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| IRELANTIS by Sean Hillen was published by Sean hillen and Irelantis Ltd, 1999. |
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| Other work by Sean Hillen |
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| Other articles by Gavin Murphy |
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| Collecting Meteorites at Knowth, IRELANTIS |
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| Sun, Sand and Cement in Temple Bar |
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| A Quare Pic In The Cooleys |
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| This was one book review I was looking forward to. I was aware of Hillen's earlier photomontages where miraculous visions of the Virgin Mary shone above a British military presence or cut and pasted nuns masked the faces of the RUC in Newry's town centre. An acerbic wit cut sharply into a rich political complex. The potency of such works lay in sensitivity to locale and the tradition of montage. With montage rooted in the work of Russian filmmakers Vertov, Kuleshov and Eisenstein and continued by the likes of Heartfield and Höch, it sought to bring submerged relations into view, to construct, as one critic put it, an 'epic vision of actuality'. |
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| If this tradition and Hillen's earlier work is marked by shrewd political insight; Irelantis seeks to adopt a lighter stance towards subject matter. Take Collecting Meteorites at Knowth as an example, with its fantastical combination of megalithic sites, meteors and Hinde's infamous postcard of ginger baps filling the donkey's turf baskets. It is at once spectacular and comical - in fact so overblown that one willingly participates in its wild flight of fancy. Likewise Sun, Sand and Cement in Temple Bar creates the most bizarre dreamscape on the building site of the Gallery of Photography. These are the successful works. Many others, whether they be of ice flows by the Cliffs of Moher or glaciers in Henry Street, slowly build up to remind me of numerous quirky adverts and photoshopped websites in their fleeting appeal. It seems that there is a thin line to be walked with this medium, particularly when we are awash with computer manipulated imagery. |
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| It may not be surprising then that accompanying text in the book appears to defend this work as a disciplined craft. The opening pages remind us that these are paper collages and that 'using a microscope, scalpel and glue Hillen weaves fragments of old postcards and other found materials into elaborate compositions'. Indeed, the painted portrait of Hillen on the back flap with an intense gaze and set before a backdrop of classical text is a solid reminder of artistic status. To affirm this further, Seamus Heaney adds weight with a short comment. These features register a certain tension with regard to artistic standing. A defence is made by reaching to the weight of tradition, whether it be that of the hand-crafted artefact or leaning on a literary anchor in the form of famous Seamus. They seek to remind the reader that these images scanned into the book are in fact (authentic) hand crafted objects and consequently a line is drawn between this and a ubiquitous and often flippant cut and paste culture. |
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| But need a defence be made on these grounds if works can make a case for themselves? Take the image The Great Pyramids of Carlingford Lough, selected for the cover of Irelantis, as the test case. Certainly, evidence of a constructed process is apparent where the edges of the image of the earth's atmosphere overlap the postcard view of the lough from the Cooley mountains. However, this does not seem to be as significant as the potential relationships built up through fragmentation and re-assembly. This is a more than familiar view of the lough, not only through the postcard used but from the troupes of amateur painters from the area who flock to this view. This time though, pyramids and the macrographic skyline are added. Additional text by the artist clarifies that the pyramids bridge the border between the North and South of Ireland. What results is something similar to Eiseinstein's montage of attraction - although in this case the shock or aesthetic tension resides less in polemical intent than in quirky spectacle. Perhaps this is where the value of these montages lie - as a precise register of the drift from grand intent towards flippant hyperbole and a growing demand for instantaneity in the gallery space. Hillen's work seems to be caught between these two poles. |
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| Gavin Murphy |
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