Brian Duggan
Everything can be done, in principle
Saturday 9 June–26 August 2012
VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art
Ground Floor Galleries
Old Dublin Road
Carlow County, Ireland
Hours: Tue–Sat, 11–5:30pm, Sun, 2–5pm
T 59 917 2400
www.everythingcanbedone.com
VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow Local Authorities Arts Office & Carlow Arts Festival Éigse present Everything can be done, in principle, a commissioned artwork by Brian Duggan, curated by Helen Carey.
Special event, 8 June: a musical performance on the opening night by David Mansfield, the original composer for the film Heaven’s Gate. Further screenings and talks to be announced.
Exploring the potential of the post Habermasian public realm in the 21st century as defined by actions rather than talk, Brian Duggan’s work Everything can be done, in principle invites the public to find their private space in his installation of a barn within a contemporary cathedral of Contemporary Art, in his exploration of a story from 122 years ago, which is inspired by its cinematic interpretation.
Outlined in the banditti of the plains by A.S. Mercer (1894), a band of fifty-two cattlemen and hired gunmen invaded Johnson Country, Wyoming, in April 1892, killing and terrorizing the settlers. Through the installation of a timber and canvas roller skating rink within the gallery, Duggan’s ambitious work transports gallery visitors through the frontier lands of Wyoming and American Western Cinema, as seen in Michael Cimino’s Heavens’s Gate (1980). Duggan invites the public to participate in a public activity, to skate with an element of costume, in the place and time of the Johnson County’s war, suggesting this trope allows Ireland of the 21st century to explore constantly shifting notions of social identity.
Within the extraordinary galleries of VISUAL Carlow, in a collaboration between VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow Local Authorities Arts Office, and Carlow Arts Festival Éigse 2012, visitors will glide across a pristine timber floor where social integration seems entirely possible. As in Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, this haven exists against the realities of resistance and harsh economics, against a world in the full throttle of seismic change, in terms of progress and innovation—a new world of railways, immigrant workers, pioneering construction, evolving power, and government organization—all moving into a new era. Duggan suggests the lens of Cimino’s version of the cattlemen / homesteader conflict in the American frontier serves to allow the individual and the collective to re-negotiate how they co-exist. He also proposes the inherent fragility of parallel versions of history in physically creating the space within a space. Walter Benjamin suggests rupture as catharsis, and in Everything can be done, in principle, Duggan suggests inhabiting a constructed space as a starting point for this.
Within this new commission the urgency around happiness and basic safety, even its possibility, uncovers a social tension in this exquisite troubled place. Proposing participation as a necessary part of the Spectacle, Duggan suggests it is also a personal journey in public.
Cimino’s film Heaven’s Gate is a film which broke all the rules and supported true art through an often ruthless pursuit of authenticity, to the extent of challenging the prevailing powerful studio system. Often seen as the beginning of money men era, Heaven’s Gate marked a changing moment for maverick auteur film directing and the role of the producer. It also branded the Western in clear class struggle, selected social agenda terms.
Brian Duggan (b. 1971) lives and works in Dublin. His practice examines the prevailing conditions when things go wrong, and the sites of stress and breakage. Citing well known historical events as well as the overlooked small dramas of the everyday, he brings physical challenges into the gallery as an interrogative method, exerting pressure and pushing boundaries. From 1996 to 2009, Duggan was a co-founder and co-director of Pallas Studios, Heights and Projects one of the longest running independent artist run spaces in Ireland. He has received many awards, including Arts Council of Ireland, Culture Ireland, and South Dublin County Council. In 2011, he was selected for the Artist Residency Program in the Irish Museum of Modern Art. He was commissioned to make new work for the inaugural Dublin Contemporary 2011. Solo exhibitions in 2012 include RuaRed Dublin; group exhibitions in the Lyndecker gallery Spain, National Sculpture Factory Cork, Limerick City Gallery of Art, and Braziers Supernormal UK. His work is included in the Permanent National Collections of the Hugh Lane Gallery and the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
Helen Carey is currently Director / Curator of Limerick City Gallery of Art, Ireland. She curates independent projects concerned with cultural identity, historical events and the public realm. She previously was inaugural Director of the Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris.
A new joint commission by VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow Local Authorities Arts Office, and Carlow Arts Festival Éigse 2012.
Supported by the Arts Council of Ireland.
www.visualcarlow.ie
www.eigsecarlow.ie
www.everythingcanbedone.com