“
I will do anything for you I can but I am afraid it will not be a great deal. The chief use I can be, though probably you will not believe this, will be to introduce you to some other writers who are starting out just like yourself, one always learns one’s business from one’s fellow workers...
”

— Letter to James Joyce from W.B. Yeats, 1902

Over the last few years a burgeoning climate of collectivism has emerged in Dublin. Although the backdrop to this discussion is Dublin, it would be short-sighted to define ‘new collectivism’ only within the concrete parameters of Dublin city; as Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “The city is always recruited from the country.”(2) Nicholas Bourriaud used a similar loophole when he avoided the strong tradition of ‘British only’ artists showing work at the Tate Britain’s Triennial in 2009, by defending his international cohort of artists for his Alter modern curatorial with the words “passing through,” making them somehow eligible because they fit the profile of his “radicant” transient artist. (3) The same can be said for these collectives – the original Francis Street version of Monster Truck Gallery is one exception in this sense, as it is still going strong after five years in Dublin – I will give my reasons later why I define Monster Truck Gallery as a collective. After much legwork, that included conversations with individuals from collectives and attending symposiums – where one individual would ‘represent’ the collective – what was common among the majority of collectives was an ill-defined, scatterbrained ideology that had no centre. This is an understandable side effect of the collective brain, where a Borg-like consensus (4) will replace the usually strong convictions of the individual. I must also state that my definition of collectivism is not tied to the amateur, DIY definition of the word in the context of visual art initiatives on the fringes of the established, but includes the professional state funded institutions that form other types of collective cliques. The collaborations, collectives, events and exhibitions, which are the focus of this text are included because they represent a subtle form of collectivism, that is on the verge of changing how art is made, or breaking the ‘bad’ habit of individualism and art. I will signal instances when collaborations have happened by the equal measures of chance and intent, or when collectivism has been a symptom of the institution. The groups I talked to included The Good Hatchery and Visual Artists Workers Forum, while I also profile Monster Truck Gallery and past collective initiatives such as the Defastenism Movement. Perhaps a good place to start from is a point in time when everything in the Dublin art scene seemed to be changing for the good – if you believe the hype. In 2009 Brian Dillon and Maeve Connolly wrote an overview of Dublin’s art scene in the City Report for Frieze Magazine. At the time the country was economically punch drunk – two years later we are still staggering. Dillon and Connolly’s report was optimistic, running under the by-line “Despite the decline of Ireland’s ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy, Dublin’s artist-run and institutional spaces are thriving.”(5) In 2011, Gemma Tipton wrote a similar overview of the “thriving...grass roots” art scene for the Irish Times. (6) Soon after Dillon and Connolly’s report, Lee Welch’s FOUR Gallery shut shop. This was followed by the closure of the Benburb Street art space, thisisnotashop. The clichéd claim that was banded around was recession was good for art, and that new DIY energies would develop alternative ways to negotiate the less bustled Dublin streets in the shared formation of ‘collectivity’. Looking further back, the first ‘local’ and visible instance of what could be termed the ‘new collectivism’ was the Defastenism movement – founded by undergraduate students at the National College of Art & Design in 2004. “Defastenism” has the twang of college politics and institutional revolt, the ‘ism’ harking back to an era of art manifestoes – not, by the way in a post-modern ironic way; but via serious post war artists such as Mondrian and Rothko. Collectives like Defastenism rarely spring out of the institution – fundamentally, art colleges promote the spirit of competition and individual progress. I’ve defined Monster Truck as a collective. My reasoning behind this description is based on the Francis Street version of Monster Truck Gallery and Studios, which between 2006 and 2010 had a core group of individuals who ran, curated, rented the studios and showed periodically at the space. I am not saying that this was an nepotistic arrangement, rather that it was a necessity to keep the core group of hardworking and determined individuals together in order to survive. Monster Truck relocated to Temple bar Dublin in 2009. The ‘new’ Monster Truck is a different animal, inviting new energies in the form of curators and emerging artists into the Monster Truck family. In essence, we could say that the ‘amateur collective’ at Francis Street provided the groundwork for their more professionally minded incarnation at Temple Bar, which neighbours Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, and does not seem out of place or out of its depth. It must also be said the sustainability of Monster Truck was not based on the anti-establishment ideology of many of these amateur organisations. Monster Truck fertilised a relationship with the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) in 2008, one of the oldest and respected arts institutions in Dublin. Patrick T. Murphy, RHA Director summed up their initial exchanges by saying: “What we decided to do was take the spare capacity that exists in the RHA during the redevelopment of Ely Place in areas such as administration, marketing, curating, educational activity, financial management and Friends events and offer those services to Monster Truck to help them get across the message of the great work they are doing.” (7) Since then, the Monster Truck/ RHA collaboration has manifested into exhibitions such as Let’s Go, which was curated by RHA Exhibitions Curator Ruth Carroll. In 2011, the group exhibition entitled 'Life Vividly Lived (Part 2)' was manifested from a week-long residency on the Island of Inish Turk Beg in September of 2010. The artists were jointly selected by Peter Prendergast (Director of Monster Truck) and Patrick T Murphy, giving new credence to their ongoing and future collaborative exchanges. Collective gathering, debate and networking seems to be the main focus of the Visual Artists Workers Forum (VAWF), which “was initiated at VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow, by Carissa Farrell and Emma Lucy O’Brien in 2010.” (8) It would be ‘recruited’ by the city through Tessa Giblin (Curator, Project Arts Centre, Dublin), Rachael