What We Call Love Part 2

The "What We Call Love" exhibition at IMMA in Dublin is so large, and there is much to remember about it. I particularly liked this delicate piece by Louise Bourgeois. As I said previously, I am more familiar with her large-scale works, but the small works are just as powerful in their expression of intimacy. The embracing figures are hand sewn soft sculptures and this looks to be a hand blown glass enclosure, reminding one of a bell jar.

 Again in another small piece by Bourgeois, the embracing figures are surrounded by another material. This soft gauze can be seen as a cocoon-like protective enclosure.

I personally don't think any discussion of love can take place without a mention of John & Yoko, so I was pleased to see a few photos of them in a political section of the exhibition -- from the Montreal bed-in, their wedding at Gibraltar and a picture from The Acorn Project.

 There were Irish artists also included in the show. I have long admired the work of sculptor Dorothy Walker, so was delighted to see some of her work that I hadn't seen before. The Passion Bed, 1993, is a delicate piece made of steel wire and sandblasted wine glasses.

Here is a detail of it:

Garrett Phelan is another Irish artist whose work I am familiar with. I first met Garrett when he was working in Temple Bar Gallery & Studios at the time of my first solo exhibition, and have bumped into him a few times over the past 20 or so years. It was delightful to meet him again at the IMMA launch. Below is one of his pieces that were included in the show, New Faith Love Song. Unfortunately the other other piece, a gorgeous gold reliquary specially commissioned for this show is too new to find its image on the web, and the launch was too crowded for me to get a good photo of it!

I can't remember when or where I saw a whole exhibition of Rebecca Horn's complex machine installations (The Tate Modern or IMMA?) but I enjoyed seeing her work again. The photo of course cannot show the sound and movement in the piece -- the steel "arrow" tapping against one of the glass funnels, the guns moving until they randomly face each other perfectly and shoot liquid at each other.

IMMA touts this as its "most ambitious exhibition to date" and it most definitely is. I am only skimming the top of the barrel with my blog. The exhibition includes nearly 200 works of national and international importance and interest. In addition to the artists that I have highlighted there is also work by Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst, Nan Goldin, Marina Abramovich, Meret Oppenheim, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Jean Genet -- the list goes on. The exhibition continues to Feb 7 2016, see it if you can! Further information at imma.ie.

What We Call Love Part 1

The exhibition "What We Call Love" opened recently at IMMA in Dublin. I braved monsoon-like weather and had to leave my house at 4.30 to catch a bus that took two hours to get into the city during rush hour. But it was worth it. The show was huge and encompassed all media with work by modern masters and contemporary international and Irish artists. Certainly love provides a wide topic for interpretation and exposition. In the first room of the exhibition it was love at first sight -- this tiny carving on lime wood, "Couple" is by Picasso.

Also in the first room, it was my pleasure to walk around this bronze construction by Alberto Giacometti. It's a complicated piece with clues to its original molding, but impossible to see welds (could it have been cast in one piece?). There is a lovely painting by Max Ernst on the wall behind the sculpture.

I was surprised by this Dali diptych, as I have never seen images of it before. Other Dali paintings that I've seen live have always surprised me by being a lot smaller than I expect; in this respect I was quite surprised at how comparatively large this piece is!

In one of the rooms there were quite a number of works by Marcel Duchamp with which I was unfamiliar. There were four small-scale bronze and mixed media sculptures in enclosed plinth cases, but there were also a series of etchings on Japanese vellum that were exquisite. The etchings were all "drawings" that referenced old master works. The picture here unfortunately does no justice to the work, but I didn't want to exclude Duchamp from the vicarious experience of the exhibition.

Brancusi's "Kiss" is iconic to me -- I am sure an image of this appears in every art history book I have ever seen, so it was great to see the real sculpture.

I am more familiar with Louise Bourgeois' large scale works so it was lovely to see the intimate pieces that were included in this exhibition. The embracing figures in the middle of this beaded mandala are soft sculptures. I will include more images of her work in another post about this exhibition.

Dublinia - Viking Museum

It seems like a long time ago -- I think because it was such a gorgeous warm day and the weather has been like to a monsoon of late -- but it was only a couple of weekends ago that I went to see Dublinia Viking Museum at Christchurch Cathedral in Dublin. I had never visited this museum before and found the three floors of displays very enjoyable and educational. I had arrived shortly after the museum opened and I was sure glad of this as the place was jammed by time I was leaving at lunchtime!

I did the 96 step climb up St. Michael's Tower where there were great views of Dublin, including the outline of a Viking hut across the road from the museum.

Coming down from the tower I was delighted that one had to exit via the enclosed bridge over the road. It is such an elegant structure with stained glass windows letting lots of coloured light in that day.

