DISPATCHES NATIONAL SCULPTURE FACTORY
2013 has been a challenging year for most individuals and organizations in Ireland. Challenging, as we individually and collectively try to find anchorage and imagine new ways of doing things in a time of great social and economic uncertainty. Yet despite this, we see moments of great community spirit, community action and positive acts of giving. Individuals and organizations are collaborating and new ways of working are emerging. The arts sector appears to be vibrant and active and we repeatedly hear how important the arts are to Ireland’s image, that the arts are a major factor in attracting visitors to Ireland, as well as being significant for Ireland’s international reputation. Yet government budgets for the arts have been cut so severely that the arts sector is at a tipping point. It is important to note that the sector appears to be surviving because of the people who work in it. Artists and arts managers are resourceful and resilient but that resilience needs public support, funding and nurturing to prevent years of careful policy development and investment unravelling completely. Arts and cultural organisations have an important role to play in providing spaces for people to make connections, to feel connected and to anchor themselves. The National Sculpture Factory has had an active year and again we have witnessed the extraordinary resourcefulness of the individual artists we work with. You will get a sense of our work within this edition of Dispatches. The artists we work with make thoughtful, considered, creative and challenging work. Like small business units, on a daily basis they strive to make work and to make it work. Founded by four artists in 1989, we are entering our twenty fith year and remain committed to the individual artist and to enabling the public to have meaningful points of engagement and interaction with the processes of art-making through public projects, open days, talks and seminars as well as workshops. We will remain committed to producing new art works and to supportDESIGN: annabarden@gmail.com Cover image: Anna Barden
ing artists to bring these works into the public domain. We have aspirations for expansion, to make it possible for us to create more opportunities for artists to present their work. We remain thankful to the Arts Council and Cork City Council for their support, without this public support none of our work would be possible. We are also grateful to the many arts organisations and educational institutions in Cork, Ireland and beyond that we lean on for support. Similarly, we are appreciative of the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and the Department of Social Protection for their support of our various programmes. Most of all we thank the large number of artists who remain loyal and continue to use us and to challenge us; it is these artists who ensure we stay relevant. Thanks to the ever creative and very committed staff, Donal, Dobz, Elma, Pat, Grainne, John, Sarah, Fiona, Frankie and Shay. And last but not least, we are governed by a committed and hard-working board of Directors made up of artists, architects, business people, politicians and educators. They help us get perspective and help advocate on our behalf. We give sincere thanks to one of our founder members, Danny McCarthy, and Conor Doyle our chairman who both stepped down from our Board this autumn after both serving the organization for many years. We welcome Oisín Creagh, architect, into the role of chairman. Board: Oisín Creagh (Chair), Cllr Catherine Clancy, Trish Brennan, Sean Taylor, Aideen Barry, Cllr Kieran McCarthy and Anne O’Leary Mary Mc Carthy, Director
info@nationalsculpturefactory.com www.nationalsculpturefactory.com + 353 (0)21 431 43 53
Organized by the National Sculpture Factory, the Dreams of Freedom? conference took place at the Crawford Gallery in March. It was an element of the United States of Europe exhibition which had previously been staged in a number of European cities including Helsinki, Paris and Dresden. The United States of Europe project was a travelling exhibition which explored
issues around European identity and the current European organization. The conference was a forum for debate around issues provoked by the exhibition; the subtitle of the conference being Conversations on Aesthetics, Ethics & European Democracies. The speakers included artists, academics,
journalists and a political scientist. A theme running through a number of the contributions was the dilemma of negotiating a position from which to work as an artist; different models of working outside the main cultural centres inherent tension within the art field where the artists’ intentions around their work can often come into conflict with the way this work must be described in order to gain funding. Artists’ practice can also be instrumentalized in ways over which they have no control. There was recognition of the uncomfortable position of having to depend financially on the very institutions being critiqued. The session, Artists’ use value in the age of social and political unrest presented a convergence among the panel of artists in how
they viewed art as being an area where alternative narratives could be explored and articulated. Reinigungsgesellschaft, an art duo from Germany, described how they felt art could not help to solve structural problems but it could highlight them. Anna Konik (Poland) explained how she saw the gallery as a space where she could ‘shout out’, a space which had both an aesthetic and political component. Dr. Agnes Czajka, a sociologist, gave an interesting talk entitled Notes on the Arab Spring: Enacting Citizenship and Staging Democracy, where she used Derrida’s concept of the autoimmunity
of democracy to explain how Europe misunderstands how it is constituted. It misidentifies elements as being foreign to it, attempts to expel them and in so doing ends up weakening and undermining its own democracy. Augustine Zenakos, a Greek journalist and former co-director of the Athens Biennial, in his talk Uncommon Grounds: Art in a Borderline Democracy, gave
DREAMS OF FREEDOM?
