Sir, - There must be a department in RTE where its commentators are trained to miss the point. First we had Bryan Dobson missing the point on the Solstice, now Joe Mullholland (Opinion, January 7th) misses the point on RTE's coverage of the arts. RTE may well make or commission documentaries on the arts, but it does not document.
In the visual arts, there has been a revolution in this country in the public art and sculpture area due to the introduction of the 1 per cent scheme by the Office of Public Works. No small town or city in Ireland has been unaffected by this policy yet RTE's coverage usually consists of a derogatory mention on Nationwide. No in-depth analysis of what is happening through the erection of public sculpture has been undertaken and in the words of Alice Maher in this newspaper, "huge efforts are made [by RTE] to explain it [Contemporary Art] away rather than elucidate its existence."
In 1997, Kathy Prendergast was awarded the Premio 2000 Prize at the Venice Biennale, a festival of visual arts the Irish Government had avoided like the plague for many years. This award, one of the most prestigious in the world, went unnoticed by RTE. Her recent exhibition, still running at IMMA, was briefly mentioned on Cursai Ealaine, but no in-depth documentary on Kathy has been shown.
Kathy is one of the many Irish artists working in London, whose work features in an exhibition entitled "0044" curated by Peter Murray, shown in the US, and now going on show in Cork. I have seen nothing on RTE about these artists' working circumstances or about the exhibition itself Love it or hate it, the annual Limerick Exhibition of Visual Art known as EVA now represents a platform for national and international artists like no other exhibition on the island of Ireland. It nevertheless continues to confront expectations and, more importantly, situates itself amongst the shops and businesses of the City of Limerick, in and outside of the gallery space. It should and often does raise debate about the nature of art. It is made for a fly-on-the-wall documentary yet RTE passes it to the ubiquitous Nationwide which searches for the local sneer.
There has been a further revolution in artist politics in this country since the early 1980s through the creation of the Association of Artists in Ireland and the Sculptor's Society of Ireland. These two organisations protect and uphold the rights of artists where, literally, no rights existed in the past. No-one in RTE has seen fit to document this change and interview the people who have altered the circumstances of artists' conditions in Ireland and brought them not only in line with Europe but also sometimes ahead of our equals.
I am sure that the above list could be added to by my contemporaries and is limited in addressing only a single discipline. Many of the above are funded at an extraordinary level by the Arts Council (EVA got £105,000 last year) which should be a good enough reason to get the cameras in. Many of the above involve direct contact with or access by the public and that is another good reason to document.
Finally, I was bemused by RTE as its latest contribution to the visual arts left our screens last week. In a series of five short programmes on painters, the reputations of Hone, Yeats, Leech, Tuohy, and Keating were diminished at every opportunity. Fortunately, all of these artists are now dead so they did not have to listen to this derision. Also dead is Francis Bacon, whom Joe Mullholland tells us is the subject of an upcoming documentary on RTE.
RTE has a moral responsibility to document the living as well as the dead. - Yours, etc.,
Samuel Walsh, (Aosdana), Springfield, Cloonlara, Co Clare.