PERSONAL SPACE:Robert Ballagh's house – or, rather, three houses, joined up to create one modernist space – is testament to the artist's family life, his attention to detail, his background in architecture and, crucially, the fluidity and flexibility of his art, writes GEMMA TIPTON
ARTIST ROBERT BALLAGH still lives in the building where his wife, Betty, was born and, from the outside, not much has changed. It’s in one of the Dublin Artisan Dwellings (DAD) terraces, built at the turn of the last century in a successful bid to lower the rates of tuberculosis, which had been rife in Dublin’s notorious tenements. They weren’t big houses: Ballagh’s was just 12 feet wide when he and his wife moved in, in the 1960s. They were offered the place for a princely IR£650. “We thought about it, wondered if we should, put it off . . .” Ballagh remembers. “Then they got back to us and said ‘it’s now £750, and if you don’t buy it, we’ll sell to someone else’.”
Almost 20 years later, during which time Ballagh had established himself as one of Ireland’s foremost artists, the Ballaghs bought another house. So far, so good, but what was unusual was that it was the house next door, and they simply knocked through. Times had changed: No 4 cost IR£17,500.
Those who have followed the artist’s career may feel they know his houses intimately: there is the painting of the Ballagh family outside in No 3 (1977); the spiral staircase appears with a nude descending in Inside No 3 (1979); you can track changes with Inside No 3 After Modernisation (1982), and Upstairs No 4 (1989) adds to the set. Then, just over a decade later, they added No 5 to the list, at IR£150,000, and this time decided that simply knocking through wouldn’t quite make sense of their trio.
“We asked our friends Valerie and Niall of McCullough Mulvin architects, but they were too busy, so they recommended Boyd Cody.” And the results? The three houses have been magically combined to become one Doctor Who Tardis of light and space: as we talk, Ballagh points out that he is sitting in No 5, while I, on an identical black leather sofa, am in No 4.
It’s a clean, cool modernist palace, in which rooms layer and look through to one another, rather like a Japanese box puzzle. You can see the architects’ love of materials everywhere: the polished, poured concrete that makes up a desk, moving to become steps in the internal courtyard, before entering the house again as a sink unit in the kitchen; wooden floors and stone floors; wood-panelled walls, and white render; walls of opaque glass, clear panes giving views throughout the different spaces. In the master bedroom “you can track the progress of the moon”.
The original windows remain to the front, but there is little else of the original features. What could potentially feel stark is, however, softened by touches of colour, which come from the Ballaghs’ own additions: a bright orange kitchen, two Ceadogán rugs, one designed by Ballagh himself, and lots of art, family mementoes and photos. On one wall is a light box photo by the couple’s daughter, Rachel, a talented artist herself. In the study a profusion of tomato plants grow, a gift from Rachel, who now lives in Cork.
Despite the hard design edges, it’s a soft space: gently cluttered, and comfortable, which is unexpected for an artist who has described his own attention to detail as “demented”, and whose work was once marked by its modernist flatness. Part of that came from Ballagh’s own training as an architect, which was distinctly modernist itself. He studied with Robin Walker, who had just returned from working with Mies van der Rohe; and he says he was “very in tune with Dermot [Boyd] and Peter [Cody]”. His art seems to have acquired more visual depth, and I wonder if that is deliberate. It turns out to be more of a joy. “I’m painting the way I’d like to have been able to paint in the past,” he says.
Ballagh originally made his name with a highly successful series of Pop Art paintings of people looking at famous art works, although after the first series he stopped painting them. “You can cease to be an artist and become a maker of decor for rich people’s houses,” he warns.
Ballagh’s own career can seem as contradictory and unexpected as his comfortably cluttered modernist house: he is well known for his political leanings and paintings, for his portraits of famous Irish people, his designs for our stamps and pre-euro bank notes, and for the sets of Riverdance.
It may seem an eclectic mix, but in a richly illustrated new book, written by critic Ciaran Carty, the various elements of Ballagh’s talents come together and start to make sense, just like his house – at numbers 3, 4 and 5.
Robert Ballagh: Citizen Artist, by Ciaran Carty is out next Thursday and available in bookshops, priced €75. His exhibition Ego, a series of self-portraits, runs at the Wexford Arts Centre until November 28th, and his work is also included in The Moderns, at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, until February 13th, 2011
