘HANDJOB’. Douglas Rodrigo Rada writes: “In a consumer society, to favour an image over a thought is not only more convincing but also more convenient: ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, and besides, it spares us from reflecting.” While Jason Oakley quotes conceptually slippery Daniel Birnbaum in reference to Lee Welch’s “multi-referential” artworks: “artists are often suspicious of meaning as it is produced through narration, they could be said to introduce caesuras of non-meaning into the thick web of sense.”
As is proven in ‘HANDJOB’, the potent imagery of multifarious hands are the seeds for thought: without one, there is no other. The onus is on the viewer to activate the artist’s meaning, which, a lot of the time, ends up being indiscriminate.
Phelan adamantly states that “‘HANDJOB’ does not pretend to be an exhaustive archival, or encyclopaedic treatise on the subject of the hand. Nor does it pretend to engage in any curatorial games…” (my emphasis). Because Phelan’s hands aesthetically fondle the ‘hands’ of his collaborators—through remote instruction, or his choice of readymade object to ‘illustrate’ the artists’ concept—this exhibition naturally and intuitively becomes a “curatorial game.“ Is it not the case that group exhibitions are fundamentally curatorial constructs? Furthermore, the individualistic, ideological, conceptual and aesthetic intent of the artist and his or her artwork are traded off for an over-arching thematic that is not devised by the artist, but by the curator? In such curatorial scenarios it is my contention that sometimes (not all of the time), that the artist’s left-of-field conceptual underpinning is lost under an umbrella theory that is, sometimes, casually administered to the artwork. Other times, however, headless artworks and artists need to be herded into the curatorial pen.
Phelan also testifies to a sort of “makeshift” … “provisional” … “tentative connectedness” in the shared responses to the hand thematic in this hybridised exhibition. It is true that the thematic ties that bind the show together are loose, sometimes untied. But what is important here in not the apparent disparate connectedness between the objects, but the fun in ‘re-narrativising’ them by extracting a personalised connoisseurship from the artworks—like Morelli might do.
Notes
[1] Jean Baudrillard, The Conspiracy of Art, Semiotext(e), MIT Press, 2005.
“Inverted Oil Rig” ‘dobby fin millen drill’ (Nightmare on Duck Street) 2011-2012
chromed steel, rubber, water pumps 510 long x 570 wide x 700 high cm installed at Fr Collins Park, Clongriffin, Co Dublin and commissioned by Dublin City Council.
Named with the help of the pupils of St Francis of Assisi Primary School, Belmayne, Balgriffin.
The inverted oil rig sculpture is a development of a work originally made for the gallery in 2005. The design was taken from this work and so the resulting sculpture can read like a 3d drawing as it is made from square metal profiles. Further additions were replacing acrylic rods with water jets. This activates the sculpture in its outdoor site and helps the work look different from various angles.
The original piece was tied to a narrative about the newspaper heir Gordon Bennett Jr and an island in Siberia. This was re-introduced during a series of naming workshops that took place earlier this year find a name for the work. The primary school children from a local school came up with a number of names which were put to a vote. Three titles were then chosen, the descriptive one, the artist’s favourite and the children’s favourite.
The piece connects directly to the sustainable design metaphors used in the park as the rig is notionally returning oil to the ground. The piece is a creative response to the alternative energy resource provided by the five wind turbines which dominate the promenade area of the park.
