Of Food Festivals, Lotto and Art Millionaires - Sotheby's Irish Sale Preview 2010

Sotheby's Irish Sale Preview for 2010 is running at Lismore Castle Arts this weekend - at least 65 of the works for sale are on display again, despite rumours that it might fall victim to the recession after last year's preview, which was heralded as possibly the last. Thankfully this is not the case and I am delighted the sales are having the inaugural leg of the Irish tour in Lismore. It's a fantastic venue for showcasing any artworks, and I did a post on last year's preview also which you can check out here if you didn't see it first time round.

Jany and Sofia and me went to the exhibition yesterday and had a lovely cultural experience - it was Jany's first visit to the Castle Arts gallery and we had a nice wander around looking at the diverse collection of artworks from the early 1800s to the present day.

There's a great online catalogue for anyone interested in viewing all the works on sale; 65 of the over 100 items were shipped over for the preview exhibitions in Ireland - only in Lismore and Dublin and Belfast will the public get to view the wonderful works close up before the May 6th sale in Sotheby's London.


The signature piece this year is The Gold Turban by Sir John Lavery with a price tag up to €660,000/£600,000, for those with deep pockets. It's a portrait of his second wife, Lady Lavery, who is famous in Ireland for having been the face of Cathleen Ní Houlihan on the Irish currency notes until 1975, when the "new money" came in - same value as the "old money" but smaller more modern-looking notes.

There were some pieces by sculptor Edward Delaney (d. 2009) whose well-known bronzes adorn College Green and Stephen's Green in Dublin.

As ever with these exhibitions - there's an element of the Emperor's New Clothes where I am probably showing my ignorance of art as a real aficionado by just not "getting" a lot of the very contemporary art - cubism and very abstract art just doesn't do a lot for me, which is possibly my loss and purists among you will be throwing your hands up in despair of such philistinism.

That the Seán Scully stripey abstract painting "Eriskay" commands from £200,000 to £300,000 (€221,000-€331,000) kind of wrecks my head as I can't see how such a value is put on a piece of work. Yes, it is nice to look at - strong colour stripes with an inlaid smaller block - but as it is similar in style to all his work and is instantly recognisable I don't see what distinguishes it from other signature pieces.

When I look online at his body of work and his reputation it is apparent that he is very renowned - coincidentally I saw a programme on him last week on Irish TV - and I read a recent Sunday Times supplement feature on him - his is a rags-to-riches life of the order that would make Frank McCourt's miserable Limerick childhood seem privileged.

There were many others - known and less known, and many totally new to me - which I liked and which were under the €100,000 level and some were under €10,000, which probably put them in the bargain bin. I liked the Seán Keating paintings - they were warm and traditional and appealed to my basic art appreciation instincts! So too were the Paul Henry "Peat Stacks" which I love, and the super-realistic petrol pumps by John Doherty. Like I said last year when I saw one of his works here, they remind me of Edward Hopper's gas pumps painting - which I came across first in Alain de Botton's Art of Travel, a philosophical treatise on travel in its many forms with links to art. The Louis le Brocquy "Spanish Shawl" was another £500,000 painting, and was unlike the more ethereal "Presence".

I hope you enjoy browsing the e-catalogue, and anyone in Dublin on 21-22 April and Belfast's Waterfront on 23-24 April may get a chance to view the Collection before Auction Day in London on May 6th. There may even be some buyers among you at the Auction in London on May 6th - especially any lotto winners out there.
The National Lotto Jackpot was won in Co. Waterford this week - the winner chose to remain anonymous - but it wasn't me, I assure you. €16 million plus was won, and it would certainly be a life-changer.

I was in Eason's in Dungarvan Shopping Centre, where the winning ticket was sold, and the manager Pat White was keeping shtum about the identity in radio and TV interviews - he was a man with a secret and he wasn't about to disclose anything. That all adds to the speculation which is growing by the day - mostly good-humoured jibes promise to be aimed at anyone with a new car or unexplained absences from work over the coming weeks.

