MEANINGS by Tommy Barr, Oliver Whelan and Marcin Kowalik
Mirror Phase by Marcin Kowalik was a phase, a continuum of a cycle, started in 2011, in which he substituted the old paintings for a mirror as the subject of interest. His primary inspiration was the observation of a mirror and its study from nature. The main conclusion that he drew was that, similarly like during the process of looking at the paintings of the old masters, it is hardly feasible to look at oneself in the mirror objectively. The eye only registers and it is the brain that 'sees'. In order to see something, the brain has to interpret it, i.e. compare it to something that it has seen before or associate it with something similar. It can be said that his work at the initial phase of this cycle was a meta-and-physical journey into and out of a mirror.
Discovering Lacan's psychology was a milestone for the further development of the project. The period in one's life between 6 and 18 months is when our ego is being shaped – we begin to identify with our reflection in the mirror. This moment when we first recognize ourselves, “zero point”, initiated deliberations on the moment when the painting first comes into being in our consciousness.
Marcin expresses in his works, the parallel reality and the world on the other side of the mirror, the psychology of human mind perceiving the reality as a simple child.
It is possible to consider Tommy Barr’s work as a continuation of Marcin’s examination. As we move from childhood and that initial consideration of the world around us, our constant scrutiny of our environment does not wane. Indeed as we begin to add layers of understanding and of meaning, we begin to realise that objects and images carry different messages dependent upon time and context.
These contextual and sometimes covert layers of interpretation come to define the environment in which we exist, who we are, and how everything connects. In his works, Tommy has chosen to depict objects, which have, at different times, been endowed with significance beyond their purely physical properties.
He has endeavored to capture something of this significance in the finished icons. In this he has been guided by the thoughts of Aristotle, who stated that the aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
Oliver has also set out to look at the visual process from an abstruse position. In that he looks at art through new thinking in science. Discoveries in science have consistently influenced both art and artist from the very beginning of its history.
In our time the influence of physics has changed the way we see and conceive the world. In Oliver’s case it has informed his work for some considerable time.
He also has taken inspiration from past artists whose act of looking was informed by new and informed discoveries in science.
Turners paintings transcends time, they pre-empted whole moments in art, he didn’t take his inspiration from the prevailing practices of his peers but looked towards sciences as a lynch pin to what reality really was. The power of light and electricity as revealed by Faraday had a profound effect on his view of reality. In Oliver’s work such individuals have equally inform his interests. Einstein’s theories on relativity, and in particular his understanding of time- space, in that, both are indivisibly linked. This concept has formed a particular interest for Oliver. “There is something about painting that reflects this fact, in that the action inherent in it’s making, is intrinsic to both its sense of time and its illusion of space”.
This grappling with meaning is the common thread, which ties together the work of these three artists and the resulting exhibition. In considering the exhibition we are confronted by what is human and common in the artists. Nationalities and other such superficial categories cease to be important. In this scrutiny of meaning the viewer is also given the space to share in the exploration, and to participate fully in the exhibition through their engagement in the personal journey of the individual works.
MEANINGS
Art from Two Countries:by Patrick Quigley author
"The Polish Irishman"
Almost 100 years ago a group of artists held an exhibition in Dublin called: Pictures of two Countries. The two countries were Ireland and Poland (even though the Polish scenes were actually from Ukraine); the artists were the Polish-speaking, Casimir Dunin-Markievicz, his wife Constance and their friend, George Russell, otherwise known as “AE.” It was the first time such an exhibition was held and was the start of a century of cultural connection between Ireland and Poland.
Constance was born in London and was technically an English citizen, but her family, the Gore-Booths, lived on the west coast of Ireland for three centuries. She was from the Anglo-Irish class, but in time she would identify totally with the Irish part of her heritage.
Her husband came from a Polish-speaking family who lived in Ukraine for centuries; they were proud of their Polish nationality, but moved among the elite of the Russian Empire. Casi and Con were similar in having a privileged background with a mixed heritage. During the early decades of the Twentieth Century they would renounce these complex backgrounds in favour of a single national identity. Things were much simpler when they met in Paris in 1899. France was neutral territory where one could invent oneself and both wanted more than anything else to learn all about art and to become serious artists.