and frameworks were proposed. There was an acceptance that there is an
image: architect’s plan and installation view USE by Francis Shier
concrete examples of this weakening of European Democracy. He showed a video of interviews with emigrants who had been attacked by far right groups and young men who had been beaten by the police. He held the economic policies dictated by the Troika directly responsible for the disintegration of civic society and the rise of fascism in Greece. He was unconvinced that the art field offered any potential for resistance, viewing it as a willing cheerleader of neo-liberal expansion during the last two decades, with the Biennial circuit being particularly complicit. His talk acted as a negative centre of gravity for the conference, putting stress on the talks which followed. As a forum for public debate, the conference worked as a form of self-reflexive institutional critique, which posited prescient questions about the political territory in which art making happens today. Catherine Harty
The National Sculpture Factory is committed to supporting artists in the creation and delivery of ambitious new projects in the public domain. As such, the NSF as an organization is comfortable and experienced across various roles – both as commissioner and producer of challenging, thought-provoking, large-scale projects and events. Since our inception, we have built a reputation as a significant national commissioning and producing organization, working with artists across the visual arts and performance as well as forging innovative collaborations with various cultural and community organizations. The quality and critical success of the resulting works means that many NSF commissioned projects have gone on to have a life outside of their initial iteration –Mark Garry’s Drift (2012), for example, commissioned in collaboration with the Cork Midsummer Festival, and Martin Healy’s Last Man (2011) commissioned by the
NSF as part of Terminal Convention, both travelled to the Galeria Civica di Modena in Italy this year as part of Island, an exhibition of contemporary Irish art curated by Fiona Kearney of the Glucksman Gallery. Similarly, the NSF is always eager to respond to artists’ proposals. Partnering with artists, often at a formative point in their careers is an important part of our remit, to support and enable them in the production of ambitious projects in a cost
COMMISSIONING
effective way. This year Ruth Lyons was invited by the NSF to make a large-scale project for Cork’s Midsummer Festival. Swimming with the E.S.B. is set to be
an elaborate architectural construction inspired by the history of the flooding of the Lee Valley and its relationship to the E.S.B.’s beginnings. Lyons plans for the piece to take the form of a large-scale temporary installation and the artist, along with the NSF, aims for the work to be realised by mid-2014.
h: approx. 10m
artworks: Ruth Lyons
The significance of having a body of air measuring some 12m (minus my height), high x 13m wide x 50m long overhead when working cannot be underestimated. This is a formative condition in which to engage with space. Ideas naturally flex into this expanse of air, and extend themselves willingly.
What I am about at the moment is forming that inner illusive centre that hangs like a ghost within what can be conjured as a piece. This
an artist’s perspective
SPACE IN THE NSF:
holding of a portion of the void at bay fulfills a much more intangible purpose – it opens a new space for the presence of the work. Attempting to tame the void as entity is best done in a large breathing volume like the NSF. As I worked there over the last year I had a feeling of being suspended by the process – of working in a drawing. Landing the work with a joint exhibition with Karl Burke titled the Air They Capture is Different at
the MAC, Belfast, and a solo exhibition titled a solution is in the room at CIT Wandesford Quay Gallery, Cork, completed the process. image: Maud Cotter
Maud Cotter
image: The Cut, Cork–Dublin road, Joe Neeson 2012
PUBLIC ART
image: Alex Pentek, design for Unfurl, perforated bronze, to be sited in Ashton School, Cork.
