THE DARK ARTS, PHOTOGRAPHY, & POLITICAL COMMUNICATIONS,
SYMPOSIUM

This new exhibition of photographs by Eamonn Farrell – ‘Charles Haughey: Power, Politics & Public Image’ examines the public image of Charles Haughey – the most controversial politician since the foundation of the state. With his Napoleonic manner, driving ambition and extravagant private life (with a penchant for tailored Charvet shirts from Paris), Haughey remains a compelling and divisive figure in the Irish political landscape. As a Taoiseach, he was before his time in understanding the power of the image: he knew how to use photographers to his advantage, and made himself easily available to them. Eamonn Farrell has used this access to capture images that offer real insights into Haughey’s elevated perception of himself.

#03: Eamonn Farrell talks about his latest exhibition on Irish politician Charles Haughey

JANET MULLARNEY: MY MINDS I at the BUTLER GALLERY, THE CASTLE, KILKENNY, IRELAND

Highlanes Gallery continues to grow, not only by bringing to Drogheda world class exhibitions like the One Day, Something Happens: Paintings of People which opened last week, but Highlanes also develops exhibitions with important Irish artists like Janet Mullarney, which this week, opened at the Butler Gallery in Kilkenny Castle.

Janet Mullarney, ARHA, is one of Ireland’s most important artists working today. The title of the exhibition, My Minds i, refers to the idiom ‘mind’s eye’ and to the human ability for visualisation, for the experiencing of visual mental imagery; one’s ability to ‘see’ things with the mind, and to the power of the psychic imagination that communicates important subterranean messages to be deciphered.

“The title refers to all these objects that are on large lightboxes or else producing strange shadows in the next room or referring to ‘my mind’s eye’ which is my subconscious”, says Mullarney. “They surface in the studio and things get put on or struck off or broken on purpose – they just make sense and I leave them at that. I don’t want to know what they’re saying”.

And there is further news of the tour, which will open in Autumn 2016 in Wexford Arts Centre for the Wexford Opera Festival, and then to Highlanes Gallery’s cross border partner, the FE McWilliam Gallery & Studio in Banbridge, Co. Down.

#04: Janet Mulraney – My Minds Eye

DANNY DEVENNY – THE BIRTH OF THE IRISH REPUBLIC MEMORIAL MURAL. At The Ambassador Theatre, O’Connell St, Dublin. 

Belfast artist Danny Devenny is responsible for some of the most powerful and provocative murals painted during the Northern Ireland Troubles. His latest project is a memorial  – a mural interpretation inspired by Robert Ballagh’s iconic painting ‘The Birth Of The Irish Republic’ which tells of that defining moment in Dublin’s GPO.

“When you’re close to someone, you forget how much of a genius they are”, Devenny says of  his friend Robert Ballagh. “He’s my friend, so I never thought about it until I first saw the painting, I got what he was trying to do, he was bringing that old image at the GPO into the modern age. To be recognised and warmed to by a younger generation.”

Devenny’s experiences during the 1970s as a paramilitary prisoner in Long Kesh, forged his understanding of how to communicate an ideology and struggle through art with very limited resources.

“I was there with the people who discussed and planned where this little island was going”, says Devenny. “We called it the ‘University of Freedom’, so Bobby Sands would have been one of my best friends there. We talked and planned about how the future could be”.

The living conditions and allowances afforded to Republican prisoners in Long Kesh was in stark contrast to what their comrades were experiencing in British prisons and this was fully appreciated by Devenny and his cell mates.

“Our comrades in British prisons were not only being brutalised and tortured by the regime – ordinary English prisoners hated them too. Here we were, sitting in Long Kesh, visitors coming to see us every week”.

In an show of solidarity for their comrades in England, the Long Kesh group wrote to newspapers while Devenny began to design posters illustrating their brutal prison conditions. Danny’s illustrations and posters were then smuggled out through cardboard laundry boxes, printed externally by Sinn Féin for public use (the video above features some of those publications).