Outside and in front of the cathedral is the chancery ruin. I imagine that the ground must have been considerably lower as that broken window structure was at my feet.

I have often walked by this series of pavement sculpture that gives an indication of the items found when the area was undergoing rebuilding. The building of the Dublin City civic offices was quite scandalous at the time as the archaeologists were in a beat-the-clock situation where they were only granted a very limited time to excavate the site.

The artist who created these works is Rachel Joynt, an Irish artist whose public work I have admired for some time.

National Museum of Ireland - Archaeology

In addition to visiting the Dead Zoo last week, we also dropped in to the National Gallery to give my visiting sister a chance to see the Sean Scully show, and then to show off the beautiful National Museum of Ireland - Archaeology building. The rotunda entrance is impressive.

My husband, sculptor James Hayes, has been recreating bronze bells using ancient techniques on the annual Umha Aois: Experimental Bronze Casting Symposium. So we took a closer look at the hand bells in the museum while we were there.

The double loop handles are intriguing.

The didactic says this bell is associated with St. Patrick, purely on the grounds of the inscription.

This is one of my husband's bronze bells; he cast it in Skibbereen this summer, where Umha Aois was held this year.

Visit to the Dead Zoo

My sister Yvonne, who is also an artist and owner of Yumart Gallery in Toronto (link on the sidebar) is visiting from Toronto. The other night, after a fondue meal at my place, we got into a discussion about museums. There was some dismay expressed over the reliance on computers and inter-activity to make museums more appealing to contemporary audiences. The perfect antidote to this was to visit some museums in Dublin the following day, starting with the Dead Zoo -- i.e. the Museum of Natural History.  The visitor is immediately charmed by gamboling shrubbery at the entrance to this museum in the heart of the city.

And then the visitor can be impressed by the skeletons of the prehistoric Giant Irish Elk (Megaloceros giganteus).

The jumbly display of stuffed animals and skeletons in the main hall is gorgeous in its variety. The museum is small and the architecture old. There is most definitely a musty odour but it is totally agreeable to the experience of this perfect example of a Victorian "cabinet" museum.

The display of primate skeletons is a clear Darwinian reminder of human development.

New drawing materials!

Over the past year or so I have been happily using watercolour pencils while doing sketches en plein air. A friend in Canada who was aware of these sketching forays asked if I had tried watercolour pens; I was curious as I had never heard of these before. When I was in Toronto in July and met this friend for coffee, I was delighted at her gift for me -- watercolour pens. Their nibs are actually brushes of varying thicknesses and they have a reservoir that you fill with water. They are perfect for outdoor sketching in conjunction with watercolour pencils.

As with most things, the watercolour pens take some practice as you must squeeze the reservoir gently for the water to flow into the brush-nib. Squeeze too hard and you get a blob of water where you didn't want it! This sketch is of the wild roses in our front yard. using pencil, watercolour pencils and watercolour pens.

On Sunday just past, I attended a calligraphy workshop in Ashford as part of Heritage Week. Another new implement of which I was previously unaware is the calligraphy pen. I have done calligraphy with metal pen nibs & holders and reed pens but had never come across this simple chiselled marker purpose-specific. The woman giving the workshop considered it a beginner's no mess-no fuss tool; beginner or not, I really liked using it!

Newgrange

Last week I was up at Brú na Boinne, near Drogheda, visiting Knowth and Newgrange prehistoric passage graves. They are magnificent neolithic sites, older than both the Great Pyramid at Giza and Stonehenge. At the entrance to Newgrange the tour guide pointed this megalith out as probably the most photographed stone in the world. He was probably right. The carving is quite beautiful and mysterious. There is one other tri-spiral carved on a stone at the end of the interior passage (no photos allowed inside).

As with the megalithic kerbstones at Knowth, I was completely fascinated by the Neolithic art from more than 5000 years ago.

There is no final agreement between archaeologists about whether the designs are scientific, religious or linguistic. It's anyone's guess as to what was going through the minds of the prehistoric makers.

Around the passage grave at Newgrange there is also a stone circle. The tour guide didn't say anything about it this time, nor do I fully remember from previous tours of the site, but I think the circle came later, so time-wise is comparable to Stonehenge and Avebury, which I have had the pleasure of visiting many years ago.

Some years ago the tour guide had implied that the placement of the sea-rolled grey stones and the white quartz that form the facade of Newgrange were entirely made up. This time the guide gave a plausible reason for the pattern, which would be quite startling to prehistoric viewers; the archaeologist Professor MJ O'Kelly had done numerous experiments on the patterns formed by fallen rocks before meticulously deciding each stone's placement on the facade.

