Bill Griffin - the Oilman of Allihies

 

 

A slightly edited version of this profile appeared in the Sunday Times Culture magazine on 19 June 2016

The North Mon in Cork in the late Fifties was a fine breeding ground for hurlers but not for artists. Its robust and philistine regime did not encourage such airy notions. The young Bill Griffin had an aptitude for art but little outlet for his fledgling talents. When Griffin tried his hand at a few nude studies via two compliant cousins ("who were into art") his efforts were uncovered by a Brother correcting an English essay. Physical retribution followed as the skill of the drawing did not compensate for the flagrant inappropriateness of the subject matter.

Griffin grew up in Blarney Street in comfortable circumstances. His father was a dental mechanic with literary leanings who enjoyed an occasional pint with Frank O'Connor in Phil Moynihan's bar in Sunday's Well. His earliest encounter with art was seeing his father make little models from spare plaster. Like many artists he is mildly dyslexic and left school at 14 : "there's not a word in the English language I don't know how to spell a dozen different ways." Over the next few years he took a series of short-lived jobs while trying his hand at drawing and painting. He began mixing with real-live Cork artists such as Willie Harrington, John Burke and Maurice Desmond in Kealy's (a long-gone bohemian bar close to the old Examiner office). He showed one of his sketches ("a little drawing I was proud of") to the famously irascible Burke (then teaching in the Crawford College of Art). Burke tore the sketch into pieces in front of him saying: "don't give up the day job". Griffin didn't actually have a day job, having been sacked recently by Ford's, but discouraged he headed for London. Cork lads of his generation knew the route well: the Innisfallen to Fishguard and the train to Paddington.

His art aspirations caught up with him again in London. He was arrested for smoking marijuana and was incarcerated briefly in the cells of Marylebone Police station. There he bumped into Henrietta Moraes, muse and model to Lucien Freud and Francis Bacon, and later girl-friend of Maggie Hambling. She was in for burglary. They had a brief affair, or as Griffin puts it "I banged a tune out of her". She introduced him to the Colony Club and to Bacon and his set. Bacon sneered at his paint-splattered shoes telling him "you don't have to have paint on your shoes to be an artist". Griffin's ready wit didn't let him down as he responded "it does if it's your only pair." He found Bacon unfriendly but became particularly close to George Dyer, Bacon's ill-fated boyfriend. Dyer was a snappy dresser and he passed on clothes to the impecunious Griffin. "When I came home to Cork I was wearing Dyer's suit with a yellow shirt and pink tie". But life in London was hard, a spartan studio in Ladbroke Grove proved too expensive and survival became moot. He headed up to Yarmouth to work in the burgeoning off-shore oil drilling business. Art was pushed into the background as he found he had an aptitude for rig work: "I loved the physicality of it and I understood the technology better than the Yanks."

Oil exploration began off Kinsale in the early Seventies and Marathon Petroleum was looking for labour locally. Griffin was a step ahead of the posse. The legendary tool pusher Gerry Gunther hired him as a roughneck, based on his brief Yarmouth experience.The oil business, like the IT business today, is a true meritocracy and if you're good you'll thrive. Griffin quickly moved from roughneck to derrickman, from derrickman to assistant driller, and then to driller. He developed a particular expertise in directional drilling, whereby the suppleness of the drill string is exploited to enable you to drill almost horizontally as well as vertically. This arcane skill took him all over the world - initially working for American companies but eventually he bought two oil rigs and worked for himself. A downturn in oil prices killed off this business and he quickly discarded his overalls and donned a business suit - travelling the world as an oil consultant. He ended up in Iraq working with the Irish company Bula Resources on the Oil for Food scheme.

On his 50th birthday he decided to quit. In Iraq he had witnessed at first hand the corruption involved in the oil business and the suffering and death that resulted amongst the ordinary people. "I suddenly saw the kind of industry I was in and I didn't like it." He resolved to return to Cork and have a go at the art thing.

His old Kealy's friends Harrington and Desmond were supportive. "Willie (Harrington) was by far the most sympathetic" and "Maurice (Desmond) helped me sell paintings." He took no art classes but just rolled up his sleeves and started painting. He literally rolled up his sleeves because after some initial dabbling with paintbrushes he decided he would paint exclusively with his fingers - "ten digits yearning for expression". It's not a technique that's common in the art world. "It just became easier for me" he explains, "I can use ten different colours at the same time if I feel like it". His first break was in a group show in Saint Fin Barre's Cathedral - where the Dean Michael Jackson (now C.I. Archbishop of Dublin) became an early supporter. He was spotted there by John P. Quinlan of the Vangard Gallery. Quinlan gave Griffin his first opportunity by offering him a one man show. Quinlan explains: "I did so because I liked his story and wanted to give him a break". Griffin remains grateful: "to this day I appreciate what John did for me".

