DEAR NADIA
The ‘Ethical Egg’ or the
‘Poetical Chicken’
BY NADIA ANNOUNCE S:
You may be surprised to know
that there is a growing interest in
art today and I am delighted to
announce, that I will be dedicating
this column to your questions on
the subject through art event
review from September, 2010.
★ Holly O'Brien presents in more
DEAR NADIA: Skipping
breakfast and replacing it with art
has become my new diet. Can you
give me some insight into how the
artist sees their work in relation to
our current downtrodden Ethics.
CURIOUS rather than an ethical work. Personally, art should
★ encompass all our vices and virtues rather than having
DEAR CURIOUS: First up, let’s
look at something that has been
bothering me for some time, what
is the real intention of the artist?
Let’s start with some ‘food for
thought’ by mentioning the
causality dilemma of the ‘chicken
or the egg,’ which was cleverly rep-
resented as a futile exercise in Ceal
Floyer’s ‘Egg/Chicken’ rolodex,
2005. Floyer succeeds in trans-
forming a semantic puzzle into a
visual pun. This is art; language
begets a question, then an image/
object/sound is formed, which
begets another question. There is a
similar dilemma that exists in art
between ‘Ethics’ and ‘poetics.’
I am defining “Ethics” as a term
that is connected to site-specificity,
political context and artist
objectivity; while poetics is formed
in language and extends to how the
artist measures and presents his/
her subject formally. Ethics or
poetics: what comes first? Which is
more valued? Does the artist really
know? Is Ethics just an add-on in
the aftermath of exterior analysis?
The Finnish Philosopher George
Henrik von Wright said: “ETHICS
is often said to be the philosophy
of morals or ‘theory’ of morals.
Questions of morals are, to a large
extent, questions of good and evil
and duty. Not all good, however, is
morally relevant and not every duty is a moral duty.”
Von Wright sees his philosophy as a study of Ethics
rural city clichés.
to use the ‘versus’ preposition between good and bad.
As one of the only free spaces, art can use those
liberties objectively and not advance subjective
individual views which become self propelled actions.
Vitally, it is the balance between both Ethics and
poetics that stops the artist’s work from being
stretched into an excessively formalist or activist
enterprise. Let’s look at a recent art event to formulate
some opinion on the matter.
OCCUPY SPACE is centrally located in Limerick
City. The gallery (or the more progressive term, ‘space’),
is surrounded on all sides by vacant commercial units -
evidence of projected faith in the markets overriding an
appreciation of the business definition of ‘worst case
scenario.’ OCCUPY has the architectural appeal of a
West Side New York gallery. The title of the show,
‘Surplus Value,’ curated by Michele Horrigan, reflects
on the economic woes - without the groan. Horrigan
has put together a selection of 5 old and new art works
that recycle provincial and foreign signifiers of
exhausted value
It is the combination of site and theme that gives this
show a poetic and ethical punch. Mike Fitzpatrick’s
'Dealer Ties' (1996-97) has a real New York City feel. A
line of white neckties with printed images of prominent
New York art dealers, hang on a wall at neck height.
The cheap white neckties with colour portraits,
document a time when art dealing was good in New
York’s SoHo District, before it moved west into
Chelsea. The only difficulty I have with this work is the
punch line; a yellow necktie with the image of a young
footpath beggar - acts as a literal quotation mark above
the line of dealer ties. If this is a social pun on “dealers”
coming in all shapes and sizes, then it is a third wheel
on an already conceptually and socially adroit work? If
it is a signifier for the unfair capitalist driven positions
in society, then the work extends beyond the ethical
Part 1., June, 2010.
boundary of art into sentimentality.
But, as I write this, maybe this
‘a d d - o n’ c r e a t e s a s t a l e m a t e
between the work being a one-liner
and something that the viewer can
enter and question?
The other works in the space act
as adjuncts to Fitzpatrick’s ‘Dealer
Ties.’ We have seen the views that
journalistic circles. Her photograp-
hs, entitled 'Mor ning, Noon,
Night'(2008) of young ‘locals’
kitted-out in ‘Red Army’ regalia
and after-hours mini-skirts, fall
between chance document and
A n i n i t i a l t u r n o f f, A n g e l a
Fulcher’s panels of tent canvas,
sourced from the afters of a music
festival, at first glance act as
window dressing and rafter
decoration for an other wise
formally tight show. But on further
reflection, Fulcher ’s means of
sourcing the materials fits nicely
with the back-story behind Oliver
Heinzenberger’s inconspicuous
‘White Square’ on the back wall of
the space. In the vein of Frank
Stella, Heinzenberger’s wooden
multiple, made up of L-Square
arrows sourced from a skateboard
ramp and pointing against the flow
of the space - resembles a parquet
Equivalent of Carl Andre’s ‘100
bricks.’ It is the discarded nature of
the “surplus” materials and forms
within the space, teamed with the
commercial vacancies without, that
creates the play between worth and
insignificance.
Out the back in a fittingly
haphazard dark-space, Sean Lynch’s
'The Bandits Live Comfortably in
the Ruins' (2006) is a presentation
of archival news footage of the
‘Failed’ attempt to demolish Rank's
M i l l s i n L i m e r i c k . Ly n c h’s
universally understood and
currently apt ‘Paddy Irish Man’
building caper, successfully avoids
being a provincial in-joke. In the
end, poetics and Ethics find an
even footing at OCCUPY.
Contact: nadiaplease@gmail.com