Royal Hibernian Academy 183rd Annual Exhibition

This summer get yourselves down to the Annual exhibition held at the Royal Hibernian Academy at the bottom of Ely place to sample what is being produced by the up and coming artists as well as the established RHA members. It's website is being updated at the mo but it opened  last Tuesday and runs for June, July and until the 17th August. There is something for everyone; photography, sculpture, portraits, landscapes, installations, abstract art and any other type you care to think of. You don't need to know anything about art to know what you like and if you can't find something here to interest you then you must be completely without soul or a robot!


The exhibition fills all of the rooms in the gallery and is made up of works from established artists and members of the academy and over half from an open submission process. Much of it is for sale. Everyone will have their personal favourites. Works that caught my eye were Peter Monaghan's trademark colored circle Seed Gene, Patrick MacAlister's Suburban Portrait, Gavin Lavelle's very surreal and colourful Station to Station, Janice Lightowler's technically brilliant detailed Forever Painting and  the exciting pictures of the Coda Party Wall.

Peter Monaghan recently had an installation in the spa area of the newly opened Marker Hotel in Dublin's Docklands. His exhibited piece Seed Gene draws on previously constructed pieces using wooden dowels coloured on their angled cut ends such as that in John Smyth Architects in Grand Canal.


Patrick MacAlister's Suburban Portrait is a black on white background study of Anthony Burgess and his wife. It is a painting full of action and detail whilst at the same time a detailed study of the author who looms large to the right of the canvas and his wife who is less easy to identify, a more impressionistic detail, reclining in the back centre of the work.

Gavin Lavelle's playful Station to Station will draw you in by its sharp acrylic colours and to examine its collage details which include beads and jewels. It is a work that draws on Van Eyck's Ghent altarpiece and Titian's Venus and Adonis.


In a break from Janice Lightowler's more usual oil studies, Forever Painting is a permanently reflected painting going back into the canvas set in a physical remaking of the artists materials. It is both technically clever and accomplished with the detail creating interest for the eye as well as thought on its construction.

CODA (Caroline O'Donnell, Ithica, NY) won the New York Young Architects programme  this year with Party Wall. A temporary outdoor installation, it will be built this June at in Long Island to be used  at an outdoor summer music series. More detail can be found at http://momaps1.org/yap/view/16
   

Royal Hibernian Academy Annual Exhibition, 28th May-17th August 2013
Ely Place, Dublin 2
http://www.rhagallery.ie/

"What Are You Looking At?" by Will Gompertz

I'm halfway through reading this great book that I picked up when I was away on a short break. Purchased from the most excellent Liber Bookshop in Sligo Town, Will Gompertz's book What Are You Looking At? 150 Years of Modern Art in the Blink of an Eye is a purchase anyone interested in art will not regret.

  
Gompertz's writing style is informative and accessible without mystifying the reader with all the arty-farty bull that often emerges when art is being discussed. Gompertz is the first to admit that the industry is guilty of this fault, with its wealth of highly qualified museum and gallery staff writing exhibition brochures and wall plaques that need to inform the public but at the same time will be seen and judged by the higher echelons of the art world.

It is an art book that sets each major movement starting with the Impressionists in their own place in history and the influences and events that sparked off the changes in approach and thought. Their are colour plates of works from the major artists discussed and black and white prints interspersed throughout to further illustrate Gompertz' text. It is the type of book that makes you want to go away and explore further about specific artists or places that they worked in. These books to me are the best, those that spring board onto other books or websites or even to visiting the gallery where a particular artwork is shown. It encourages further thought and exploration where Gompertz has skirted the surface to give just enough detail to make one feel knowledgeable and to understand the roots of the art movement but not so saturated that there is not  more to discover. His very cleverly designed timeline of the Modern Art movements at the front of the book is laid out like the London underground map- a familiar iconic design that we are used to interpreting but here presenting a sometimes confusing pattern of development in a very clear and manageable way.



