6 Years in the making, The Dublin Contemporary has overcome Sisyphean odds to deliver a relevant exhibition of modern art.
By Tommy Gavin
“A lot of shows, and a lot of artists and curators, are only about aesthetics, and in reality we need a show about ideas and about the real world, and that’s our mandate.” Such were the words of Jota Castro (no relation to the Cuban autocrat), one of the curators of the Dublin Contemporary 2011 which opened on the 6th of September and runs until the 31st of October. Bob Geldoff and the Minister for Art Jimmy Deenihan launched the event, with a flurry of cameras following them around what used to be the UCD Medical School at Earlsfort Terrace, which makes for a surprisingly good gallery, with its long corridors and confined spaces.
The exhibition is Ireland’s first attempt at a biennial, which in art-terms means an exhibition of international contemporary art, the idea being like Oxegen but with art instead of bands, and thoughtful reflection instead of stabbings. The show is the first of its kind in Ireland since the ROSC exhibition in the sixties and seventies, and it features the work of over a hundred artists, over 30 of whom are Irish. The Curators, Jota Castro and Christian Viveros-Fauné opted to forego big-name artists that are associated with other events like the Venice Biennial, and instead opted for emerging talent with something to say: “We were looking for originality, diversity and good ideas.”
It was for that reason that they selected Terrible Beauty – Art Crisis, Change as the theme of the show, to reflect the necessary engagement with change, and ways to address it in light of the global economic meltdown. The other corresponding theme is the office of non-compliance in the centre of Earlsfort terrace. Inspired by the free universities of the anarchist movement, it aims to creatively tackle one problem a week using non-conformist, artist led solutions. This may sound airy and slightly ridiculous, but it has precedent in art movements at their most idealistic, notably of the Situationists, and other groups of artists who sought beneficial social change. At the very least, it will be interesting to see what it produces.
The planning of the Dublin Contemporary though, has been tumultuous. It has its beginnings in 1999 when Oliver Dowling, then visual arts officer for the Arts Council and a co-founder of the exhibition, proposed an international art exhibition for Dublin. This was generally welcomed but seen as untimely. Rachel Thomas, Head of Exhibitions for the Irish Museum of Modern Art approached him in 2005 when she had a similar vision, and the two pushed for it since. Under them, the show was to be about Joycean interaction with the city, as visitors would follow a path between different galleries where the journey became part of the art through imposed context. The other theme was to be Silence as a part of Irish storytelling tradition. However, there were rumours of strife within the Dublin Contemporary headquarters, and it was launched twice in Dublin, once in London and once in New York without much to show for itself. It was also pushed back several times, as it was due debut in 2010, and then moved to the Summer of 2011, only to be pushed back to have opened recently. Then, in January of this year, Rachel Thomas departed as artistic director for mysterious reasons that nobody felt comfortable disclosing to The University Times.
It was only in February that the current curators were appointed, and it is they who picked the present line-up of artists and chose the new themes. Despite the baggage and scope of the undertaking, the Dublin Contemporary 2011 has overcome its many obstacles in presenting an international contemporary art show of significant merit, which is obviously great from a cultural standpoint, but also as a draw for tourism and in giving a welcome home for Irish artists.
A lot of the art at the exhibition is explicitly political in one way or another. Alan Butler’s mixed media installation finds a room wallpapered with print-outs of stories about China from news websites; one side of the room about the suicides at the FOXCONN plants where iPhones are manufactured, the other about media censorship. The former also has an iPhone with a video on a loop, the former has 2 giant psychedelic poster recreations of the recent press release condemning traitorous portrayals of Party-approved China. Then there is Brian Duggan’s scale model of a rusted ferris-wheel, accompanied by an English translation of the evacuation order of Pripyat following the meltdown at Chernobyl. Another sure-to-be popular exhibit is Richard Mosse’s Infra series; a set of photographs with altered colours depicting a series of surreal purple landscapes, filled with rifle bearing Congolese soldiers, that strikes a tragic contrast between dreamscape and reality. Then there are larger scale pieces, such as Castos’s large scale, reflective and oddly dimensioned piece “us”, and Thomas Hirschhorn’s giant coffin decorated with images of culture, violence and icons of consumerism.
You can’t help but feel that the curators were right to ignore big-name artists and embrace the next generation of artists who are confident to comment on national and international affairs on their own terms. In particular, the Danish artists’ group Superflex have a piece about the economic crisis that seems particularly relevant to Ireland, with their video of an ominous man saying that everything is going to be fine, as you step over euro coins glued to the floor. While the exhibition may have originated out of the Celtic Tiger years, it seems more appropriate now than ever, justifying its title: a Terrible Beauty.
The Dublin Contemporary runs from September 6th until October 31st and spans across the Earlsfort Terrace, the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin City Gallery the Hugh Lane, the National Gallery of Ireland and the Royal Hibernian Academy and the Iveagh Gardens.