image: An tSlí Feasa, limestone and bronze, Christian Brothers College, Cork Mick Wilkins 2013
Taking place each Wednesday in August, the Frequencies series of lunchtime talks gives the NSF an opportunity to open its doors to the public in order to foster an exchange of ideas between our local community and some
FREQUENCIES
of Ireland’s leading artists, architects and researchers. This year’s theme was Eternal Returns: Renewal, Revival and Re-enactment and responding to it were Dominic
Stevens (architect), Alice Maher (artist), Seamus Nolan (artist) and Dr. Eve Olney (media practitioner and experimental ethnographer). Nietzsche’s theory of the Eternal Return suggests that we should imagine our lives not ending at our deaths but being repeated over and over again for all eternity, each moment recurring in exactly the same way, without end. However, the four practitioners that we invited to respond to the theme are less involved in the dry recycling of forms and strategies in art and culture, than they are engaged in a far more generative and ultimately optimistic dialogue with historical moments or modes of making. The eclecticism of the line-up is integral to the beauty of the Frequencies series; each speaker, through their approach and through their diverse practices, illuminates a different facet of the topic while each different session builds on the ideas raised in the last. Sarah Kelleher
image: Francis Shier
Using the facilities of the NSF I had the opportu-
dence at the National Sculpture Factory in No-
nity to explore and develop a knowledge of ma-
vember 2012. This appointment was for one year and had a dual aim – to create links and to find a new space for architecture [the architect] and its position in the broader cultural landscape, and to develop my practice in a creative way in the environment of the NSF. I have had the opportunity as an architect to explore, research and develop what the practice of architecture can be if it sits between architecture and the arts. Through my practice I wish to explore and question the position, role and process of the contemporary architect. With support from the NSF I was involved in curating and positioning of architecture in the city, highlighting the cultural contribution and relevance of architecture as a creative practice. I have been involved in various steering groups, and I collaborated and worked with the NSF on the delivery and design of the space for the Dreams of Freedom symposium, as part of United States of Europe exhibition at the Craw-
ford Art Gallery.
ARCHITECT in RESIDENCE
I was offered the position of architect in resi-
terials, and have been exposed to techniques in traditional making and manual fabrication, such as metal fabrication, casting, form-making and working with wood. I have begun to embark on a method of working not typical of the traditional architectural practice in Ireland. With the position of architect in residence I have been able to direct my own course as a practicing architect – using competitions as a method of testing and probing ideas, finally culminating in a percent for art commission due to be completed in 2014. I would like to thank all at the NSF for the wonderful experience and opportunities they have afforded me. The year I have had will no doubt have an impact on my practice for a long time to come. Francis Shier
This year’s Culture Night saw Ireland’s representation at the 13th International Architecture Exhibition – la Biennale de Venezia, exhibited in the National Sculpture Factory. The piece, entitled Shifting Ground by heneghen peng architects was commissioned by Elizabeth Francis and curated by John McLaughlin. The National Sculpture Factory was delighted to host this large project and to provide Cork based audiences with the opportunity to physically interact with this work. As Ireland is one of the most globalized countries in the world, this exhibit looks at architecture’s relation to networked flows of products, data, and knowledge. It asks how could a global architecture be grounded culturally, philosophically and spatially? How can it situate itself outside of shared national reference points? The work is composed of a series of wall drawings and a bench for resting. The 12 metre long bench is constructed of 6 interlinked sections, 6 rotation-only fulcrums and 5 translation pivots. The bench, when at a resting balanced equilibrium is horizontal but members of the public are invited to sit on the bench setting it in motion. image: ChunMan Tang courtesy of Arup
CULTURE NIGHT SHIFTING GROUND
CULTURE NIGHT THE VITRINES PROJECT
