Foregoing the wholesome institutional embrace of the gallery, Foaming at the Mouth is a ‘visual art spoken word’ event which takes the best Irish artists, writers, and performers out of the white cube and into venues that are far less definitively shaped. We caught up with its organisers, Emer Lynch and Tracy Hanna, to discuss the fruitful marriage of visual art and language.
Can you introduce yourselves and talk a bit about your artistic backgrounds?
Emer: I studied at NCAD originally. I was in the Glass department and mainly studied glassblowing. After college I went to Germany and Italy for a while to learn skills in architectural and stained-glass studios. I moved back to Dublin in 2012 to my masters at IADT studying curation. This new mix of theory, project planning, installation and developing relationships with artists suited me perfectly.
Tracy: I’d been making artworks for years and showing them, and studied fine art for my BA – at DIT in 2007 – but I’ve recently become increasingly interested in more discursive methods of research, production, and realisation. I write too, in various ways, for art and not for art. The year before Foaming I did an experimental fiction writing course in the Irish Writer’s Centre which gave me the confidence to put more focus directly on writing as a material. Right now I’m studying on an MFA in Rotterdam at the Piet Zwart Institute.
How did Foaming at the Mouth come into being?
E: Early in February 2014 I had an elusive date with someone organising a spoken word night for writers. I dragged Tracy along, and at one point she turned around to me and said ‘Oh my god, wouldn’t this be great for artists?’ It all kicked off from there and we quickly became very excited. We knew the writing skills of many of our artist friends and imagined what might happen if they said their words live to an audience. But it also felt like a natural progression from what I was doing already. I had worked with commissioning writers and producing publications for exhibitions I curated, and was thinking more and more about the gap that exists between an exhibited artwork and a piece of text printed on a page.
T: Yeah, I suppose we saw a gap, something that maybe wasn’t happening so prevalently or did not yet have a forum of its own: a space for the presentation of art writing. But we certainly had no apprehension of how receptive everyone was going to be to it. I think making it more universal and accessible came from taking some risks: asking some people to contribute who weren’t showing writing but who we just knew had the skills to do this and would be great at it. I think this kept some rigidity away, and made it a space to experiment. This was and is so important to how we approach curating this.
The first Foaming at the Mouth showcased performers who hailed from a variety of creative backgrounds: music, writing, visual art, comedy, academia, etc. How would you situate Foaming at the Mouth amongst these largely differing styles of production?
T: It’s like putting your hand into a huge gloopy pot of people working with language in different ways and scooping out those who use it a bit more aesthetically than others.
Is there a common thread throughout the performers you decide to showcase?
E: Our main curatorial interest is use of text or language. There’s no outright criteria but we generally invite people who use words in an interesting or strong way in their practice. Mostly we chose people from visual art, but also some we thought were interesting from other disciplines. Most people we invite we have encountered in person at some point, professionally or personally, and we’ve been excited by some spark in their behaviour or attitude: we’re excited by *them*.
What informed your decision to host Foaming at the Mouth outside of a typical gallery space?
E: We wanted to make a space where contributors felt comfortable in taking a risk. And for the audience, a pub is already designed as a comfortable place for telling stories and listening. Also, it was important that anyone could happen upon the events and feel comfortable there: that they weren’t just for the art community.
T: Yeah, I suppose doing it in a pub gave the pair of us free reign to do what we wanted – to keep it fun, to pack people in, to choose how we promoted it. Not being connected with an institution gave us the space to do what we wanted with this event, no one was paying us, the event itself was the most important thing and how it functioned. It really felt like some kind of community spirit pushed the appreciation of the events, like maybe people felt like this kind of thing was needed or something. In my mind our thinking was: let’s try to put really great stuff in front of people, but let’s not take ourselves so seriously and let’s enjoy art and have a laugh together. And in retrospect, doing it this way gave extra-importance to the ‘thing’ we were putting in front of people. Holding up art and language together, away from the gallery, institution, other programming. It wasn’t an add-on: it was the main event.
The first run of shows took place in the Stag Head’s cosy basement. When did you decide to move to a new venue? Tell us about it.
E: It became very apparent by the final event in the series last year that if we did it again we would simply need a bigger venue. We are very excited about the new venue. It’s the Polo Clubhouse in the Phoenix Park, behind the zoo. I just did a site visit with our fantastic sound technician Aaron Kelly and I got so excited. The venue itself holds so much potential to facilitate something great happening.
Do you have plans to follow up this new series of shows? What can we expect from the future of Foaming at the Mouth?
E: It’s been more difficult with the geographical distance this year. I don’t think it’s something we’ll do continually every summer, but the future is definitely wide open.
T: I love this thing we’ve been doing and I love working with Emer. There’ll be a future of some sort for sure. Since last summer there’s been events in Dublin cropping up that are similar to what we’re doing and I think that is a super positive. Having some containers for art and language is a facilitative, supportive and enabling thing for artists and others working with words. I think for us, individually and collaboratively, there will be a future tense that is richer because of Foaming. I’m excited to move forward with my own practice and I know Emer is too with her’s. Foaming at the Mouth has influenced us both enormously, and given us the confidence to be much more daring.
Foaming at the Mouth returns for two shows in the Phoenix Park Polo Club on Saturday 11th July and Saturday 15th August. For more information see fatm-dublin.tumblr.com
Words: Aidan Wall
Photos: Killian Broderick
