The concept of the city centre park has always been something of a paradox. An attempt to capture the freedom of the wild and place it in the beating heart of urbanity, it strikes an interesting compromise between the architectural and the natural, exterior and interior; bridging the twin worlds of private and public space.
From May 16th, one of Dublin’s most culturally important green spaces, Merrion Square, plays host to an exhibition of contemporary art bouncing off this theme. Titled Vestibule, and featuring the work of Aleana Egan, Daniel Gustav Cramer and Eva Rothschild, the project links the green space of Merrion Square to its Georgian surroundings.
“The vestibule in Georgian architecture is an ante-chamber which you enter before the actual building,” explains curator Aoife Tunney. “It’s the moment in between the street and the interior of the house. It’s also socially important, as it was the first thing people saw and where first impressions were made. Knowing the inner house was like knowing the person. I see it as a kind of link between the conscious and the subconscious; the real and the imagined.”
Tunney’s proposal of Merrion Square as a “vestibule” or transitory space – bridging the gap between interior/exterior, conscious/subconscious – is further reflected by the inclusion of satellite exhibitions inside a few Merrion Square buildings. Alongside his sculpture in the square, Daniel Gustav Cramer is also showing a piece in the Goethe Institut: “Thinking
about it now,” he says, “the exhibition space turns the building itself into a vestibule to the work – and the work itself into a vestibule to the park.” Cramer’s sculpture in the park is a spherical object, submerged into the ground. One cannot help but think of the oft whispered-of bunker that causes protrusions in Merrion Square’s landscape (and you thought it was just a grassy knoll). It’s these secret histories that, while not explicitly referred to, inform his practice.
And Merrion Square has lots of history. Alongside associations with Oscar Wilde, Daniel O’Connell, Æ, W.B. Yeats, Bram Stoker and Sheridan Le Fanu, it was the site of the 1853 Great Industrial Exhibition, a landmark event in Irish art history. This provided a good jump-off point for Aleana Egan, whose work incorporates industrial flotsam sourced around the urban landscape. “The history and visual material surrounding the Great Exhibition is so fascinating,” she told us. “I was interested in making something that reflects the material history of Merrion Square and this encompasses the mechanical machinery that would have been on display in The Great Exhibition.” Egan’s piece, Understudy, is “an amalgam of physical things and impressions from the immediate area and the maritime heritage nearby … the remains of everyday armature from the 19th and early 20th century that remains in the city and docklands of Dublin.” It also engages with the idea of an actor’s understudy: “The idea that an actor has to live and learn a part that they may never play and still invest themselves nonetheless in the role. Something one could shape a philosophy from.”
Industrial materials also crop up in the work of Eva Rothschild, who is showing a steel arch that somewhat mirrors the natural canopies formed by the park’s trees. “It’s a tough, hard, steel, fabricated object but the colour and form bring a romantic openness to it,” Rothschild explains. “It’s a kind of industrial, urban rainbow.” Contrasting building material with “romantic openness” seems like a perfect reflection of the paradox of public space. Rothschild confesses that she has made some “quite harsh, confrontational outdoor pieces” in the past, but didn’t feel they were appropriate for Merrion Square. “There is always an expectation of pleasure and delight that the viewer brings with them to the park. In this instance, in this kind of location, I felt this expectation should be fulfilled.”
Perhaps it helps that Rothschild has fond memories of growing up in the vicinity of the square. “I haven’t lived in Dublin for some years,” the London-based artist reflects. “But I actually have quite a personal relationship to the park as my mother grew up in nearby Fitzwilliam Place. The park was established then, but was semi-private and open only to local keyholders. My great aunt, who my mother lived with, was also very active in the initial campaign for the square to
be made into a public park.”
Aleana Egan harbours similar personal connections: “I grew up looking at this architecture,” she tells us. “I remember as a child, Merrion Square seemed far away. It marked the beginning of ‘town’. As a child, your sense of topology is defined by colours and the shape and feelings of the buildings… Then seeing it afresh after living in different cities, I came to fully appreciate Merrion Square. Its totality impressed upon me. The facades and perimeters and how his captures one’s sense of inside and outside. The views of the mountains and the feel of the sea close by.”
Egan regaled us with some oral histories of the park passed on by a former resident, during the 1950s: “In the old lease, if you were a garden flat tenant, there was a stipulation that you were obliged to let the fisherman dry their nets on the back wall,” she says. “There was also a Mulberry tree that yielded delicious berries and was a great source of fascination. One time, a man grafted a piece of it to set up a silkworm farm in Leixlip.”
Such meandering narratives and personal anecdotes add new richness to the project: when you consider its closed-off history, party only to keyholding residents, the line between public and private space becomes even more blurry. A tiny blip of green in the urban landscape, it is at once a vestibule-like passageway between Georgian gaffs, and a sort of Georgian
pleasure-garden. “But while Merrion Square offers calm in the city,” curator Aoife Tunney concludes, “I hope the artworks and events in this project will also activate the interior of people’s minds.”
Vestibule runs in Merrion Square from May 17 until September, with satellite exhibitions taking place in the Goethe Institut, Irish Architectural Archive and the National Gallery of Ireland’s Centre for the Study of Irish Art. There’ll also be an education programme, The Square School, from May 29, and a music event curated by Aoife Tunney and White Collar Boy in Merrion Square on August 23. Check www.aoifetunney.com for details.
Words: Rosa Abbott
