by Tom Mooney
Writing in the FT at the weekend, designer Marcel Wanders expressed a preference for –given the choice – the experiential.
The probability of enjoying art experientially is bookended between empiricism and extraction: the essence of an encounter with something special is therefore both the physical and the visual connection.
For example, Meadow by Gillian Freedman at Bravura (Blue Egg Gallery), cannot be anything but an experiential experience: you want to touch it, then to stroke it and then to absorb it.
Meadow (hand stitched paper yarn, silk organza set in canvas) starts as an empirical encounter – you standing before it – and concludes with a process of extraction.
There is, however, no empirical gain from reading about it, or indeed what follows about Bravura, which is why I urge you to visit one of the most important venues for contemporary art and crafts in these islands.
This isn’t a home spun exaggeration: the Blue Egg Gallery – in just two years – has become a treasured showcase for the extraordinary by the few once unacknowledged by the many. But no more. This is their moment.
We are on a learning curve with Marry Gallagher, and thus far the trajectory has been nothing less than thrilling.
It is important to view work by Reilitin Murphy, Liam Flynn, Jean Murphy and Derek Wilson in an ambience conducive to a more wholesome appreciation of the artist’s achievement.
I suspect, as curator, Mary’s eye is ruthless: this is an exhibition without excess, without frills, without pomp and without pretension. The exhibits are as close to perfection as you would want.
How this is achieved is a miracle, beyond the scrutiny of words. Consider Murphy’s collection: Gloria en Eggshellses. Look at the titles: Bua agus Beannacht, AlphabetCave with R, Habitat Encrusted with Blessings.
Murphy’s is a show within a show, a voyage a step ahead of a journey: Fragment With Aleph might allude to the denotation of a collection of artifacts, but study the medium.
Ostrich eggshell, cara gold leaf, vellum, thread: now, if your imagination has been stirred, a bridge is constructed between a play on infinity and the symbolism of the Hebrew letter aleph.
It may, of course, have nothing to do with the uncountable or impermanence, for explication shouldn’t diminish the joie de vivre of the artist, but Gloria in Eggshellses is an unforgettable encounter.
It is the fashion of established galleries in Dublin, taking after London, to charge stratospheric prices which, like an eyrie, are out of reach. The Blue Egg Gallery has its feet on the ground, with prices that don’t require a calculator, and exhibits that are more than worth every cent.
E.M. Forster, concluding an introductory note to Twenty Years A-Growing by Maurice O’Sullivan, compared the writing to“the egg of a sea bird – lovely, perfect and laid this very morning.”
To see, touch, admire Reflections of Winter by Helen McLean or Christiane Wilhelm’s Vessel with One Flower or Large Skib by Joe Hogan is to experience Forster’s exaltation.
Perhaps Murphy’s Fragment with Aleph is a comment on Bravura: infinity in a collection of objects.
