Níl aon Tinteán

Curated by Helena Tobin

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9^th September – 21^st October 2023

This exhibition features works by John Conway, Adrian Duncan, Ronja Lagerqvist, Michelle Malone, Eimear Walshe and Bloomers.

Housing is one of the biggest and most urgent issues in Ireland at this moment. Multiple generations struggle to find secure homes yet live in areas surrounded by dereliction and vacant townscapes. Art has always been a powerful tool in activating conversations and stirring emotions in relation to pressing societal issues and this exhibition presents a selection of artistic responses to ideas of housing, home and the housing crisis.

Referencing its original billboard installation for the 2020 edition of EVA International, Eimear Walshe’s powerful piece How Much, No Thanks draws on a series of images by the artist addressing the relationship between housing, sexuality and Irish colonial history. This piece is part of the National Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art at IMMA.

John Conway’s installation An Ideal Location/Sexual Overcrowding is a pink neon art work and a film work which remixes found footage, installed on a domestic platform dressed with beige carpet and skirting board. His film work Sexual Overcrowding looks at the chronic state of housing insecurity and intergenerational housing crises, as well as government attitudes towards citizens and companies, combining archival audio footage with 3D digital animation. The title of the piece refers to the term used in the archival footage to describe overcrowding where a family with one or more children aged 12+ lived in a single room. The collective work of neon and  archival footage echoes today’s housing crisis, highlighting Ireland’s ongoing complex relationship to home, housing and land ownership.

Social housing is central to the tapestry pieces by Michelle Malone included in the exhibition. These works focus on her childhood memories of her grandmother’s house and of her move from Fatima Mansions to new social housing in the suburbs. Michelle recreates found family photos taken of her grandmother’s home as wall hanging tapestries, referencing her grandmother's experience “coming from tenements then getting a flat in Fatima and then finally getting a council house in the suburbs of Finglas”, and in doing so highlights the lived experience of the working class, a voice often omitted.

Adrian Duncan’s expansive research into ‘Bungalow Bliss’, a catalogue of affordable housing designs self-published by Jack and Anne Fitzsimons which sold over 250,000 copies over 30 years, acts as the inspiration for the works in this exhibition. The works Standard Windows, consists of three aluminium frames, made to the dimensions of a standard window from the bungalow-bliss era of rural domestic building, with each a multiple of the size of a standard concrete block. Sitting alongside this work are Planning Permission Site Notices, four works following the style of the planning permissions site notice to host four pieces of archival material from the Jack Fitzsimons' archive. This work looks at the legacy of ‘Bungalow Bliss’, the complex history of housing in Ireland and how this understanding can inform new approaches in the present.

Dereliction is the focus of Ronja Lagerqvist’s mixed media drawing Garretstown.  As a recent graduate, Ronja and her fellow graduates are acutely affected by the housing crisis and dereliction is a continuing visual reminder of the crisis. The work counteracts what we deem to be of value, by putting the country's forgotten and abandoned buildings on full display, bringing into question our notions of worth, and what we believe to be of importance, while highlighting the nations forgotten spaces, in the midst of mass gentrification and economic growth.

Bless the Corners of this House is an upcoming publication published by Bloomers and will explore perspectives from Irish based artists, writers and activists that illustrate an understanding of home and what it means. The results of a survey looking at the effect of the housing crisis on artists will also form part of this publication and Bloomers invites you to take part in this survey via their wall vinyl.