Periodical Review 14: A Language to Shout In
Pallas Projects, Dublin
★★★★☆
Beginning in 2011, the Periodical Review series was designed to bring external peers – artists, curators, writers, educators etc – into dialogue with Pallas Projects. After a process of deliberation and discussion, they select a small number of artworks from the past 12 months that exemplify the state of Irish contemporary art. This year, Pallas invited the curators Miguel Amado, director of the Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh, and Valeria Ceregini, an Italian art historian based in Ireland, to submit their preferred artworks. As an added bonus, the gallery has a tradition of partnering with Paper Visual Art to release an accompanying essay, reflecting on the themes of the exhibition. Enter Diana Bamimeke, who identifies “a shared concern with the collective” in the artworks on display. Bamimeke conceives of this imagined collective in terms of “a language to shout in”, which will emancipate its users to address “the planetary challenges of the next century”.
There are 20 artists in the exhibition, and moving-image figures predominantly throughout. When considering highlights it is impossible not to begin with Namaco’s ingenious video game-artwork hybrid Mega Dreolín, a pixelated Nintendo 64-style journey through Dublin’s decaying urban and residential zones. Guided by non-player characters such as Avril Corroon (whose artwork thematises damp in rental properties) and Manchán Magan, the player jumps, dashes and avenges themselves against monstrous corporate landlords, combining entertainment with outrage, as the knowledge that Ireland’s housing crisis is the result of political decision-making sinks inescapably in.
Amanda Rice’s haunting and evocative The Flesh of Language is another contribution that demands to be experienced in its entirety. Rice’s film creates a riveting visual narrative from the remains of extinct Irish elk, dance performance, parapsychology experiments, and archives dedicated to obsolescent technology. One media archivist pulls several threads together when she notes that all plastic technologies, from VHS players to Bluetooth headphones, are products of crude oil, which in turn is produced from the sedimentation of ancient organic matter. This luminous thought pairs fruitfully with the choreography of Rice, Nina Davies and Ananya Jaidev, whose compelling movements are dislocated in time by repetitive editing.
Pallas’s exhibition also features several analogue artists, including Kian Benson Bailes and Samir Mahmood. Mahmood’s acrylic paintings strike a balance between intimacy and iconography, a finessed style that calmly weaves together domestic life, spiritual yearning, the body and national symbolism within wooden panels. Benson Bailes is a more bombastic presence: his sculptures are confectionery mutants, like body-horror props designed and executed by primary schoolers: David Cronenberg meets The Morbegs.
The last thing our teenage son said was: ‘Why are you all so sad? I’m going to be fine’
Babygirl review: Five stars for a fearless Nicole Kidman’s dive into a hot erotic mess. Bondage has seldom been as playful
10 great films to watch if you’re stuck indoors
50 people to watch in 2025: From film and music to arts, activism, sport and more
While Bamimeke’s choice of “collective” as the linchpin concept for the show makes sense, my own instinct is that this year’s Periodical Review is a meditation on deterioration, expressing a fundamental sense of decline. Kathy Tynan’s painting, Aoife, brings this thought home in a sophisticated counterbalance of expectations, depicting a father and son in the Garden of Remembrance, seemingly enjoying their visit to the national monument. On closer inspection, however, one notices that the boy is unresponsive to the father’s outstretched hand, as though immune to the possibility of connection, while behind them a great transformation is taking place: humans becoming animals.
Periodical Review 14: A Language to Shout In continues at Pallas Projects until Saturday, January 25th
