Up up and art
The GPA exhibition, by Paddy Agnew
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"What's this supposed to mean, Mister. I suppose it's about the IRA, is it?"
"Don't be stupid, Mick, how could it be about the IRA?"
The two teenagers might have been puzzled by Mary O'Connor's installaation, but they certainly were not bored by it. The instructions to take a black or white paper heart and to go into the mysterious looking black or white entrance to theywhat were intriguing. Once inside the large morgue cum crypt cum three dimensional chess game, the signs forbidding one to cross a boldly marked red line added mystery to the experience. But once the redl.i:"~':-"""T)S on the wall had been pushed, ~,'".. sickening fun and frightening garrres really began . . . and the teenagers got quite a fright. Now if you want to know what happens when you press the buttons, well you will have to go and find out for yourself, because that is really the point of the exercise.
This is the second year of the Guinness Peat Aviation three year programme of awards for the visual arts. This scheme has two main objecctives: "to encourage and give practical assistance to young artists working in Ireland, and to recognise outstanding individual contributions to the addvancement of the arts." Thus we have the present exhibition at the Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick, curiously entiitled the GPA Aviation Awards for Emerging Artists.
As with any group show, the GPA one is so diverse and involves so much different use of different media that it is very difficult to understand exacctly how all the works came to be in the same space at the same time. The exhibition features watercolours, oil paintings, pencil drawings, sculptures in limestone, steel, stone, wood, ceraamic, an installation, tape, photographs - in short a general hotch potch.
Exhibits which appealed to Magill included the stark geometry of Paul O'Keefe's steel constructions, the warm rural feel about Christopher Keeney's ceramic sculpted figures, Michael Cullen's rough and ready evocation of a hot, perhaps Medittteranean landscape in "Tourist I" and Mary O'Connor's consistently bizarre blend of altar shapes and deadly games. The work of the above, and doubtless of others too, is well worthy of an exhibition. But there is nonetheless a disappointingly tame feel to the overall impact of the show.
The absence of any performance piece, only one installation, only two photographic exhibits and no photoorealist work combine to make one wonder if this exhibition is truly reppresentative of emerging Irish art. It feels more like an exhibition of young or younger Irish artists specially pickked for the over-4Os - nearly all good, clean, harmless, easily absorbable stuff. With so much placidity, you could almost be grateful for Mary O'Connor's violent red buttons, well almost.
On a final note: if you are of the school which feels that sculpted works are there to be touched, caressed, kicked, licked or even sat upon, be warned. Marjorie Cunningham's ceraamic, raku and elm wood sculpture is a lovely pleasing shape, with a strong Celtic feel about it. But don't try sitting on it, for it is none too steady.