Squaring the Triangle

Mark Lawlor opens one of his brown sketchbooks to an accomplished drawing of a middle aged man in a suit, squat on his hunkers. In one hand he holds the paw of a German Shepherd wearing a heavy chain lead which hangs slack from the man’s other hand. The dog’s tail is between its legs. Forlornly, it looks directly from the page as if to say, what do you make of this power struggle?

Gently humorous, the scene is also curiously unsettling. The Celt wonders if Mark drew it or Gábor Roskó?

“Who did it, doesn't make any difference,” Mark says with a good natured laugh. I suspect it was Mark, but he’s right: it’s not the point.

Between Mark, Gábor and Rebecca O’Connor they are each contributors to a single art project called Triangle that will open in the Town Hall Arts Centre this weekend. Mark and Rebecca were joined in the Arts Centre by curator Joe Keenan to discuss the work, but the third face of the Triangle - Gábor - had yet to arrive from his Budapest base.

Mark and Gábor’s longstanding friendship stems from meeting at an artists’ residency in Annaghmakerrig.

“We just clicked,” says Mark and happily recalls walks with Gábor around the picturesque grounds of the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, and his Hungarian pal playing the clarinet.

Through the years the friendship endured.

“He’s a superb visual artist,” says Mark. Gábor apparently underplays the esteem in which he is held at home.

“This was 20 years ago,” Mark recalls of a particular visit to Budapest, “we went in one day into the national gallery and there were two of his paintings up!”

During a trip to Wicklow, sitting half the day in a cafe, the pair began drawing in response to each other’s sketches. The practice developed during a spell at the Moth artists’ retreat in Drumlane, of which Rebecca O’Connor is a director.

“They were sitting opposite each other at the table in the house, drawing for hours,” remembers Rebecca, who is also an accomplished novelist, poet and editor.

When Gábor returned to Hungary the pair kept the visual correspondence going through emailing drawings.

“He would do a drawing that would get my head going. And then I would do this,” he said flicking to a picture in one of his sketchbooks. “So that’s in answer to his drawing.”

Initially their styles were more distinct, but as the work progresses the accents have softened. Rebecca suggests: “I think Gábor is more graphic, very fine lines, and Mark is more loose and painterly.”

The pictures are typically playful. One used in the promotional posters show two characters playing chess inside the belly of a whale.

“They are serious about what they are doing, they have a philosophical undertone I find interesting,” Rebecca assures.

Gábor and Mark asked Rebecca if she would write something in response to their drawings. Hesitant at first, she likens leafing through the surreal sketchbooks to “stepping in to a dream”.

“I so loved their drawings – genuinely loved them and was so inspired it felt it was easy to write it, and to create a narrative thread throughout each little book.

“They are sparse little poems on the page. It’s an interesting way to approach – to try to put text to images rather than illustrating text, which is usually the way it goes.”

Rebecca came up with single lines of text for each page which somehow manage to make an “imaginative leap” to the next, and has conjured a loose narrative through a book which they have reproduced and is available to buy.

“You don’t know where it's going to go, but you discover things about what your preoccupations are – things like the war that’s going on popped up in one, or the environment, or the passing of time, the children growing up so fast – all of that came out through looking at those pictures.”

Mark regards Rebecca’s contribution as “beautiful”.

“That book wouldn’t be anything without Rebecca. It gives it a force and neither myself nor Gábor were ready to do that.”

“As well as the text,” adds Joe Keenan, “Rebecca has a song written - a beautiful song.”

The quirky song is an arrangement of an wonderful, surreal poem by Rebecca - ‘The Perennial Garden’ delivered in a voice that’s as crisp as the Pigma Micron 003 pens used to create the drawings.

Joe immediately appreciated the force of the Triangle project.

“When we met the first time and I saw the work, within seconds I thought, ‘Yes, we’ve got to have these.’”

The panel that pick the Art Centre’s exhibitions were equally enthusiastic, but given much of the work is contained in sketch books, it doesn’t lend itself to the conventional style of exhibiting on a wall. Instead, they will project the work on a large screen. Display cabinets will include some of the original sketchbooks, as if they are museum pieces, and you can leaf through the books by donning the white gloves provided, as befitting a precious artefact.

A collection of immediately engaging work, Joe expects Triangle to prove a crowd pleaser.

“There’s a playfulness to the drawings, but they are deeply serious at the same time,” he says, urging viewers to call in to the Townhall.

Triangle will be launched at the Town Hall Arts Centre on Saturday, October 4 at 3pm and runs to Friday, November 14.