A fitting location for the exhibition, the Ambassador Theatre was formerly the Rotunda Rink and dates back to 1764. It was here on 25 November 1913 that the Irish Volunteers held a mass meeting and many volunteers who took part in the 1916 Rising signed up.

During the 1916 Rising, the Ambassador was the backdrop for the famous image of British Soldiers posing with the captured Irish Republic flag held upside down and inside out. Beside the building is where the captured rebels from the GPO and Four Courts garrisons were held out overnight at the front of the Rotunda.

#05: Danny Devenny – Belfast Mural artist

DRAGANA JURISIC – YU: THE LOST COUNTRY (2011-2013)

Using Rebecca West’s book Black Lamb and Grey Falcon as a travel guide to a country that had ceased to exist, photographer and writer Dragana Jurisic’s YU: The Lost Country explores personal and political identity. With an original print run of only 500 copies, the much sought-after book sold out very quickly on its release. The book is remarkable, not only for the quality of its photography, but also for its writing. Recently, Dragana returned to the “lost country” with an exhibition at The Meeting Point in Sarajevo. Murmur talks to her about the past, present and future.

“The story of me as a photographer starts in 1991 during the war in former Yugoslavia when our family apartment was burned down together with thousands of prints and negatives my father, an ardent amateur photographer, had accumulated. The day after the fire was the last day he took a photograph, a perfunctory snapshot to record the damage for the insurance company. Where my father stopped, I started.

“The act of photographing, of looking at the world through a camera lens, helped provide a semblance of control over an otherwise unpredictable world.” – Dragana Jurisic from YU: The Lost Country.

Dragana Jurisic was born in Slavonski Brod, Croatia (then Yugoslavia). She is currently based in Dublin, Ireland. After the break up of Yugoslavia in 1991, an entire country disappeared and nearly 1.5 million Yugoslavs vanished into thin air. Today, in the countries that came into being after Yugoslavia’s disintegration, there is total denial of that former identity. Her book YU: The Lost Country looks at the effects of exile and displacement on memory and identity from the eyes of an exile. Now, more than twenty years after the war, she feels at the safe distance to recall and question her own memories of both the place and the events she personally experienced.

Jurisic’s views on the doctrine of nationalism, the ethnic, cultural and religious identity of a race, are deeply embedded in her work. “I truly believe nationalism is the ideology of idiots. And I don’t just imply that with former Yugolslavia but everywhere around the world”, says Dragana. Nationalism, in Jurisic’s opinion, is for people who have no sense of self with the constant need to attach themselves to other establishments – a football team, a part of town, a country. “I don’t think there is any anger in my work, I think it’s quite melancholy actually”.

On becoming an Irish citizen in 2009 (making her a dual passport holder – the other being Croatian), Dragana understands its significance: “I really appreciate living here. What is really good for me is the fact that Irish headline news wouldn’t even make news where I’m from”, she says. “It makes me happy that I live in a civilised society in terms of politics and corruption. Irish people might disagree, but I would challenge them to study what’s going on in former Yugoslavia”.

The quietly prolific Jurisic is already in the throws of planning her latest project: “My next book will be more of a novel in the classical sense. There will be images in it but not necessarily my images”, says Jurisic. “It’s primarily about my aunt who escaped Yugoslavia in the 1950s. She was an uneducated girl from a small village who ended up working as a spy in Paris. There are rumours she was in the sex industry there but I can’t prove that … it will be a fictionalised biography”.

You can see more of Dragana Jurisics work, including her latest show My Own Unknown, here: www.draganajurisic.com

#06: Dragana Jurisic – Return To The Lost Country

TRISH LAMBE OF THE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY IRELAND TALKS TO MURMUR

REFLECTING 1916 – Photography and the Easter Rising is a photography-based programme which includes a specially curated photographic exhibition and publication by the Gallery of Photography Ireland. The programme extends to street-based art installations at key locations around the city, outdoor projections, free public talks & tours, a book launch and workshops on how to preserve your family photographs.

