Visual Arts/Aidan Dunne: Cork did not enjoy quite the pre-eminence in the visual arts it should have during its year as European Capital of Culture. Why? In a way it's hard to explain, given that, along the way, there were many very good shows and events.
Sebastiao Salgado's Exodus was certainly a blockbuster, a huge photojournalistic account of humanity in crisis. Salgado's classically constructed, black-and-white images tell stories in a way that the widest audience can appreciate, and did.
There was a fortuitous pieces of juxtaposition in the nature of the succeeding show, Simon Norfolk's Welcome to the Hotel Africa, based on his stay with the Irish Army in Liberia, and augmented by a representative selection of his other work Refuge, centred on the Sirius Arts Centre (the initiators of the project). Norfolk, who takes history paintings as his starting point and reference, exemplifies another way of using photography.
Both the Norfolk and Salgado shows lodged chiefly in a new office block on Lavitt's Quay, a serviceable but far from ideal exhibition venue and, despite the presence of the Glucksman and the Crawford, the lack of a good venue was a problem, one that surely could have been foreseen. The impression of unpreparedness was reinforced by the way projects with long lead-in times seemed to be pushed further and further back. Tacita Dean's piece on the Presentation Sisters barely made it in time for Christmas and will promptly close thereafter. The much anticipated Dorothy Cross-Fiona Shaw collaboration was indefinitely deferred.
Several site-specific, one-off projects were outstanding. Vinyl, Simon Cutts' show based on the confluence of art, text and graphics, thoughtfully installed throughout the Christian Brothers School on Sullivan's Quay, was excellent. Superbia 2, curated by Stephen Brandes and Darragh Hogan, continued the school theme and was pretty good if not quite superb. The Crawford had a busy year, from a show of Dutch drawings via Maritime Paintings of Cork, appositely sited in the Custom House, to displays of both the AIB and Bank of Ireland art collections and a huge survey of the work of James Barry, probably the most important artist to emerge from Cork.
However, despite his undoubted gifts, the show confirmed that Barry did not achieve his ambition of becoming a great history painter. The quieter William Higgins show didn't get as much attention but merited it. The Glucksman's Through the Looking Glass, exploring representations of childhood in contemporary art photography, was particularly good in a solid enough year for the fledgling gallery. The city's commercial galleries, including the Fenton and the Vangard, made a concerted effort throughout, maintaining excellent programmes.
Lessons to be learnt from the visual strand of Cork 2005? Long-term strategic thinking, encompassing venues and key events, is indispensable. Impromptu planning will get you only so far.
It used to be that the Irish art world moved gently up through the gears from the start of each new year. The annual outing of the Turner watercolours in the National Gallery set the tone. All that changed at the beginning of 2005. Throughout January there was a non-stop barrage of openings, with an exceptional number of high-calibre shows.
For example, Abigail O'Brien's mammoth Seven Sacraments project, a series of thematic sculptural installation with an emphasis on photography, symbolically charting a woman's life, and made over a period of years, reached the Royal Hibernian Academy after a highly successful tour in Germany.
In the Limerick City Gallery of Art, AIB Art Award winner Amanda Coogan's A Brick in the Handbag, which anthologised a number of her works and began with a live performance, consolidated her position as one of the leading Irish artists across the board, and Mark O'Kelly's In Fashion was a survey of a tremendously rich body of paintings exploring the nature and mechanics of representation.
Among the almost bewildering succession of really first-rate solo shows in January were Madeleine Moore's examination of Utopian ideas at Pallas Heights, Felicity Clear's Dirty Pretty Things, a sardonic look at the tawdriness underlying consumer culture, and Eithne Jordan's Peripheral Landscapes at the Rubicon. Diana Copperwhite's meditative Midnight at Kevin Kavanagh, and Makiko Nakamura and John Noel Smith's exemplary approaches to abstraction, both at the Fenderesky, were also excellent.
As were Thomas Brezing's When we were older at the Ashford, Walter Verling's beautifully presented paintings (credit to Paul O'Reilly) at Belltable, Mariele Neudecker's winterreise at Temple Bar Gallery (a filmic response to Schubert's bleak song-cycle), and Mark Cullen's Cosmic Annihilator, an installation encapsulating an apocalyptic vision, which enjoyed multiple incarnations, at Temple Bar, Pallas Heights, and EV+A.
Then things calmed down from frenetic to merely hectic, which for the time being seems to be the standard level of activity in the visual arts in Ireland. Even a few years ago the current level of activity would have been unthinkable. New venues, private and public, that have sprung up are evidence of ever-growing demand: the Stone Gallery, Mother's Tankstation, Form, hopewire, the reopened Paul Kane Gallery and The Dock in Carrick-on-Shannon. Traditionally quiet corners of the calendar in gallery schedules are being fully utilised. Furthermore, the general level of solo shows is very high. The following are not "The Best Of", or at least nothing like a comprehensive "Best Of", but more shows worth mentioning for particular reasons.
