Production of Sight (continued)
Theorist Carlotta Castellani1 has aligned the site-specific artist residency with what Foucault describes as a heterotopia – that every place is also non-place, a place dependent on a range of relationships and particularly dependent on the artist’s personal connection to it.
Resort Residency, through the unwavering support of Gerry Lynders and Fingal Arts Office, has become a space where visiting artists are welcomed as guests. The model aims to create a space where artists are supported enough to feel at ease within their environment so that the intricacies of their way of seeing reveal a truthful and integral representation of Portrane and surrounding Donabate.
On and on and on and on and on goes the title of the sculpture at the site by Difference Engine (Mark Cullen and Gillian Lawler). The form of the sculpture was decided on the throw of a 50-cent coin, creating an aperiodic binary tiling formation that allows the visitor to engage in the feeling of disorientation while remaining immersed in a place, a feeling which I am sure resonates with any artist participating on residency – what Marnie Badham describes as “places that are not their own”.2
Land Grabs by Wendy Judge looks at rock formations surrounding the area and invites us to suspend our perceptions of them; after all, The Bleeding Pig is a rock which is acknowledged as an animal form.
Jessica Foley has written a new work, Holes, which weaves her own experience on residency with anecdotes and fiction to reveal topographical and geological observations of the site.
Bennie Reilly’s Souvenirs of Portrane speaks to the history of Newbridge House and its relationship to the coast, showing that the found object so revered by Fanny Cobbe is still a treasure across the ages, when in the eye of the beholder.
The barely noticeable architectural features at the park have been beautifully illuminated by Marie Farrington in her work See Level, where the everyday vernacular becomes monumental through plaster mixed with seawater, as material is mixed with site.
Ciaran Murphy’s I See gives us an insight into the power of the artist’s eye to influence how we perceive a location, aligned with the practice of Conrad Martens, the 18th-century artist who travelled with Charles Darwin along unchartered landscapes, where his observations became more important than the written descriptions of them.
As always we have many to thank, and as always we begin with Gerry Lynders and his family for their dedication to the artist’s process. We are delighted to announce that over the winter months Gerry has built a permanent studio space, which is a valuable site of production and presentation and further confirms that the artist will always be welcome at the park. Thanks is also due to Eilish McDermott, Larry Carolan and all at the Bleeding Festival for supporting the programme, Bryan Greene for his production assistance, Anne Brophy and the staff of Newbridge House and Farm, Brian Cregan and our design collaborator Rossi McAuley and his team at Distinctive Repetition for the communication of this year’s programme at the park and the bespoke production of Bennie Reilly’s Souvenirs of Portrane playing card decks. I would like to congratulate this year’s artists – Ciaran Murphy, Bennie Reilly, Marie Farrington and Difference Engine’s Mark Cullen, Gillian Lawler, Wendy Judge and Jessica Foley – for the production of outstanding work, and wish them all the best on their next residency journey, wherever that may be.
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1 Carlotta Castellani, “From ‘Ermetic’ artist residency to ‘Heterotopia’: Shifts in the cultural politics of Villa Romana (1905–2017)”, “The Artist Residency in Context”, Seismpolite Journal of Art & Politics, Issue 18, 2017.
2 Marnie Badham, “The Social Life of Artists Residencies, Working with People & Places not your own”, The Artist Residency in Context, Seismpolite Journal of Art & Politics, Issue 19, 2017.
