Present Tense »

• THIS is how to make an arts show

  May 1, 2008 @ 4:07 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  I was griping with someone earlier about how dry The View is – the only regular arts programme on RTE television, and not worth staying up for – and how BBC2′s Late Review has become of a caricature of itself. And I was reminded of how fresh and ambitious the BBC’s Culture Show can be, and specifically how this piece on skiffle music, by Mark Kermode, was one of the best packages I’ve seen on television over the last couple of years.

  Top moment: Kermode giving a piece to camera while playing double bass with his skiffle band.

  

• ‘Glass half full’ press release of the day

  January 31, 2008 @ 10:48 am | by Shane Hegarty

  This landed this morning:

  PRESS RELEASE

  FOUR – moving forward
  At the end of 2007, due to circumstances beyond our control FOUR lost its premises at 11 Burgh Quay, Dublin 2. Although this came as unfortunate news, FOUR none-the-less remains committed to continue with its programme for 2008.

  In the absence of a fixed gallery this presents the opportunity to form a discourse to contest the idea of an exhibition space. In 2008 we endeavour to implement the FOUR programme in the form of a publication, together with a series of off-site events and exhibitions, scheduled to take place throughout the year.

  That’s the spirit. And if you want to know their current whereabouts, Four’s website is here.

• London, yesterday

  November 21, 2007 @ 1:02 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  I was in London yesterday. (Spotted David Bellamy on the street. What a town!) Had a spare hour, so scuttled through the rain to Tate Britain to see the Turner Prize Retrospective, which features works from winners stretching back to 1984.

  Because it’s the Turner Prize, it sometimes simmers your blood, or leaves you baffled. Or just cold. I found myself unmoved by Antony Gormley’s Testing a World View and uncertain if Martin Creed’s on-off light in an empty room is worthwhile for no other reason than because it made me think. And Gilbert and George’s work looks so horribly rooted in the 80s.

  But there are some beautiful works on show. Highlights included Anish Kapoor’s mesmerising hanging blue “voids”. It was also a chance to see Damien Hirst’s iconic Mother and Child, Divided (above, in an earlier installation) – the split cow and calf that can’t fail to elicit some kind of response, be it disgust, sympathy, wonder or just plain old admiration at the beauty of the piece.

  Perhaps the most thrilling of all the works was Steve McQueen’s Deadpan, in which he recreates Buster Keaton’s famous “house falling around man” stunt, but with a straight face and several camera angles – plus it was the only work of art there that could have killed the artist.

• Possible sculptures: Bertie Ahern on a high horse; a visual representation of Michael Flatley’s ego…

  November 9, 2007 @ 5:01 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  

  Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth has a new sculpture. Model for a Hotel 2007 by German artist Thomas Schutte. What’s it all about Thomas? “I don’t know” he says. At least he has a nice explanation for its creation:

  It came about while I was drawing. It has hips, a waist, a torso. It was like a big man. So I thought, why not add a lobby?

  Why not, indeed.

  The fourth plinth was left empty because a cash row meant a planned statue never got put there. It turned out to be a wonderful accident, and since 1999 has housed temporary sculptures, including one of Alison Lapper, Rachel Whiteread’s Monument and (briefly) Jonny Wilkinson during the Rugby World Cup.

  It is such a simple, refreshing idea: a bare plinth on which sculptures by major artists can come and go. Why not one for Dublin (or Cork, Limerick, wherever), where artists can have a go at doing it justice, the public can decide whether they like it or not, and regardless of the outcome it’ll be gone after a while anyway to be replaced by another talking point. O’Connell St would be as good a place as any for it.

  It would be a perfect way for the public to engage with art: it would everyone something to talk about; cause some arguments; give us a chance to praise/complain about art; and (of course) give us all a chance to come up with new funny nicknames on a more regular basis.

  There have been duds on the Fourth Plinth, but it has become a welcome and malleable part of the London landscape. Why not a “fourth plinth” here?

• Up yours, art!

  October 9, 2007 @ 1:23 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  Because everyone’s looking at the crack in the Tate floor and wondering for, oh, the gazzilionth time, “is it art?” and “what is art?” and “thank god for silly art, it fills news pages”, it has meant that Banksy has been overshadowed for once.

  The Rude Lord, a portrait he bought for £2,000 and gave a single-fingered airbrushing too is expected to fetch a top price of £200,000 at auction. Then again, his prices have gone wacko over the past couple of years. Not to everyone’s delight, though. This July piece by the Guardian’s art critic gave him a thorough going over.

• The year’s most sensitive analogy

  September 19, 2007 @ 11:06 am | by Shane Hegarty

  I’d missed this when it first appeared in the Guardian the Saturday before last, but a piece on Turner Prize winners elicited this from Dublin’s new-best-friend (and 1994 winner) Antony Gormley:

  He dislikes the “gladiatorial” way in which artists are pitted one against another, and feels “embarrassed and guilty to have won – it’s like being a Holocaust survivor. In the moment of winning there is a sense the others have been diminished. I know artists who’ve been seriously knocked off their perches through disappointment.”

  How could being a Turner Prize winner not be “like being a Holocaust survivor”? Bravo, that man.

• Shattered

  September 13, 2007 @ 3:27 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  Interesting work from German artist Martin Klimas, who uses high speed photography to capture moments of surreal drama and emotion in shattering figurines.

  

  The Daily Telegraph’s arts blog includes a quote on the process:

  I drop the figurine from the same height in complete darkness while the lens of the camera is open. When the figurine hits the ground, the sound triggers the lights to go off for a fraction of a second. I do this procedure many times, or until I find the one frame that is just right. I keep just one such picture for every figurine. Every attempt yields a unique outcome, so I need to look for the one that best expresses a transformation of the figurine into a new form.

  (more…)

• This week’s big festival…

  August 29, 2007 @ 5:01 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  

  …is the Burning Man in the Nevada desert. (What else could it be?)

  No “posh washes”. No umbrella stalls. No sponsored stages. No clothes.

  Instead, there is a staggering level of imagination, a need for self-sufficiency (in water and food), and a “no spectators, only participants” ethic which encourages some incredible art. I was there in 1999, and it was the most mind-altering/expanding/boggling/melting festival I’ve been at. After 21 years, it faces annual accusations that it’s sold out, but this seems to be only from the perspective of the more rarified levels of Californian hippidom.

  Eight days long, it culminates in the burning of a 40ft sculpture of “the Man” (you may spot the subtle symbolism in that).

  Except that an “attention whore” arsonist has set it on fire four days early. Can’t imagine what he’d do if he saw Antony Gormley’s sculpture.

• Antony Gormley’s sculpture

  August 23, 2007 @ 9:30 am | by Shane Hegarty

  Antony Gormley has released an image of his proposed 48-metre high Dublin Docklands sculpture. He tells The Irish Times that it will be “like a charcoal drawing against the sky, changing as your position changes in relation to it. Up close you will see through it, in the distance it will cohere into a bodily image.”

  It’ll be two-thirds the height of Liberty Hall, so Dubliners had better like it…

  

• Dublin’s new sculpture: (insert witty nickname here)

  August 2, 2007 @ 9:22 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  You may have seen the announcement that Antony Gormley has been commissioned to create a sculpture that will be two-thirds the height of Liberty Hall, in the Docklands (actually in the Liffey, according to the Irish Times) and close to the Sean O’Casey bridge. What might it look like? (more…)