Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Reviewed by: Ruth Jones
Selected from open submission by Lynne Cooke, senior curator at Dia Center for the Arts, New York, twenty-nine artists took part in the third annual 'Perspective' exhibition at Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast. This year's £6000 prize was split between two artists, Phil Collins and Niamh McCann, both of whom explored the effects of Belfast's cultural heritage on its inhabitants. Niamh McCann's site-specific light installation Dislocated, situated in front of the city hall, highlighted the imposing figure of Queen Victoria and encouraged an examination of the impact of Victorian principles and architecture on the city. Phil Collins invited visitors to relax on beanbags and watch taped interviews of four Belfast residents who were asked the same questions ranging from 'Do you think the media supports the violence?' to 'Do you like supermarkets?' Behind, two monitors displayed footage from loyalist and republican marches. Collins focused on the images which were carefully excluded from media coverage of these events: the background and spectators. The piece worked at undermining the polarisation of Northern Irish culture by the media.
Of the many photographic works, John Duncan's Boom Town series effectively captured Belfast's rapid urban redevelopment, and pointed to the responsibility inherent in this process. James Ireland's ingenious installation ,Mountain Landscape explored the constructed nature of idealised landscape and offered a brief illusion of a range of mountains on a misty morning, its construction from a plastic bin, a black binliner and a fluorescent tube was plainly visible. Paul Nugent's two paintings from the Carmelite Nun series possessed the unstable quality of Daguerreotype prints. The rigidity of the portrait pose is unsettled by the liquidity of the images, which seemed ready to either slip away entirely or sharpen into focus. The two paintings were similar but not the same, creating an uncanny doubling which was strangely disturbing. Helen Karen Eriksen's brash installation No 13, dominated the same space and appeared in bizarre contrast. Composed of black Madonnas, gold helium balloons and eggs, it pointed to the kitsch of popular religious culture - but offered little or no mediation on the matter.
The exhibition seemed to focus on discourses on place and dislocation in a global context, and the ability for art to articulate changing attitudes towards identities in relation to place - a debate which is particularly relevant to the negotiation of a transitional era for Belfast.
Writer detail:
RUTH JONES
is an artist based in Belfast.
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