Borderline brilliant Biennale

We’re entering a liminal space. That momentary blindness when you come from the daylight of Townhall Street into the half-dark of the Arts Centre gives way to a series of spectacular works by Pascal Ungerer that possess a hard to describe luminescence.

Depicting brutalist edifices, in otherworldly colours, and unyielding straight lines, these are simply breath taking works by the Cork artist. From a distance the crisp edges of the buildings have that mechanised feel you get from a technical drawing, but under close examination you can see the honesty in the minuscule flaws of a human hand.

Ungerer’s body of work is just one startling limb of what forms a crowd pleasing Border Biennale. Curated by Joe Keenan and Rita Duffy, each of the works are captivating and easy to engage with.

Duffy has contributed new works titled ‘Split’ to the exhibition, however they were still being installed at the time the Celt visited.

The work displays animations with their mirror image. In Dr Edwin Coomasaru’s essay in the exhibition programme he astutely references the so-called ‘peace lines’ of Belfast, where Duffy was born. These walls - the majority of which didn’t exist during the conflict - split working class areas of Belfast along sectarian lines. Ostensibly the walls were to prevent attacks from either side, but equally they blocked communities from seeing the symmetry of their lives.

The Border Biennale lens zooms out with the inclusion of a film by Maria Anastassiou which focuses on her family’s experiences during the war in Cyprus of 1974 that culminated in its partition.

The video shows Anastassiou unearthing her family history. With a young child on her lap she sifts through old photos of her family pictured outside a tent. Meanwhile audio plays of her mother on the phone giving the background to this period of displacement - how they were not allocated a tent and how her resourceful grandmother had to contrive one from a sheet and wood.

This reviewer is not one for video installations generally, but the section of Maria’s work I viewed really was affecting. It shows how unrelated conflicts share rhymes and rhythms of pain and how future generations will seek out narratives to make sense of their place within its aftermath. I can’t help but think of future Palestinians having to re-explore this current moment.

Found/Acquired is an epic work by Miriam De Burca. De Burca has taken time to draw a series of artefacts gifted/lifted in each of the 32 counties, and currently housed in the British Museum. Together they provide a sort of map of craftmanship, artistry, spirituality, and ultimately colonialism in Ireland.

A pair of letters accompany the work, one typed by the artist and a response by the London based museum’s director. With a tone that borders on whimsy and formality De Burca mischievously writes:

‘I hereby wish to make you an offer: I would like to donate my entire series of 32 original, 100% Irish made drawing to the British Museum - in exchange for the repatriation of the original objects that are replicated in the Found/Acquired series.’

Does the museum director - who has a knighthood - agree to the proposal, and has in fact returned the artefacts?

You’ll have to head along to the exhibition to find out. When there, take time to sit with these visual delights a while.

The Border Biennale runs at Townhall Arts Centre Cavan until Saturday, August 30.