Aosdána's inconsistent approach to controversy

A difference of opinion between Louise Donlon and Mannix Flynn became a badly handled affair, argues MICHAEL HARDING

THE ROW started a year ago, in the Dunamaise Arts Centre in Portlaoise. Mannix Flynn was putting up his artwork, and the director of the centre, Louise Donlon, told him to stop. She said she didn’t want his work in the foyer, where children could read sexually explicit phrases about oral and anal rape. She said it would have to be moved upstairs to the gallery, so that parents would have a choice of preventing their children seeing it.

Not the right thing to say to Mannix Flynn, a champion of child protection who sees it as imperative that artwork around child abuse be seen by everyone.

He said it couldn’t go upstairs. He said it was too late to change his installation. But she put her foot down. So he took up his art and went home, and in the end nobody in Portlaoise saw his work. Then Flynn said Donlon was censoring his work. He called for her resignation. But she said she was only following best practice, regarding the welfare of children.

Fintan O’Toole wrote about the debacle, saying it was a pity the show wasn’t put up; that more ought to be done by theatres and arts centres to engage the public with the issues of child abuse. Kevin Kavanagh, a noted curator, who regularly works with Flynn, said he agreed with the artist, and that Donlon was in the wrong.

One would have hoped that a third party might have stepped in at that stage, and brought the two sides together and repaired the damage. Flynn is an important artist and advocate for victims of institutional abuse. Donlon is an important facilitator at the cutting edge of where the public engages with art – the arts centre. The Arts Council or Aosdána might have noted the damage, and brought some conflict resolution skills to the sorry mess that was emerging. Instead, the matter was left idle for a year, and then brought up at the recent General Assembly of Aosdána.

A motion was put down calling on the Assembly to deplore Donlon's act of censorship, and although there was a last minute alteration to the wording, before it went to a vote, it still meant the same thing. It went: "That this assembly deplores the act of censorship imposed by the management of the Dunamaise Arts Centre Portlaoise, on Farcry Productions installation of the visual art show, Padded Cell and other stories. Further, that this assembly finds the support by the Arts Council for such censorship inappropriate and unacceptable."

This was foghorn diplomacy; the bulls of the Aosdána herd were about to declare in a collective bellow to the nation, that this woman had committed the kind of act that is seen as quiveringly evil in the artistic world — an act of censorship.

In essence a personality clash was working its way through the General Assembly of a State institution. Up to that moment it was an argument between Flynn and Donlon. Now it was to become “Aosdána versus the Dunamaise”.

The real difficulty with Aosdána deploring an act of censorship by the Dunamaise Arts Centre is that using the word censorship is really pushing the incident to the emotional limit. Censorship has a nasty propensity to suppress art; to stop people seeing art, for political reasons. If the administrator of Dunamaise wished to restrict the artwork to the gallery space, for what she claims to be child protection issues, then no matter how unreasonable or unnecessary her position may be considered, it’s not fair to call it censorship.

The Dunamaise Arts Centre, and Donlon in particular, have a good record of over a decade of bringing strong and challenging art to the wider community. They have a track record in doing something very much the opposite of censorship.

The fact is that the installation of one show turned into a nasty mess, where both sides had fundamentally different views of what happened, and someone ought to have stepped in with a little bit of conflict resolution, hot tea and good humour.

Instead Aosdána opted for hot air, by invoking the shadow of censorship, and issuing a declaration of their abhorrence to the nation. The really interesting thing is that Aosdána’s burst of high-minded rhetoric is in stark contrast to its response to ethical issues closer to home.

The most notorious case was when Francis Stuart’s membership of Aosdána was questioned, because of his well-known and sordid dalliance with Nazi Germany. At the time Aosdana’s analysis of the issue was reminiscent of a bench of bishops breaking wind on esoteric theological matter.

Eloquent and robust arguments were made, explaining how a writer must explore the dark abyss of the human psyche, and be applauded for it. Stuart we were told was an artist, a person exploring the human condition, and that was all that was important.

That he chose to explore it in such dangerous and dark places as a radio studio broadcasting in support of a regime that was pumping smoke out of the chimneys of Auschwitz at the time, the reasoning went, only made him more courageous.

Stuart’s behaviour in collaborating with the Third Reich did not earn him chastisement in Aosdána; in fact they promoted him.

More recently, when the poet, Cathal Ó Searcaigh caused controversy for helping young people in Nepal, in his own very peculiar way, not even an official eyelid was batted. In fact, Aosdána was at pains to block a member tabling a motion of censure at the General Assembly.

The need for delicacy in the matter of criticising one of their own was heeded, and the motion dropped, before the press were allowed into the room.

I DON'T KNOW WHO WASright or wrong in the debacle at the Dunamaise. Maybe it was bad judgement, or bad management, or just bad manners. But it is deeply disturbing to see Aosdána deplore an act of censorship that has not been proven to be censorship and without giving the alleged offenders a proper hearing.

People such as Louise Donlon have done immense work to improve the possibilities for artists. Local art centres may be small fry for the larger art practitioners, whose work has international platforms, but for the less-known artists who have to scrape a living and find small outlets in Ireland without selling much art, people such as Louise Donlon sustain the infrastructure that keeps art on the walls.

They are not minions to be roared at through the foghorn of motions laid down in a national assembly, especially when the Assembly in question has such a track record of coy discretion when it comes to saying boo to one of their own.