Three vitrines were set up in the Mezzanine (used as an exhibition space during Culture Night) and artists that were currently working on the factory floor were given an open invitation to place objects/ things/pieces of work into this display. Accustomed to mainly working with large-scale artworks, the artists were only restricted by the dimensions of the vitrines themselves and were free to move both their own and others’ objects around in the three days leading up to the doors opening to the public. There was a deliberate attempt at a lack of curatorship as the end result could not be anticipated prior to the deadline of completion - one o’clock on the Friday of Culture Night. The final arrangements within the vitrines overlooked the segregated work spaces the artists occupied on the factory floor. It was not clear which artist authored which object/arrangement so the observer was reliant on reading the work through the juxtaposition of the objects in relation to each other as well as to their extended relationship with the sculptural works-in-progress visible through the Mezzanine windows. Three posters mirrored the displays in the vitrines offering one method of interpreting the work through quotes collected from the artists during their participation in the project. Eve Olney image: Eve Olney
I spent six and a half weeks in Cork working at the National Sculpture Factory and enjoying the friendly, down to earth ambience of the city. I felt the people were a highlight of my experience; I quickly felt at home, enjoying the conversation and sense of humour. The music was an added bonus, for a music obsessive like myself, with many nights spent at The Cornerhouse, Sin E and many more venues. When I carry out an overseas residency I prefer to produce behind. To engage with a new place is always exciting and interest-
images: Greg Johns, Tree Guards 2013
ing – in the first few days I try to “read” the place, get a feel for it. Walking to the National Sculpture Factory during the week I saw a site along the river which I liked, opposite Dunnes department store. There were a number of trees in a row in a recently developed area. I felt this space could be enlivened with some sculptural pieces. I believe site is important to placing sculpture, but that a literal approach should not be taken. My solution for the site was three sets of tree guards, two with forms influenced by the great Celtic tradition and one with forms that come out of the
GREG JOHNS:
perspective of a visiting Australian artist
a work and leave it
Australian landscape. The figurative forms have a protective feel to them, and having a connection with both Ireland and Australia they also mark my visit to Cork. The title for this work is Monument To The Keepers Of Place. While I do not classify myself as an environmental artist,
I am at this point in time extremely alarmed at the state of our world-wide environment. The title pays tribute to those cultures and individuals who understand that we have no choice but to live with place in a sustainable way. The piece also challenges the notion of the traditional monument. I have missed the interaction with the working sculptors and staff at the National Sculpture Factory since my return – hopefully some links can be made between the N.S.F. and the Palmer Sculpture Biennial held on my property in South Australia and the relationship can continue and develop. Greg Johns
images: Rory Mullen
RORY MULLEN Each year the National Sculpture Factory gives out a major Graduate Award Bursary to one outstanding artist from the CIT Crawford College of Art & Design Degree show. The artist chosen in 2012 was Rory Mullen. With Rory Mullen’s: Hours of Idleness, held in an unoccupied retail unit of the Winthrop
Arcade, Rory presented a new body of work completed during his six-month graduate residency at the National Sculpture Factory. Comprised of drawings, video and small-scale sculpture, this exhibition evidenced a move away from the immersive cardboard installations stemming from his degree show, which garnered him critical acclaim. Conceptually however, he continued to investigate ideas of the everyday and the useless, filtered through the lens of his own particularly anarchic humour and a defiantly ‘anti-slick’ aesthetic. Delicately intricate line drawings of isolated objects, adrift on the page, are described by the artist as ‘field notes from something that never happened’, while deliberately precarious architectural models made of soap and glue sit alongside complex drawings of churches, a motif chosen by Rory because the purpose they were built for ‘is now largely irrelevant.’ Rory Mullen’s: Hours of Idleness took place in May.
ANTHONY HAUGHEY STRIKE!
image: Jedzrej Niezgoda
To mark the anniversary of the infamous 1913 Dublin Lockout, the NSF, as part of the Cork Film Festival, presented STRIKE! Curated by artist Anthony Haughey, STRIKE! explored a wide range of film responses to industrial unrest and workers’ resistance movements internationally. Main features on the big screen were Sergei Eisenstein’s, The Strike (1925) and Allan Sekula’s The Forgotten Space (2010). In addition, the Mezzanine played host to Demo-
cratic Cinema – Cinéma Liberté, a mini-cinema programme where the audience selected the screened programme from our STRIKE! library also curated by Anthony Haughey.
