Question of Taste: Cork artist Emmet Brickley picks his favourite art and music
Cork artist Emmet Brickley has a show at St Peter's on North Main Street.
Emmet Brickley is an artist from Cork. His exhibition, Still On The Land, runs at St Peter's on North Main Street March 21 to April 1. See emmetbrickley.com
I'm reading Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon at the moment. You can flick through it, read a paragraph, and be mesmerized by the text.
I rewatched Her recently as Netflix kept pushing it on us. There has been a crazy level of AI obsession by companies in the last few years to want us to buy into it is more than data-mining people. The film deals with the selfish thoughts in the recovery from a breakup well without going over the top with the tech stuff and keeps the film romantic and overly cute to combat the viewer's doubt of his romance with the next Siri upgrade.
Saturation is currently on in the Crawford Gallery. Great to see the younger generation of artists showing when possible.
Radie Peat always makes me stop the random playlists, and is sound for the following hour of listening. If I have music on while painting I listen to the same music over and over to stay in the atmosphere of the work and she played to some of the newer pieces.
Not the first, but Olafur Eliasson’s The Weather Project - an artificial sun in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, 2003.
I think the most disappointing one I’ve seen left me most inspired. I say disappointing but it was just my expectations for a renowned artist. I remember not being fooled by the magic of the paint, it was just paint, on big canvases. I realised how unrealistic it was to think an artist can hit the mark they set for themselves every time they show work, or even how freedom in painting won’t always be received well (besides by those with financial incentive). I felt like I had a chance to do what I was really passionate about making.
I’m going to rewatch the Adam Curtis documentary, Can’t Get You Out Of My Head, as soon as I can deal with some of the dread from it again. He puts forward ideas of how we’ve come to be so uncertain of everything happening. We entered the age of individualism and by pushing this we’ve become confused, such as allowing algorithms that push for negative reactions be a driving force in social engagement and how conspiracies are now political tools used to fill in the gaps of uncertainties. If all that sounds a bit too heavy, he has incredible collaged clips to accompany the ideas.
The Tommy, Hector & Laurita Podcast is a nice easy one if you’re a bit homesick for Irishness.
Definitely would go with the living, the dead get more than enough encouragement in art.
As it’s a dream I’ll put my own name on the bill and scrap the curation process. I’d love to show with Joy Gerrard. She’s dealing with specific events whereas I am responding with multiple layers removed to anything specific but there are some parallels to the processes to get to where we go. It would really push me to try and keep up. I often get Brian Harte's vision when I’m lost in thought staring at something at home- as if one of his paintings is dying to be made. A fantastic thing. His work reminds me of my love for the process and the freedom of an image as much as Gerrard’s abstracted stains and textures in the details of her canvases.
Jonathan Rhys Meyers waded through a crowd of his fans in a bar to shake my hand and ask how I was just moments after I had joked to my friend’s girlfriend, who wasn’t from Cork, that I knew him, as all Cork heads know each other. It was mistaken identity or he was desperate to escape the fans but either way we were laughing at how it played out.
I’d head back to the time of the first cave paintings, to see how important the artwork was for storytelling or was it purely for admiration. I’d love to see what else they made that didn’t last. And breathe in the freshest air!
