N.C.A.D. Graduate & Masters Exhibition - Dublin - Ireland
cypher
My Blog Site - www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=cypherthepanicartist
Yesterday I went to see the N.C.A.D. Graduate and Masters exhibitions
in Thomas Street Dublin. As usual the work on display was a rag bag of
mixed success and abject failure. I noticed that amongst the viewers
there were about ten women to everyman at the exhibition. Some might
think - that I should be kind to young artists like this. Personally I
don't! N.C.A.D. is the premier art college in Ireland - one which I
have applied to three times and been rejected by three times! So my
whole attitude to artists like this is - if N.C.A.D. considers them
all better student material than me - are they fucking deaf, dumb and
blind! But in a way I now consider my last rejection a mixed blessing
- since it saved my art from the rotten manipulation and criticisms of
the incompetent N.C.A.D. faculty. In art terms these artists are still
in infancy - most artists only really hit their best period in their
late thirties. But on the other hand compared with what Raphael, or
Gericault or Picasso were doing at their age their work is ridiculous.
These days artists like me are the new Outsiders - cursed with
passion, obsession, craft and intelligence. Art colleges don't want
anyone who wants to pursue a more conventional approach to art - the
drawn figure, the finely worked print, the painted landscape or the
sculpted group of figures. A clue to the role-playing and bullshit of
these artists - was the catalogue. Like in previous years - there was
hardly a single coherent (whole image) of beauty or arresting power.
Instead it was full of obscure close-ups of frivolous and
insubstantial work or supposedly 'witty' feckless indulgences. And
that is the problem in a nut shell. Hardly any of these artists are
capable of creating an art object of real integrity, craft and skill -
which can hold up to close and repeated scrutiny.
Colleges try to claim that they tolerate different ideas - but in
reality it is just a new form of academia - tricked out with all
trivial and already stale fads and fashions of contemporary art. Deep
down these artists are as profoundly upper middle class,
Conservative, narrow minded and ignorant as the old academic students
- but they have none of their technical mastery - but then neither do
their teachers.
So these students are supposed to be the cream of the crop in Ireland
- and their desultory studies are paid for by the government. After
they graduate - they form part of the N.C.A.D. Mafia that control and
dominate what is considered important art in Ireland. While many of
them will never become professional artists - they might become
curators, critics and collectors in the Irish art world. So what they
consider important - is important if only in Ireland - even if their
judgments are based on ignorance, stupidity, smug conceit and
technical incompetence.
First I looked around the Graduate show - yet again it was infinitely
better than the Masters show in The Digital Hub on Thomas Street -
proof again of the gradual disintegration of the creative spirit -
wreaked on art students by their tutors who only want them to paint
like them.
This year - photo's of women in tights, rubbish, teddy bears, video
head pieces, self-piting rants, images of childhood, quantum
mechanics, drawings on book pages, cutting up maps, Dublin housing and
consumerism, Victorian wall paper, balloons, stuffed birds, fun fair
stupidity, family photos and drunk art student parties recorded in
photos - were all in.
As with a television talent show - the ones I remember in exhibitions
like this are the best and the very worst - the rest industriously
produce elaborate works which have a - so fucking what - quality as
mind numbing as beta blockers. This is the fourth N.C.A.D. graduate
show I have seen - and I have yet to discover a genius! None of these
artists actually strikes me as genuinely creative people - their work
is limp, gimmicky, smart-assed, incompetent and emotionally retarded.
The ceramic department was a quite strong show - but none of this
twee, feminine and pretentious offerings had any real power.
Yet again the sculpture department was the utter dregs of
incompetence, self-delusion and intellectual arrogance. What in Gods
name is the point today of sculpture made out of rubbish, builders
materials and other crap - it has all been done better in the 1980's
and 1990's. None of these students demonstrated any original ideas,
craft, discipline or intellectual integrity and not one of their
pieces had the slightest visual punch, beauty or craft.
The print department proved again to be one of the best. These
students did not just restrict themselves to conventional prints -
they also produced installations, photos, and sculptural elements -
there was also a rigor and competence in their works - utterly lacking
for example in the unmitigated crap offered up by the sculpture
students. I was most impressed with the work of Nessah Darcey and
Niamh Dunphy. Both of them dealt in their way with the themes,
television programs, toys and moments of childhood - but there was
great wit and lightness of touch to their efforts.
The painting department this year was big let down. Not one of these
painters were up to the likes of Liam Ryan last year - or Paul Doran
or Sean Skully in past years. The paintings were full of trendy
painterly conceits and gimmicks - but not one of them hit home. The
best painters this year were Owen McLaughlin, Cleon Fay and Kevin Cos
grove.
Owen McLaughlin made Albert Oehlen type Neo-Expressionistic late
1990's abstracts -with daring colours. Cleon Fay produced figurative
paintings of nude women distorted in a looking glass - painted like a
lighter more kitsch version of Jenny Saville. Kevin Cos grove produced
light-filled paintings of boats in moorings - the technique a little
like Luc Tuyman's.
The worst was undoubtedly Genieve Figgis - her rotten plagiarism of
the even more incompetent, ugly and stupid paintings of Stella Vine -
where laughably bad. Nearly as bad were Robert Sherlocks 'moving'
paintings - in which he created an armature to hold his paintings -
which moved slots in and out! What utter rubbish! Poor old Rembrandt -
think how much better his paintings would have been if they had moved
up and down - in and out! This is the stuff of the fair-ground -
creating a quick impact that fades in a nanosecond once you realize
the crassness and stupidity of it all.
A perfect example of the way art colleges like N.C.A.D. can manipluate
a talent - is the work of Michael Henry. From a distance his paintings
of woods look like very conventional landscape painting - so much so
that his work stood out like a sore thumb amongst the fashionistas.
But getting closer one quickly sees that he has build up the paint in
inch thick relief. It's a pure gimmick - and amounts to nothing - but
maybe it was a survival strategy for a very conventional painter in a
school of chancers. The trouble is his technique is not good enough to
stand up to comparison with countless conventional landscape painters
- so he needs tricks like these to make any mark at all.
Then I went up to The Digital Hub (an old run down wear-house space)
on Thomas Street where the Master's show was being held. Masters of
Fine Art! Their having a laugh! If this is what it takes to get a
Masters in Fine art - maybe its not such a bad thing that I have not a
single qualification to my name! Yet again this show proved to me that
art college is like a tuberculosis ward - the longer you are there -
the sicker you get. Progressively as these students pass through the
years - their art becomes more conceited, obscure, dry and devoid of
any sign of creative pleasure or passion. Gimmicks become formula,
ideas become bloated - and technique gets more professional but also
more contrived. Frankly there was not one artist in this show that
stuck in my mind for good or ill.
My Blog Site - www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=cypherthepanicartist
My Website - www.thepanicartist.com