“Against our real world, which by its very nature is fleeting and worthy of forgetting, works of art stand as a different world, a world that is ideal, solid, where every detail has its importance, its meaning, where everything in it – every word, every phrase – deserves to be unforgettable and was conceived as such.” –Milan Kundera, The Curtain
Gavin Murphy makes works through an assemblage of unique fabricated elements, sourced and found objects, video, sound and photography. Using cultural matter as his material-medium, he references art, history and theory to form a spatial and temporal narrative arc made up of intercommunicating texts, combined with an interest in the sculptural possibilities of cinematic structures and mise en scène.
For the Golden Bough, he uses critical and historical documents, texts from Flaubert to Fellini, Milan Kundera and Italo Calvino, and the hidden fabric of Charlemont House itself, to consider specifically the arts as system – ordering knowledge, ideas, and cultural history.
Murphy’s practice has more and more come to question necessity in art, while refusing to define or distinguish the contemporary from the anachronistic, or accept definite perspectives. In this way the works oscillate between the wonder and futility of investigation: The Necessity of Ruins is a spoken work, made of collected fragments of texts and documents pertaining to the ruin, art and literature, the museum, and the novel. Eulogy to the Blank Page is a sculptural rendering of a section of dialogue from Fellini’s 8 ½, for which the artist commissioned a new typeface Personal (Stencil).
Gavin Murphy is a Dublin-based artist and curator. His current project On Seeing Only Totally New Things – of which these works form part – is also to include a film, and a publication in collaboration with Atelier David Smith. He is the recipient of various Arts Council awards, and residencies at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne, and currently, Fire Station Artists’ Studios. He is co-curator of the art space, Pallas Projects."
We spoke to Michael Dempsey, the curator of the Golden Bough.
Also on the show, Owen O'Doherty of "Designers in Residence"
"Dublin City Libraries in association with City Architects have announced an innovative collaborative design project for branch libraries, which will explore ways of improving children’s participation. A number of designers will be working with primary schoolchildren to develop proposals for better connecting the library with other places of learning in the local community, whether this is the school, the study place in the home or otherwise.
The scheme will build on the Library service’s relationships with local schools asking how children engage with their local libraries and assisting them in making design proposals for expanding this engagement. The wider aim is to grow a culture of continual learning and sharing of knowledge through the city’s local communities.
A number of libraries have future proposals for renovations or upgrades and designs for these can be usefully informed by the outcomes of this scheme. This will benefit both the library through learning more about the needs of its clientele and benefit the children involved through seeing tangible results from their creative work.
The Council has teamed three architects up with three graphic designers to be “Designers in Residence” at Kevin Street, Raheny and Ballyfermot libraries. The designers are: Architecture Republic, TAKA Architects, George Boyle Designs, Zero-G, Detail and Radarstation. Over the course of the next school term they will work with groups of children from Gaelscoil Míde, Kilbarrack, St. Gabriel’s NS, Ballyfermot Road and The Presentation Convent Junior School, Dublin 8.
The scheme, which is funded by the City’s Social Inclusion Unit, will commence in January, continuing for the rest of the 2010 school year. During this time the different groups of children will be participating in workshops with the designers, with an exhibition of the results to follow at the end of the programme."
Further information is available from DCC City Architects at www.dublincity.ie/cityarchitects