He then made a fortuitous trip to Allihies. His brother has a large house there and he came down to paint for a week. That was nine years ago and he's still there. He met a local teacher, Deirdre Ni Dhonnchadha, and they both liked what they saw. "I think I landed on my feet" he says with a smile. She's also "a virtuoso tin whistle player" he informs me proudly. Ni Dhonnchadha is the niece of the legendary fiddle player Denis Murphy, Sliabh Luachra royalty.

Griffin is burly, he's bearded, he's bushy-haired, he's wildly unkempt, and he's extravagant in word and gesture. What characterises him most is his unwavering good humour and his infectious enthusiasm for life in general and the arts in particular. His role in Allihies is far more than that of another artist plying his trade. He seems to function as a kind pf power station for the arts in the parish. He organises the annual pantomime, he writes and performs one man plays (which he tours abroad), he organises exhibitions for himself and other artists in the Copper Mine Museum Gallery and he generally adds to the gaiety of nations. At present he is involved with Ni Dhonnchadha in running the annual Michael Dwyer Festival in honour of the renowned tin whistle player who lived locally.

Coming to art by an unconventional route and not caring a lot about the niceties of technique and compositional decorum, Griffin is often described as an outsider artist - or even by some as a naive artist in the manner of the Tory Island school. While Griffin doesn't quite bridle at this suggestion, he is quick to dismiss it. "I think my work is very sophisticated". He featured in Gemma Tipton's exhibition of outsider art in the Crawford a few years ago. "It was me she picked as her anchor tenant". He is not short of venues for his work and when he's not showing at his local Copper Mine Gallery has shown at the Triskel, the Vangard, and the Crawford in Cork, and at the Wexford Opera Festival. He sells well, his current show sold 13 pieces on the opening night. He bats aside all attempts at interpretation of his painting. He sees these ostensibly representational works as pure colour exercises. "In essence if you turn them upside down they will work as abstract paintings"."It's all about getting colour on the canvas". I point out similarities to the work of James Ensor but he says he's never heard of him.

For his current show Griffin tells me that he is "using the whole village as a gallery". The 60 odd paintings are on display at the Copper Mine Gallery, O'Neill's pub up the road, and a disused schoolhouse nearby. Wild and scenic Allihies is worth a visit at any time of the year but if you get down there in the next few weeks you will have the added pleasure of entering the colourful world of the Oil Man of Allihies.

The Copper Mine Museum Gallery

Allihies, Co. Cork

Mon-Sun: 10am-4.30pm

Tel.: 027 73218

John P. O'Sullivan

 

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Nothing on Earth by Conor O'Callaghan

A slightly edited version of this review appeared in the Sunday Times Culture magazine on 29 May 2016

If I were an idle billionaire I'd occupy myself by suing the blurb writers of Ireland under the trade descriptions law. There are serial offenders out there such as Colm Tóibín and Joseph O'Connor but this careless puffery has reached epidemic proportions amongst well-known writers in our incestuous literary world. Whatever happened to "truth is beauty"? The first line on the front cover of this book is a puff by Donal Ryan, Conor O'Callaghan's stable companion at Random House: "Strange, beautiful and quietly terrifying" it advises us. Now I don't claim to know Donal Ryan but if he finds this book terrifying he must have led a very sheltered life. If he finds it beautiful then truly beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And as for strange, I can only concur.

This is a first novel by O'Callaghan who is a poet and academic - creative writing is one of his areas of expertise. He has a few poetry collections under his belt and a contribution to that tedious debate about Roy Keane: "Red Mist: Roy Keane and the Irish World Cup Blues: A Fan's Story".

His book opens with a dire warning from Leviticus about the dangers of sex during menstruation. Now there is sex in the novel, and indeed menstruation, but the link between them and any subsequent dark consequences is extremely tenuous. (I should point out that this review is full of spoilers.) Perhaps we shouldn't be taking the quote too literally but unfortunately it prefigures the book as a whole which seems like a patch-work quilt of non sequiturs.