The films selected for this screening programme explored national and international industrial disputes and workers’ attempts to challenge the dehumanising effects of globalisation and increasingly deregulated work practices. Most of the films were documentary in style, others are participatory films made by the workers themselves, including, The Globalisation Tapes (2012) and there were two films directed by artists. There are also a number of dramas based on real events, with direct input and performances from the workers. The films span a period of more than a hundred years from 1895 to 2012. There were two films from Ireland, including 161 Days (2012), a film documenting the industrial dispute at the Vita Cortex factory in Cork where the workers staged an epic sit-in. Their resistance captured the attention and support of numerous international scholars, activists and celebrities, including Noam Chomsky who championed their cause. In 1895 film flickered into life at the gates of the Lumière Brothers Factory. The film depicting the workers leaving the factory was probably produced more out of convenience rather than a celebration of the workers themselves. But nonetheless, this group of workers were immortalized in the first ever public screening of a film in Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris On March 19, 1895. A darker reading put forward by Harun Farocki suggests that this short film clip could be considered a precursor to panoptic surveillance. His observation finds resonance with Jeremy Bentham’s architectural surveillance structure the Panopticon, conceived of as a way of controlling prisoners and large workforces. The Lumière Brothers’ film is explored further in Harun Farocki’s evocative installation, Workers Leaving the Factory (1995). A single channel version of Faroki’s film was included in this film-screening programme as an apt starting point for excavating a history of films depicting labour disputes and workers’ struggles. This film programme was dedicated to the life of artist and writer, Allan Sekula who passed away on August 10, 2013. His work has influenced a generation of artists. Anthony Haughey
Eve Olney is an academic and media practitioner whose practice involves exploring cultural themes through the employment of sound, photography and video as both investigative tools of inquiry and modes of representation. Her current field of interest lies in exploring specific cultural sites as a means of reconceptualizing the idea of the archive and what might constitute archival knowledge within a mediapractice-led (experimental) ethnographic approach. She is currently conducting an ethnographic study of The National Sculpture Factory as a ‘living archive’. The project is based upon a methodological approach formulated during my doctoral project (CTMP, DIT 2012) which involved an ethnographic study of a private music collection and its collector where conceptual classificatory systems were identified through the collector’s ‘performance’ within the archival space of his collection as a method of ‘reading’ the space. A short ‘archival and ethnographic’ film was produced as part of this project. This methodology is now being developed within a broader and public context as I conduct an ethnographic study of the National Sculpture Factory as a ‘living’ archive. The project thinks beyond conventional archival practices and instead responds to the type of ‘creative’ experience that artistic/ cultural sites such as the Factory are offering. This work expands upon Stuart Hall’s notion of a ‘living archive’ in tandem with Andrew Moutu’s theory of ‘collection as a way of being’ in relation to how the NSF can be conceptualised as an archival site; the intention being to produce a more inclusive archival reading which acknowledges the everyday sensory experience of the organization – the type of practices and social relations that are lost within conventional classificatory systems usually found in archives. My working method is to identify/classify various groups as already defined within the NSF (artists, administrative members, tools, work spaces etc) and consider how these ‘collections’ work both internally as well as how they inter-relate with different groups and other exterior agencies. Throughout the ethnographic component of the research I will be determining disruptions/transgressions to these identified systems of taxonomy as they are being performed on an everyday basis whilst documenting these exchanges through auditory and visual media. Cultural meaning is therefore revealed through an ‘axis of social relations’ (Moutu 2012) and offers a closer representation of the everyday experience of the NSF. The existing archival material held within the library of the NSF is also incorporated into this reading of the site. The work will result in an experimental ethnographic film – archival in nature – that contains within it a sustainable ongoing archival program that continues the idea of the NSF as a living archive. The project addresses how public arts/cultural organizations might rethink their ongoing archival practices in a digital age in relation to how they classify and present that material to the public. Eve Olney
images: Eve Olney
LIVING ARCHIVE
image: Peter McGlinchey
image: The Artificial Infinite, HD Video still, 2013 Amanda Rice
images: 99 Music Videos, 2012-ongoing, digital video stills James McCann 2013
STUDIO WORKS
image: Landscape 1832ยบ Fahrenheit, Nedyalka Panova, porcelain, kiln props 2013
image: Vanity Fair 2013 Angela Fulcher. Mixed media installation, 12.3m x 1.7m. Installation view, Vanity Fair, Triskel Christchurch, Cork, 2013
FACILITY The National Sculpture Factory provides a dynamic flexible environment for artists to work on projects or to acquire new skills. Situated in an old tramway depot adjacent to the city centre and all materials suppliers the NSF is ideally positioned for ease of access. The NSF provides facilities for working on installation, ceramics, glass, stone, metalwork and woodwork. Studio spaces are flexible and can accommodate work of diverse scales. Studio rental includes: technical assistance; use of all Factory floor equipment; canteen facilities; meeting room with wireless internet access, scanning, printing and photocopying facilities; use of reference library and NSF archive; loan service of audio-visual equipment; full administrative support if required. For all details on equipment, facilities, membership and studio rates check www.nationalsculpturefactory.com
image: Anna Barden