It was a nice symbiosis - having a lotto millionaire in Waterford, right in the vicinity of the means of disposing of a fairly large whack of it in one fell swoop by investing in some serious art! For the rest of us, we can dream of ownership of a favourite piece, while enjoying the pleasure of visiting a lovely art gallery and gazing in wonder at at the paintings and scultptures, even if they don't all have universal appeal.

It was a beautiful sunny day, and we wandered around the Castle Gardens (which you already

know about if you read my posts on Devonshire Day in March 2009 and 2010). Jany was chuffed to meet Laura, Lady Burlington (the wife of Lord William Burlington who runs the gallery and spends a lot of time in Lismore Castle - he's the son of the current Duke of Devonshire) and their little girl in the garden, where they had a nice chat about babies and toddlers. We have been invited to the launch next Friday of the Summer Exhibition in the Gallery - Gerald Byrne is the artist, and that will be quite avant-garde.

The Waterford Festival of Food was on this weekend and Lismore had the Farmers' Market going all day Saturday in the Castle Avenue, with delicious food stalls and demonstrations from various chefs. The weekend in Dungarvan had a lot more foodie events and celebrity chefs like Neven Maguire and Paul O'Flynn of the local Tannery - but I was happy to stay in Lismore and soak up the atmosphere - without any noticeable Icelandic volcanic ash deposits - in glorious sunshine where you could for a while think you were transported for a day in Provence.

The photos show some of the works of art and an overview of the Gallery:

• Sir John Lavery's The Gold Turban, the money with Lady Lavery,
• Sean Scully's Eriskay,
• Paul Henry's Peat Stacks,
• Sean Keating's Self Portrait,
• John Doherty's The Odd Couple - open for petrol in Castletownbere,
• Louis le Brocquy's Spanish Shawl,

Me and Sofia at the Farmers' Market and Jany and Sofia in Lismore Castle gardens

Lismore Castle Arts - a challenging encounter with installation art

Last Saturday I paid a visit to Lismore Castle Arts, to see the collection of installation art United Technologies which is the Summer 2009 exhibition and has been in place since late April, shortly after the Sotheby's Irish Sale show which I wrote about earlier this year. This exhibition showcases different artistic installations from renowned contemporary artists, though I confess ignorance in that I hadn't heard of most of them. It has a guest curator from Berlin's Kunsthalle, Philippe Pirotte.

I took some photos and will share them with you in a sidebar slide show, and some here on the blogpost. I know some of the followers of this blog are artists already (you know who you are!) and may enjoy seeing this art. I am an already self-confessed art virgin when it comes to knowledge of contemporary artists outside the well-known (read notorious) artists like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, and probably Graham Knuttel and Banksy. So my take on this exhibition must be seen in that context, and not that of a knowledgeable art critic!

I always feel a bit of a fraud at these exhibitions, as I think all the other punters look so earnest and informed and they look at the artworks as if they are really appraising them, whereas I just look and wonder what exactly is the artist trying to convey. I guess a lot of contemporary art goes right over my head and I just don't "get" it, and even reading the guide in the gallery doesn't enlighten as it is often couched in language so flowery and convoluted that it seems to speak to other artists and not to the common man - or woman.

So that's probably why I have a somewhat cynical view of a lot of installation art in particular. Tracey Emin's Bed for example - I can well understand why one lady so felt the urge to tidy it up and throw away the detritus in which it is embedded that she took cleaning materials along to the Tate. Nor do I quite get what's so wonderful about Francis Bacon's horrendously messy studio that warranted replication in Dublin's Hugh Lane Gallery. Oh well, maybe one of the artistic readers will be able to educate me accordingly!