Since I had been to the nearby site of Knowth earlier in the day and seen the jumble of sea rolled grey stones and white quartz (neither of which are local stone) surrounding the largest monument there, I could imagine O'Kelly's reconstruction rationale. Although the tour guide at Knowth suggested that the stones may be to form a path rather than a facade, I couldn't imagine walking on these lumps!

Knowth

Yesterday was the perfect day to explore Brú na Boinne - the passage grave monuments in the Boyne Valley, Co. Meath. I had last been to Newgrange and Knowth in 1997 and a lot has changed at Knowth especially. Nearly 20 years ago this site was still in a state of discovery -- maybe that is an understatement as I am sure there will always be something new to discover there -- but there were no didactics or guides, one just simply walked among the ruins looking. Though there is something magical about doing just that, the "cleaned-up" site allowed for better understanding of what one was looking at. So the view from the entrance of several tumuli overshadowed by the largest passage grave (bigger than Newgrange) begins the enchantment...

This is one of the smaller passage graves being singled out so that its structure is obvious: the opening to the passage is visible behind the entrance stone and kerbstones (megaliths) can be seen surrounding the mound.

I was most fascinated by the wonderful examples of Neolithic art! The huge kerbstones of the largest mound were all carved.

The drawings are all abstract and it is completely unknown whether they are a form of writing, religious symbolism or scientific/geographic symbolism.

The architecture of these mounds is so advanced: dry stone building which doesn't leak, corbelled roofs over cruciform passages and all covered by several tons of soil and rock which has lasted  for 5000 years... With this in mind, personally I tend to think of the drawings on the most advanced level possible: some kind of symbolism which blends science, geography and religion to have real meaning for the people who created these amazing structures.

The very exciting thing for me was to see the tool marks of design creation and to be able to run my fingers through the grooves of these prehistoric drawings.

Dublin culture!

A few weeks ago I spent the day in Dublin catching up on exhibitions that I wanted to see. At the National Gallery of Ireland, there is a new way of displaying a most beloved and delicate painting of FW Burton's. "Hellelil & Hildebrand, The Meeting on the Turret Stairs" is on view at the ESB Centre for the Study of Irish Art on Monday & Wednesday morning only, through a free, but timed, ticket (available at the information desk). The last time I had planned to see this painting the viewing box was closed, so armed with my timed ticket I was delighted at the almost private view.

At the NGI I also saw the Sean Scully exhibition in honour of his 70th birthday. It was great to see the large canvases, especially the multiple canvas "window" works. A room full of Scully's b&w photographs was a very pleasant surprise, as I also share his obsession with stone walls in Ireland.

It is always nice to pop into the nearby National Museum of Ireland. There was an exhibition on Brian Boru and the battle for Dublin. You learn something new every day! Also in the vicinity is the National Library of Ireland. On the recommendation of a visitor I went to see the very meaty WB Yeats exhibition. This was my first time in the NLI and I was surprised at the size of the exhibition space. Since the collection and displays were manuscript based, the lights were very dim. However, I don't think conservation was really the top priority as a single spotlight focused in the centre of this painting by Edmund Dulac of WB's wife George! I don't think the spotlight was good for the painting but I was also disappointed that it was displayed on the top shelf of a display case so that it was out of my viewing reach.

In the afternoon I went over to the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) specifically to see the Etel Adnan exhibition. I had read about Adnan a few months ago -- she is a 90 year old painter and poet who is only finally getting some recognition lately!

While at IMMA I also took the opportunity to see the Stan Douglas exhibition "Mise en Scene".

Airport Art

On my recent trip to the US and Canada, I welcomed the chance to spend some time with some airport art on arrival and departure!

At Chicago's O'Hare airport I was delighted to use this moving walkway, the installation of changing lights, "Sky's the Limit" by Michael Hayden, making it a great experience. I used this walkway on a previous visit to the US, but couldn't figure out where it had gotten to on my last visit. Turns out I wasn't flying United on my last visit and O'Hare is a big airport - this walkway is for traffic between two sections of United Airways terminal.

I had a few hours between flights so I was in no hurry, and enjoyed going back and forth on the moving walkway.

The first time I encountered this installation, I could hear Brian Eno music and thought it was part of the installation, but this time jazz was playing.

At Toronto's Pearson International Airport this Richard Serra sculpture, "Tilted Spheres", is another pleasant experience.

Again, I had a few hours to spare, waiting for my flight, so I got to engage with the acoustics -- sound is amplified so that people beyond the sculpture can hear what people within the sculpture are saying (or, as when walking under a bridge, barking...)