The action is divided between the interior monologue of a sexually shifty priest, who could be an unreliable narrator, and descriptions of the lives of four characters uneasily residing in a house on a ghost estate near a small town. The only character to come alive is the priest so there is a basic problem about caring too much about the ultimate fate of the four estate residents: a couple with an almost silent daughter and the wife's sister. The sister, Martina, seems ripe for diversion but this leads nowhere except for a few jousts with the night watchman. Apart from the two discreetly written sexual encounters most of the action seems desultory. There's a lot of sunbathing - that rarest of Irish activities. We don't get to know the characters so that as they disappear one by one we are benignly indifferent. There's no attempt to justify their disappearance with prior intimations - either from within or without. One moment they are part of the action, the next they are not. And the sun bathing continues. The disappeared are never discovered and we are offered no clue as to their fates. There are hints of dark doings: doors opening, taps flowing, mysterious writing and unexplained noises. We must use our imagination I suppose but we are never engaged enough to bother. The priest seems to be shifty but innocent of any wrong-doing. His interior life is occasionally given to sexual musings, suggesting he is imperfectly adjusted to a life of celibacy. However, his interactions with the Gardai seem unlikely and the dialogue has a false ring "You run off and process some parking tickets".

At times the author's attempts to suggest the mysterious is plain confusing. If I were teaching creative writing I would use page 21 as an example of gratuitous obfuscation:

"The girl's mother was not 'Helen', but Helen will have to do for now. She did have a real name. It was, once, a matter of public record. What was it her real name? Nobody seems sure any more. There were even moments, towards the end, when Helen wasn't entirely certain herself."

O'Callaghan can certainly write but I am not sure he can tell a story. There is a hole in the heart of his narrative. There are promising dabs of colour, a pub scene, a grisly (and gristly) dinner party, a feckless landlord, a subtle description of oral sex - but in general nothing much happens and then the characters disappear. And the priest sweats on.

Doubleday Ireland

Pages 175

RRP: €16.99

John P. O'Sullivan

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Cymbeline at the RSC

 

I do enjoy my occasional visits to Stratford-on-Avon - a town dedicated to Shakespeare and tourism, with some decent restaurants (especially the Scullery) amidst the twee shops. It's great for strolling around with interesting buildings, some nice walks along the Avon, and along the canals where there's plenty of barge activity. And of course each visit must be build around an RSC production. This time it was Cymbeline, a play I had never seen performed before. The only bit I know is the famous lament for Innogen: "Fear no more the heat o' the sun ..." - often recited at funerals. I remember Hilton Edwards declaiming it at the funeral of Micheál Mac Liammóir. Perusing the cast list beforehand I see that Cymbeline (the King of ancient Briton) is played by a woman. Also, one of his long lost sons, is also played by a woman. Ho, hum. Now Cymbeline is one of these slightly annoying plays by Shakespeare where the audience must work hard on suspending their disbelief as one of the characters adopts a disguise as a member of the opposite sex - in this case Innogen, the main female character. Twelfth Night has a similar scenario. It's quite clear to all of us that it's the same person but not of course to the characters in the play. So adding to this confusion by changing Kings to Queens and sons to daughters is compounding Shakespeare's confusion. Also, a large proportion of the cast are black which seems historically dubious if politically correct. As I'm on the subject of appearances, the actor playing Posthumus (Innogen's beloved) is small and wimpy while the aspiring and despised lover Cloten is tall, imposing and far better looking. Open your eyes girl.

But these are all superficial criticisms, the production generally is more like a pantomime than a play. The language gets lost, often literally, as the director Melly Still introduces French, Italian and even Latin dialogue - projecting the English version on the walls of the set. Still is a designer by trade, and she's accompanied by Anna Fleischle another designer so guess what - there's an emphasis on design elements and a deeply eccentric assortment of costumes: tutus, caveman outfits, sharp suits etc. Shakespeare should be all about the language but it gets buried amidst the alarums, excursions and pyrotechnics - smoke, streamers and percussion. The story, such as it is, gets lost along with the language so we settle back and enjoy the colour, the music and the movement. There is one beautiful, lyrical interlude where the lament for Innogen is accompanied by sweetly apposite music. Otherwise it's fun and spectacle but hardly what I wanted from an RSC production. Two stars.

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Mind Your Metaphors Crawley

The Irish Times special on the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death last Saturday was a celebration devoutly to be wished. However, the hideously inappropriate metaphor employed by Peter Crawley about Shakespeare's contribution to our vernacular ("flowing as usefully as fluoride through the water supply") struck a bum note. Most European countries including Germany, Sweden and Denmark ban fluoride in water because of its health risks. Shakespeare's language enriches and invigorates our discourse without any attendant perils.


