Breaking out from the gallery

THE gallery space in Lismore Castle is certainly one of the country’s most striking, based as it is in the 19th-century west wing of the castle. But to mark the gallery’s 10th anniversary this year, the summer exhibition will go beyond the thick castle walls and into the grounds, the town, and its other landmark, St Carthage’s Cathedral.

As Lismore Castle Arts director Eamonn Maxwell explains: “We wanted to do something different this year and it really was a long-held idea, this idea of breaking out from the gallery. In there we’ll have a fairly standard contemporary art show, but then it begins to infiltrate the grounds.”

Maxwell approached the Scottish-based Common Guild as curators for the show and they have brought together works from a diverse range of artists including Gerard Byrne and Duncan Campbell from Ireland; photographer Wolfgang Tillmans; Egyptian painter and filmmaker Basim Magdy; and Scottish mixed-media artist Hayley Tompkins.

The exhibition’s title, The Persistence of Objects, is also the unifying theme, as Maxwell explains. “The basic premise refers to that idea of how objects don’t change, but the world around them does. If you take a book that was published in the 16th century, it hasn’t changed but everything around it has to make it a valuable artifact. So the exhibition explores that idea of what happens when you put objects in different settings. Hence this idea of putting objects in the cathedral, or an old courthouse, or a disused shopfront. The objects themselves will be the same as if you’ve seen them in a gallery, but the context will be different. The viewer gets a different perspective.”

From Duncan Campbell, the exhibition has included It for Others, his deserving Turner Prize winner. It is clearly in close keeping with the stated theme — a film about objects and culture: how they are valued or debased, appropriated and contextualised.

Gabriel Kuri, an LA-based Mexican, fulfills the brief: one of his works, from a series called ‘Punto y linea en el Altiplano’, balances a builder’s skip against a piece of sheet metal. It’s been seen before in a disused factory space, but no doubt it will be more striking when placed in a more contrasting space, such as the inside of a cathedral.

“I hope people are amused, enthralled and entertained by this,” says Maxwell. “People can be walking past these shopfronts they’ve passed hundreds of times and be kind of jolted in a positive way, to make them think, why is that there? What is that about? Most contemporary art gets you to question your way of looking, and this exhibition very much taps into that idea of how we as viewers can respond to objects, architecture, location and history.”

The mix of artists, including Basin Magdy, who lives and works in Cairo, speaks to the wide perspective that Lismore Castle Arts has always had. “We are local in context, but international in ambition,” says Maxwell. “We see ourselves as rooted in west Waterford but the artists we want to work with are the best that are working across the world. What we want to try and do is bring that exceptional talent, be it from Ireland, the UK, Europe, America, Asia, to west Waterford and say, these artists are important, let’s show their practice.”

The Persistence of Objects runs from June 20 to August 30 at Lismore Castle Arts and various venues in Lismore. Full details at www.lismorecastlearts.ie