Anthony Haughey’s photographs of ghost estates

A lot of the interesting visual art this year seemed to concern the liminal spaces at the edges of towns and cities, Patricia Burns’s Hinterland paintings at the Triskel in Cork (published as a book by Gandon) being an outstanding example. But the most potent images are probably Anthony Haughey’s extraordinary sequence of photographs of ghost estates and abandoned building projects. Captured in the very low light of day’s end, they glow eerily with what Wordsworth called “the light of setting suns”, giving them the mythic feel of ruins from a lost civilisation. Though, in this case, “civilisation” may not be quite the right word.

Highlights  of 2011 –  ’Arts and Books’ by Fintan O’Toole

Settlement charts the fallout from the collapse of Ireland’s ‘property bubble’, a result of the overheated Celtic Tiger economy. For this exhibition Anthony Haughey has created an installation in Fire’s new Copper House Gallery, which reflects the financial, ecological and domestic impact of Ireland’s economic collapse. His installation will incorporate a collaboration with some of Irelands architects – in association with DIT Department of Architecture and Urban Design, NAMAlab, UCD School of Architecture and Mahoney Architects – who have proposed visionary plans for abandoned and half-finished buildings currently littering the landscape. These architectural proposals will form part of the installation in the gallery and will also be viewable in their site- specific context by using a freely available smartphone app (QR reader) to scan a QR code fixed to the hoardings of various NAMA building sites around Dublin city.

The photographs in Settlement are produced in the half-light between sunset and sunrise. The combination of darkness, artificial light and long exposures draws attention to the destruction of the natural environment as a result of over development. In this ongoing series, these ghost estates are recast as eerie ‘monuments’ – testament to the end of Ireland’s gold rush and the resulting cost of unregulated growth and institutionalised speculation. More recently, Pyrite was discovered as a component of hardcore under the foundations of more than 20,000 new homes in north Dublin and Co. Meath, resulting in serious structural damage. Pyrite also known as ‘fools gold’ is a tragic but fitting metaphor for this exhibition and the demise of Ireland’s speculators.

Exhibition links and Press Reviews

Exhibition website: http://settlementexhibitiondotcom.wordpress.com/

YouTube tour of the Settlement exhibition at The Copperhouse Gallery: http://youtu.be/d78q0YADpuA

27.11.11. AlJazeera news feature on the Settlement exhibiiton: View it here  

15.11.11. RTE broadcast, Settlement feature on The View: http://www.rte.ie/tv/theview/archive/20111115.html

Press Review 1:  http://thecopperhousegallery.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/settlement-by-anthony-haughey-review-by-fintan-otoole-for-the-irish-times-2/

Download The Irish Times, Fintan O’Toole review of Settlement here (pdf 664kb).

Press Review 2:  http://thecopperhousegallery.wordpress.com/2011/10/25/settlement-caught-through-a-ghostly-lens-by-the-irish-times/

Download The Irish Times, Frank McDonald review of Settlement here (pdf 508kb).

Anthony Haughey | Think Tank

Troubling Ireland public hearing

September 10, 2011

Troubling Ireland poster campaign

12th–23rd Sept 2011, Dublin City Centre

12th–19th Sept 2011, Leitrim Sculpture Centre, Manorhamilton, Co. Leitrim

Troubling Ireland public hearing
Friday 16th September, 2–4.30pm
Liberty Hall, Dublin 1

In 2010, the Danish curatorial collective Kuratorisk Aktion was commissioned by the Fire Station Artists’ Studios in Dublin to frame and convene a think tank for artists and curators in Ireland. Drawing on their expertise and experience in social, political and cultural activism, and in colonialism and postcolonialism, Kuratorisk Aktion conceived the idea of ‘troubling’ Ireland. The think tank would provide a critical, aesthetic and discursive platform for socially engaged practitioners in which received notions of Irish identity, history and politics, and Ireland’s relationship to global capitalism, would be probed and unravelled. The chosen participants were Gareth Kennedy and Sarah Browne (as collaborative partnership Kennedy Browne), Anthony Haughey, Anna Macleod, Augustine O’Donoghue, Susan Thomson and Helen Carey.

Over the course of a year, from September 2010 to May 2011, five meetings were held in cities of social and political significance, north and south of the border: Dublin, Manorhamilton (Co. Leitrim), Belfast and Limerick. In each location, different problematics were engaged: British plantation economy and class relations, Ireland’s colonisation and division, the Celtic Tiger boom and bust, and possible paths to a more convivial and equitable future. These meetings comprised presentations, readings, screenings, walks, lectures and discussions, and concluded in summer 2011 with a collective decision to launch a Troubling Ireland Campaign, beginning with a public poster campaign and website in September 2011 and ending with a major exhibition in 2013.

Running from 12th—23rd September 2011, the poster campaign presents seven posters mounted around Dublin city centre, and related sites, as well as Leitrim Sculpture Centre, Manorhamilton (runs 12th—19th September 2011). Each poster is an initial response from the think tank participants to the concept of ‘troubling Ireland’, ultimately inviting viewers to also partake in the act of ‘troubling’. The poster campaign is accompanied by this website, which in addition to presenting the ideas behind each poster and their producers, includes a reflection on the think tank process by cultural geographer Bryonie Reid. To coincide with this poster campaign, the think tank organises a Public Hearing in Liberty Hall, Dublin on Friday, 16th September 2011, from 2–4:30 pm, where the audience is invited to discuss the think tank’s aims with its participants. Admission is free and all are welcome.

The campaign will end in 2013, when participants of the think tank will exhibit work arising from sustained individual engagements with the theme in a major travelling exhibition.

Image: Anthony Haughey, Our History is Your History

Commissioned by Fire Station Artists’ Studios, Dublin, Ireland.

Conceptualised by Kuratorisk Aktion, Denmark.

Published by Project Press, a division of Project Arts Centre, Dublin STATE documents a series of interrelated projects by Susanne Bosch and Anthony Haughey which explore the phenomena of migration and migratory culture in an attempt to trace and map out their respective specific contested spaces. The artists have worked together since 2006, both collaboratively and individually with migrants in Ireland (north and south), wider Europe and North Africa. Their creative investigations are based on the premise of a principal situatedness of art in place and community and its connectedness through dialogic exchange. They employ a range of strategies, from direct engagement with migrants to provocative public interferences, which expose the structures of power that impose vulnerability and marginalization on individuals. Their work has been exhibited widely internationally and their individual art works are represented in numerous public and private collections.