The Arts:An exhibition of maps, both historic and imagined, reveals much about the way we view the world, writes Aidan Dunne.
In the mid 1990s, artist Mariele Neudecker asked nine friends to each draw a map of the world - from memory. She called the project Never Eat Shredded Wheat, for reasons that become obvious if you note the initial capital letters. As you might expect, results varied, but the images generally tended towards blobby approximations of the familiar Mercator projection view of the continents stretched along in a line, albeit with some strange absences and distortions. But then, as the Crawford's Gallery's current exhibition, (c)artography: map-making as art form, would have it, absences and distortions are at the heart of pretty much any cartographic project.
The show is based on the intriguing combination of examples of the work of, mostly, early map-makers, and of work by contemporary fine artists who draw on, question or otherwise address maps and mapping. Maps have, it is only fair to point out, come in for quite a clobbering in modern cultural theory, especially from post-colonial scholars.
To some extent the reasons are obvious: maps have been pre-eminently the instruments of exploitative colonists and empire builders, essential to their immediate aims and useful in consolidating their stamp on territory. Maps and the military have always been closely associated. Rather than merely providing information about a terrain, maps can be a way of possessing, redefining and dominating it.
In so doing, however, maps are also informative about the people who caused them to be made, their priorities and their motives. This is something reiterated time and again - though not gratuitously - in geographer William J Smyth's essay in the handsome publication accompanying the exhibition. He provides an engrossing historical synopsis of the development of map-making in Ireland, and incorporates a cautionary forewarning in the form of an excerpt from Eavan Boland's poem That the Science of Cartography is Limited, in which she peruses a map of Ireland and notes what she will not find there: a famine road that leads nowhere and signifies historical catastrophe and despair.
It's a good rhetorical flourish, and Murphy proceeds to itemise the causes served by maps made through centuries of colonial and imperial endeavour in Ireland. What makes it all the more intriguing, though, is the inclusion of one of the show's relatively few present-day examples of cartographic ingenuity, one that, in a sense, aims to put Boland's "line which says woodland and cries hunger" right there on the map. A project that took a year's work, not to mention drawing on prior labours, it is a colour-coded GIS map of the island showing "the population decline per civil parish in Ireland from 1841-1851". It is fascinating and remarkably informative, and is likely to incite the viewer to further study. It is also visually rich, and as effective a demonstration as one could wish for of the effectiveness of the visual representation of quantitative information. The perusal of reams of data would not be remotely as informative as a quick glance at this map.
EQUALLY DRAMATIC INeffect is a reproduction of a map derived from census statistics, graphically representing the distance people throughout the country travel to work. No surprises there, perhaps, but the huge, dense haloes of long distance commuters garlanding just a handful of urban centres makes for sobering viewing.
(c)artography includes a rich trawl of early maps. The earliest, from 1482, a colour woodcut copy of Ptolemy's original map of Britain and Ireland, is predictably skimpy in terms of information, but is aesthetically beautiful in its spare, graphic depiction of land and chalky blue sea. Move on from there, and one is quickly impressed with the skill and industry of the map-makers, motivation notwithstanding. Time after time the most pertinent question is, how on earth, with the available means, did they do it? To a large extent Murphy fills us in on how as well as why they did it.
Some of the most impressive documents could also be described as the most well-intentioned. He cites Thomas Larcom's four-inches-to-the-mile maps compiled for the commissioners devising a rail network for Ireland. Larcom was a lieutenant with the Royal Engineers, and Murphy sees him as "the greatest geographer of 19th-century Ireland."
Among others, he worked with Richard Griffith and JE Portlock, and the resulting maps brilliantly synthesise topographical and geological information. They also feature detailed rail networks that do not, in reality, exist, due not to the efforts of Todd Andrews but the fact that lines were not necessarily developed along the routes recommended by the commissioners.
The Map of the London Underground is a classic of schematic design. Its originator, Harry Beck, designed the first version of it in 1933. Much more recently, Paul Gambit contributed significantly to what we recognise as today's ubiquitous Tube maps.
In 1992, artist Simon Patterson produced a classic of contemporary art with The Great Bear, a version of the map of the London Underground with its station names replaced by various categories of celebrity, from philosophers to actors. He was, he has said, subverting the idea that maps can be read in a factual, uncritical way. Perhaps so, but whatever the reason, he produced a witty and oddly fascinating work that has inspired numerous examples of lists and categories as art. He was also, reputedly, pre-empted by Beck, who is said to have produced a cod version of his own map with the station names replaced by electronic terminology.
AMONG CONTEMPORARY IRISHartists, Kathy Prendergast has worked with maps to an unprecedented extent. Made in 1983, her series of Body Mapswatercolours, which chart the body of a young woman as a territory to be possessed and exploited, is a key work of its time, and stands as one of her best. Her City drawings, a group of which are also included in the show, take the opposite tack. In these small, intricate pieces, the vast, haphazard networks of city maps from around the globe are reduced to tiny, delicate organisms, some resembling baby heads, some plants.
The fine art strand of (c)artography includes a lively cross-section of map-related works, familiar and less familiar. Eaton O'Hare, Sean Helen, Tom Molloy, Brian Fay, Gary Farrell and Stephen Brands are among the Irish-based artists featured. Grayson Perry shows a good piece, an allegorical map of an Englishman in pastiche medieval style. Cornelia Parker, Patrick Ireland and Mona Hatoum are there, and Chris Kenny has a particularly nice, delicate, three-dimensional construction.
It is an odd feature of both exhibition and catalogue that no curator is cited, so we don't know who chose the work or on what basis, other than the obvious one of a relationship to maps. There are obvious absences including Jasper Johns (presumably too tall an order), Vija Celmins and, much nearer to home, David Lilburn, who has worked a great deal, and innovatively, with maps. But it is a very good show nonetheless.
• (c)artography: map-making as artform is at the Crawford Art Gallery, Emmet Place, Cork till Nov 10 Tel: 021-4907777853.
