The Eurojet Futures 01 exhibition at the RHA Gallagher Gallery in Dublin takes models such as the erstwhile GPA Emerging Artists Awards and the Glen Dimplex Artists Award and dispenses with their prize-winning hierarchies. What was on offer to seven artists was a modest fee, expenses and the chance to exhibit at the Gallagher.
Rather than enlisting the services of a panel, committee or outside adjudicator, Patrick Murphy, the Gallagher's director, took on the task of finding, selecting and inviting artists. Or rather, as he is keen to make clear, he capitalised on the finds of others, seeing who turned up in, for example, the Victor Treacy Award show at the Butler Gallery in Kilkenny.
"This is not a discovery show," as be puts it. It is more a recognition and, with luck, a consolidation of a prior level of achievement. All seven artists have had solo shows outside of Dublin. This doesn't mean they have not shown in Dublin, but it is a good indication of the development of a gallery infrastructure outside the capital.
Murphy is forthright about his reasons for choosing work himself. "I believe we are mature enough in our curatorial development to begin to accept authorship, and thus accountability, for the decisions we make. It is good to seek an outside adjudicator from time to time, but not all of the time."
The seven artists have distinct and clearly argued approaches. In terms of media, the works range from traditional paint-on-panels by Katy Simpson to Kristina Huxley's "paintings" animated by environmental factors, via a great deal of photography.
Eoghan McTigue from Belfast is known not only for his own work but also through his ambitious, alternative curatorial projects with Grassyknoll Productions. Here he is showing a series of large-scale photographs. The biggest is a huge black-and-white print, Untitled (Shaftesbury Square, Belfast 1991-1999), a life-size view of the LED screen that used to broadcast messages over the square. Dismayed to find the screen had disappeared - it was replaced by a more sophisticated device - he tracked it down at Windsor Park, where it is used as a scoreboard. The notion of the blank screen that was the site of and conduit for profuse quantities of information is echoed in his photographs of blank noticeboards in the series Empty signs.
Liam O'Callaghan's projected slides, in "these are not precious things, hint at some exotic origin through their visual richness. In fact, they are made of ordinary bits and pieces of rubbish, physically applied to the slides. The consistent thread in O'Callaghan's work is the exploration and interrogation of value systems. His long-term project, I'm A success, published in book form, consisted of Polaroid photographs taken by a large number of people, illustrating personal successes. The enormously thoughtful responses invite us to question the priorities of our lives.
At first glance, Kristina Huxley's paintings resemble monochrome, minimalist abstracts. In fact, they are invariably subject to change and fluctuation engendered by such things as the proximity of viewers (IJV-sensitive pigment) or various other changes in light, temperature and even sound. In the case of the latter, ingeniously, the sound is that of a canvas being primed, recorded and broadcast behind the canvas, so the resultant vibration recalls the process of preparation. There is a perpetual-motion quality to these works that continually, restlessly remake themselves, never settling.
The configuration of Katy Simpson polyptychs changes according to the character of the space in which she installs them. Installation is part of her working process. She paints series of fragmentary images in muted, tonal colours, as if viewed through filters. The images are mostly domestic: tele and so on.
She establishes linear sequences but doesn't specify narrative progression. Rather, she creates narrative spaces in which we are invited to find the imprint of fragments of our memories, thoughts and ideas. The resultant works are extraordinarily resonant and multilayered.
Mary Kelly has worked collaboratively with Abigail O'Brien, and their approach and concerns are to some extent carried over in her solo pieces. The careful, formally composed photographic images are one carry-over. Here, a series of images of utensils and preparation refers to the workaday rituals of eating. They are counterpointed by images of a baby at the breast, perhaps inviting us to compare and contrast. What comes across is the taming and refinement of primary animal instincts through their progressive incorporation in socially stratifies, sanctioned rituals.
There is a conceptual emphasis to Brendan Earley's projects, one apparently based on a resistance to and scepticism of technology. In an age when has never been easier to obtain high-quality photographic or video images, he resorts to an impromptu pinhole camera to record images of the kitchen of his old family home, just prior to its demolition.
Then, a series of grid-patterned portraits turns out to be photofit images of family members generated on the basis of the artist's descriptions. The point being, presumably, their, inaccuracy. There are disquieting hints of the diminution of the personal in the face of change driven by technology and materialism.
Mark Clare's casual drawings have a retro quality, recalling commercial illustration of the 1950s or 1960s. That sense of self-conscious stylishness, of a knowing modernity, comes across in concise linear images that hint at the limitations of their world view, They are like an exploration of the culture of leisure, an exploration shot through with an unease generated by an awareness of underlying emptiness.
Eurojet Futures 01 is at the RHA Gallagher (01-6612558) until July 1st