Gilbourne (Artist/Assistant Curator, Project Arts Centre, Dublin), Anne Lynott (Curatorial Fellow, MAVIS, Dublin), Emma Lucy O’Brien (VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow), and Ruairí Ó Cuív (Public Art Manager, Dublin City Council).” Speaking with Gilbourne in July of this year, the word “networking” was mentioned as a big part of the VAWF meetings, while her answer to my question regarding a VAWF “ideology” was an outright “No.” (9) I wrongly deduced left-wing intonations from VAWF’s initial forum entitled WORK IT in April 2011 at the Project Arts Centre Dublin. The awkward juxtaposition of ‘worker’ with ‘Visual’ is provocative, but it is too early to tell whether the voices will the heard beyond the site of the forum. There have been recent instances in Dublin when individual artists have given up their individual art practice for the collective, such as the group show 'Offline' – curated by Rayne Booth, at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios Dublin, where Eilis McDonald’s overarching presence amongst the other five artists through her scatter installation of ‘found objects’, called in to play the position of the individual within the collective. Also in 2011, Michelle Browne’s solo show at the LAB, Dublin, entitled ‘out on the sea was a boat full of people singing & other stories’, was headed by Browne’s name in the literature and advertising for the exhibition, but the most prominent aspect of the solo show was the ‘collective voice’ heard from Browne’s videos. The activities of Ruth E. Lyons and Carl Giffney of the Good Hatchery can be discussed here through my “loophole” of Emerson’s recruitment of the country to fuel the elements in the city. Lyons and Giffney literally illustrated this in their timber and photographic portraits of rural water towers found in the midlands for Paul Murnaghan and Sally Timmons’ group show entitled This Must Be The Place at IMOCA Dublin in 2009. Lyons and Giffney were invited to make a work on the back of their efforts in which they “offer studios and workshop spaces to artists for the realisation of ambitious art works free of charge” at a 19th Century hayloft in rural County Offaly.(10) The show at IMOCA could be termed a collective endeavour as it brought together ten artist-led organisations currently working in Ireland and asked them to consider the question, “how do we think?” For the context of this text, The Good Hatchery represent a less subtle and rare form of collectivism with a strong ideology that ironically speaks of sustainability (what other amateur collectives strive for) in their use of base materials and elements such as light and water. Speaking with Lyons and Giffney at the Fire Station Studios Dublin in May of this year they disclosed that they had been invited to make six works under the ‘Brand’ of the “Good Hatchery,” not to mention the invites they turned down.(11) What I deduced from our conversation was the pairing of Lyons and Giffney as a collaborative art practice happened by chance through the initial invitation for the IMOCA show. More significantly, for the five projects that have followed, ownership and responsibility has been placed on the shoulders of the ‘Brand’ of The Good Hatchery rather than the individual. In July of this year the Photo Ireland and Gradcam symposium Collaborative Change – commons, networks, exchange, questioned this new collectivist mindset of free co-operation in the exchange of education, funding and distribution of the arts. A Skype presentation by Michel Bauwens at the Collaborative Exchange symposium provided a brilliant overview of the underpinnings of collective networks, beyond the city to encompass a global scale – what he described as a tri-archy of “peer production, governance, property.”(12) Bauwens convincingly presented the business of sharing and producing on a global scale. However, there were issues he voiced himself to do with the sustainability of these models – specifically the reality of the state and other large institutions as “unmovable presences”. Sustainability was also called into question regarding the presentation by Dublin based Provisional University who voiced their opinion concerning capitalist forces promoting the ‘marketability’ of the education system. The fact is, without private funding alternative positions such as theirs, will always depend on the resources of state universities, not to mention the accreditation that ‘proper’ universities offer the individual to further their career in the arts. Further afield, the New York art collective The Bruce High Quality Foundation has managed to manufacture an unaccredited ‘art school’ through private benefactors and miniscule public funding. However, its actions are packaged as art rather than empty rhetoric. Roberta Smith has described ‘The Bruces’ provocative antics as “sharp, well-aimed and unusually entertaining form of institutional critique.”(13) There are two reasons why I included Yeats’ letter to Joyce at the start of this text. The first is the context of Dublin Contemporary 2011. In a perverse way the letter intentionally references the recent reshuffling of Joyce for Yeats – who is the new creative mascot in the relay to Dublin Contemporary. The late Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald once said that “tribalism” in this country was borne from the provincialism promoted by the GAA. In the context of Dublin city, the tribalism that is evident amongst the art institutions amidst the reshuffling of more than just mascots in the roll out of Dublin Contemporary, has unveiled a Dublin art scene that is more tribal than ever, and as one anonymous commentator said, has triggered a welcome cull. So just like the amateur organisations in Dublin city – who I like to call the ‘timber frame proletariat’ – who continually shift and evolve in their ambition to survive one more day, the established institutions and artists have realised for the good that their foundations are not fully set after all, and the need for change is long overdue. Secondly, the letter illustrates a need for community in the formation of the individual’s career. Jean-Luc Nancy tells us that the ‘limit’ of the individual determines the emergence of the “community.”(14) The “limit” in Joyce’s case was Dublin, until he would recruit Dublin as the site for Ulysses. In a sense, Joyce is the epitome of individualism: Joycean being a term that tests the limitations of the collective as a source of creative output. Today, individualism is a bad word – it is whispered rather than shouted aloud. Personally, I think a bit more tribalism and individualism would be good for art in Dublin; for the reasons I have already outlined. The truth is, behind the ‘lemming revolt’ of collective cliff diving there could be individuals, like Joyce or Yeats waiting on the collective’s shoulders to make their mark.