The exhibition features photographs taken by eyewitnesses to this pivotal period in Ireland’s history, a number of which are being shown in public for the first time. A key album on show is the Smith Album which was contributed by an anonymous Dublin photographer. “The Smith Album is the most amazing set of photographs taken by an anonymous eyewitness at the time which is an ordinary persons view of the week of the Rising”, says Trish Lambe, co-director of the gallery. “We’ve got an incredible picture of Moore Lane – ‘Rebel Stronghold’ – depicting the infamous address, riddled with bullet holes, on the day of the surrender”.

A centerpiece installation of large-scale photos captures the destruction of Dublin and offers viewers a dramatic, immersive experience. This is contextualised by explorations of the use of photography to represent the idealism and growing militarism of the revolutionary generation. The wider use of photography as a vital tool for propaganda focusses on Roger Casement and his use of photography to highlight crimes against humanity.

Casement’s own documentary photographs from the Putamayo offer an insight into his evolution from British imperialist to Irish revolutionary.

A further sequence includes images of the widows and orphans of the Rising that were reproduced in the Catholic Bulletin in 1916, highlighting how photography was used to sway public opinion in the immediate aftermath.

There’s also a fascinating series of photographs (annotated by Captain Wheeler, who took the surrender from commandant Mallon at the Royal College of Surgeons) showing guns, pouches and canteens: “Included in this set is an intriguing photograph of the canteen belonging to commandant Pearse (see above) containing two large onions which he was carrying when he surrendered”, says Lambe.

The final section looks at how the Rising has been represented in subsequent commemorations.

The gallery’s unique and compact interior space, a landmark building which was designed by O’Donnell + Tuomey architects in 1996, has proved a major challenge for staff in accommodating a large-scale exhibition of the likes of REFLECTING 1916.

In 2016, it is evident the gallery requires a more suitable interior to accommodate the ever-increasing larger shows: “It’s quite a tight squeeze – we now find that the gallery is actually too small to accommodate the type of exhibition we’d like to curate here”, says Lambe. “We’ve got a really rich photographic heritage, as you can see with the material on show on the walls. But what we really need now, in order to deliver on the potential of the photography, is a bigger space in the centre of Dublin that can really engage with the public”.


#07: Trish Lambe of the Gallery Of Photography

PHOTOTROPISM AT THE LIBRARY PROJECT, TEMPLE BAR, DUBLIN

Phototropism is defined as the natural tendency of plants to move or point towards a light source. One could also interpret this action as the result of a far more complex and instinctive decision, made in the search for subsistence, for all living things, towards a common good.

This exhibition, now running at The Library Project, combines two natural forms that rely heavily on light for their existence – plants and photography.

“The exhibition brings together the works of contemporary photographers assembled among various plant installations”, says Ángel Luis González Fernández, co-curator of the exhibition and director of Photo Ireland. “We’re trying to assimilate phototropism – the idea of plants going towards the light. It could also be understood, in human terms, as the idea of a movement towards a common good, something positive”.

Placed, and at times concealed, amid a diverse botanical display of tropical, desert and domestic plants are the works of eleven contemporary photographers including Viviane Sassen, Ciarán Óg Arnold, Miriam O’Connor, Paul Gaffney, Jan Dirk Van Der Burg, Gerry Blake, Saskia Groneberg, Enda Bowe, Ruth van Beek, Eoin Moylan, and Awoiska Van Der Molen. All works have a distinct, varied and playful approach that will evolve together with the plant life over the month-long installation.

Check out the full feature here
http://murmur.ie/murmurings-2/phototropism-library-project/

#08: Ángel Luis González Fernández - Phototropism exhibition at the Library Project, Dublin

FOLLOWING FISHAMBLE’S RECENT SOLD OUT SHOW IN DUBLIN, WE TALK TO PRODUCER EVA SCANLAN AND PLAYWRIGHT COLIN MURPHY ABOUT THE MAKING OF INSIDE THE GPO.