 

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Review of: John Behan - The Bull of Sheriff Street

An edited version of this review appeared in the Sunday Times Culture magazine on the 10 April 2016

Anyone seeking prurient details of bohemian antics a la Francis Bacon or Ted Hughes will be disappointed by this short biography of the sculptor John Behan. The discretion about his personal life is so absolute that we are not even told the name of his first wife. A footnote tells us that "the spouse of John Behan wishes not to have her name appear in this book" - a restriction that draws unnecessary attention to a banal fact. It's well known he was married to the artist Constance Short so why bother omitting it. Frazier undertook the book as a way of helping Behan deal with the death of his partner Emer McHale in 2012. He describes it as "a work of recuperation" in which Behan's friends "would get a nod to help out". So it would be churlish to chide it for being no more than it sets out to be - an entertaining tribute to the genial artist. However, along the way it succeeds in providing a fascinating insight into the politics of Irish art during a fraught and transformative period.

Although many would associate Behan with Dublin, and particularly the Project Arts Centre, he has lived in Galway since 1980. He made a lasting mark on the cultural life of the capitol in a number of ways before he moved west. The scion of a corner shop on Sheriff Street, he left school at 15 to serve a seven year apprenticeship as a metal worker. Playing with metal stirred some artistic impulse and he enrolled in night classes at NCAD in 1957. In 1960 a bronze bull of his was accepted by the Irish Exhibition of Living Art (IELA) and his career was on its way. The critic James White admired its "simple and witty conception". Subsequently he went to London and later Birmingham to work. The money he earned through working seven days a week meant that he could return to Ireland and pursue the artistic life. He never returned to structured employment. While in London he encountered the work of artists such as Henry Moore, David Smith, Elizabeth Frink and Michael Ayrton. These were influences that were to play a significant role in his evolution as an artist. He was particularly taken with the methodology of David Smith which showed him that being a metal worker was "an avant-garde advantage".

By far the most interesting aspect of the book is its account of the art politics of the 60s where the indifference of the Arts Council, and the cosy restrictiveness of the RHA and the IELA led to frustrated outsiders such Behan and Michael Kane having to find their own way of gaining the public's attention. Behan was part of a loose movement that included Kane, Brian Bourke and Charlie Cullen. They were working-class lads who felt excluded by an art establishment in general and the Arts Council in particular. That organisation was dominated by the architect Michael Scott and its director the colourful Fr. Donal O'Sullivan. The latter with his shot silk waistcoat and his personal wine cellar comes in for particular criticism. When he wasn't sharing a mistress with Graham Greene he was presiding over the Arts Council's buying policy which favoured the ethereal compositions of Louis le Brocquy and the decorative abstraction of Pat Scott (who was employed by Michael Scott at the time) rather than the rough, expressive figuration of these uncouth boys. The critic Brian Fallon described its policy as "arbitrary and exclusive to the point of cliqueishness", and excessively skewed in favour of abstract art "because it is abstract".

Behan was a prime mover in a number of initiatives to redress the perceived injustices suffered by him and his fellow outsiders. He was involved in the creation of the Project Arts Centre in 1967 and was the first artist to exhibit there - a collection of lithographs. He was also a major figure in the Independent Artists group which instigated its own annual exhibition as a reaction to the hegemony of the Protestant matrons who dominated the IELA - formidable figures such as Evie Hone, Mainie Jellet, Anne Yeats, and Norah McGuinness. One of Behan's most significant contributions to Irish art was his creation of the Dublin Art Foundry in 1970. Before this initiative Irish sculptors had to send large work to England to be cast. This often took many months as they waited in line behind Moore, Ayrton and the other big names of that era. Behan initially pitched the idea to the Arts Council but the elegant Father O'Sullivan who had "a hatred of sculpture" rejected his plans. Behan carried on anyway and raised the necessary money. His legacy is still with us today.

His engagement with the art establishment and his energy and enthusiasm for more inclusive and accessible art bore fruit in 1973 when the old establishment dominated Arts Council was disbanded and a new more democratic one was constituted with him as a member. He was able to put into practice his belief that art was for the people and not just for the few. His ascent from outsider to being a member of the new establishment was confirmed in 1978 when he was one of the first group of artists elected into Aosdána. Following the breakup of his marriage in 1980 to the coy Constance he moved to Galway - stepping back from art politics to focus on his work. Anyone interested in Irish art and our cultural history, will find much to admire in this doughty character and much to interest them in this generously illustrated and handsome book.

The Lilliput Press

Pages: 152

RRP: €25

 

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