Inaugural Border Biennale to open
When former Fine Gael leader Alan Dukes suggested in the RTÉ documentary 'Quinn Country' that people from the Border region have violence “in their blood”, artist and painter Rita Duffy’s shoulders slumped, and she sighed tiredly.
Dukes, who played a key role in businessman Séan Quinn’s unseating while State-appointed chairman of the nationalised Anglo Irish Bank in 2011, rushed to a rapid climb down. He apologised “unreservedly” for his remarks, which he soon after admitted were “entirely unjustified”.
But the damage had been done, the headlines written, and the same exhausted motif of a lawless region governed by bloodshed imprinted.
For too long Rita has listened to the trope trotted out.
The Border, she feels, is forever misunderstood. “It inspires confusion,” she states, expressing the notion that the divide resonates on an historical and metaphorical level.
“There has never been a border established in the Irish imagination, and therefore I live my life on the Border as if there is none. For me it is a place of confusion and possibilities and, it’s in these places - the joins, the cracks in the pavement - that I find most interesting.”
The idea of a ‘Border Biennale’, curated by Rita and by Cavan’s John Keenan, and set to open at Cavan’s Townhall Gallery and Theatre Space (August 11-September 16), has been “percolating” for some time.
Bringing together works by six Irish contemporary artists, the upcoming exhibition explores how borders violently shape and structure both territory and identity, in a way that imagines new and more open geographies of association.
“I don’t see borders as being where something ends and something other begins. I don’t recognise them as linear divisions. As a creative person, I actually think when the climate and location collide you get the potential for something truly interesting, and I’m hopeful this is what we’ve got happening here,” Rita explains.
The exhibition includes chosen works by Belfast-born, Ballyconnell-based Rita; Belfast-born, Dublin-based John Byrne; Newry-born, Dublin-based Sean Hillen; Belfast-born, Mayo-based Dermot Seymour, and Belfast painters Patrick Hickey and Jennifer Trouton.
Rita is currently hosting her first solo exhibition ‘Persistent Illusion’ at Cork’s Crawford Art Gallery, and recently had several works purchased by the State for the national collection; while Byrne previously worked on a collaborative piece with The Palestrina Choir entitled ‘Good Works’, commissioned through Create, that was performed at Cavan’s Cathedral of Saint Patrick and Saint Felim in 2012, and the Chapel at IMMA. The biennale includes a documentary and print taken from his staging of a satirical tourist site along the Border on the main Dublin-Belfast road (2000).
Hickey’s paintings explore concepts pertaining to identity, masculinity and, importantly, sexuality in the context of Northern/Irish cultural assumptions; whereas Hillen’s work includes collages and a creative use of photographs. His work has featured as a frontispiece on the Imperial War Museum’s book ‘Art from Contemporary Conflict’, and his work chosen for the biennale focuses on the conflict’s implication in wider colonial histories.
Seymour meanwhile is a member of the R.U.A and Aosdána, who has had solo shows in Belfast, Dublin, New York, Berlin, Galway, Sligo and Derry; and Trouton, currently based at Belfast’s QSS Studios. His works feature in group exhibitions both nationally and internationally.
The Cavan exhibition itself has been designed by art consultant and advisor, Mark St John Ellis, best known for his work as curator for 'nag', a gallery he founded, and before that as curator and co–ordinator of the Royal Hibernian Academy Ashford Gallery in Dublin.
He settled in Cavan around 1993 through his collaborations with neoclassical darkwave act, Dead Can Dance and former Quivvy Church resident Brendan Perry. Most recently St John Ellis worked on a sound project at Cavan Cathedral titled ‘The Empty Vessel’, part of the Cavan Arts Festival 2020.
As an aside, the works selected for the inaugural Border Biennale, have informed the contents of an essay scripted by Dr Edwin Coomasaru, a historian of modern and contemporary art, who previously published an article titled ‘Brexit and the Occult’ looking at artworks themed on the Irish Border that explore substance such feminism, anti-racism and occultism.
For that he examined closely Rita’s 2017 ‘Soften the Border’, an installation of hand-knitted votive dolls on the Northern Irish Border, and the year after Project O’s ‘Saved’ at London’s Somerset House, a video depicting women of colour performing magical rituals in a post-apocalyptic watery wasteland.
Rita has high hopes the biennale can become “bigger and more impactful” in its scope in future.
“There are lots of ideas. This is really a first footing in looking at how art can impact society,” she says. “I have always been interested in studying a subject by living here, and the duality of things, and my belief is from that creative things will grow. This is very much about putting a marker down, and we are boldly looking to have recognised that we are trying to do something here of international significance.”
The Border Biennale, an exhibition curated by Rita Duffy and Joe Keenan, at Cavan’s Townhall Gallery and Theatre Space runs until Saturday, September 16 (Tuesday to Friday 10am to 4pm; Saturday 11am to 4pm).