The route from Belfast is peppered with road signs that point the direction to ‘Derry’, the ‘London’ prefix obscured by white spray paint. As you enter the city, the first notable sight is the Peace Bridge that spans the River Foyle, opened in 2011 and symbolically connecting the Catholic and Protestant populations. When I arrive at my hotel, the frieze behind the reception shows images relating to the city’s recent political history. Later on, at the opening reception for the Lumiere festival – my reason for being in the first UK City of Culture – former IRA commander Martin McGuiness, now Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister and born and bred in Derry, makes one of the speeches.
Politics, religion and Northern Ireland’s recent violent history are unavoidable in this still divided city. “Even the use of the name ‘Derry-Londonderry’ in the branding was a political compromise,” says Derry artist Damian Duffy. It is impossible to write about the visual arts in this City of Culture year without mentioning the area’s difficult past. History permeates the architecture of the city, from its 17th century walled ramparts and cathedral and churches, to the terraced houses of the Bogside and the imposing Ebrington Barracks, previously home to the British Army and currently housing the Turner Prize exhibition.
While redolent of the past, for some within the local visual arts community the barracks’ site is symbolic of concerns regarding the future – in particular the legacy of 2013. The refurbishment to international gallery standards cost £2.4 million, but when the Turner Prize exhibition closes early next year it seems likely that this new space will be rented to the digital sector. It will have been used as a visual arts venue for only 11 weeks.
“They’ve over-developed the site as a short-term measure, to have the prestige project of hosting the Turner Prize,” reasons Duffy, who is a member of artist-led gallery Void’s curating committee. “It’s robbed the indigenous art population of the opportunity of using the legacy of the Turner Prize in a positive way.”
Visual arts infrastructure
Although Void is very active in the city and the newly created Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), which grew out of the Context Gallery, has presented an international contemporary art programme since moving to its new space in 2012, the city doesn’t have a well-developed visual arts infrastructure. (Perhaps symptomatic of this, CCA is currently seeking a new director to replace founding co-directors Aileen Burns and Johan Lundh, who have left to co-direct the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia.) The hope was that 2013 would enable growth for the sector.
“Visual arts has been the success story of the year,” believes Graeme Farrow, a senior programmer with the Culture Company, organisers of the 2013 programme. Yet while events like the Turner Prize, the Lumiere festival and the major Willie Doherty retrospective, Unseen, have hightlighted contemporary art, the city remains a difficult place for artists to work in: only four permanent artists’ studios have been created in the city during 2013, as part of the Ebrington Barracks refurbishment.
Farrow accepts that more needs to be done if there is to be a legacy for visual arts practice in the city. “From the perspective of individual artists, in general they are poorly served infrastructurally, and the amount of money afforded to individual artists has declined in the last few years,” he says, speaking prior to news that he has been appointed Artistic and Creative Director of the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff. “How do we increase wages for artists from £7000 to £10,000? That should be a target for the next three years for Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the government.”
Void gallery director Maoliosa Boyle is one of three Derry curators of the Turner Prize show and has shadowed Tate Britain curators since 2011. “I’ve gained skills from Tate Britain,” she says, “including an insight into researching the artists and a week of writing in April.” So, there is some legacy in terms of the development of relationships and enhanced skills, but there is still a lot to do in terms of infrastructure.
“There is no third level art course in Derry, meaning that we lose our creative population at 18,” explains Boyle. “To help address this, we created an alternative art school at Void [in 2006] offering 12 places a year. We also have six studio spaces.”
Void has consistently punched above its weight, bringing heavyweight artists such as Mark Wallinger, Christian Boltanski and Jeremy Deller to the city. As part of its 2013 programme, it commissioned two new installations from Spainish artist Santiago Sierra: Veterans and Psychophonies. The former uses a drone camera to explore the now derelict interior spaces of the former officers’ mess at Ebrington Barracks. The black and white film lingers on the peeling paint and shabby walls, and five British Army veterans were contracted to stand in the corner of rooms, backs to the audience, symbolic, perhaps of punishment and expected shame.
Individual voices
Recent history is reflected in other major art exhibitions as well. As one of the ten new commissions for the four-night Lumiere festival, Polish artist Krzysztof Wodiczko recorded testimony from people affected by the violence of the 1970s and ‘80s. Edited into short narratives and projected rhythmically word-by-word onto the city’s Guildhall building, there is a heartbreaking power in the individual voices sharing their experiences.
In The Shirt Factory, one of two additional spaces taken on by Void for the year, Jonathan Cummins (also a curator of Veterans and part of the Void curating committee) has made the large-scale installation, When I leave these Landings. The piece features in-depth filmed interviews with people who wittingly or unwittingly became players in The Troubles, and in some cases have been imprisoned for their activities. Exploring experience and motivations, thoughtful reflections are made with hindsight, greater maturity and within a changed context. Anthropological and without judgement, there is a disturbing dark reality in what is presented.
The retrospective of Willie Doherty’s photographs and video works is curated by Matt’s Gallery with Pearse Moore from Derry’s Nerve Centre. Doherty’s work is partly documentary in focus, made in Derry’s years of violence and drawing attention to acts of terror carried out in hidden but ordinary urban and suburban settings. His video work is imbued with the emotional tension inherent in such an environment, particularly his Turner Prize-nominated film, Re-run.
But most of the works exhibited in this final glow of 2013 are not so thematically site specific. Many of the Lumiere works are charming, such as Neon Dogs, by County Down-based artist Deepa Mann-Kerr, one of five works realised as part of the Brilliant commissioning scheme for regional artists. Mann-Kerr also had another work in Lumiere – the words ‘A teenage dream’s so hard to beat’ writ large in neon against the city’s skyline. The line is taken from the song Teenage Kicks by the city’s most famous pop act, The Undertones. Given that 40% of Derry’s population is under 25, this could be a permanent inspirational landmark for the city – a possibility that is currently under discussion.
Although £4 million has been made available as legacy funding for Derry, the city council appears to be focusing on large-scale cultural tourism events, with 2014 designated a Year of Music, and 2015 Year of Maritime. It doesn’t bode well for infrastructure development. Duffy, however, believes there is one real benefit of the City of Culture year: “What it is has done is to provide licence to use culture as an instrument to deal with the politics and history.”
Not everyone agrees with this approach. During my trip, an Irish journalist asked me which of the Lumiere artworks was my favourite. I replied that I thought the Wodiczko piece, with its moving recollections of Northern Ireland’s scarred past, was the most important. “Really?” she exclaimed. “I thought: ‘Not another piece exploring The Troubles.’ It’s history! Let’s move on already.”
It’s an understandable view – but I’m not sure Derry is ready to do that just yet.