James Merrigan is the winner of City Limits, a visual art writing award devised and run in collaboration by Dublin City Arts Office & Visual Artists Ireland. City Limits was devised as a developmental opportunity for writers, as part of Dublin City Council Arts Office and Visual Artists Ireland’s commitment to encouraging and supporting critical dialogue around contemporary visual arts practices. THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN VAN, 2011: EDITED BY JASON OAKLEY.

Notes

1. John Kelly and Ronald Schuchard, The Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats, Volume 3:1901-1904, (Clarendon Press 1994) p249

2. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Farming, 1870, from The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude, (Eds) Douglas Emory Wilson, Ronald A. Bosco, (Harvard University Press, 2007)

3. Tom Morton interview with Nicolas Bourriaud, Tate Triennial 2009, (Frieze Magazine, Issue 120, Jan-Feb, 2009)

4. “The Borg are a fictional pseudo-race of cybernetic organisms depicted in the Star Trek universe… organised as an interconnected collective, the decisions of which are made by a hive mind, linked by subspace radio frequencies.”

5. Brian Dillon and Maeve Connolly, City Report, (Frieze Magazine, Issue 124, June-August 2009)

6. Gemma Tipton, Leaving space for the grassroots, (The Irish Times, Monday, May 16, 2011)

7. Monster Truck website.

8. Visual Artists Workers Website.

9. Conversation with Rachael Gilbourne, Temple Bar, Dublin, June 2011.

10. Conversations with Ruth E. Lyons and Carl Giffney of The Good Hatchery at the Mermaid Arts Centre Bray and Fire Station Studios, Dublin, March and April of 2011.

12. Quoted in literature for Collaborative Change – commons, networks, exchange, (Gradcam, July 2011)

13. Roberta Smith, The New York Times, Artists Without Mortarboards, (September 9, 2009)

14. Jean-Luc Nancy, The Inoperative Community, (University of Minnesota Press, 1991) p4

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