Become a columnist. Or write an article. Or head back to the homepage.

The Slug Nemesis

Probably the worst moment was when I realised I'd stepped in the exhibit. I really tried to pretend to myself that it wasn't mine, but bending down and looking at the footprint in the art I couldn't deny that the size and pattern were very familiar. I'd like to say that it had all started so promisingly but to tell the truth it seemed to be a fitting end to my visit to the Douglas Hyde Gallery.

For anyone who hasn't been to the Douglas Gallery (and why would you have?) It has probably the finest exhibition location in Ireland. Positioned just inside the Naussau St. entrance to Trinity College Dublin it offers free admittance to a frequently changing exhibition space to the thousands of people who pass its doors. That you will never find more than two of those thousands actually inside the gallery speaks volumes about the artists they choose to exhibit. The curator(s) of the gallery are great believers in Modern Art. Unfortunately, their conception of what is daringly modern is, like the building in which they reside, an embarrassingly dated vision of modernity which is now pushing forty years old. So this is the first of an occasional series of art reviews; The Douglas Hyde Gallery: A Waste of Space.

Rivane Neuenschwander is, apparently, a Brazilian artist who recently finished a residency in Sweden. (This is one of the perks of being an artist. The rest of us have places we live. Artists have residencies). How pleased the Douglas Hyde Gallery must have been to discover her. Not only is she exotic and foreign sounding with a vital "neu" in her name, but she is also an "Organic minimalist". To find out what that is, have a peep with me over the balcony of the gallery to the large open space below. The first thing to catch your eye are three bowls huddled together and one slightly further away. They are filled with what appears to be urine and to have numerous insect wings dropped into them. I looked at them for a moment. I give them some thought. Who knows, maybe you would too. They looked like the bowls that mysteriously used to find their way into my back garden as a child before being abandoned for months, becoming mausoleums for any flies, snails or slugs who fell into their spheres off influence. At the time I didn't think they were particular artistic and looking at them with fresh eyes, I still don't.

According to the accompanying hype material, the works "demonstrate the artist's empathy with the natural processes of decomposition and transformation". Reading on, I learnt that they are "arranged in delicate configurations [which] seem to hover on the boarder between this world and the next". Anxious to get to the art before it passed away I moved on to contemplate six sheets of brown cardboard, glazed and mounted on the wall. They were adorned with scraps of white rice paper, which have been eaten by slugs. An awful vista opened up before me. I realised I looking at a torture chamber for those less spinally gifted than ourselves. After pulling the wings off dragonflies got boring, Ms. Neuenschwander had built a cube of rice paper and imprisoned a number of slugs in it. They were then forced to gorge themselves if they were to have any hope of freedom. My fears were confirmed by the exhibit featuring a 100 watt light bulb hung six inches from the ground, illuminating four pieces of black paper which bore the tragic traces of slugs who had attempted to blindly escape its searing challenge.

Now all the exhibits became sinister. The book with dots burnt into it on a foot high shelf became a cruel torment for the illiterate gastropods. A glass of water with an egg floating in it stuck in the corner at eye level taunting them with everything they could never have- elevation, an ovoid shape, and buoyancy. The bowl at the edge of a cheap Formica table became a sword of Damocles' for the low acceleration slime sticks, threatening to crush them all.

I soon bored of the game however. To tell the truth, my first impression as I came down the stairs of the gallery had been that there was nothing there. On closer examination, I realised that I'd been correct.

The work was boring and one dimensional. Had I not made a list of the pieces I wouldn't have remembered a single one. Except for the pile of ground black pepper I stood in while trying to imagine the menace of a floating egg from a slug's perspective. I would definitely recall that. Except I'm not sure it actually was a piece of art. It may have been something someone forgot to clean up after trying to find a way to make slugs sneeze.

by

Simon McGarr
5th February 2001

Topics