A video installation in confession boxes in a church; an art doctor arriving by ambulance to hold art patient clinics; a 12 hour street performance on the topic of drugs. These are a few of the projects in a public art initiative in Dublin's north inner city which runs throughout September and will be formally launched by Sile De Valera, Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, next Wednesday.
The 13 artists involved in Inner Art are taking their work to the rubbish-strewn streets and graffiti-stained flat complexes of the Summerhill area off the North Circular Road.
In fulfilling their brief to "respond" to this environment, the artists have immersed themselves in the community in a wide variety of ways. In addition to their works, a seminar on art in marginalised areas will be held in Lourdes Parish Hall, Sean MacDermott Street, from 2.30 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday September 13th.
The £40,000 initiative - funded by the European Union's Kaleidoscope Programme and other bodies - is organised by the Fire Station Artists' Studios on Buckingham Street.
Inner Art developed, says the studios' director, Tony Sheehan, from a sense among residents involved in the area's anti-drugs street campaigns around two years ago that there was a role for artists in rejuvenating the community. The first involvement in community art by artists in the studios was a large parade last Hallowe'en. For Inner Art, artists from Ireland, Spain, Germany, France and England were given a briefing document outlining two forces in the inner city: grief and anger, says Sheehan. "Grief at the death toll of heroin, and anger at the continuing neglect and lack of acknowledgement of the dire problem by the authorities and by society in general," he says.
The aims of the initiative are to "test the waters for artists to make work out of the safety of the gallery" and "to bring that standard of work to people who do not normally have access to contemporary art," he says. While some of the projects involve participation by local children, Sheehan stresses that Inner Art is "art in the community, not community art":
"It's not our role to be a community art project. I'm more interested in trying to extend the possibility of contemporary visual art and seeing what happens with that, given that this project is full is practising artists who wouldn't normally work in the community. "We are doing what the Arts Council talks about, but without reference to policy documents. We just go ahead and do it because we are really well-placed in the inner city to take on that sort of environment."
Thus, an installation by Spanish artist Valentin Torrens, is situated in St Francis Xavier Church in Gardiner Street, a building where families have long prayed for their young drug addicts. The work, which has a celestial quality, consists of spoons dangling from the ceiling like fishing hooks, some of them arranged to spell out the words "Dow Jones". On the floor are small mirrors which spell out the word "Illusion".
Suspended in one corner of the exhibit is an upside-down red umbrella which speaks of life and the blood in the veins into which drugs are injected. The work is at once a memorial for those who have died from drug abuse and an allusion to religion as the opium of the masses. The work's position ensures that it has a captive audience, with around 700 mass-goers viewing it last Sunday alone.
While some artists, like Torrens, have responded to their brief with work which deals directly with the area's heroin problem, others deal with broader issues within the community. Paul O'Neill will exhibit on the facade of a building, which houses an after-schools project, more than 100 photographs taken by eight local children in workshops. Vernon Carter will create a life-size toy band which will interact with passers-by while Shane Cullen has painted a 36 foot mural based on a covert message sent to Gerry Adams following the death of Bobby Sands, which formed part of work he exhibited last year in the Douglas Hyde Gallery.
In planning Inner Art, Sheehan worked closely with community groups and representatives so that residents would not feel that art works were parachuted into their area. "I believe that working-class people really don't have much contact with what is a middle-class sector and this is a part of the process of trying to break that barrier. So in that way it is a model of how access and participation in the arts can happen. We're at least making the effort to do that through a high standard of art production and a high level of consultation," he says.
But Sheehan is also acutely aware that art projects which inhabit, even temporarily, spaces belonging to the community, are inherently "risky":
"I didn't expect that people would so readily take it on," he says. "There's been surprisingly little of the `yes, but what does it mean' and `what are you doing this for' attitude. There are people questioning it and there are people talking about it just as there would be in a gallery. Working-class people in our community are just as capable of reacting to contemporary art as anybody else. They can be as critical, as praising, as decisive and as dismissive and that is what is refreshing."
The Fire Station Artists' Studios is also involved in planning a permanent memorial for local people who have died and will die of heroin addiction. Dublin Corporation has donated £5,000 for the project which will cost £50,000. The family support group of the Inner City Organisations' Network, which is made up of people whose relatives have died from heroin abuse, will be closely involved in the project.
Inner Art continues until September 27th. For further information contact the Fire Station Artists' Studios on tel: 01-8556735 or 8555632.
