Ladies who Launch - At the Lismore Castle Arts Summer 2011 Exhibition

 Last Friday evening I went to Lismore Castle Arts to the
opening of the Summer Exhibition 2011 - Still Life is the name of the exhibition and it has paintings on the walls again - a far cry from last year's way too avant-garde video installations in a blacked-out gallery. I took some nice photos and met some friends there - like any gallery opening it was an eclectic and diverse group with a lot of quite plummy posh people from the art world who stood around knowingly stroking their beards/chins - while I wandered around looking like a lady who launches for a living!

I love the opening events at the castle as there is a good buzz around and plenty of people milling about genteelly. With the setting sun casting slanting shadows across the gardens the atmosphere was magical. I was here about a month earlier at Devonshire Day and it was amazing to see the change in the gardens in such a short time; the tulips and wallflowers were in full bloom and the daffodils were starting to straggle. The blossom on the trees was at various stages of bloom, with some early cherry trees already past their prime and shedding.

The gallery housed the majority of the works on display and after the glass of wine and the wander around, I wallked through the gardens to the only outdoor exhibit - the Monkey Tower, which had a makeover from 2009 Turner Prizewinner Richard Wright that was delightfully quirky. The walls of this circular tower at the corner of the Lower Gardens were stamped with a series of symmetrical triangles on a white background, and it was very pop-arty with a trompe l'oeil effect incorporating the window recesses and the doorframe. That was one of my favourite pieces. Another one that I liked was the video installation of the robot reflecting the room on a continuous 20 minute loop, called Made in 'Eaven, 2004, by Mark Leckey. Weird but pretty cool, like a Philip Starck kitchen gadget - it's been in the Tate and he was the Turner Prizewinner in 2008

There were a lot of floral paintings by Gillian Carnegie, you can see the photos above. The photos of the Open Book series by Anne Collier were nice, if a bit I-could-have-done-that-myself -ish! But that's modern art for you - and at least it was aesthetically pleasing, even if I didn't quite get it - is it art or photography as art? Oh dear, I'm just such a philistine when it comes to the whole art thing.

This year I missed my favourite exhibition of the year in the Castle, the Sotheby's Irish Sale Preview - it was on in early March and I didn't check the dates, expecting it to be in April as in other years. A missed blog opportunity as well as a wander through history. I'll not be so remiss next year!

Another exhibit were three plasticised polystyrene bomber jackets by Seth Price - one of them was slightly in meltdown, and they didn't really do it for me as they were just vacuum packed reliefs of bomber jackets in the plastic. Probably technically great but art? I dunno!

Aspens in Flagstaff made an impact from a distance - it was clever as they were all pictures of the same image of aspen trees - a photo in a large frame - all placed on the wall to make one big exhibit. Sherrie Levine was the artist, and again you could say I-could-have-done-that. And probably add - why-didn't-I? and that would be because I'm not an artist and wouldn't have thought of it!

There is a video installation in another venue in Lismore, St. Carthage's Hall, which has served as a satellite gallery for the Castle Arts last year as well. I haven't yet been, so that will be for another weekend. I enjoyed the stroll through the lovely gardens, and we are very lucky in Lismore to have easy access to the beautiful castle and its gardens, and the boundaries between the aristocracy and the locals have become very blurred, in that the castle incumbent, Lord William Burlington, is a very pleasant chap who doesn't put on any airs and graces and is as friendly and chatty as the next person, as is his wife Laura. They have two little kids, and they spend a lot of time in Lismore, and our son has played cricket with Lismore over in Chatsworth, the main gaff of the Devonshires.

I haven't yet captioned the photos - just have a look and see whether you can match them up from the descriptions I've given. Most are pretty self-explanatory.

Next week I'll be back (like Arnie) for the launch of Immrama 2011 in the Pugin Room and will report on that illustrious event in Dispatches from the Deise. Watch this space!

Recession-proof Art - Sotheby's Irish Sale Preview at Lismore Castle

Easter weekend is over and one of the things on my to-do list was to visit the Sotheby's Irish Sale preview at Lismore Castle Art Gallery which took place on Friday and Saturday, an event that was free to all. I had missed this gig since its inception a few years ago, either because I didn't know it was on, and heard of it after the event, or I was away that weekend. So when I saw the piece in the Irish Times the previous weekend I flagged it as a must-see for the Easter weekend.





The gallery in Lismore Castle is a fairly recent innovation, the brainchild of the current resident of the Castle, Lord William Burlington, son of the Duke of Devonshire who lives in Chatsworth House in Derbyshire in England. I have referred to this family in my blog post on Devonshire Day last month. Lord Burlington had the West Wing of the Castle renovated from dereliction to its present ultra-modern minimalist state, a wonderfully lit art gallery with some side rooms and a round tower, and a smaller room at each end of the main gallery.