Well, I had some idea that this exhibition would be "different" having heard from hubby who was at the launch back when he was still Mayor, (I missed it as I was at something dull and worthy like a union meeting that night) and sons who work there butlering part-time. So I knew there were ceramic oil spill blobs randomly around the gallery, and a ton of tea in a cube, and some dandelion wine in its early stages that would be there right to the bottling (and maybe drinking!) stage.

I knew there was some scaffolding and a room full of quasi-erotic neon lighting, and a photo of a stone wall, and a collage wall made up of photos of a real garden shot from above and arranged like a cartographer would make a map. There were some gold-leaf sticks, which were very pretty if not very functional, and the staff were hard-pressed to keep the visitors from touching the exhibits, particularly the tea cube, which was crying out to be touched as it looked so tea-like you wondered how did it stay stuck together and not get all mouldy like tea-leaves you forget to rinse out of the pot, or teabags in the compost bin!

The whole gallery was wallpapered in this amazing silvery wallpaper with the words Conceptual Decoration in black printed all over, and it will all be removed (presumably scraped unceremoniously off like you would any old wallpaper!) when the exhibition is over at the end of September.

The artists were people I had never heard of, although one of the gallery guides informed me the Ton of Tea and Oil Spills guy was Ai Weiwei also designed the Bird's Nest stadium for the Beijing Olympics, which he boycotted. I hadn't heard of him but his stadium is certainly beautiful. I wonder why he did it if he had such difficulty with the regime, it would seem to be contradictory in my eyes, and diminish whatever boycott he might decide on after the job was done (and paid for.) I must read up more on the whole issue, seems like there's a lot of articles about it and the answers are probably in there somewhere.

Jason Rhoades died of a heart failure from accidental drug intoxication at age 41, and his controversial art is included here, with his erotic neon signs with international slang words for vagina certainly raising eyebrows among any visitors with a penchant for Irish Catholic Guilt after a convent sex education (which is a pretty oxymoronic concept!). He also did the scaffolding and the wall garden collage, an aerial scaled down view of his dad's garden which he seemingly reproduced in life-size at another exhibition. It's made up of a lot of 4"x6" photos which don't all align so it doesn't quite make a jigsaw picture but close up you see all the elements - courgette plants and fencing and grass. He stuck tiny rugs on it to represent magic carpets flying over the garden. It would take ages to see it all in detail but the overall effect is pleasing - I can't imagine the patience required but then he seems to have been very much an alternative kind of guy.

Corey McCorkle was the dandelion wine guy, although this was at the fermentation-stopping stage and not on display; we could see the glass bottles it will eventually be decanted to out in the Paxton greenhouse, and they were cut-and-paste bottles which I hope won't leak. He also made the gold-leaf walking sticks, more style than substance for any hill-walkers with a fancy for a bit of bling!

Rita McBride must have Irish roots, though she is American based in Dusseldorf. She did these intriguingly titled Mae West Templates - steel stencils, curvy cutout shapes which reminded me of African drums. She did the relief rock wall, which is a bit optical illusiony as it is partly mirror-imaged, and sits nicely in the gallery, leaning against one wall.

Stefan Bruggemann is the decorator guy - he designed the wallpaper that covers all the gallery walls and he must have no difficulty with the transience of his art given that it all goes in a few weeks when the gallery is returned to its pristine white walled state. Looking at his website he has plenty of rolls of this design as it featured frequently elsewhere!

I went to this with an open mind, and prepared to be surprised. Maybe I have learnt something new, certainly about the artists, and despite my skepticism on installations, I admire the tenacity of people who go to such lengths for their art, and to me much of it seems to have more merit than a lot of the better known Britart, which aims to shock rather than please the general public.

I also enjoyed seeing the gardens in their summer glory on a rare sunny September day, as I spent last year squelching around in wet shoes on a filthy day when I visited the gardens and the gallery with a friend.

You should be able to match the photos with the artists from the descriptions - and there are plenty of links to various sites to satisfy the connoisseur in you!
I will also post a sidebar slide show for all the photos of that day.

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