Through Light and Shade

Through Light and Shade

BRENDAN MAHER INTERVIEWS THERRY RUDIN AND PATRICIA HURL.

Patricia Hurl, Irish Gothic (Living Room) 1985, oil on paper, 123 x 90 cm; photograph by Denis Mortell Photography, courtesy of the artist and IMMA.

Top: Thaís Muniz, Darling, Don’t Turn Your Back On Me, 2021, video; image courtesy of the artist.

‘HOMELAND’, AN EXHIBITION of video art, was on show at The Source Arts Centre in Thurles from 10 March to 22 April. This annual showcase is screened each autumn in Damer House Gallery in Roscrea and at the Alalimòn Galeria as part of the Barcelona Loop Festival each November.

‘Homeland’ is dedicated exclusively to video art and aims to bring together professionals in all fields across the sector – filmmakers, performance artists, writers, directors, and producers –within a space of international association.

Curators/artists, Therry Rudin and Patricia Hurl, outlined the exhibition selection process. Rudin said: “We usually get about 60 to 70 works sent to us each year. A sub-committee chooses a shortlist and then we work with our partners in Barcelona who have a shortlist of their own. For the latest edition, our combined list of about 35 works was reduced to the 11 we eventually featured in the show. ‘Homeland’ offers the only open-submission exhibition opportunity dedicated to contemporary video art in Ireland, and as such, we often have younger artists and those new to video sending us their work.”

The theme for this edition of ‘Homeland’ was ‘Through Light and Shade’. Author Lindsay J. Sedgwick notes in her introduction to the accompanying exhibition catalogue that the presented works explore “the nature of home and community, what it means to have or not to have a home ‘land’, but also what it means to be human.”

Rudin continues: “The works are selected in line with each year’s theme, their aesthetic qualities, and overall impact. Strong production values are important too, especially in cinematography, sound and editing.”

Included in the selection from Ireland is An Balún Bán (202023) by Sarah Edmonson and Kieran Sheridan, a Dublin-centred,

Super-8-style take on Albert Lamorisse’s short film, The Red Balloon (1956); Grey Area (2018-22) by Eduard Fulop, an animated slide puzzle collage of rear and front windowed buildings and their inhabitants; and Thaís Muniz’s video, Darling, Don’t Turn Your Back On Me (2021), a piece concerned with migration and identity which culminates in the artist creating a shrine-like installation of disparate elements which support that sense of self.

The Barcelona selection includes Elisabet Mabres’s nine-minute work, See & to be seen (2017) which reveals the public’s push and pull reactions to a mask-wearing woman as she walks through the streets of Hong Kong. Also featured is Una Dona Jove (A Young Woman) (2022) by Ramon Villegas in which a dancer loses their parent – an autobiographical fact that feeds directly into a performance.

Rudin’s collaboration with Hurl in ‘Homeland’ (chosen by the sub-committee) is a film, titled The Moon is Set in Motion and the Golden Plated Stars Appear (2022). Played perhaps as a scene from a big-house melodrama, the protagonist (Hurl) deliberately breaks a set of blue glasses and bottles. She is left distressed while considering the evidence of her actions – the broken shards –and how they might be reassembled. The viewer watches an unconsoled mind unravelling, knowing that the vessels and what they might have contained are beyond reclamation.

Patricia Hurl is also currently enjoying a retrospective of her work, titled ‘Irish Gothic’, in the Irish Museum of Modern Art. While Hurl’s work crosses disciplines, the exhibition focuses somewhat on her paintings from the 1980s. Expressionist in style, these are strong political and social pieces dealing with the control and erasure of Irish women during that period. Indeed, Hurl’s own experience mixes the personal with the political and this is depicted most jarringly in a painting in the show, Jingle Bells (1986). She recounts: “I was pregnant and the child died, but I still had to carry it further along its term. Given the climate of the time, I was met with a blank indifference from the medical establishment to my situation. Eventually, in December, the child was stillborn in hospital. On that night, I remember I was left all alone in a room with

the dead baby and I could hear Christmas carols being sung down the hall.”

These memories rise quickly to the surface for Hurl. Her suite of paintings on show in ‘Irish Gothic’ question how such cruelties were thoughtlessly embedded by the State in both care and justice systems, working directly against those they were supposed to protect and serve.

In addition, Hurl and Rudin are currently exhibiting in The Dock in Leitrim, as part of Na Cailleacha – an artist collective of eight older women, exploring strategies for sustaining creativity as we age, through solidarity and friendship. The exhibition presents a body of new work referencing the ground-breaking feminist artist, Paula Rego, who died last year. Plans are also in train for the tenth iteration of ‘Homeland’ later this year. Artists John Gerrard and Barbara Freeman have been invited to produce work alongside a number of artists who have featured in previous ‘Homeland’ exhibitions. Rudin notes: “It will be exciting to have these two artists involved and also to present new work from previous collaborators, to celebrate what has been achieved over the past decade.”

Brendan Maher is Artistic Director at The Source Art Centre in Thurles, County Tipperary. thesourceartscentre.ie

Patricia Hurl lives and works in Silverbarn Studios, Ballybritt, County Offaly. Originally from Switzerland, Therry Rudin is an artist living in Roscrea, County Tipperary. Their collaborative practice focuses on film-performance, documentary, and object-making around the subject of folk narrative. hurlrudin.com

‘Patricia Hurl: Irish Gothic’ continues at the Irish Museum of Modern Art until 21 May. imma.ie

‘Na Cailleacha: With reference to Paula Rego….’ continues at The Dock until 1 July. thedock.ie

Patricia Hurl, Madonna (Irish Gothic 2) c.1984-85, oil on canvas, 155 x 94 cm, Collection Highlanes Gallery; photograph courtesy of the artist, Highlanes Gallery, and IMMA.