New Collaborative Work with Rachel Fallon at To Never Look Away @ TØN Gallery Dublin
To Never Look Away
Artists: Rachel Fallon and Claire Halpin. Glass technician: Madeleine Hellier
Hand stitched wool felt box, kiln formed black glass, oil on gesso tondo panel, 14cm D X 6cm, 2024
New collaborative artwork created with artist Rachel Fallon as part of the exhibition To Never Look Away which I curated at TØN Dublin. Following my recent discovery of the Claude Glass as an object fitting image and metaphor for this exhibition which I was curating and producing – I wanted to create a contemporary version or interpretation. And so invited Rachel Fallon to collaborate and create a box/ container and asked Madeleine Hellier, glass artist for technical guidance on kiln forming the black glass itself. The resulting artwork is, to my mind an object of beauty with multilayered meanings that evolved through the collaboration to become a key piece in the exhibition evoking many responses.
Thanks Rachel and Madeleine for taking the gauntlet!
A Claude glass (or black mirror) is a small mirror, slightly convex, with its surface tinted a dark colour. Bound up like a pocket-book or in a carrying case, Claude glasses were used by artists, travellers and connoisseurs of landscape and landscape painting.
The black mirror has the effect of reducing and simplifying the colour and tonal range of scenes and scenery to give them a painterly quality. The user would turn their back on the scene to observe the framed view through the tinted mirror—in a sort of pre-photographic lens—which added the picturesque aesthetic of a subtle gradation of tones. The Claude glass is named after Claude Lorrain, the 17th-century landscape painter, whose name became synonymous with the picturesque aesthetic.
Here contained in a handstitched felted wool box – the choice of material and construction references the “Act for Burying in Woollen” of 1666 and again more radically in 1678 which laid down that all corpses excepting plague victims and the destitute should be buried in wool and no other material whatsoever. Failure to comply resulted in a £5 forfeit. Intended to support the wool trade, it was detrimental to the textile industry in Ireland and Scotland where it had been customary for the deceased to have shrouds of linen. Eventually this wool burying act was extended to Ireland in 1733 before falling out of favour around 1770. However burials in wool are being revived, this time in the form of woollen coffins due to the materials’ biodegradable and sustainable qualities.
Inserted in the box lid a miniature tondo painting of migrants on a raft, the background composition based on the Gericault painting The Raft of The Medusa (1819), with a contemporary image of migrants crossing the Mediterranean. This is only somewhat reflected in the Claude glass, depending on how it is angled and how much the viewer selects to view.
The portable artwork harkens back to manuports and the small folded icons carried by pilgrims, crusaders and conquistadores as well as personal items, memento mori carried in pockets by migrants and refugees lost at sea, buried at sea, unrecorded.
This artwork reflects many of the themes in the exhibition, how we look observe, record and bear witness to the horrors of war and conflict around us – the artists through their tools, materials and visual language making more bearable these horrors – anaesthetic aesthetics.
To Never Look Away at TØN Gallery Dublin/ 7 – 31 March 2024
The artists: Rachel Fallon, Joy Gerrard, Claire Halpin, Myra Jago, Paul Mac Cormaic and Amna Walayat,
The poets: Fióna Bolger and Nasouh Hossari.
Curated by Claire Halpin
To Never Look away at TØN Gallery Dublin – Talks & Events Programme
As curator of the exhibition To Never Look Away at TØN Gallery Dublin, participation and engagement inclusion and dialogue are hugely important through my programming of a wide range of different events, talks, tours and conversations during the exhibition for all ages and backgrounds – from the students of Central Model Primary School to Grandparents Against Racism, and everyone else in between! Thanks to Temple Bar Gallery ans Studios for including the exhibition in their Art Walk tour too! Here is some images from the programme of events. Firstly above – 3rd Class, Central Model SNS for a VTS/ Visual Thinking Strategies discussion with myself and Rachel Fallon.
TALKS@TØN DUBLIN: Poetry Reading at To Never Look Away
Sunday 24th March/ 1.00 – 2.30pm
Poets Nasouh Hossari and Fíona Bolger joined with friends performing poetry in Arabic and English and music by Gaza musician Abdulaziz. Followed by an open mic for Gaza. Works by Palestinian poets encouraged and warmly welcomed.
TALKS@TØN DUBLIN: Artists In Conversation at To Never Look Away
Wednesday 27th March/ 6.00 – 7.30pm
Sara O’Rourke, (Dept. of Anthropology, Maynooth University), Claire Halpin (Curator/ Artist/ Arts Educator), Rachel Fallon (Artist), Brenda Aherne (Artist/ Mini Placard Movement) & Exhibiting Artists
Another great evening of though provoking conversation responding to the prescient themes, subjects, concepts, artworks and art practices in the exhibition To Never Look Away at TØN Gallery.
All were welcome, no bookings necessary. Donations to Médecins Sans Frontières Gaza Appeal.
A huge thank you each of the exhibiting artists – Rachel Fallon, Joy Gerrard, Claire Halpin, Myra Jago, Paul Mac Cormaic and Amna Walayat, and the poets Fióna Bolger and Nasouh Hossari – who participated and facilitated discussions as part of the exhibition programme. And a huge thank you to all of you who came along to some or all of the events. It really has been an amazing experience – thought provoking, inspiring, discursive, important, emotive and moving in equal measures.
