This year the Claremorris Open Exhibition, the main annual open submission show west of the Shannon, had a major rethink. Finding a suitable venue has always been a problem. Through sheer hard labour, the Town Hall has usually been modified to do the job but, despite the best efforts of all concerned, the setting had an improvisatory air. In an imaginative bid to transcend this limitation, prospective exhibitors were this year invited to submit proposals for 30 specific sites throughout the town. These were places like shop windows, the entrance to the Supervalu supermarket, a prominent gable wall or a small wall cabinet in a public house. It seemed, even at the time the scheme was mooted, hugely ambitious. In the event, the exhibition is, with some notable exceptions, disappointing. But this is not entirely the fault of the artists. Every artist and arts administrator knows that preparing a site- specific work is a costly business in terms of time, effort and probably money as well. So the show was asking a lot of its potential exhibitors.
Why invest a significant amount of time in a work intended for a specific site if there's a fair chance it will never even be realised there? It's a question that requires some thought on the part of the organisers. In many cases the works have no special relationship with their surroundings. This is perfectly okay, but perhaps it makes the case for the provision of an additional, more conventional venue as well. Organisers and adjudicators express surprise and disappointment at the relatively few paintings in the submission but, frankly, the elaborate brief did read like a disincentive to painters. In this regard it's ironic that what is probably the best piece in the show is a beautiful, substantial painting, by John Noel Smith, that hangs in the original venue, the Town Hall. It's approached via another fine piece, Aine Phillips's White Passage, a white fabric tunnel that diminishes in size as you work you way along it. Simple but very effective. Other highlights include Anne Seagrave's shop window installation, an oblique commentary on the role of women in botany in Ireland.
The centrepiece of Allie Kay's Invisible Man is a clear plastic mac and a suitcase, a striking symbol of the flight from the land and emigration. Amanda Ralph's gable painting I Dreamt That I was Naked and Everyone Could See Me is a great idea, shakily presented. Joe MaGill's snappy visual pun, Year in-Year Out, is a broken hourglass on an enormous heap of sand. Betty Newman Maguire's Fireplace is an ingenious meditation on the role of the hearth in the home. There are in addition pieces that seem like good ideas but need further development or elaboration or different presentation. Work sited in the windows of shops or on open sites is competing with the theatre of the streets, and a lot of what's on view fares badly in terms of that context.
There is the distinct impression that of the considerable resources that went into the project, not enough went into the actual physical fabric of the works themselves - which is not to underestimate the prodigious logistical effort of organisation. The revamp is an audacious, promising idea, one that needs refinement but should, let's hope, find the right balance next year.
In its 14-year history, Sculpture in Context has found a home in several locations, notably Fernhill Gardens in Sandyford, where it began. This year, it is in Kilmainham Gaol, a place so steeped in history and with such a heavy, pervasive atmosphere of its own that it makes at once an inviting and a very daunting venue for an exhibition. Most of the work is sited on the ground floor of the cell block, and in many of the narrow cells on that floor. It, too, is a site-specific show, in that the artists visited the gaol in April and then developed their ideas. There are many references to escape, flight and freedom, as in Paul Gregg's Farewell, which consists of an enormous balloon, with gondola attached, that soars above the main space, or Laurent Mellet's winged Icarus - someone had to do it. Maeve Sookram creates a terrific image by placing a pair of giant ceramic butterflies on the wall of a cell. Kathy Taylor envisages an inner voyage, with a boat suspended high in a cell.
Similarly, Noel Scullion's Headscape, a head painted as though it is the night sky, evokes the limitless spaces of an inner world. Rowan Gillespie's Ambition is a figure clambering up its own chain. Images of confinement are also popular. Fish swim in Andrew Clancy's polished copper Mine. Jonathan Kavanagh's Untitled is, according to the catalogue, a confined "live rat", but if so it was keeping out of sight. In Remco de Fouw's clever Double Vision we see ourselves in a full-length mirror that fills a cell door, with just a spyhole located at eye level. Orla De Bri's figures embody different kinds of confinement, as do Cecilia Moore's cages. Slates are heaped on a prone, naked figure in Fergus Byrne's Breath. The end result of the same artist's Religious Occupation, a performance piece in which a cell was lined with gold leaf and completely transformed, is stunning, and is actually a remarkable memorial to those who were incarcerated in the prison. It's a highlight in what is a pretty strong show, one that by itself makes a visit worthwhile.
COE 98 continues until September 30th. Sculpture in Context continues until October 1st.