From the beginning they influenced each other. Casi came to Ireland for the first time in 1900 and fell in love with the West of Ireland scenery, especially the ocean. Picture titles from the exhibition show the range of landscapes he painted in those early years: Sands at Lissadell, Sligo Bay, Black Biddy’s Cottage and Sligo Fisherman. A nationalist critic, Evelyn Gleeson, praised his very sympathetic pictures of Irish peasant life. However, “one sees in them his people from the outside; not all his power can approach the people that is Mr. Jack Yeats’ birthright.”
According to the Irish nationalist one had to be born Irish to be able to properly depict an Irish scene, surely a case of ideology dictating how we should view a picture. To be born Irish gave the artist telepathic gifts denied to the foreigner no matter how talented. As far as we know Casimir did not overly concern himself with meaning. He painted what he pleased and not out of any agenda. That does not prevent critics from deducing (or imposing) meaning on his work. The study of two bare trees in the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin has the neutral title: Landscape Study. The trees can symbolize two lovers rooted in the same earth but forever out of reach. A modern critic reads into them a statement about the condition of Poland in the early 1900s. We can winkle out these and other meanings while bearing in mind that he simply painted two bare trees because he felt it or couldn’t think of anything else.
We are on different ground with Constance. She could dash off a landscape as well but she was fascinated with the life of the Ukrainian peasants in the Markievicz homeland at Zywotowka. Casimir brought her to Ukraine in the summers of 1902 and 1903 and built a studio in the park where they could paint without interruption. Her pictures from this time are stark and dramatic depictions of the hard endured by the peasants in the fields. The most striking picture is The Conscript which shows a deep awareness of injustice that would grow when she came to live in Ireland. In contrast to Casimir her pictures are keen to depict life with an emphasis on the nature of poverty.
How are we to view pictures and art in general if we are unaware of what the artist intended? Some artists keep the viewer at a distance; others want to draw you in. Meaning can appear simple in naturalistic painting, but becomes complex when we recognize codes and symbols.
As the art moves along the scale towards the abstract the viewer is asked to participate in a different way. The one constant factor is that the viewer wants to be challenged, informed, entertained, maybe even to be transformed. There is a zone where the artist takes on the role of seer or shaman and develops his or her vision of the world. The viewer responds to this and either embraces or rejects the vision, but a connection is made.
The art in this exhibition is very different from the Dublin exhibition of a century ago. Art has changed, but the viewer still wants to be enriched; we still have the need to nourish our minds and souls. We are well served by the artists who present very different views of the world. Poland is well represented by Marcin Kowalik’s elegant diagrams and austere but colourful visions. From Ireland we have Tommy Barr’s studies of the mythical landscape and Oliver Whelan’s vibrant and challenging paintings.
Welcome to this new Exhibition of Paintings from Two Countries. Like the art that went before these works seek to inspire, to entertain, to make you feel more alive, to nourish the mind and enrich the soul.
“Meanings”by Dr Derek Hand
All the best art makes us see the world again as if for the first time, forcing us to consider what we don't know rather than being comforted by the familiar. This is what happens too when cultures come together through emigration and immigration as each person is forced to confront the other, not only the other person out there in the world but the other which is in themselves also. Such meetings and encounters lead to the possibility of change and development and progress. And so cultures and people renew and reimagine who they are now and who they might be in the future while embracing the traditions and myths of the past.
The Irish playwright J.M. Synge declared that “All art is collaboration” and this is echoed in this exhibition bringing together Polish and Irish artists into a shared space. The title of the show, ‘Meanings’, reflects directly the notion of collaboration. The plural used here indicates diversity and an on-going engagement and dialogue between the differing perspectives and visions of each of the artists on display and the contrasting media and techniques through which they present their images. And the viewer too is drawn into the dialogue, interpreting and responding to the work, making that vision which is some else’s an element of their own.
This exhibition is important because it is a snap-shot of the energies of an ever changing world that includes Ireland and Poland, giving expression to the cultural encounter of the two countries, opening up new meetings, new ideas and new ways of coming together and celebrating difference. It is exciting that it will happen in Warsaw and Dublin, where the audiences in both these places will enact that encounter again and again as each viewer shares both the collective experience but will also take individual meaning(s) from the art.
Dr Derek Hand (Dublin)
