artfirstprimo in the contemporary world of art in Cork

Welcome back. On Wednesday 30th November I found myself in Cork, Southern Ireland at Crawford College of Art and Design for a lecture given by the curator Sean Lynch.  Lynch spoke about the exhibition he is curating at the nearby Crawford Art Gallery that looks at Irish art in the 70s and 80s. We were given an introduction to Sean Lynch by the ever effusive Trish Brennan director of Art at the Crawford College of Art and Design.

In a very informal style that is more a seminar than a lecture Lynch takes us through shows that he has been involved in, such as a show at the Camden Art Gallery, London and others that stirred his interest, such as a show in Santa Monica that reinstated the framework past false walls past exhibitions in the exhibition space in the Santa Monica gallery.  Both shows dwell on resonances of past shows re-imagined, layered and re-realised in their original spaces.

Lynch then revisited Joseph Beuys' work and visit to the Crawford in the 70s. At which point the talk is briefly interrupted by someone tying to seek the whereabouts of the owner of a silver Laguna.  However, the talk then moved on to the point where we are shown photographs of the proposed site of an Irish pavilion in Venice for the Bienniale. It was never built, so we view the resonances of the space the pavilion would have occupied through these photographs.

Lynch also spoke about the utilisation of cultural objects, illustrating this with episode of the so called Tau Crosses (possibly 6th or 13th century objects), which were removed from their places of origin (in Irish fields) to accompany contemporary art exhibitions from the 60s onwards.  Over-arching theme of Lynch's talk was that of resonances of works that were never made, and the controversy surrounding work that was made, but pilloried and even vandalised by the society at the time (70s), such as a large steel sculpture in Kinsale and an artist's nude self-portrait with an erection.

All these events were of course seen strictly from a contemporary and Irish perspective and thus did not mention the fact that art work has been pilloried and vandalised by members of society for at least the past 6 centuries and more. With iconoclasms occurring between 730 and 787, 814 and 842, and the many incidents that occurred in Wittenberg, Germany in 1517 that resulted in Reformation. Indeed protests against images remain with us today in the form of attacks on works of art in galleries, some of which have occurred as recently as in the last 5 years and the last 6 months in national institutions in the UK.

So with the talk now over you now join me in the Crawford Art Gallery viewing some of the pieces discussed by Sean Lynch in his talk earlier today, such as the Tau Cross incident, represented here in old newspaper cuttings, and the works by the artist Nigel Rolfe, including a video piece of the artist himself falling into a bog. It will take me some time to understand this piece. But unfortunately our time has unexpected run out due the rather early closing of the Crawford at 17:00, I am ushered in a somewhat uncouth fashion by an official that clearly does not enjoy his job and should be doing something else, but lacks the courage to do so. This together with the almost non-existant signage, making it difficult to locate part 2 of the exhibition, which was split over two floors, made for a quick and unsatisfying visit to this exhibition at the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork.