Crawford Open 3, Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, CorkThis time last year Crawford Open 2 was busy doing a good job of irritating the hell out of me. Many of the artists assembled in that exhibition were overly influenced by the post-modernist predilection for mimicry, which on occasion manifested as smug and arrogant tomfoolery.
This disillusionment with contemporary art practice has once again resurrected for Crawford Open 3 - however the overt art historical referentialism is not as obvious this time around. Also, there seems to be less of a sense that the younger artists are overly seduced by their own role within the creative process, with a more definite sense of externalising, rather than internalising, their endeavours.
However, the reduced presence of these traits is replaced by a greater number of quite bland artworks, that neither inspire nor stimulate. Of course there are the perceived controversies which will titillate, offend or just confuse you. Eleanor Phillips' video of a woman waxing her bikini-line, Paul Connell's self explanatory Piss Stains or Melissa McDonnelland Brendan Earley's builders' plaster board contribution, are cases in point.
The anti-aesthetic taking on an eloquence of its own is a regular theme for contemporary artists and it is seen in Conor Caffrey's photographs of stolen cars rusting in the scenic Wicklow Mountains. Barbara Ash's bizarre bronze hybrid of baby/woman/child is a curious yet finely rendered artefact, while Anthony-Noel Kelly's matter-of-fact view of mortality represented by human teeth arranged onto a mirror, has a certain bleak, yet comic resonance.
Such attributes continue in Gail O'Reilly's film sequence of photographs spliced together with frenetic pace to a dance soundtrack, brilliantly conveying the accumulation of a lifetime of memories. Lorraine Neeson's photographs of dollhouse chairs viewed behind translucent screens are marvellously eerie and contemplative images.
In contrast Lisa Malone's houses-on-wheels sculptures have a charm and playfulness that act as a foil for some of the more intense works.
Runs until tomorrow...
Mark Ewart
The Yellow Room, Space Upstairs, Project
Yellow Room is the final piece in Yoshiko Chuma's tenure as artistic director of Daghdha Dance Company, which ends in July. Her arrival from New York in 2000 signalled a new departure for the company as it embraced the sudden artistic shifts that prioritised performance over Daghdha's long established dance-in-education programme. But Chuma herself has also taken a journey through those three years and The Yellow Room contrasts with the early, austere Reverse Psychology works.
The abstract metal cubes, which used to frame movement, have transformed into a flat set that opens out, forming a room to accommodate the comings and goings of the four performers. Although featuring choreography by Colin Dunne and Mary Nunan, many of Chuma's signatures are still present - the metronomes, stories and controlled chaos - but there seems more warmth and humanity underlying the action. Alienation still abounds and Robert Flynt's underwater photographs reinforce the performers' strong sense of individual space. On stage they rarely physically interact, but simply co-exist as if submerged without sensory awareness of others. At times this awareness is awoken, such as when Olwyn Grindley stands staring at projections of underwater couples in the back wall, alone in the room and lit with two dull streaks of light.
But The Yellow Room can't be conveniently summarised, because its images and stories refuse to logically connect, creating a sprawling, but fascinating, performance. On paper the performers seem wildly mismatched - former artistic director Mary Nunan, ex-Riverdance star Colin Dunne and actor Pádraig Delaney join Daghdha regular Olwyn Grindley - but they gel perfectly as an ensemble. Nunan's quiet energy contrasts with Delaney's bustling matter-of-factness, as does Grindley's self-absorption with Dunne's outwardly focused presence, yet they all unite with common performance energy. John Breen's text intermittently bursts into the action, lip-synched while seated at tables, and adds another layer to the physicality and constantly changing projected images. In the end we return to where we started, this time with the stage blanketed in deep red light. Chuma suggests with tongue-in-cheek in the programme that The Yellow Room is not a "dance", but however it is categorised, it's a production that sets the bar high for Daghdha's next artistic director.
Michael Seaver
