NOBODY EVER BRINGS ANYTHING SMALL INTO A BAR
nobody ever brings anything small into a bar
Kunstverein Aughrim
12 June—5 September
This exhibition starts twenty years ago in the slide library of the National College of Art and Design (NCAD), Dublin. The college's teaching slides, small glass-panelled display devices used as educational tools, assembled in-house by-hand, and meticulously labelled and filed, mostly contained reproductions of artworks in the form of images photographed from the pages of the library’s reference books. Curator Vaari Claffey, interested in the current status of these slides, began a search with collaborator Brian Hand. A rich repository of discarded slide pockets and carousels was discovered. As objects that held no intrinsic value as artworks or even as documentation, the conservation of these teaching slides would not have been prioritised.
Now twenty years old, these slides have started to morph and disintegrate. A set of fashion images from the library and an informal collection held by Enterprise Ireland were of particular interest. Despite the degradation and disintegration of these images, they still hold some recognisable form. A runway, a swathe of fabric, the appearance of a human body, an arm, a shoulder, the poised foot of a spectator, all submerged in the melted cracks of the spoiled slide film emulsion. The images no longer function as straightforward representations. Instead, they occupy an ambiguous space between documentation and abstraction, unexpectedly compromised. They have autonomously created 'effects' that have little to do with authorship. These altered images raise questions about material change and the relationship between photographic records and the passage of time. How have these photographs of fabric, people, and scenes aged, alongside their subjects?
Removed from their original institutional context, released from the archive, and rescued from storage, can these slides gain a new form of agency? Presented in their current condition, altered, rotting, and materially vulnerable, the slides are displayed in various formats within the exhibition. Some of them have been rehoused in a series of tall, thin, staff-like sculptures created by Hand, to preserve and display these transformed, salvaged images. Referring to a 1970s series by Romanian artist André Cadere, titled Round Bar of Wood, these spindly sculptural forms suggest new possibilities for how the slide collection might circulate beyond the archive and continue to hold attention. Encounters are invited.
Biographies
| Vaari Claffey is an independent curator living in Dublin. She teaches at NCAD, Dublin. She has initiated a number of curatorial platforms including Gracelands, Magnetism at Hazelwood, IsolationTV and Dirty Solutions. Her practice involves working closely with artists to commission and stage experiential projects across a variety of media, aiming to produce a particularly dynamic relationship with the audience. These projects range from low-key, self-performed moments to large-scale exhibitions and public art commissions. Known for her innovative and experiential projects, Claffey’s practice involves collaborating closely with artists and other practitioners to conceive and stage large-scale exhibitions, performance/screening events, filmworks and outdoor artworks. |
| Brian Hand is an artist based in Carlow, Ireland. He also lectures and is head of sculpture and expanded practice at NCAD, Dublin. Hand’s art practice is broadly concerned with creatively exploring and researching events in the past. Hand makes temporary public work and time-based installations often in site-specific locations. He has a deep interest in post-colonial historiography and the limits of historical representation. In the past, he believes, we can find alternative images that disrupt the naturalness of the present. He has made work addressing art and politics through researching secret societies, prisons, suffragettes, the archive, the great famine and the invention of the Irish Wolfhound. As a writer Hand has published essays for artists such as Anne Tallentire, Noel Sheridan, Daphne Wright, Dennis McNulty, Colin Darke, and Dorothy Cross. Hand was a founding member of collaborative art groups: Blue Funk, The Fire Dept.,147, Entre Chien et Loup and most recently Stormy Petrel/ Guairdeall. |
This exhibition is part of The Clearing, a major new public project by Dublin-based curator and producer Vaari Claffey. It unfolds across an exhibition at Kunstverein Aughrim, a day of performance and sculpture as part of Craic in the Granite Music & Arts Festival, and a screening programme at The Courthouse Arts Centre, Tinahely.
The exhibition is open from 11am–3pm, Thursday–Sunday and by appointment
The Clearing is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council of Ireland. Kunstverein Aughrim’s collaboration with Vaari Claffey is supported by the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon. Vaari Claffey would like to thank CCI Paris, and Der Windtunnel, Zurich for support in the development of this project. Vaari Claffey & Brian Hand were supported by NCAD Research Seed Funding and NIVAL, Dublin.