Just after midday on Easter Monday 1916 a contingent of men, led by Patrick Pearse and James Connolly, entered Dublin’s General Post Office and ordered the skeleton staff and customers to leave. The building, chosen by the Irish rebels for its central location in the city, was also the nucleus of communications in Ireland. On its roof, the flag of the Irish Republic was immediately hoisted.

Fishamble’s Inside The GPO tells the true story of what happened in Dublin’s ‘Public Letters Office’ during the five days of the Easter Rising of 1916 when it became the temporary headquarters of the Irish Volunteers. The show, staged during the commemoration weekend, was completely sold out. “Demand for tickets was so high that even with extra performances and added capacity, we still had a massive waiting list from people wishing to see it”, says Eva Scanlan of Fishamble theatre company and producer of the show.

Along with the demanding task of accommodating the audience the production had other challenges: “We presented the show in the main Post Office hall of the GPO which, until 6pm every evening, is a functioning financial institution. So every evening, our crew worked to turn it into a theatre – bringing in seating, rigging lights and masking, setting scenic items – before our first audience of 130 came in for the 7.30pm performance”, says Eva. “That process worked thanks to our brilliant production crew, as well as members of staff from our partnering organisations An Post and Arnotts, who helped with the set-up and take-down every night. It was a very well-oiled machine by the end of the run”.

The documentary-style drama, directed by Jim Culleton, was unique in the fact that the performance took place on the site in question – adding even more pathos and atmosphere to a captivating production.

While most of the action in the play takes place in the main hall, on the ground floor, around the central podium. Up on the first floor balcony, appears a woman named Mary Louisa Hamilton-Norway. Like Pearse and Connolly, Mary Louisa is a real life character, who recorded the turbulent five days in her diary.
“When I decided to do a play about the Easter Rising set inside the GPO I realised that one of the risks, from the off, was losing the most obvious source of conflict”, says Colin Murphy, journalist and writer of Inside The GPO. “The struggle between those on the inside who were fighting for an independent Ireland and those on the outside representing the British Empire.” 

Murphy introduces this conflict through the character of Hamilton-Norway and, unlike most of the other characters, her words appear verbatim, taken from unsent letters she wrote to a friend in England during her ordeal.

Some of the principals that Murphy brings to his work for the stage are those of the ‘docu-drama’ style and, where possible, using the actual words of people, keeping the story as true to details and chronology.

“They say ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ and the challenge that I find very compelling is to find the dramatic shape in the messiness of truth”, says Murphy, “that’s something you’re trained to do as a journalist and then, as a dramatist, that’s something I try to do too”.
Inside The GPO by Colin Murphy was produced by Fishamble: The New Play Company in partnership with Fáilte Ireland, Dublin City Council, Ireland 2016, An Post, Dublin Town, and Arnotts.

Check out the full feature here
http://murmur.ie/2016/04/20/inside-the-gpo/

#09: Writer Colin Murphy talks about his recent play – 'Inside The GPO'

HILARY WOODS – ‘HEARTBOX EP’ IS OUT NOW

Dublin singer/songwriter Hilary Woods returns with her new singles Bathing, a slow-burning, synth-infused track that evokes the haunting soundtrack work of American composer Angelo Badalamenti and delivered with that up-close-and-personal vocal style synonymous with her Night EP from 2013.

Unlike the stripped-down, acoustic approach on her last outing, Bathing is laced with shimmering synths and lush strings.”The first record (Night) was far more acoustic, there were very little synths used and not as much instrumentation. With the new songs on Heartbox I wanted to explore a more electronic soundworld by using a lot more synths,” says Hilary.

There are plenty of intimate moments on Heartbox, the effect of Woods’ whispered, vocal delivery is both discrete and intimate. On describing how this effect is achieved the singer is surprisingly frank: “I record my vocals up close to the mic and a lot is dependent on the mic itself – the pre-amps used”, says Hilary. “Usually, I’d choose one which picks up a lot of breath and then a nice reverb”. This might explain why Woods’ songs have such a cinematic flavour to them. Being an ardent film buff and performance art lover (the video for Bathing and promo for early single Night were both directed by the singer) Hilary’s influences are quite eclectic: “I love Russian Cinema, experimental film, contemporary dance, photography and noise art. But I love lots of different music too, from medieval troubadour folk songs to Girl Band, Americana, Rimsky Korsakov …”, she says. “Visuals come to me naturally when I write music. I enjoy directing videos – it’s something I’d like to pursue more in the future”.

