Reviews 1997
more Sunday Tribune (Dublin)
more Sunday Times (London)
More reviews as we get them.
Sunday Tribune (Dublin) July 20th 1997
!NV!S!B!L!T!ES
(RHA Gallagher Gallery)
The subtitle of the show is 'An
exhibition of gay, lesbian and
queer art' which suggests an
ambiguity of nomenclature and
allows other ambiguiies despite
the apparent forthrightness.
Such as, to take just the first
term: What is gay art? Art made
by artists who are gay or art that
deals with gay subject matter ?
Or art made by artists who are
gay that happens to address
gayness ? We must look to the
exhibits for answers.
MacDermott and MacCough
consult the rulebook and iterate
various definitions and
descriptions of gay individuals.
Tom of Finland meets Peter
Howsen in Andrew Fox's
pneumatic drawings. Veronica
Slater's Wardrobe paintings
treat what we would now see as
emblems of exaggerated
feminity, like a lavish floral
patterned, waisted, big-skirted
dress from the 1950's or 60's. In
a gestural painterly language
with quite different cultural
connotations James Dunbar
offers and ink-jet allegory. Michael
Beirne's tattered fabric "toros"
are particularly good. Christa
Zauner offhandely recasts body
parts, animating them with with crude
cartoon drawings of whimsically
concieved creatures. Mo White's
quizzical video presents us with
an unknowable other who
constantly seeks corroboration
of her own presence but whose
identity remains moot. But, as
Paul Rowley's video suggests,
identity may be a movable
feast, a matter of mood and
costume, a silhouette in the
show's title artwork, and
throughout the catalogue essays
and entries, designers N!all
Sweeney and Ed Sh!psey have
replaced the letter i with an
exclamation mark. It is a neat
graphic idea and it works in the
title. When it comes to a body of
text, though, it is intensely
irritating and militates against
comprehension. Invisibility is
replaced by obduracy.
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more Sunday Times (London)
................................................................................................
The reviewers raise issues in these reviews which are addressed explicity
in the
1997 catalogue essays, however they do not
seem to fully acknowledge this...
................................................................................................
More reviews as we get them.
Sunday Times (London) July 20th 1997
INVISIBILITIES
RHA Gallery, Dublin: until July 27th
Being queer doesn't mean you auto-
matically make queer art, so Out Art's
annual wrangle about how to make
one single show for Ireland's Pride
celebrations is always worth a look.
This year's attempt to avoid the perils
of the group show provokes an in-
teresting curatorial subtext about im-
age and appearances, which links
some otherwise radically different
practices, from the painterly corner-
boy antics of MacDermott and Mac-
Cough to Michael Beirne's elegant,
quite moving intallation.
A tasty exchange between Mo
White's slide projection and Paul
Rowley's video Pacific pitches an
interior domestic space where a
woman photographs her lover via
upfront mirror imagery, against
some freewheeling frames where drag
queens undercut straight womean, each
undercutting the other and gaining in
the process.
The same tight use of iternal di-
alogues between works allows Veron-
ica Slater's frock paintings to pick up
body-printing photowork by Christa
Zauner, and let both hit off James
Dunbar, before you turn a corner,
aee Beirne's gauzy body suits and
then spy strong nude drawings from
Andrew Fox.
What you most admire are the in-
ternal curatorial solutions - however
tight the intercutting here, the show
lacks power overall. Pride needs art-
ists, and needs an exhibition too:
whether those factors will ever be re-
solved through this format is becom
ing ever more debatable. MR
................................................................................................
more Sunday Tribune (Dublin)
................................................................................................
The reviewers raise issues in these reviews which are addressed explicity
in the
1997 catalogue essays, however they do not
seem to fully acknowledge this...
................................................................................................
More reviews as we get them.