It is probably possible to cross central Dublin this month without coming across a work of site specific temporary public art, but it certainly isn't easy. First onto the streets were Nissan prize-winners Hegarty and Stones with their neon setting of Joycean quotations. Since then, Temple Bar Properties (see above) and the Fire Station Artists' Studios have both joined in. Perhaps, however, the most complex, and on many levels the most ambitious event is the Sculptors Society of Ireland's 22artist show, Ireland and Europe.
For the SSI event, 11 Irish artists were chosen to make works, and they in their turn selected 11 European artists to contribute. Twenty installations have emerged from the process, and these span a huge range of contemporary practice, from sound installations to performance-led work and more straightforwardly sculptural interventions.
It is in the nature of public projects to slip slightly beyond the control of the artists, a getaway that can have positive, and some less positive, effects. Soon after the opening of Ireland and Europe, a visit to the Civic Offices revealed that Daniel Jewesbury's Exchange, which promised a corridor of Babel, contained only one speaker and a silent one at that, while Joke Robaard's Horse, Athlete, Bird photo-works were somewhere behind locked doors. Surely the first business of public art is to be thoroughly public.
No work was more public than Sean Taylor's Insult The State?, a performance in which the eponymous slogan was pulled across the summer sky behind an aeroplane. The question mark has been added since Taylor made his original proposal, but the work still remains fairly taciturn without the event's programme, which explains that the piece refers to an incident of official racism in Germany.
All the works, barring Taylor's aeroplane, are flanked by semi-explanatory notices. Sometimes these provide useful insight into the artists' interests, but on more than one occasion over-zealous commentary flattens what may have been delicately poised work. Kaarina Kaikkonen's untitled intervention at a fountain in the Iveagh Gardens, in which the original fake waterfall stones have been covered with coloured coded clothing, men's suits in shades of blue and brown, near which a small plaque explaining the biographical references of the piece all but extinguishes the work's elliptical communications, gives one obvious example of this pitfall.
The ambition to offer some contexts for a work is laudable, but some works function best when they are at their most enigmatic. Aaronn Fowler's The Golden Calf, a calf made of butter in a glass case situated at Dublin Castle, hardly benefits from a text reminding us of Ireland's agricultural status. Neither Lorraine Whelan's "graffiti" prints of the EU symbol with the names of the members in Irish and their own national language, nor Nelida Mendoza's exterior window blinds (both in Parnell Square) have made the journey from idea to image particularly well. Pauline Agnew's installation of pillows printed with flags and taped reminiscences of refugees in the GPO did not even sound good on paper, but as executed failed to ignite the possibilities of its resonant setting.
Works which face up squarely to their contexts, and offer rewards for various levels of engagement seem like a far more coherent response to possibilities offered by large, varied audiences. In this respect, works at the Iveagh Gardens, such as Alan Phelan's assured markings for mutant sports, to Aine Ni Giolla's Coda and Michael Minnis's busy moments of humorous re-engineering, came off best. Sound works by English artist Max Eastley, and by Irish artist Fergus Kelly, hidden in the trees at the gardens, have a calm confidence that makes them highlights of the event.
Kelly has set up a trail of speakers in the canopy above a path through a small wooded patch, from which various sounds collected around the gardens are replayed and amplified, so as to interact with the area's live soundscape. Nearby, Max Eastley has suspended a line of diamond-shaped objects, the rubber struts of which vibrate with the wind, humming and whistling, but struggling, as every work must, to be heard over the ambient backdrop of the city.
Sculptures in the Ireland and Europe exhibition may be seen, until October 16th, at the following locations in Dublin: the GPO; Dublin Castle; Parnell Square; the Iveagh Gardens, off Harcourt St; the Civic Offices, Wood Quay; the Debtors' Prison, Green St; the Irish Film Centre; the Pen Corner, Dame Street.
Further information from Sculptors' Society of Ireland, tel: 01-872 2355/2296.