The Guardian is quoted as saying that "Will Gompertz is the best teacher that you never had" and I will second that statement. This is the type of book that you will return to again and again as the read about influences are recognised in new artworks that are produced and seen by the critical public.

Retro Sweets

I'm a sweet lover- let me state that fact now. By that I mean sweeties; gums, toffee bonbons, chewy fruit sweets, you get the picture. Chocolate is nice, especially that lime Áine plain chocolate, but I'm not going to get excited about a Mars bar. Sweets mean those ones that come in swing bags and you seem to be able to scoff in huge quantities without coming over all sick like you do with chocolate. So now we are straight on that let me get to the point.

I recently bought a pack of four sherbet fountains. Ooh, the anticipation of opening them was immense. The thought of the lovely stiff stick of licorice, the sherbet sticking with each re-dip. The reality was just one big disappointment. You see if you are going to re-introduce sweets they have to be as they were, and this sherbet fountain was not as it was.

 Exhibit 1- new sherbet fountain

  Exhibit 2 - old sherbet fountain

Now, the subtle differences between these two fountains are all important. As a result I suppose of some type of health and safety food regulation the licorice is now inside a hermetically sealed plastic container with a fakey looking black plastic tip to mimic the licorice that used to stick out the top. This issue overcome and the lid twisted off, the licorice stick is kind of thinner and more bendy, not up to repeated sucking and dipping into the sherbet. Complaint number three is the supposedly improved plastic tube. Half the fun of eating a sherbet fountain was when the top paper got all soggy with the constant repeated dips and tinged with black goo. This resulted in a tearing off of half the cardboard to reveal the sherbet stuck in the bottom so that you could have a good ole prod and dig at it. This is no longer possible in the rigid plastic tube and you end up either tipping it out and risking choking as the dust shoots down your throat or just abandoning the project halfway.

So, new design of sherbet fountain - "nil point" as they say in Eurovision. So glad I got that out of my system!

   

DVD's- 'End of Watch' and Jo Nesbo's 'Jackpot'

Does anybody rent DVDs these days? With the closure of 20 of Xtravision's 152 stores across Ireland earlier this May and the company going into receivership I guess the facts speak for themselves. Viewing has changed; we stream films and TV series, subscribe to Netflix for all its faults and have Sky or other cable networks. So I guess the answer to my first question is "No". Despite this my local DVD rental store is always busy with browsing public who leave with a couple of discs and for the bank holiday weekend we rented '3 for the price of 2' of which we have viewed two.

  

End of Watch starring Jake Gyllenhall and Michael Pena as two South Central California cops is a very real and sometimes disturbing journey as the two cops with an extremely close 'brother in arms' relationship patrol the neighbourhood holding their own camcorder to document their watch. The success of their busts is their ultimate downfall as they mess with a big Mexican cartel involved in drugs and human trafficking. Sometimes hard to watch it is violent, rough and disturbing as the gangs pitch themselves against their enforcers but it is the relationship between Gyllenhall and Pena as Brian and Mike, the cop car banter and the more personal exchanges that carries the story. A very rewarding rental.

 

Jackpot, based on the Jo Nesbo story was an unexpected joy. Violent, rough, disturbing and .....funny, it was one of the funniest black humour movies I have seen for a while. The arrest of Oscar Svenson played by Kyrre Hellum in a strip joint/sex shop after a violent shoot out allows the detective in charge, Solor to question him and get to the bottom of the event. Oscar works with ex-offenders and is roped into getting into a football betting pool as the fourth person. The unexpected win leads to a chain of events carefully explained by the innocent Svenson. The four main characters, Svenson, Thor Eggen, Billy and Dan Treschow work perfectly together as the combination of psych vs innocent vs stupid vs the loyal con. All of this is balanced out by the cool questioning by Solor whom we never quite know whether he is being serious or sarcastic. The outcome is most satisfying.

Two dvd rentals recommended should you wish to support an ailing industry!