Last year there was a number of installations and weird sculpture on display, including a steel plate that the artist had urinated on to make it rust! I guess this is art in the Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin tradition of, well, different! There has been a previous Turner Prize winning entry here on display also, Richard Long's Slate Walk, which was only dismantled this year, and returned to the UK. This has left a long rectangular bed in the lower garden, which would make a nice vegetable patch or flower bed.

This exhibition showed the artworks that will go under the hammer in Sotheby's in London on May 7th from the Irish Sale, and it is fascinating to read the online catalogue with all the detail of the paintings and the artists. I was too stingy to spend €20 on the catalogue at the preview, given the recessionary times we live in, and bearing in mind that the that the Emergency/Mini/Supplementary Budget was still burning a major hole in my pocket I was pretty unprepared psychologically for the reserves on some of these works. I suppose I was surprised some were not dearer, given how well-known the artists are, and also surprised at the high cost of others that I had not heard much about.

This petrol pump painting was one of my favourites - it is so lifelike that I thought it was a photograph - but on closer inspection it is a painting by John Doherty entitled "Pay double this amount" and is oil on canvas with a reserve of £35-45,000/€38-48,000. It reminded me of those paintings of Edward Hopper that evoke rural isolation; gas stations on lonely roads, whimsical and nostalgic. Alain de Botton, the contemporary philosopher and social commentator depicted his works in his lovely book "The Art of Travel" which we read for our book club a few years ago. So for this alone I am glad I saw the exhibition; paintings can trigger happy memories too!

I was absolutely blown away by the more famous works, which I felt really privileged to see, as most were from private collections and going to auction on May 7th in Sotheby's in London, after a preview at Lismore, and two other venues on the island of Ireland, one in Belfast and one in Dublin.

What intrigues me is that so many of these works of Irish Masters past and present are in private collections, and that they are turning up for auction, some for the second year in succession, as Noll by William Orpen was on display last year. Is it being re-sold, or did it remain unsold? I am not sure, and I only heard that it is doing the rounds again through a friend who was at last year's show. It has a hefty reserve of between €250,000 and €350,000, and you would want to have a good large wall to display it.

Now I am not an art connoisseur, and claim no knowledge above that of the ordinary Joe Soap of art and their value, but I was pretty amazed at some of what passes for art and wonder if there isn't a bit of the Emperor's new clothes about it all! I can appreciate beauty and I am probably a traditionalist in that I prefer art that conveys some meaning rather than very abstract modern art. I absolutely love the surreal works of Dalí even though I abhor his Francoist/fascist politics, and have managed to separate them in my mind, whether this is ethical or not, and his Teatro Museum in Figueras is one of my favourite places to visit on the Costa Brava. I also love Picasso and Míro, though I haven't seen so much of their art.

So I was equally thrilled to see the works of Paul Henry, with his Connemara landscapes, and Jack B. Yeats, and also intrigued to see Louis le Brocquy's very abstract impressions of Francis Bacon and Beckett, and thought they would be way dearer. On the other hand I was pretty underwhelmed by the naive modern work by Scott of kitchen pots and pans, and thought I would put €500,000 to much better use, and likewise with the Roderic O'Conor Breton seascape. The latter was beautifully lit and had very vibrant colour but I didn't realise his work was commanding such value. The work by Sean Scully who is a leading contemporary Irish artist was very abstract and I guess I don't know enough art to fully appreciate it.

I was able to take photos with a clear conscience as I had the flash turned off, and the light was good enough to get a pretty good picture of most, except those with glass in the frames. They inevitably reflected the light and this affected their clarity. You can see all the pictures in the online catalogue if you wish, as I only took the photos for my pleasure and yours, and didn't realise they were all easy to view online.

Roderic O'Conor's Breton Seascape "Rocks and Foam, St Guénolé" (£300-£500,000)

It is fascinating to read the background to the paintings in the catalogue, as it gives a snapshot of the history of the time in pre- and post-colonial Ireland.

It certainly puts the recession into perspective, as there is no evidence of any constraint when it comes to private investment in art; perhaps people think there will be less likelihood of an "art bubble" than a property one.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if these great works could be bought by the State for the National Gallery instead of going yet again into anonymous private collections? We sometimes have our priorities skewed when it comes to showing national pride, and it could do wonders for our collective morale to have a stake in this art - surely we can claim it as much our heritage as are Joyce, Yeats and Synge, to name a but a few.

In any event, I wish them all a good home - meanwhile we can all enjoy the fruits of the artists' labours while the haves and the have-yachts agonise over their bids on May 7th in London!

The William Scott (See label below)

A selection of Louis le Brocquy - a tapestry and the Francis Bacon study

The entrance to the gallery at Lismore Castle Arts