Last year the Claremorris Open Exhibition came up with a drastic solution to a problem that had dogged it since its inception in 1978: the lack of an appropriate exhibition venue in the town. The town itself became a gallery, and prospective exhibitors were invited to submit proposals for any of a list of specified sites. The initiative has been repeated this year, for COE '99, the 22nd show in the series.
Most of the sites are shop windows. While windows can and do adequately house some conventional paintings or drawings, more obviously they provide an opportunity for artists to make their own installation displays, and several have done so very effectively. They include Allie Kay's brilliant textile sculptures Three Corset Bodies in Berr's Boutique, Noreen Casey's Dreaming Fairytale Dreams, a portrait of a young girl that captures the magical quality of childhood imagination, a story taken up in Jane Sullivan's exuberant clothes-based piece in the window of Jeremiah Higgins. Joyce Duffy's acerbic treatment of the idea of consumable women in art and culture is, appropriately enough, in the Eat Inn Cafe. More straightforwardly, Cathy Callan's very physical paintings of joints of meat are comfortably at home in Clarke's butcher chop.
There is some particularly good siting, such as Neva Elliott's clinically cool photographs of body parts in Flynn's Pharmacy, playing on ideas of body image and notions of normality, and Maeve Connolly's wing mirror video in Pat's Cabs, or Stephen Hackett's didactic audio installation, pointedly juxtaposing John McCormack and Phil Coulter in easy listening mode, in the window of Atlantic Music (and, alas, inaudible against the road of non-stop traffic).
Because the exhibition demands that you ramble around, it directs attention to the fabric of the town, which is enjoyable in itself. Some artists have obviously explored in depth. Amanda Ralph found a beautiful, venerable, narrow twisting laneway between Dalton Street and Mount Street and made it the subject of her audio piece - a local history commentary on the laneway. Walter Michael has installed lengths of piping on the new pedestrian railway bridge to make wind chimes.
Off the main Galway road, the show's route map leads you to Clare Lake, a beautifully situated body of water carefully landscaped and planted as a recreational area. There you find A Small Exhibition Inside a Big One, a group of massive stone carvings by Lithuanian artist Jonas Simonelis. His stylised, serpentine forms combine highly polished and very roughly chiselled stone. They sit well in the tranquil setting, and it would be terrific if one of them could find a permanent home there, but that may well be impossible.
John Kirrane, who has laboured heroically over the years for COE, regrets "the lack of entries from the core group of artists, especially the painters and print-makers, who were synonymous with COE from its inception". Their relative scarcity is probably explicable in terms of the emphasis on the site-specific aspect of show. In fact, many of the venues are reasonably sympathetic to painting and prints, although none remotely approaches the qualities of the "white cube". Though mind you, John Kirrane can afford a little self-congratulation for featuring one outstanding discovery in that general area, in the form of a suite of mixed media coloured drawings, In Beckett's Garden, by Virginia R. Gibbons. Gestural, made with great vigour and attack, they are thoroughly alive.
COE 99 in Claremorris continues until September 25th. Many exhibits are generally accessible but the official hours are Sunday 2.30 p.m. - 6 p.m., Tuesday - Wednesday 11 a.m. - 6 p.m., Thursday - Friday 11 a.m. - 5 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. The COE office is on the Ballyhaunis Road
