An edited version of this piece appeared in the Winter edition of the Irish Arts Review.
Aideen Barry, the curator of the RDS Visual Arts Awards tell us that “What you're seeing is a cutting edge snapshot of what the future of Irish art is going to be.” A bold statement which could perhaps do without the “cutting edge”. It’s a snapshot – time will judge whether it’s old hat, emperor’s new clothes, or the real deal . Barry is a fine artist herself with an interest in the Gothic and the “uncanny”. Her work incorporates drawing, sculpture, and film and the show that she and her fellow judges have assembled provides a rich and entertaining blend of these media.
Inside the entrance of the RDS Concert Hall you encounter Sadhbh Mowlds’ startlingly life-like Eve (see image above). I had to move very close to ensure it wasn’t a person so well-wrought was the illusion. Duane Hansen could hardly have done better and I wager he never used his own hair to give the legs a little authentic hirsuteness. This striking, award-winning work sets the tone for a show that aside from one dull and gratuitously esoteric work (accompanied by an earnestly worthy blurb) is full of colour and technical verve. Orla Comerford’s prize-winning Oidhreacht is an innovative video depiction of her father, a woodworker, building a boat. The film is projected on to three large curved screens and the images move from abstract to figurative depending how far you stand from the screen. This provides the viewer with a taste of Comerford’s own visual impairment. It’s a technical tour-de-force, an aesthetically-pleasing encounter, and a meaningful expression of the artist’s psyche. Another arresting piece of video was Aisling Phelan’s Dual Reality. A triptych of screens delivered a well-scripted meditation on the gulf between our identity and our digital identity. The long-list of candidates for the awards, and indeed the awards themselves, were inclusive in terms of colour and our LGBGTQ community. However, there was a noticeable shortage of male contenders on both the long list and the short-list. It possibly reflects the dwindling number of men taking fine art as a subject – with a touch of the zeitgeist thrown in. (A recent Graphic Studio Dublin show featured 16 female members and nary a male one. When I queried this with the curator she replied “I’d say you weren’t a bit worried when the art world was dominated by males for centuries”. A comment that suggests her selection process may have tainted by an element of revenge for the sins of our fathers.) It was good to see that one of this beleaguered gender at least made it to the final 13 – he also represented the art of painting, somewhat neglected in our art colleges. Syzmon Minias’s small self-portraits in oil were full of character with echoes of Vuillard and Eugène Leroy. Michelle Malone’s striking tapestries of the Artane Industrial School, accompanied by video and interviews with those whose lives were touched by the abuse in these places was another moving work and a fine record of hard times.The main award, the RDS Taylor Art Award, went to Venus Patel for her film Eggshells. As a queer person of colour she has experienced abuse, including ‘egging’. The film employed the offending object in a series of colourful vignettes where the artist danced her troubles away. I was however concerned by the number of innocent eggs that were harmed in this exercise. I was entertained by being allowed sit on Sinead McCormick’s very serviceable raft Adrift and getting that islanded experience. And Myfanwy Frost-Jones alarming film that dealt with pollution in Kenmare Bay combined grim facts with distractingly gorgeous views of the South-West. The show, notwithstanding the many substantial issues it addressed, was highly entertaining and professionally presented so it’s a shame it didn’t enjoy a longer run.
