An open submission exhibition is attempting to widen the audience engaging with Irish art by exhibiting in unorthodox, accesible venues, writes Aidan Dunne.
As exhibitions of contemporary art go, EV+A 2003 is a user- friendly show. The basic template of the exhibition was established in 1979. That involves inviting an international adjudicator, a "vertical invader", to select work from an open submission. The idea is that an outsider will be free of the familiarity and biases of a local adjudicator, and also that the process will foster international links. Since 1994, as well, biennially, the adjudicator can invite artists to exhibit, as well as drawing on work submitted.
Another important development was initiated the same year. That is, the practice of treating the wider environment of the city as a gallery by dispersing works in various unorthodox venues. This was never just a question of imposition. The idea was that a work could initiate a dialogue with its particular location. This strategy is clearly designed to overcome a perennial problem with exhibitions of contemporary art: that they are usually art-world events for an art-world audience, they preach only to the converted. One would have to say there has been no dramatic breakthrough for EV+A in this regard, but qualitatively, the show has consistently performed well.
Operating on huge amounts of goodwill and hard work, it has stuck gamely to this overall scheme. It is one inherited by this year's selector, Virginia Perez-Ratton from Costa Rica. A curator and former jury member at the Venice Biennale, Perez-Ratton has come up with a particularly agreeable EV+A on the basis of a 400 strong submission. She built up her selection through instinct and with the potential venues very much in mind.
"I tried to make the show airy, that is to give each piece a lot of space. I think that if you can give the viewers a mentally uncluttered show you give them more space for reflection. There are relatively few images in EV+A. I didn't do that deliberately, but perhaps it came about partly as a reaction to the excess of images that bombard us all the time through the media and in advertising. If you see too many images you don't have the time to think about them, so I did want to create an exhibition in which people have the time for reflective introspection." Actually, despite her disclaimer, there are many striking images in EV+A, mostly photographic, including work by Kate Byrne and Amy O'Riordan.
Perez-Ratton has banded works thematically together. "I didn't want just isolated islands of meaning, I hope the spectator gets a sense of clusters of works dealing with different aspects of life." She identifies roughly four such clusters, relating broadly to introspection, global politics, the living city and spirituality, although there are no hard and fast boundaries.
She never thought in terms of quantity, but early on she did expect a much smaller show than she ended up with.
"As you work you prepare a reading of the show for the spectator and as I did that it became more difficult to eliminate certain pieces. There was a logic to their being there." Her reading of the show begins in its traditional nerve centre, the City Gallery on Pery Sq. There is a great deal of quietly good work there, and a couple of real show-stoppers, including Eamon O'Kane's extraordinary installation Bildermacher, an entire fantasy world. From there, the visitor heads down towards what have become two other habitual venues, City Hall and St Mary's Cathedral. You encounter other venues and exhibits en route - including Milton Becerra's striking Medusa suspended over the rushing waters of the Abbey River - and will have to make a couple of diversions to see some of the best pieces.
These include Priscilla Monge's soap Virgin in St John of the Cross Church in Johns Sq, and exceptional video installations, by John Gerrard and Susan McWilliam, in the Bourn Vincent Gallery.
You know the latter are good because Perez-Ratton admits to being wary of video. She is, it must be said, generally very open to different kinds of work, if wary of slickness, of product tailored to fit a trend. "I look for something personal."
In terms of video, she feels: "You have to think of what you're asking of your audience. Are you going to ask them to sit through a very long video? There must be a good reason to have them do that." Before she encountered television in Costa Rica she was, she points out, 13 years old, "so maybe I just didn't have the level of conditioning that others would have had".
Apart from the thematic clusters, she notes that: "At a certain stage I realised that the exhibition is about architecture. I mean architecture from many points of view - the architecture of the city, of the home, architecture as an aggressive context, or as a poetic space."
Part of her own role in this was as facilitator, in directing particular works towards their most suitable, telling setting.
"For example some pieces related very well to religious architecture. In fact I'd say some of the work is openly spiritual, some even religious. And that work is non-Irish, which surprised me. I thought that because religion was an issue in Ireland throughout its history that might come through in the work, but I didn't really find that."
There are works that sit extremely well in a religious setting. Dorothy Ann Daly's crocheted shamrocks, almost 170 of them, are studded against the inside stone wall of St Mary's Cathedral. These painstakingly made emblems subtly echo the brilliant, translucent colour of the stained glass windows.
The ruined interior in Alfaro Brooke's ethereal video Aria, with its intimation of transcendence, echoes the cathedral setting.
It is a feature of open submission shows like EV+A that, for whatever reason, many well established artists tend not to offer work. This surprised Perez-Ratton.
"I know group shows can be difficult. They are about sharing, generosity, they're exercises in diplomacy. Things are never ideal. But in Latin America even very well known artists would submit work. But in relation to EV+A I'd say it's not something I regret. I've come across Irish artists who I know I'd like to work with in the future." The fact remains, though, that the quality of the work will probably never be enough to build a wider audience.
People respond to names, and names will draw them into the exhibition. Invited EV+A, every other year, is an attempt to deal with this issue.
Perez-Ratton had visited Ireland before, about ten years or so ago, and was keen to come back. "In relation to the European art centres, Ireland is peripheral, and Limerick is peripheral in Ireland. I know it suffers from a bad image, being known as Stab City, as the setting for Angela's Ashes, all so negative, but then you come here and my experience has been that everyone is so open and so enthusiastic, so open to suggestions."
Perez-Ratton is very sympathetic to the integration of EV+A into the fabric of the city, but she is also aware that contemporary art poses particular problems for the viewer. "I know there is a problem with contemporary art and what might be escribed as the 'normal' community. There is still a lot to be done to have people approach contemporary art. The public will visit blockbuster shows of Modernists like Matisse or Picasso, but not contemporary work."
Where does she feel the problem lies?
"Well, I think people are afraid to give their opinion of contemporary art because they do not feel well enough informed. I think perhaps people are uncomfortable, as well, with the irony and humour of a lot of contemporary work. Artists try to establish a certain distance through irony and that can be difficult for the viewer.
"I always feel that the best way to approach an artwork is in relation to one's own life and parameters. But it does take a certain amount of thought and attention. The difference with a lot of contemporary art is that it demands a larger involvement from the spectator, it's not all given to them. But just ask basic questions of a work and you get closer to it. "
EV+A 2003, featuring work by 69 artists is at the Limerick City Gallery of Art and other venues throughout Limerick, runs until June 1st. Maps with detailes listings are widely available. The exhibition website is at www.eva.ie