An Irish photographer found inspiration in the inferno that destroyed many landmark works of British art, writes Brian O'Connell.
'Fifty years of British Art lies in Ashes," proclaimed the Guardian headline on the morning of May 27th, 2004. Three days earlier, on the evening of May 24th, fire had broken out at the Momart storage warehouse in Leyton, east London.
By the time the fire had been extinguished, some of the most important British artworks of the last half century, worth an estimated €100 million, had been reduced to ashes. Some of the important works lost included Patrick Heron's Vertical Light and Gillian Ayres' huge scale canvas Altair.
An old blue wooden beach hut from Whitstable, which Tracey Emin sold to Charles Saatchi in 2000 for £75,000 entitled The Last Thing I Said To You Is Don't Leave Me Here was also destroyed, as well as Emin's notorious Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995, a tent embroidered with the names that gave the work its name.
Other artists tried desperately to retrieve fragments of their smouldering masterpieces. Christopher Redgrave, son of William Redgrave, whose major sculpture, The Event, was in the fire, manage to retrieve more than 30 out of 228 bronze figures, though cutting his hands badly in the process.
Describing the scene he said, "There was a smell of rotting food, rotting chips, rotting meat from one of the units Momart shared the building with . . . There were bits of glass hanging from the roof. I had to climb over steel girders. It looked like a twisted rollercoaster that had crashed."
While this artistic annihilation played itself out, in a cottage in east Clare, self-taught photographer Christy McNamara was packing an overnight bag. He'd just come off the phone to Sean Sexton, a well-known Irish collector based in London, who told him about the Momart fire earlier that day. Both agreed the scene might make for interesting images, and McNamara wasted little time in grabbing his 1950s Rolleiflex camera and heading for the airport.
"I wasn't really thinking at the time," says McNamara. "It was purely an instinctive thing. I didn't go with any expectation other than to witness that had happened. When I got there the police had sealed off the area. I went down and walked around and began taking images. Some of the artists I would have known their work quite well, and I think the scale and importance of the loss struck me straight away."
The resulting images make up an exhibition by McNamara, which is attracting much interest among the London art sect. The works comprise six large scale black and white images, measuring four foot by four foot.
"The images are of the structures, and other things such as burnt out cars, doors blown out and other parts of the devastating image," says McNamara. "I was aiming to capture the balance of the destruction and the images are an attempt by me to creatively frame my response to the site."
MCNAMARA IS QUICKLY earning a name for himself as an international photographer of note. In March this year, the prestigious Morrison Hotel Gallery on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles hosted a successful exhibition of his music images. His work has also attracted the interest of celebrity clients - Whoopi Goldberg recently bought one of his prints in New York, while at present he is framing an image for Brad Pitt, who was introduced to his work by a mutual friend.
Incredibly, given his soaring reputation abroad, McNamara has yet to host a major exhibition in Ireland.
"I think the problem with Christy," says Christie's international head of photography Philippe Garner, "is that he put a great deal of energy and focus into making pictures. He now has this incredible back catalogue and he needs to put some of the energy that went into making the images into making them better known. It's never easy to sell yourself."
Garner believes McNamara is one of Ireland's most underrated photographers. "I felt there was something genuine or worthwhile there. He has a strong instinctive talent, and I want to see him succeed and become appreciated by as wide an audience as possible. I mean I like to think I can appreciate the difference between a jobbing photographer and one who has some soul. To me Christy McNamara has a lot of soul!"
Art In Ashes runs until Sept at Avenue, 7-9 St James's Street, Mayfair, London.
Tel: 0044-2073212111. See www.christymcnamara.com