Thanks to Mark and Helen at TØN Gallery for the invitation and opportunity to curate and produce this important and timely exhibition and programme of events – opening up new spaces for collaboration and discussion.
To Never Look Away at TØN Gallery/ 7 – 31 March 2024
To Never Look Away – TØN Dublin/ 7-31 March 2024
To Never Look Away
TØN Gallery Dublin
The Artists: Rachel Fallon, Joy Gerrard, Claire Halpin, Myra Jago, Paul Mac Cormaic and Amna Walayat
The Poets: Fíona Bolger and Nasouh Hossari
Curated by Claire Halpin
Exhibition: 7th – 31st March 2024.
Exhibition Launch: Thursday 7th March 2024/ 6-8pm
Opening Conversation with Clíodhna Shaffrey, Director Temple Bar Gallery + Studios
TØN Dublin is delighted to present the exhibition To Never Look Away which brings together six artists whose work and practice are politically, socially engaged and motivated. The themes and subjects in their work spans that of protest, labour, the migrant crisis, racism and matters of war, conflict and the media.
As artists – Rachel Fallon, Joy Gerrard, Claire Halpin, Myra Jago, Paul Mac Cormaic and Amna Walayat are images makers, using their individual visual language to mediate the saturation of media images, scrolled, liked and shared that we are somewhat inured to and to try and make sense of it through what they make. There is something about the artist sitting with the work, meticulous, painstakingly painting, making, mediating on these images.
As poets – Fióna Bolger and Nasouh Hossari were invited to contribute poems that respond to the exhibition. Their selected poems as texts and translations are installed as artworks, reflecting the prescient themes of language and memory in the exhibition.
There is an onus, the role of the artist as bearing witness, testimony – I was there, I saw, I recorded. It is tasked of the artist to ask important questions of society and the world around us. And to be cognisant of the artworks they put into the world. They have to matter.
For Claire Halpin, as curator – the aesthetic and what connects each of these artists’ work and practice is their engagement, commitment in using traditional materials and means from ink on paper, oil on gesso on canvas, gold leaf to cast iron. They are makers, hands on artists immersed in the tools and materials of their craft and trade. We are drawn into their work in a way that there is a familiarity and a luring in by the beauty of the painted surface, the hand drawn detail the cast material to realise there is a deeper meaning or message to their work.
The artists – Rachel Fallon, Joy Gerrard, Claire Halpin, Myra Jago, Paul Mac Cormaic and Amna Walayat – raise questions about how we remember the past; choose to record history – the veracity of painting, photography, and the media in documenting future history and the role of art and artists as bearing witness…to never look away.
“The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet and saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable.” Arundhati Roy, Power Politics, South End Press, 2001.
Further information and images available on request.
TØN DUBLIN
25a Temple Lane South, Dublin 2, Ireland
www.tondublin.com tondublin@gmail.com @tondublin
Claire Halpin
Winter Newsletter 2023 – Happy Christmas and New Year!
Welcome to my Winter Newsletter 2023 and what a year it has been! A huge thanks and appreciation to all the galleries, museums, artists, curators, writers, patrons, podcasters, viewers and buyers who have supported my work throughout the year and made 2023 a great year. Here’s a look back to some of the highlights from this year. Looking forward to very exciting exhibition plans being hatched with TØN Dublin in early 2024…watch this space!
Happy Christmas and New Year to one and all!
Claire
2023 brought many international exhibition opportunities, most significantly my first international solo exhibition – Primo Piatto at Galleria Cabaret Voltaire in Rome in March. Such an honour, experience and opportunity to exhibit in the Monti in the great city of Rome! The exhibition was very well received and reviewed and included paintings from the Augmented Auguries series. newly created Migrant Souvenir plates and a site specific historic sculpture – The Lost Heart of Daniel O’Connell.This intriguing work, through a sequence of events was bequested to the Church of St. Agata dei Goti, Rome for permanent exhibition in the church…My Body to Ireland, My Heart to Rome…. Donal Fallon, historian chats with me about it in his great podcast Three Castles Burning.
During the summer my work was exhibited in Summer Salon at Red Sheep Gallery, Klockestrand, Sweden, In the Cross Fire at SEAS Brighton as part of International Refugee week. Other group exhibitions included Mermaid 21 at Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray, Chaos/ Order at dlr Municipal Gallery, Dún Laoghaire, Here and Now at TØN Dublin. Another brilliant collaboration with Madeleine Hellier at Sculpture in Context 2023 – this year Glassophere a three part large scale installation across the Botanic Gardens. I am delighted also to have new work selected for the Winter Exhibition at Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin currently on exhibition until 13th January 2024.
Another huge honour in 2023 was the inclusion of my work in this seminal publication –
LANDSCAPE AND ENVIRONMENT IN CONTEMPORARY IRISH ART
by YVONNE SCOTT, published by CHURCHILL HOUSE PRESS
This book identifies a representative selection of compelling and intriguing artworks by a range of around one hundred of the most challenging and vibrant artists from, or working in, Ireland or whose work addresses Irish landscapes and environments. Examining them both individually and collectively, this book reveals primary motivations behind strategies of representation.
Claire Halpin Artist 