Having been a member of bands in the past Hilary has found the new challenges of the solo performance invigorating: “I’v enjoyed playing my new material live so far, they exercise that ‘fuck-it’ muscle – where there’s no hiding behind the drummer syndrome! It requires my full presence and helps me to get over any lingering self-consciousness. They’ve been fun and good for me”.

Check out the full feature here
http://murmur.ie/2016/06/24/hilary-woods/

#10: Hilary Woods talks about her new EP - HEARTBOX

MURMUR MET ACTOR JOHN CONNORS IN GALWAY

Last month a teaser trailer for a new Irish film went viral. Clocking in at one minute in duration, the short clip featured just one character – a heavy set, twenty-something male, clearly agitated, breathing heavily and pacing nervously in a small, untidy bedroom. Reaching for a pack of cigarettes and lighting one up, he inhales and exhales repeatedly. With every emission of smoke the character looks increasingly more agitated. Then, the scene takes a more disturbing turn and all hell breaks loose.

Meet John Connolly, a part-time DJ and low-level drug dealer played by John Connors (Love/Hate. King of the Travellers). The short trailer was released to promote Cardboard Gangsters, a new Irish film set around the world of low-level criminals in Darndale in Dublin’s northside – an area victimised by gangs, drugs and social problems.

John Connors’ performance during those 60 seconds brings to mind of one of the early scenes in Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola’s surreal, drug-fueled, psychedelic horror about the Vietnam war. Holed up in a Saigon hotel room, Captain Willard (played by Martin Sheen), collapses in an emotional heap. The actor, having downed a bottle of whiskey, and God knows what else to get ‘into character’, experiences an emotional breakdown on camera. Shooting on a closed set, the director (Coppola) continues to film the scene, encouraging his lead actor to embrace his inner demons. Sheen, rising to the challenge, staggers to his feet, karate chops a full length mirror, badly cutting up his hands in the process.

There are similarities between Connors’ character and Willard. Both are thrust into a grave situation out of necessity and survival. Both confronting their own demons while fighting the external ones too. John Connors’ Darndale bedroom disintegration is Martin Sheen’s Saigon meltdown and Cardboard Gangsters his personal journey into the Heart of Darkness.

“I co-wrote the film and played the lead. It’s been so long in the making, we had to go through World War 1, 2 and 3 just to get the budget up”, says John Connors. “It was tough and grueling shoot but, by the end, it was like a cathartic release for me”.

Cardboard Gangsters is due for national release on 30th September, 2016.

Check out the full feature here
http://murmur.ie/2016/07/15/john-connors-actor/

#11: Actor John Connors talks about his new film 'Cardboard Gangsters'

KIM WILLOUGHBY, CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF DAMN FINE PRINT, TALKS TO MURMUR

The boutique screenprint and risograph print studio, Damn Fine Print, is based in an old textile mill on North Brunswick Street in Dublin’s north city enclave of Stoneybatter. The studio provides affordable, non-committal access to workspace, industrial grade equipment, workshops, classes and seminars that serve as a platform for a community of screen printers and designers to showcase their talents. One of the main purposes of the studio is to connect and collaborate with brilliant Irish illustrators and artists to create unique contemporary limited edition print works.

“We curate and host bi-annual print exhibitions that introduce a wider demographic to affordable, original artwork, bringing a contemporary art scene to a new market”, says Kim Willoughby, creative director of Damn Fine Print. “We offer a bespoke printing service, clients can commission our team to print their project, bringing the artwork to life”.

Read more at: http://murmur.ie/2016/08/07/damn-fine-print/

#012: Kim Willoughby, creative director of Damn Fine Print

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