Eigse continues to deliver the goods

IN her review of EV+A in the current Circa magazine, Dr Nora Donnelly raised a thorny issue when she recorded that, throughout the three days she spent making her way around the shows far-flung exhibits, she encountered just "three or four" people similarly engaged and that, of those, two were directly involved in the art world - were not, in other words, members of the public. EV+A is a cutting-edge, hugely ambitious undertaking, and Donnelly's observation touches on the big question of the level of contemporary art's engagement with the audience.

The visual arts strand of ╔igse Carlow is a more modest undertaking. While each year the organisers programme a remarkably ambitious series of shows, drawing in artists from all of Ireland and from abroad, it seems fair to say that ╔igse tends to go for artists who work in traditional media.

Not to say that video and installation have not featured, but painting and sculpture per se are the staples. And, as a midweek visit to the two main venues, St Patrick's College and the ITC on the Kilkenny Road, readily confirmed, ╔igse seems to know its audience, or know how to mobilise its audience.

Lively streams of visitors made their way continuously through both venues, the capacious St Patrick's and the fine ITC campus. It is possible that many of them looked at some or even most of what was on offer and said to themselves: "Rubbish". (I didn't think Bobby McLean's paintings were that convincing myself, but that's just my opinion, and others seemed to enjoy them.) Yet, judging by appearances, people were interested, patient and observant. Does that suggest canny programming on ╔igse's part? Pitching the exhibits at a level that challenges without alienating the audience?

One guest artist left a beautiful and durable legacy. Keiichi Tahara, who is Japanese but has been based in Paris since 1972, made a fine, monumental sculptural piece that is now installed at the ITC. He used local limestone (courtesy of Feelystone): two big rough-hewn slabs, their inner, facing surfaces honed, with a beam of glass cutting through them like a shaft of light - or, in darkness, literally a shaft of light by virtue of fibre optic cable running through the glass. It is, in its final form, an admirably simple sculpture, elegantly designed.

It came as something of a surprise to another ╔igse guest, the Japanese curator and critic Fumio Nanjo. With considerable experience as a curator on the international art scene (he is also a former Turner Prize adjudicator), he turned up to deliver a talk during the festival as part of the country-wide Critical Voices Programme. He had heard of Keiichi, but remembered him as a maker of photographic work a long time back, and hadn't come across him for many years. He was extremely impressed by the sculpture, however, and returned to Japan intent on securing a major commission for Keiichi.

Back at St Patrick's, the main sculptural installation was by English artist Sophie Ryder. Working with what looked like rusted, compressed chicken wire, Ryder had made a series of life-sized - that is, human-sized - lady-hares. These striking hybrid creatures combine, as their name suggests, human and animal features. They have the bodies of women and the heads of hares. A group of them, gathered in a circle in a forest-like space, together with a moodily ominous musical soundtrack, engendered a mood of real disquiet, particularly if you situated yourself at the centre of the circle. It doesn't seem that menace was exactly what Ryder had in mind, but you did feel yourself to be in the midst of some arcane ritual the rules of which eluded you.

These strange, powerful nude figures have tremendous presence. They are not at all sentimental anthropomorphic inventions, remaining strange and wild despite the familiarity of their constituent parts. And Ryder knows how to conjure up a powerful atmosphere.

Another featured sculptor, Sarah O'Flaherty (Lancashire born, despite the name), showed a series of witty, inventive mannequin-based figures which explored versions of constructed feminine - and masculine - identity, without the didacticism or earnestness the phrase has come to suggest.

THE inclusion of an exhibition of London School Prints from Marlborough Graphics was a good move, introducing a host of major names in British art. Among them were Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, R.B. Kitaj, Paula Rego and Ken Kiff - who, sadly, died earlier this year. It is interesting that good artists are not necessarily good print-makers. Perhaps the laboured quality of Freud's etchings are symptomatic of his intermittent tendency to overwork his paintings. But, of everything on view here, Leon Kossoff comes out particularly well: comfortably at home in print, making work every bit as substantial and rich as his paintings; whereas the prints by Kitaj, a fine draughtsman, come across as overly precious.

╔igse selectors have a flair for finding slightly offbeat but curiously compelling talents, and this year another English artist, Sonia Lawson, fits the bill. Her grid-patterned images, with the texture and dryness of rough cement rendering, resemble fragments of preserved antiquity. Her human and animal figures and plant motifs, all described in an oblique, shorthand iconography, suggest elements of myth and ritual - but a quirky, personal mythology rather than one with a universally recognisable meaning. One problem, a not uncommon one, is that too much of her work is crammed into the available space.

Now that, as ╔igse's visual arts chairman, Bob Lynn, notes, the Council is committed to developing a purpose-built arts centre on a site adjacent to St Patrick's, that problem should be ameliorated within a few years. Nick Miller's suite of paintings, which might be described as a series of studio interiors-cum-still lifes, make up a substantial exhibition in themselves, but they are hung in a hallway - a wide hallway, but a hallway none the less - which is not the ideal setting in which to encounter them. They are fairly demanding pictures, layered and subtle, drawing on such ideas as the cruciform shape of the easel.

There are also substantial displays by other artists, including Rebecca Peart, whose architectonic abstracts need just slightly more Θlan to clinch their argument. Alison Pilkington's colour abstracts, similarly, are almost very good, but lack that added degree of concentration or intensity. The cheerful prolixity of Geraldine O'Neill's still-lifes, in which the frames are crowded with numerous categories of object, deliberately flout the rules to deconstruct still-life tradition. Recently, her visual puns see her operate in a more restrained vein. Sculptor Joe Butler, who generally likes excess, or at any rate prodigality, is also restrained with just a few of his jokily engaging figures.

The Carlow Art Collection has grown with ╔igse, and a very good selection of works from it were on view at the ITC, where the formidable line-up included a Hughie O'Donoghue drawing together with pieces by Barbara Rae, Peter Prendergast and Michael Warren. Chris Carter's ceramics, beautifully judged, were also on view there, together with a series of incised slate sculptural reliefs by Maighread Tobin. She has stayed with this form over a number of years and has more or less made it her own. This current work is admirably elegant and restrained.

Nora Norton selected this year's open submission exhibition, and it was quite strong, with notable pieces by Colin Crotty, Stephen Cullen, Margaret Deignan, Lynne Foster-Fitzgerald, Judy Hamilton, Carol Hodder, Gillian Lawlor, Elizabeth Rackard, Gerda Teljeur, Cara Thorpe and others. This year, the ITC was used as a new venue, and that is a worthy innovation. ╔igse 2001, on the whole, set out to consolidate its strengths rather than strike out in any radical new direction. But then, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.