Tina O'Connell

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Askeaton Pavilion, part of 'Welcome to the Neighbourhood' - Askeaton Contemporary Arts, 2017, Ireland.

Askeaton Pavilion
Tina O’Connell and Neal White.

 

Following a short residency in Askeaton, we developed a number of small interventions for the festival of contemporary Art 'Welcome to the Neighbourhood'. Primarily based on research into the nearby Ardnacrusha Hydro Dam and Power Station, Limerick, and its inclusion in the 1939 Worlds Fair Expo in New York, mainly as a vast mural by Sean Keating (all works later destroyed), we developed a proposal for Askeaton Pavilion at a Worlds Fair. Study for a Pavilon loosely took the oringinal design of the building, and mapped out a plan into the community centre. The festival event included a guided tour with speculation on the possible sections and areas that might be promoted, and which might best reflect the heritage, industry and culture of the town.

 

The work also included a media installation based on a reconstruction of the Keating Mural from lost photographs of the mural in New York.

 

A further series of spectral reconstructions, of lost or stolen public sculptures that had disappeared in the UK, were developed in local park and displayed alongside the Study.

 

Curated by Michele Horrigan and Sean Lynch.

More information here

 

The following text was printed on an Interpretation Panel at the entrance to the Community Hall

 

ART, LOST & FOUND

Whether through vandalism, unplanned devastating events or intentional theft, the loss of any artwork can tear holes in a shared cultural fabric. For art that is publicly accessible, this has a different register. From a sculpture stolen from a park for its weight in metal, through to removal of historical artworks taken during foreign occupations (theft by finding), or even the recent destruction of public cultural icons in the middle east, the loss becomes a direct assault on our shared values, our history and our future.

However, in some cases, a public artwork that is meticulously planned and executed by a leading artistic figure is intentionally lost. Between 1937-39, Limerick born artist Sean Keating worked on an extensive mural for the Irish National Pavilion, designed by the architect Michael Scott, for the New York World’s Fair, 1939. Modern and uncompromising in its quality, and quite unlike any of his previous works, the vast mural depicted Ireland as a pioneer of modern technology, with the Ardnacrusha Hydroelectric Power Station in Co. Clare at its centre. Flanked by historical references, images of political independence and the future of aviation and telecommunication, this vast painting encompassed the Irish Governments vision of the “Love of Liberty, Love of Learning”.

Only two years later however, the love was lost, the pavilion was demolished, along with the mural. Not only was the artwork destroyed, but it’s short life and lack of photographic apparatus of the time meant that the historical record is limited to a few partial images. Only notes of the process of the painting can retrace the vivid colours of Buff Yellow, Map Green, Burnt Umber, White, Red and various shades of Blue that transmitted the work to the visitors of the World Fair. Keating himself hardly noticed, as events tore Europe apart.

STUDY FOR A PAVILION: ASKEATON

Today, International Art Fairs and Art Biennales promote artists from their nation states around the globe. National Pavilions and ‘statement spaces’ provide platforms that connect curators and collectors, leading Museums and Galleries, which then seek to shape our cultural identity. However, for many, these events represent a global economy of art with all of the critical and political dimensions that such a phenomenon raises. For the artists, critics and audiences consuming these spectacles in person, these events continue the tradition of the World’s Fairs, as temporary sites of power and privilege. Experienced through social media, the rarefied event, exclusive, remote, is connected to daily life through luxurious glossy images in near constant and potentially perpetual circulation.

In ‘Study for a Pavilion: Askeaton’, Tina O’Connell and Neal White use a range of site specific media to ask how a small town in Ireland might be represented in the context of a global economy, whilst remaining rooted to the local culture and community that has given rise to its own outstanding and Internationally recognised art event – Askeaton Contemporary Arts Festival.

 

Askeaton Pavilion, Askeaton Community Centre, Ireland.

View under stage revealing ghost image of the Ardnacrusha Mural

Apparitiion of Ardnacrusha in the community hall

The view under the stage

Visitors to the Askeaton Pavilion get a tour of the archive and proposed zones of interest

One of two photos of the original mural in the worlds Fair Expo. Courtesy of Dr O'Connor and the Estate of Sean Keating

One of a number of apparitions of lost sculptures that appeared in the Askeaton community park.
All images Copyright Tina O'Connell or Neal White
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