The ghosts of old garrisons sing in Crosshaven fort

Five artists were invited to spend several months at Fort Camden in Cork to create their own work, the fruits of which are now on show

SPACE AND time may change our perceptions of an art work: the space in which we see it, and the time we bring to it – “time” meaning not only a span of time, but our mood, and all that shapes our viewing.

After the British departed (belatedly) in 1938, Fort Camden was renamed Fort Meagher, although nobody calls it that. It is an eerie and exciting place, semi-derelict, and thanks to the extraordinary efforts of a team of volunteers, being coaxed back into life. It served as a garrison, defensive site, and a prison, though it never saw actual battle.

It re-opened last year, for September only, and this year five artists were invited to spend several months at the site to make installations, the results of which are now on show. Sometimes art imposed on striking spaces fails, either not connecting with its surroundings, or else not having the presence to meet the strength of its space. At Fort Camden, the art works add layers of ideas and meanings, and are well worth the trip to Crosshaven.

Monica Boyle has made a series of illuminated boxes, hung in a grid on the wall. They contain mementoes of, or allusions to, the life of the fort. There is a page of recipes – nothing elaborate, how to make stew is described in just two lines – printed on a transparent sheet, behind which is an image of one of the fort’s semi-derelict spaces. Elsewhere are charts, photographs, a frame containing a key and a seedy dandelion head. These are gentle pieces, reminding that this desolate edifice was once filled with young men away from home for the first time, prisoners, sailors, stewards and commanders.

Boyle’s picture boxes are paired with a book of poetry by Neil Regan, reflecting the lives of the fort’s different eras of inhabitants. The book sits behind glass in a spot-lit space, which feels aggrandising, jarring somehow, although a copy is also open on a lectern, and the room is haunted by a recording of the poems being read aloud: Song / stood still. Listening was lifted / on the swell and sucked back / into its vacuum.

Initially, Julia Pallone's Inner Seaseems to borrow from Richard Wilson's famous 20:50, the room he created at the Saatchi Gallery full of sump oil that casts marvellous and disconcerting reflections. Spending more time in Pallone's space gives a different experience, as her "sea" is a shallow tank of water with little boats, a bubbling misty cloud, and rippling movements across its surface. Two tall windows are reflected in the water, and the semi-ruined room both contains the sea, and seems in danger of subsiding back in to it.

The architecture and conditions of the fort are least kind to Julie Merriman’s work. Her delicate drawings of charts and blueprints are bending and buckling, and the walls’ own patterns of decay are at war with their lines and shapes. These are pieces that should be seen again in a quieter space.

James L Hayes shows a short film about casting iron, which seems a little out of place, until you get to the main part of his installation: the two rooms of In celebration of two non-events. Hayes has created cast iron plates from scrap metal found in the fort. Against an atmospheric soundtrack, the artist shows that it is the mundane moments that make up the real time of our lives.

The art works that make up the Camden Commissions are accessible to non-art audiences, without losing their subtlety and impact. To get the best from them explore the fort first. Go down the long tunnel, walk past the miser- able prison rooms, and experience the views from the battlements. Then the time and space of the art really start to sing.

The Fort Camden Commissions can be seen each weekend until the end of September. Admission €3, concession €2. See rescuecamden.ie