A whole lot more than just hot air

ARTS: From a giant Asian woman superhero to a windbag politician, 'Balloon art' in Carlow is humorous and involving - and thankfully avoids any patronising art-is-fun notions, writes Aidan Dunne, Art Critic.

Carlow's new contemporary arts centre is due to open its doors in just two years' time. The architectural competition for the design of this major cultural development will be decided before the end of this year, but in the meantime the local authority (with support from the Arts Council and various sponsors) has been running an ambitious preparatory programme of artistic events under the title Visualise Carlow. The latest in the series, Hot Air, currently running at the IT Carlow, is an international exhibition of balloon art curated by the renowned curator and critic Fumio Nanjo.

If the words "balloon art" conjure up in your mind a populist, patronising art-is-fun exercise, think again. While many of the exhibits in Hot Air are indeed good-humoured and even funny, Nanjo has not compromised on artistic standards. What he has done is to select works that use not just balloons but humour. "Most contemporary art is very serious," he explains. "Here, people can participate, and they can see things that will make them smile."

As such it encapsulates the point of the Visualise programme, which aims partly to generate a broad sense of artistic possibilities in the local community. Carlow arts officer Caoimhin Corrigan sees it as a process of laying the conceptual groundwork, "So that when we come to open the doors we already have a track record".

Relatively close as it is to Dublin, it is important that the new centre should not be overshadowed by the capital's cultural resources. "You could put it that we can certainly participate in the Dublin discourse, but we should look to ourselves as well, to the community here, and also see ourselves in an international context. There is no reason why we shouldn't develop our direct international connections. If there is that energy here, artists will want to be involved."

The three Visualise projects completed prior to Hot Air involved a range of curators and artists, national and international. In fact, at four to three, the curators outnumber the artists, which is an interesting comment on contemporary art practice.

Brian Hand's drive-in The Car Called the Manager, Apolonija Sustersic's Simulation Cafe and Visual Cookie competition and Paul Gregg's pyrotechnical Magnesium, all offered radical diverse approaches and were notable for their use of the local urban and rural landscape, its historical layerings and future possibilities.

Nanjo originally came to Carlow as part of the Critical Voices programme. Hot Air began life as an inaugural exhibition for the vast interior space of Granship, a convention and arts centre in Shizuoka Prefecture in Japan in 1999. Nanjo was enlisted to come up with an event that would make use of the space while not costing the earth. "Enormous in size, but not in budget," as he puts it. An inflatable exhibition seemed like a good idea. "Once I started to research it, I realised that a lot of artists make use of inflatables."

"Nowadays," Nanjo says, "exhibitions have their own lives. They change as they move from one venue to another. The demands of one venue will differ from those of another. That is why we looked carefully at the question of placement here." The original version of the show featured 22 artists and was enormously popular, while there are works by nine artists in Carlow - more than enough to make quite an impact.

The first to do so is Korean Lee Bul, whose monumental likeness greets visitors at the Institute's entrance. Imprinted on a six-metre high balloon, Bul is richly attired as a fearsome Hydra, with the appearance of a cross between mythical and comic book superhero. She intends the work as a corrective to the stereotypical view of Asian women as being diminutive and docile.

Andy Warhol is certainly the most famous name in the show. He's there because you couldn't really have a show of balloon art without his Silver Clouds, and they occupy a glass-walled room in the library complex. Their neighbour there is a wonderful piece by Yayoi Kusama. The pattern of black dots on a huge yellow balloon (which rotates slowly) is reflected on every side of the room. Hovering over the void outside is, incongruously enough, an airship in the shape of a submarine. Despite its flame-patterned prow, Kusama's intention is to defuse the inherently threatening aspect of the submarine by rendering it as a playful, transparent object.

Izuru Kasahara's trademark icon is a smiling face that features just the smile - no other features. A vast array of inflated, smiling cartoon figures looks entirely appropriate at the Institute. They are also a bit sinister, suggesting both a zombie-like conformity and implying that you, the view, are the target of their derision. You will also encounter individual examples of Kasahara's figures around the town itself. These Smiling Ghosts, as Kasahara dubs them, exemplify different kinds of laughter, smiling on one side, guffawing on the other.

Pierre Reimer's video My House is Yours is a strange, increasingly ominous work. A subjective camera equipped with a needle - a device that recalls the Powell and Pressberger classic Peeping Tom - enters a room filled with pink balloons and proceeds to burst them all.

THE curiously compulsive urge to burst balloons gradually gives way to a kind of dismay at the senseless violence and destructiveness of the action. As Nanjo observes, "At first it's a very simple, almost romantic thing, but then it becomes quite brutal. All these bits of balloons building up on the ground come to be like bits of bodies. Very simple but very effective." Reimer also shows a brilliant working sculpture that inflates and deflates itself. The idea is that of a self- important politician - literally a windbag - puffing himself up.

A couple of the artists have been seen previously in Ireland, including Hans Memmert, whose hilarious Johnny L video features the artist dancing along to a soundtrack inside a big yellow balloon. Nikos Navridie's three-video projection is another simple work - featuring the blowing up of balloons and, in one case, an arm donning a rubber glove before inflating it - that gradually becomes fascinating as it progresses.

Nanjo was initially surprised at just how much inflatable art there was out there. But he realised that it made sense.

"From a practical point of view, art and artists travel much more now. Culture is both globalised and local. Inflatables are easy to transport. Then for something to be ephemeral used to be considered a bad thing in art. Now it's different. There has been a change in society, in culture. We appreciate things that are ephemeral. That's why performance art has flourished, for example. Even in industry, heavy industry has declined, and today's industries are invisible."

As a curator, he likes projects that mediate between potential opposites. "I like things that bridge differences, like the demands of public art and cutting edge contemporary art. Public art is very difficult, but it is an area where you get a chance to try to do something new. I look on it as a chance to put good contemporary art in the public eye, and that is very rewarding."

Hot Air is at IT Carlow until Sunday, September 1st. It is open daily from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.