Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin
16 January – 16 February
and other shows in Ireland
Reviewed by: Gemma Tipton
Beyond the confines of artworld discourse, price is one of the main ways by which many people come to negotiate a sense of value in art. More than the endorsement of major museum shows, it is through newspaper hype attending to auction results, and statistics from selling extravaganzas like Armory, Basel and Frieze, that artists are determined ‘successful’ and ‘good’. As a token of exchange, money is undeniably useful, yet we give it a value beyond the sum it represents. Looking at the nature of this, Colin Darke’s two-part project ‘Capital’ explores price, value, symbolic exchange, and what happens when the ‘ordinary’ is elevated into ‘art’. Part one (exhibited at the Venice Biennale, 2003, and Context Galleries in Derry, 2005) saw Darke painstakingly transcribe the three volumes of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital onto the surface of 480 two-dimensional objects. The fine, spidery writing, and the nature of the artist’s labour (which is seldom, if ever, valued on a cost-per-hour basis), transformed the detritus of consumer society (adverts, Post-it notes, religious cards, packaging) into something with a quantifiable exchange value, to be exhibited in the rarefied atmosphere of the contemporary gallery, and to be subsequently sold.
Five years later, ‘The Capital Paintings’, at Dublin’s Temple Bar Gallery, completes the transformation of ephemera into art as the artist has painted each object from Capital onto a separate A4 canvas, minus the handwriting, and with that has made the mass-produced unique. This is in the tradition of the readymade, and Darke’s Magic Tree air freshener echoes Duchamp’s urinal, and Koons’ vacuum cleaner; but the sheer volume of paintings (480 canvases) also refers to Marx’s investigations into production and consumption. In addition to the intriguing intellectual conceit at the heart of the project, Darke’s painting also renders these images attractive and desirable commodities in themselves.
A project on this scale requires a gallery to show it; thus an additional layer of value is conferred by the space where it is seen. There are naturally hierarchies in this: Venice being ‘more important’ than a venue in Dublin or Derry; as exchange systems of capital do not solely find their expression in financial terms. While Pierre Bourdieu defined the conditions in which cultural capital exists, a further kind of exchange may be seen in the relationships developed between the institutions and some of Ireland’s ‘young’ artist-run spaces. When the Dublin City Gallery (Hugh Lane) closed a couple of years ago for an extension project, they worked with artist-led initiative, Pallas, to curate one in-gallery exhibition, and various off-site projects. Here, the energy of one reflects to the credit of the other. The institution embraces the ‘outsider’ and the status quo is maintained.
Currently, the Royal Hibernian Academy is closed for refurbishment, and they have ‘adopted’ Monster Truck. Based on Francis Street, Monster Truck is another artist-run gallery and studios, running an eclectic, innovative programme. “As the oldest artists’ co-operative in the city the RHA is thrilled to be working with one of the newest, most exciting artists’ collaborations,” says the publicity material. And why shouldn’t they? Monster Truck will benefit from the RHA’s installation, organisational and marketing expertise, and the RHA demonstrates how open the Establishment can be. The important thing for both sides to remember is the value of what each has to offer.
Capital is important (in financial as well as practical terms) when it comes to possession of a venue. Another of Ireland’s most interesting new spaces to emerge in recent years was Four. Named for the fourth-floor space where it was sited, Four recently lost its space, and is now an itinerant (or nomadic) entity, initiating exhibitions and collaborating on projects around the city. Karen Azoulay’s ‘Fire Tale’ was the most recent of these, finding a home in the project space of The Lab. Already hosting a collaborative initiative with Four (‘Launch’, which platforms the work of recent graduates), The Lab is a Dublin City Council space dedicated to experimental projects and the exhibition of process-based work.
Artist-run spaces have a habit of developing to ‘become’ the institution – the Temple Bar Gallery being an example. Housed in a former shirt factory, it is now one of the key cultural organisations of Dublin’s Temple Bar Cultural Quarter. Colin Darke himself was a founder of Void, a gallery whose home is another former shirt factory, this time in Derry. Void itself is presently hosting ‘The True Complex’, work by Brendan Earley and Bea McMahon, two of the four recipients of the Curated Visual Art Award, jointly supported by both Arts Councils in Ireland (North and South), which saw Earley, McMahon, Factotum and Conor McFeely working with Mike Nelson on projects for Void, and Dublin’s Douglas Hyde. Perhaps in these postmodern days, one can no longer speak of the institution, or of its ‘alternatives’. Certainly, as contemporary practice in Ireland demonstrates, if such distinctions exist, each one understands the value to be gleaned from collaboration, and is willing, and able, to benefit from it.
Karen Azoulay: Fire Tale, The Lab, Dublin, 14 December – 20 January
Launch, The Lab, Dublin, 14 December – 20 January
True Complex, Void, Derry, 12 January – 15 February
Big Foot, Monster Truck, Dublin, 1-5 February
Writer detail:
Gemma Tipton is a writer and critic of contemporary art and architecture based in Dublin.
Venue detail:
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