A BRIGHTER SHADE OF PALE

The consensual world and a parable for post-modernists.

I READ John Farrell’s article (Hot Press Volume 18. No. 22) on From Beyond The Pale once and then once again and I still don’t understand what it is all about other than amplifying his own importance and personal involvement with artists which seems an unnecessary and unfortunate starting point. There is a lot of emphasis on post-modernism, as if to say that this is the agenda of From Beyond The Pale which is most dubious to start with. His writing is very plausible but not clear and the worrying undercurrent does not encourage an interest in the subject or content for your audience but relies on the personal and, worse, the cult of the personality.

Is this the same John M. Farrell who in his Sunday Press review of the 2nd October, said virtually the opposite about From Beyond The Pale. One assumes that Hot Press is a music newspaper, read by those interested in music and current affairs, most of whom aren’t authorities on visual art criticism, post-modern or otherwise. Leaving aside the somewhat pretentious and pompous tone of his piece (he knows better; we don’t understand), and the amplification and discussion of a gay aesthetic qualified and extended by artists and work which are not in this programme, certain simple points must be answered.

1. From Beyond the Pale is majorly a contemporary programme which involves the juxtaposition and counter balance of a wide range of current living artists’ practice to a core exhibition, Picasso to Koons, which sets up the premise that when these artists were working their work was considered beyond the pale of acceptability. This history exhibit deliberately spans this century and includes figures in modern art only now regarded as major, but not then. Picasso is probably the first abstract artist, Duchamp the first conceptualist, Beuys a fluxus artist who became the primary free socialist, Warhol the pop artist and Koons is a little bit of scandal added to bring in the contemporary. Picasso is probably the only artist in reference to this place who would be recognised as an artist at all. Certainly Duchamp, Beuys, Warhol and Koons are beyond the pale of accepted taste, and taste is the government here, not content.

2. If you treat this is as a core exhibit, core as in apple, it sustains the fruit of the contemporary but in itself is thrown away, so here there is an indication in the thinking behind this series. In fact there are 45 other living, working artists and groups in this programme besides this core exhibit, 23 women, 22 men, 16 Irish, 29 international. It also includes an art radio station that covers literally hundreds of artists’ work, an exhibition of sheela na gigs, media projects and a lecture programme and performances; its ambition to say the least is extensive. Why, if you write an article with the implication of overview do you do it half way through without taking on board the whole programme?

3. This is a living museum, young and fast-growing in a culture where modernism, let alone post-modernism, had no place at culture’s table. It was as traditional, pre-modern, visually conservative and unenthusiastic an environment as any playground of the visual arts could be. Neither did it support, show interest or encourage its artists to risk or change the primary factors in developing any cultural strength. There was until three years ago no museum of modern art to make available on a regular and permanent basis the work of artists in an informed and professional way. This is an isolated place, an outpost of Europe, exhibitions and artists did not regularly come here. Capitalism, television and music culture in fact establish the new pale of information, beyond the catholic hierarchy and the hand in glove political oligarchy, but if primary one-on-one visual experience retains any cultural importance, this museum’s work is vital. One would expect that Hot Press and its voice for the young would begin to look and work closely with it. This is not a once off, every four years ROSC as important as this modernist celebration was. This museum is involved with discourse and is more difficult and contradictory. IMMA is constant, working, changing, bringing, growing.

4. I am reminded of the kind of environment this is for visual expression: even in 1994, my children do not do any art to speak of, nor creative writing, nor music, nor drama in National primary school. A well regarded American artist from Ireland was taken to the High Court for blasphemy for work in this very exhibition and there is no pale to go beyond here? By and large this remains a visually barren, culturally narrow right-wing society. It protects and amplifies the past and will not encourage its young to be free, to tread ground that has not already been walked on. This is an un-modern, non-modern place, but certainly not post-modern; in any event to qualify post-modernism as an anti-high cultural pre-requisite seems utterly wrong-thinking.

Here art is art if it looks like art; if it is not a painting or sculpture it is not art, it cannot be bought or sold. Most usually formal, figurative and then abstract, you hang it on a wall or put it on a plinth over your fireplace or in front of your building: all other work is marginal, not encouraged or understood. This is a place of the second-hand, images received and remade for a local audience and then in singular one-dimensional terms, not layered or overlaid as in post-modernity. Content is anathema and not considered, what work is about and whatever it addresses, the subtext goes unnoticed. This is the European twilight, history before future, technique before dreams, at all stages disbelief.