Claire Kerr's tiny, snapshot-like paintings at the Ashford in March were a revelation - beautiful, sensitive pictures with a presence that belied their scale. Charles Tyrrell at the Fenton Gallery in April produced an exceptional body of intelligent, forcefully argued abstract paintings. Finola Jones's Artificially reconstructed habitats at Temple Bar Gallery was a very ambitious multi-screen installation, viewing the world as a kind of human zoo; Paul Mosse creates entire, intricate worlds, and his Amor Infiniti at Green on Red in May was superb.
In July John Byrne's From a South-facing Family at the Fenton was a deservedly very popular show, a satirical look at the politics of identity in Ireland North and South. Margaret O'Brien's essay in obsessive compulsive introspection, Sea of Unknowing, was one of the best things at Pallas Heights during the year.
Among substantial survey shows, Eileen MacDonagh's From Another Constellation at the Model Arts and Niland Gallery, featuring a series of beautiful, monumental stone carvings based on the complex geometric form of the dodecahedron, was outstanding. As was the Dorothy Cross Retrospective at IMMA from June, which demonstrated the artist's mordant wit. Donald Teskey's Tidal Narratives at the Limerick City Gallery from September, was an extremely well-received show that featured the elemental clash of rock and water in a series of ambitious, large-scale canvases.
Stephen McKenna's Nissan Art Project show at the Gallagher Gallery (just prior to his election as President of the RHA), provided a generous, richly enjoyable account of one of the most rigorous and analytical representational artists around. The work in Gavin Hogg's The Dragon's Eyes like Fish Cry Crocodile's Tears at the Limerick City Gallery had the luxuriance of an oriental rug.
It was a good year for David Godbold, whose Once it was a lie, now it's the truth was a very popular show, and who was invited to be the official artist covering the English General Election. Predictably, what he produced ruffled feathers. Another Kerlin artist, Phil Collins, also had a good year, and is shortlisted for the prestigious Deutschburse Photography Prize.
Fine shows by visiting artists included Laurie Anderson's at IMMA in February. Anderson, best known for her surprise hit Oh Superman, is a hugely energetic and committed artist and put a great deal of effort into what was a very well attendedshow, helping to boost IMMA's annual figures to its highest point to date (at more than 400,000). It's worth mentioning Fred Tomaselli's compelling, hallucinatory collage works the following month, also at IMMA. Dimitri Tsykalov's national health at the Model Art in June was a virtuoso series of installations in which elements of rough-hewn, mostly wooden sculpture were used to explore aspects of medical technology and human anatomy. 89 seconds at Alcazar by Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation (the Butler Gallery, September), was a dazzling, conjectural account of the minutes leading up to the scene we witness in Velazquez's masterpiece Las Meninas.
The William Orpen Retrospective was undoubtedly the big hit of the year for the National Gallery.
Meanwhile, in the Biennale year Ireland, north and south, invaded Venice en masse, dispatching a extraordinary number of artists to fly the flag(s).
In Carlow, the council quietly gave the nod to a major new arts centre, VISUAL, specifically designed as a national centre. The plans incorporate what would be the largest single exhibition space in the country. If the project goes ahead, and there is no reason to believe it won't, it amounts to a big cultural gamble, nothing less than an attempt to redraw the cultural map of Ireland.
Also potentially significant is the introduction of the artists' resale right, the droit de suite under EU legislation, something that led to the establishment of IVARO, designed to administrate its workings. While the Government is obliged to introduce the right from January 1st, much discussion has focused on the lack of information available on its detail and status. It is not yet apparent if the Government intends to avail of a derogation allowing it to suspend the implementation of part of the right, that relating to the work of deceased artists, for up to four years: of course, the level of money involved is far higher with regard to the work of deceased artists.
In November the Sculptors' Society of Ireland finally got around to changing its name to Visual Artists Ireland. The change had been on the cards ever since the controversial demise of the Association of Artists in Ireland in 2002. Visual Artists Ireland seems to be a well-organised body, capable of working in the interests of artists.
It was involved in the establishment of IVARO and campaigned for the retention of the Artists' Tax Exemption Scheme prior to the Budget.
Highs&Lows
Highs
The work of South African artist William Kentridge appeared at the Model Arts Centre in a terrific show. The idea came from Suzanne Woods during her tenure as director. She had departed by the time it opened. It is a co-operative venture between the Model, the Limerick City Art Gallery and the Royal Hibernian Academy Gallagher Gallery and is being presented in all three - surely the way to go for Irish galleries.
Lows
One of the potential highlights of Cork 2005's visual programme, the collaboration between Dorothy Cross and Fiona Shaw, monte notte, fell through when complications arose over access to the proposed site, Spike Island. But whatever happened to background diplomacy? Surely, given the year that was in it, there should have been some forceful negotiations.
