VISUAL ARTS:THERE IS AN exceptional modesty of presence to Fergus Feehily's work in Strange Mountain( Makeshift), his exhibition at the Green on Red gallery. Not only is the work small in scale and minimally stated, but each piece seems to step reticently back from itself as though, in conversation, the artist were to make and then immediately withdraw a remark. A framed scrap of paper that forms part of one piece contains handwritten notes: they refer to an unnamed book and they are about doubt, writes Aidan Dunne
Many of the works appear to be partially obscured by screens of fabric or paper, but of course the covering is part of the work, not a means of hiding it. There's nothing contrived or false about this: Feehily is just very particular about what makes it into his work and what form it takes. In a way, it's a difficult exhibition to write about because one could quickly be led into the use of a vocabulary that makes it sound precious and pretentious, which is why it's worthwhile going to see the show and appreciating how carefully pitched and well-judged it is.
While, on the one hand, the work is sparse and understated, it is also, on the other, increasingly heterogeneous and inclusive, incorporating several kinds of found materials that seem likely to disrupt Feehily's penchant for refined precision. Found frames are a staple ingredient. Of course, the term "found", while indicating the element of chance, also allows choice, and a great deal of Feehily's methodology is about fine-tuning both choice and chance.
Apart from several kinds of frame, there are also fragments of fabric, photographs, a book jacket and various other kinds of printed paper, as well as an installation that looks very like a work-table, with several items spread across its surface. It would be rash to say what the work is about, but running through much of it is a sense of potentiality, a desire not to close things off and pin down meaning. The items on the tabletop all relate to researching, doing and making: press cuttings, photographs, twine, coils of wire, alphabet printing blocks, cut-out numerals. A German paperback lying on the table is about linking the development of human tribal societies to primate communities.
This feeling of theorising, ordering, organising, making things and making sense of things, is usually present in the work generally, though invariably in a cautious, tentative way.
Whatever one's initial impressions, Feehily's artistic tactics - of borrowing, concealing and fragmenting - are not designed to obscure or mystify but to indicate how difficult it is to see something, to frame a conceptual scheme. They demonstrate how it is necessary to allow a certain leeway and openness and, of course, doubt. The image concealed becomes, oddly, more enriching than the image seen and symbolically consumed. It's as though his work is a considered response to an era of excess, of relentless cultural bombardment. In the face of this, he seems to say, it's more than ever necessary to step back, to create a time and a space that allows room for quiet reflection and analysis.
For all of this, and its subtlety and conceptual rigour, it is certainly one of the best solo shows of the year.
ALTHOUGH THEY WORK in different ways, there is some common ground between Feehily and Liam O'Callaghan, a notably inventive and resourceful artist whose show, Made to Make Do, is showing at the Rubicon.
One of O'Callaghan's recurrent tactics is to take something fairly ordinary, ordinary to the point of invisibility - such as an eraser or an off-cut of wood - and by multiplying and concentrating it, transform it into something else entirely, something emblematic of ambition and folly, of grand plans and ignoble actualities, of the triumph of optimism over experience, of the role of improvisation in human affairs. He does this with deftness and humour, and often with a satirical edge.
The largest piece in the show, Untitled Work of Some Determination, has the air of being a site- specific improvisation. It consists of masses of wood off-cuts crammed face to face and spanning the gallery, wedged between opposite walls and tenuously propped by a couple of lengths of dowelling rod. In other words, O'Callaghan doesn't allow the structure to possess the cohesive self-assurance of a piece of minimalist sculpture, to project the illusion of seamless perfection. He insists on imperfection, making not only the nuts and bolts visible but also the desperate stratagems employed to hold things together. It's a contraption of rough-hewn, imperfect technology. Yet it also has a genuinely startling, gosh-is-that-for-real factor.
A series of Designs for Public Monuments that Won't Happen, ( the Dumb Series) comes across as an irreverent take on the whole business of public sculpture and, indeed, of aspects of contemporary art generally. They are photographic enlargements of miniature set-ups in the studio, in which workaday items, including biscuits, cardboard canisters, fluorescent lights and household paint, take on monumental status.
O'Callaghan's way of creating impromptu architectonic worlds recalls the work of the German artist, Thomas Scheibitz. This is not to say that it is derivative of Scheibitz, just that they share a certain outlook on making and picturing.
It's worth hanging around the gallery long enough, by the way, to catch the startling aural component of O'Callaghan's remarkable sculpture, Tales of the Inside-Out on Repeat.
AT THE Office of Public Works on St Stephen's Green, Lundbeck Art Initiative: Art Against Stigmais this year's annual exhibition of work by clients of the mental health services in the Dublin region. One of the striking things about this event is the way that standards advance year by year. The level of art- historical literacy would be impressive in any context, and reflects the vital role of the occupational therapists, but what is most important is the way that the practice of art enables and licenses the articulation of thoughts, feelings and aspirations on the part of the artists.
There is a great deal in the exhibition that is well worth seeing, including, to take a cross-section, fine landscapes by John Casey, Anthony Lynch, AF, and many others. Fionnuala Ni Gallcobhair's Colourscapeis a remarkable abstract composition, there is an exceptionally good urban view by Gemma Lawlor, and Marianne Wolf contributes an accomplished ceramic piece, bright with dark undertones. There are also lively pencil portraits by Darren Wren, an inventive tribute to Rory Gallagher by Karl Roche, a brilliant drawing by Darren Hughes and a terrific floral composition by SM.
Strange Mountain (Makeshift): Recent Work by Fergus Feehily, Green on Red Gallery, Dublin, until Nov 15; Made to Make Do: Recent Work by Liam O'Callaghan, Rubicon Gallery, Dublin, until Nov 15; Lundbeck Art Initiative: Art Against Stigma, Dublin Regional Exhibition, Office of Public Works, Nov 10-23