Of course there are historical and social factors that contribute to this pattern, a choking reactionary religious domination, the culture of denial, geographic isolation, poverty and education all go towards sustaining the right and not endorsing the confidence and freedom for self-expression.

5. Declan McGonagle moves in mysterious ways but what is beyond discussion is his commitment to the subject and the Irish audience in the widest terms. It would be a better starting point to discuss how such an incredibly active and crowded programme is achieved at all when finances in the world are shrinking and resources for the world art climate are not good. To bring this history work here at last and to offer a survey as this does is to inform beyond the pale. The crisis is extremes and concerns the question of personal expression: poverty, travelling people, the North, sexual politics and right at its core, a pragmatic conservatism that sees no worth in dreaming, drawing, acting, writing or singing. It doesn’t take much to look from beyond the pale – you could stand in the Royal Hospital and spit and it would land in St. Michael’s Estate in Inchicore.

Let’s forget about self-serving critical semantics and encourage content-led discourse. Increasingly this generation of Irish artists is present and knocking at the door of the world. Why, if in London or in New York they are regarded and taken seriously, can they not be at home? Let’s not drown in the café culture of the new bourgeois, the cult of the personality, the social and personal, but respond with enthusiasm and at least some intelligence to content and then form.

FIGHT IN THE DARK

A MAJOR row has broken-out with the fundraiser who co-ordinated the Irish Red Cross’ ‘Light In The Dark’ initiative accusing the Government-sponsored agency of failing to publish itemised accounts of how the money from the RTE Telethon and other music-related events was spent.

“When I took the project on in the summer of 1992,” claims Ray Driscoll, “the first thing I did was seek an assurance from the Irish Red Cross’ executive committee that all the money raised would go directly to emergency relief in Somalia and nowhere else. And realising that a lot of artists were suffering from ‘charity-fatigue’, I also insisted on being able to tell people I approached that we’d let them know exactly how much their contribution had raised and how it had been spent. This was crucial in getting performers to come on board. When I was trying to get a U2 track for the compilation album, for instance, I remember sitting in Ossie Kilkenny’s office while he ’phoned Paul McGuinness in New York and Paul saying, ‘I’m not contributing to fucking Red Cross administration’. I told him ‘neither am I’ and, bingo, we had our U2 song.”

While the secretary general of the Irish Red Cross, Martin Good, puts the sum raised by the Somalia telethon and accompanying Point Theatre concert at £1.2 million, Driscoll insists that the overall appeal netted more.

“That £1.2 million,” he continues, “is what came in on the night of the Telethon itself. What happened to the £25,000 from the compilation album? What happened to the £18,500 from the Mary Black, Altan and Stockton’s Wing concert? What happened to the £2,500 from the Elvis Costello gig? How much came from the Red Cross’ own collections and Government contributions? How much interest was earned on that money sitting in a bank account? These are questions I’ve asked the Red Cross time and time again and I’m still waiting for answers.”

Ray Driscoll’s estrangement from the Irish Red Cross finally came in March 1993 when he wrote to all 46-members of the organisation’s central council asking for these and other matters to be clarified.

“I was given five minutes to clear out my desk,” he alleges, “and the central committee members were instructed at the Red Cross national convention to ignore my correspondence. In October 1993, Martin Good sent a letter to Hothouse Flowers’ manager Robbie Wooton which disclosed that £1 million worth of ‘non-food’ items had been sent to Somalia but failed to give an itemised breakdown. There was no mention of the other money or the fact that 2% of the total sum was siphoned off in administration expenses.”

While 2% – that’s £20,000 per £1 million raised – seems on the surface to be a fairly negligible figure, it’s worth noting that the Irish Red Cross already receives over £550,000 a year in direct Department of Defence and National Lottery funding.

“Even if it was ‘only’ £20,000, the undertaking I received was that none of the money raised by the appeal was going to go to administration. And what does that ‘administration’ consist of? The time we went to Mogadishu for a briefing I expected to be staying in a tent and eating strict rations but instead ourselves and the rest of the delegates were put up in a palatial house and fed champagne and smoked-salmon. It was quite obscene.”

The ‘Light In The Dark’ fundraising controversy has caused considerable upheaval within the Irish Red Cross central committee. Jim Walsh, a member of the organisation for 35 years and chairman of the Dublin County branch, was removed from his posts in 1994 after taking up some of Ray Driscoll’s observations. The result of the Judicial Review into Walsh’s dismissal is expected this week.

Martin Good and the Irish Red Cross executive committee were invited to comment on the issues covered in this article but declined on the grounds that it would, at this time, be “inappropriate.”