Priest Casts I - IV outside the president’s office at MTU, Bishopstown, Cork.
A Drift, James Barry Exhibition Centre, Cork, March 2020
A Drift was a solo exhibition comprising drawings and objects related to my drawing practice. I brought together chalk and charcoal drawings, projections, photographic work and sculptural objects which are connected through themes of absence, disappearance and rediscovery. The story of the Canova casts, a collection of plaster casts which arrived in Cork 200 years ago and which was the catalyst for the foundation of the Cork School of Art, is at the heart of this work.
In this exhibition large-scale chalk drawings, which have long since been erased, were shown in projected film sequences. Other drawings, made in The Crawford Art Gallery, were left outside in the rain in a process which had echos of a photograph being developed. There are also photographs of tinfoil impressions which interrogate indexicality and works cast in plaster which pose questions about the meaning of words like ‘authentic’ and ‘original’ in art.
The Priest Cast series was purchased by MTU and is displayed outside the president’s office.
The Priest. On loan from CIT CCAD by kind permission.
This is a teaching tool from the drawing department of The Crawford College of Art and Design. It has been a subtle presence in CCAD for as long as anyone there can remember and has survived fairly well throughout various chapters in the life of the School of Art. It is presented here as a visual metaphor for the enduring nature of drawing.
The mythology: Laocoon was a Trojan priest who appears in Virgil's Aeneid. When the Greeks left the famous Trojan Horse outside the city of Troy he tried to warn the leaders of the city not to accept the gift in case it was a trick. He was severely punished for his actions by the Greek goddess Athena. He and his two sons were attacked by two ferocious sea serpents who were called Chariboea and Porces. He is captured in the sculpture in his final excruciating death agonies.
Priest casts I- IV
In this series of partial casts, one mould was made from which to make a plaster cast and then another was made from that and so on. The features lose distinction with each new cast. To me these pieces are like three-dimensional rubbings: they have picked up enough information to describe their subject but at the same time each has its own innate character. They have a material similarity to the chalk drawing sequences in this exhibition as chalk and Plaster of Paris share their chemical structure for the most part. They are also connected in other ways to the drawings. They are sequential in nature just as the drawings are, and both also have that sense of either coming into being or slowly disappearing.
Rain Drawings
I had a conversation with the conservator Eoghan Daltun while he was carrying out some work in the sculpture room at the Crawford Art Gallery a few years ago. We talked about the treatment of historical casts. Once academic drawing ceased to be taught in the School of Art, the casts became defunct and they were stored away in cupboards, damp basements or back yards. Plaster can only be left outside in the elements for a certain amount of time before it becomes degraded beyond repair. Past that point, restoration is impossible.
These drawings were made in the sculpture room at The Crawford and left to ‘develop’ in the rain.
Foil Face I
These are analogue photographs of tin foil impressions. They register both an absence and a presence simultaneously.
I have been working with light-sensitive chemistry in the darkroom since 2015.
Venus gets her arms. Film still/detail. From Dismantle 2019.
In this piece, dozens of chalk drawings of ancient plaster casts are projected onto an eight-foot, free-standing blackboard. All the drawings were made on this board and have been erased, with traces still visible. My fascination with the arrival here in Cork of the Canova casts continues. The arc of their story tells other stories about the teaching of art (drawing, particularly) and our relationship with history and historical objects.
From my degree show in 2019:
While carrying out research into the story of Cork’s Canova casts, I have been developing a visual language of loss and rediscovery.
Records show that 219 plaster casts arrived, by a circuitous route, at Cork Harbour in November 1818. By now, most of the collection is missing. Only a small number of the original casts are known to remain. Those make up the Recasting Canova exhibition which is currently running at The Crawford Municipal Art Gallery.
How and why have we lost more than two hundred plaster casts which were the foundation of the first Art School in the city?