STEPHEN GUNNING @ MOTHER'S TANKSTATION

I spent longer watching the two videos that comprise this show than i normally do (i am hella philistine abt video in gen.) for a number of reasons but they were all pretty practical. Mother's Tankstation is the furthest out of the city's galleries and since it wasn't open when I walked out past NCAD I had to come back later especially. And it was cold, and I kinda had a headache and I didn't really wanna get back out into the weather so I just kinda chilled there a bit.

And I'm pretty glad I did. Duration feels important in this exhibition. Just inside the door there is a looped shot of a the feet of that Turkish (dancing) where they wear those full length tunic things and spin, I wanna say Dervish. The soundtrack is a bit like some 90's dubby techno with the beats dropped out, slightly menacing and purposeful sub-bass frequencies. Its hypnotic and strange, and in its abstraction of a specific cultural form it signals the theme which is not really so much being discussed in this exhibition as it haunts it or clings to it. Something to do with cultural tourism, a kind of fetishistic Otherness.

The main gallery is a static shot of tourists coming and going from a mosque, taking scarves from the pile provided, putting their shoes in little plastic baggies. Its effect is cumulative, just the repeating of the gesture over and over it becomes ritualistic in its own right, but also operates in the interstices whereby two cultures interface with each other but not in a waythat is abt engaging with each other, more abt watching each other, reducing and fetishising. I felt woozy and strange after watching it.

Stephen Gunning - Journeyman @ Mother's tankstation, exhibition runs until 13 Feb, 2010 4-6pm daily.

G126 @ RHA

i guess its fair to say that g126 have an "aesthetic." Like its not somewhere you take your friends who don't "get" "art" or "whatever." They show a lot of stuff that isn't painting and not really sculpture, but like video, readymades and installation. They like stuff that looks like it was done on an office printer and then pasted to something made out of MDF and packing palletts, you know, kindof austere but trashy and pretentious/unpretentious.

This show was good but seemed small? I assume there are loads of members and I woulda liked to have seen something more inclusive, like even someone as dumb abt local art as me recognised most of the names. And despite that it was patchy, Kevin Mooney's paintings are way better than they seem in jpeg form, twitchy and abrupt but with sudden passages of bravura, kinetic brushwork, they seem to play off competing senses of space (surface design v. photographic pictorial space)

Also Fiona Chambers cross-stich sets of kitch jpegs was pretty inspired in its decision not to actually make the things up, but to display them as little kits for sale (I couldn't be sure if they were in fact for sale for €25 each, I prolly woulda bought one if they were, btw my email is in the sidebar fyi) and it was clever about the distinction between handmade and electronic and the internet as a folk-art museum which was surprising bc ud think that subject ran out of milage circa 2004 at the latest.

Dominic Thorpe reminded me of Glenn Ligon via bad acid and was probably the thing I enjoyed the most out of this show even though in some ways it was the same kind of lame joke that Breda Lynch and Padraig Robinson were tryna pull, (like i actually couldnt believe that coco-pop hirst steez wtf u guys)

MARK GARRY @ KERLIN

theres a moment in this exhibition where you look up @ "Folds", an installation made from a rainbow of sewing-thread strung from one-wall to another, and the thing has disappeared, what you see is just the soft radiation of colour, like the little rainbows you see when someone waters the lawn in summer. Its kindof amazing, and even though the poetry of it feels a little cheap, its sort of the point.

I mean i was rollin my damn eyes when I saw that the little feather palm tree (garishly yellow!) was called "to say a psalm for now" i mean lol its great, like a joke your dad would tell. But when you see it from across the room it leaves a reflected yellow circle on the wall.

Anyway pretty good, its got a bit of Jessica Stockholder abt it, I mean the overall aesthetic is pretty Euro Two but there are moments when something else bubbles up and punctures that (felt like the balsa-wood flowers were him jamming his tongue way into his cheek tho) but it didn't make me think abt the universe, or anything at all really when I left (also there was like three things that i didn't "get" like at all) but thats just me i guess.