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OH, LET ME SEE YOUR BEAUTY WHEN WITNESSES ARE GONE!
Mark Clare
(Ireland),
Gordon Dalton (United
Kingdom), Julian Dashper
(New Zealand), Karen Henderson
(United Kingdom), Melvin
Moti (The
Netherlands), Vanessa O’Reilly
(Ireland), Alan Phelan
(Ireland)
Curated by Noel Kelly (Ireland)
February 22 – 16 March, 2007
You are kindly invited to attend the opening
of the exhibition on Thursday,
February 22 at 8 p.m.
You are kindly invited to attend the
lecture by Gordon Dalton entitled ‘The worst
years of our lives’ which will take place on February
21st at 7 pm at British Council,
Tivolska 30.
"Language contains the same traps for
everyone; the immense network of well-kept false paths."
-- Wittgenstein
The exhibition, ‘Oh, let me your beauty
when the witnesses are gone!’, brings together the work
of 7 international artists. Uniting both thematic and
conceptual approaches to exhibition, the work of each artist
explores notions of the inherent power of our feelings,
cognisance, intuition, and thinking. In addition, the
central ideas addressed by the included works act as
catalyst for questioning our current notions of beauty, as
perceived through sight, sound and thought.
The exhibition utilises a monochromatic
palette. The black and white starkness is offset by
specific moments of colour. Upon entry the initial work of
Karen Henderson provides a core aspect to the
negotiation of the exhibition. A screen blocks direct entry
to the body of the space. Moveable panels on the screen
provide for different viewpoints to be negotiated, allowing
each visitor to have a different possibility and vista upon
arrival.
To move forward into the exhibition the
audience are forced left into the work of Alan Phelan.
Phelan’s Lip Synch with Mel and Joe shimmers
beguilingly as if a watercolour in motion. The figure of a
seated person on the top deck of a Dublin bus listens on
earphones. The heavy accent and stilted language of this
figure makes it obvious that he is not a native English
speaker. The disjointed sentences are repetitions of
tabloid radio that have become an opportunity for the
practice of English. The lone figure repeats the inane
questions of the interviewer concerning ‘bi-polar psychosis’
as he attempts to adapt to his own new reality and face into
his own madness of migrant life.
Placed between Phelan and Moti, Mark Clare
attempts to keep balance on a small raised platform. The
artist as his own subject is clothed in pink silk female
pyjamas. The appropriated voice of Jørgen Leth places the
artist at the centre of a brief mockumentary. We are
presented with the artist as ‘Det Perfekte Menneske’, ‘The
Perfect Human’. Clare’s humorous investigation of his
role as a dominant heterosexual male takes the guise of a
serious anthropological treatise. The modern Dane is
replaced with an insecure artist who shares the same
obsessions with self and self-image that we create in order
to reach some kind of tentative perfection.
In the ‘The Black Room’ of Melvin
Moti a single camera pans a black plastered room adorned
with Pompeian painting. The slow movement of the camera
provides moments of darkness and light. The style is
familiar, as classical motifs appear that have been copied
through the ages. We hear an interview. The interviewee is
Desnos; his subject is Surrealist experiments into ‘lucid
dreaming’. Desnos contrives to expain and to speak his
dreams at will. His objective is a state of unfettered
freedom from socialized consciousness. Though, we slowly
come to realise that his coherency has become rambling. The
idealised Desnos, disembodied from his journey from Left
Bank salon to his final death in a recently liberated
Theresienstadt, has descended into the depths of his own
mind!
Gordon Dalton
has been ‘Born Under a Bad Sign’. The
most romantic of the artists on exhibition, Dalton never
fails to be disappointed that attempts at excellence are
underpinned by mediocrity and melancholia. The mundane,
potentially found, objects are placed in an absurdist and
falsified balance. They challenge us to negotiate our
thoughts on their beauty. Their simplicity confounds our
need for complex understanding.
A single icon of the modern age lies in a
museum like case. Future Call by Julian Dashper
objectifies the irritation and funnelled vision of modern
society. New Zealand based Dashper telephones at random
intervals. He exists eleven hours ahead of our present
time. We are unable to answer his call. We lose a moment
when we can talk to the future. Our encasement of the
method of communications removes our ability to listen to
our own future.
Vanessa O’Reilly is an observer of systems
that surround us. For the 20 days she has been amongst the
people of Ljubljana. As an ordinary citizen, she wandered
the streets, frequented bars, ate local produce, and
interacted with passers by. And yet, the temporary nature
of her stay retained her as an outsider. Potentially
unencumbered, the loner examined and now reacts; her sound
work portraying reactions to this experience of
changing
sequences of possibilities within modernity and openly
altering the traditional silence of the gallery space.
Noel Kelly hates being called a curator. He
is worried that nobody really knows what the term means
anymore.. He lives with his partner in Dublin, Ireland and
occupies his time with writing and preparing exhibitions
both in Ireland and abroad. His dog's name is Toby!
Part
of the text from a lecture by Gordon Dalton entitled
‘The worst years of our lives’:
There are too many artists. They are selfish,
arrogant and pompous. They are naively stupid, gullible and
corruptible. They have a mind full of other peoples’ ideas.
Their self-importance holds no bounds. They actually believe
there is a line between what they are and the institution.
They think they are outside of the establishment whilst
plotting to become part of it. Never trust an artist. They
will stab you in the back…
…There are too many curators. The old guard
recognised this and protected themselves by transforming
into a younger, hip gun slinging version. The strongest of
the new breed promoted themselves to generals, formulating
new ways of becoming the institution. They have the power
and the glory. They believe they are more creative than
artists but still the artists look up to them. The curators
scratch each others backs and give glossy lip service to the
artists. Never look a curator in the eye. They are a dark
empty pit of bitterness and resentment...
Gordon Dalton is an artist/curator and writer.
Project
supported by:
The
programme of Škuc Gallery is supported
by Ministry of
Culture of the Republic of Slovenia
and
Cultural Department of the City of
Ljubljana.
For
further information contact Alenka
Gregorič, artistic director of the Škuc
Gallery on +386 1 251 65 40,
galerija.skuc@guest.arnes.si.
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