ÚNA 'N' ANU
How do you catch a dream? My artistic journey with ANU PRODUCTIONS.
The FIGURATIVE artist
& ÚNA ‘N’ ANU
by ÚNA KAVANAGH.
I was working on a sculpture in 1991 during my Masters in The National College of Art and Design and there was a distinct moment of awareness and understanding to what kind of artist I was. I realized I was a figurative artist. The body was my metaphor. I remember then asking myself, “Yes? but what kind of figurative artist are you?” Some artists create only in a singular form, others in many (e.g. Tracey Emin, Louise Bourgeoise). They create sculptures, paintings, video, embroidery, installation. They use many and varied mediums to create with. I felt that was the pathway I would also like to choose. Let the concept choose the medium. At that time to make one piece of sculpture or painting I would excavate and create. I would write, draw, compose. I would move and photograph myself and life models to see the three dimensional image in space. I would make maquettes, films, collages of photography. I was working on very large scale pieces that took months to make. I had many ways of producing that final work. Today particularly in my work with ANU I still use many and varied artistic methodologies and crafts to create with. They all co-exist to create a live embodied performance. They also co-exist and inspire me to make new art works in conversation with these embodiments. A pluralism of art forms co-existing and communicating. Many art forms can collide to create unique works of art. The pluralism of creative language can exist inside the artist too. A pluralist multi-form interior language.
The sculpture I was making in 1991 was “Blue Requiem”.
It was made to embody a lost generation of children – lost to famine and starvation. It is a sculpture of a little girl. Her starved seated frame frozen, as if she had been mummified when she died. Dusted and veiled in blue ash. As if she was found similar to the figures in Pompeii. A figure held inside ash revealing her last moments. She sits, quiet, eyes shut, with dignity. A fragile boned-body, a reminder of a life, of a body made to suffer the ravages of hunger, injustice and war. Every day I went into the studio to work on this piece, I put on my overalls, put on my walkman and hit play for Mozart’s Requiem. Working 8-10 hour days, listening over and over to each of the movements for months. I understood on a instinctive, visceral, emotional and kinesthetic way that this helped me to focus my brain, body and consequentially “the work” in the tone and expression I felt was truthful.
My work continued with large figurative pieces embodying wounds, telling stories, revealing themes I wanted the viewer to see. I have used, and still use Visual Notebooks since I was a teenager. These are full of sketches, photos, miscellaneous objects and what I came to understand later as “internal monologues”. I knew I was a figurative artist. I knew that I felt the connective metaphor for me as an artist was the body, and in particular “The Female Body”. It was narratives that I wanted to transmit out from me through metaphor to an audience/witness/viewer/other. I had found a language to express what I thought was the truth and a way of being in this world. As I sat in the studio writing streams of thought and consciousness for these sculptures I remember observing the “WHY?”. Why am I recording the fictional narrative, the psychological outlook, the trauma, the cause and effect, the geography of the body? Why am I painting, drawing a score of emotional journeys for them as well as making a final fragment held forever in a medium of clay or bronze? I realized only many, many years later that I would transfer the sculptural body to my own body and continue. It was a process. An artistic process that moved between image, word, sound, gesture, private and public, internal and external. It was a system of creative excavation and interrogation.
This was an artistic process I engaged very quietly for many years as I navigated my way through performances in film, theatre, radio, television while continuing a very quiet private arts practice at the kitchen table. Making, making, making. Sometimes because of financial budgets and single parenting I could only have pencils but that didn’t stop the engagement of an arts practice. Or a way of making my art.
I kept visual notebooks for characters which I kept unseen in my bag in rehearsals.
In 2007 having spent years in the practice of theatre and film I decided after a massive emotional tsunami of self doubt to hold a large exhibition of work with Amnesty International which included large scale sculptures in bronze & ceramics, paintings, illustrations, film, and animation. I had been working quietly for years on a body of work that was taking over my home and coal bunker. “I’m Only Human” has been the thematic for my work as far back as I can remember and this exhibition was all about that. I had the honour of the South African Ambassador to Ireland, Her Excellency Priscilla Jana officially opening the exhibition with an extraordinary speech about women, indigenous culture, the body, humanity and lack of humanity, story telling and the environment.
I had opened Pandora’s box. I had raised my head in a very obvious way and those wonderful Beckett words rang out loudly “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better”. Beckett, my constant inspiration as a teenager, still by my side.
After that I went back to writing and finished “Black Bessie” in 2009. I had been writing this piece since 2000. I had long wanted to create a performative embodiment of an Irish woman. A nomadic, homeless Irish woman. A woman enslaved by a State, abused and thrown away by a patriarchal society, and a metaphor for an Ireland that I saw everywhere. After the exhibition I wanted to merge the worlds of my own personal art practice and place the body, the female body, the female Irish body, mine, at the core of this work. She came into being as “Black Bessie” in the 2009 Fringe Festival in Dublin, with the massively supportive Karl Shiels as director. Paul Walker and Semper Fi as co producers. “Black Bessie” was nominated for the Fishamble New Writing Award which was a delight but, most extraordinarily, it had happened. I had borrowed from The Credit Union. I had hired Merrion Square Park. All the arts practices and disciplines I engaged as an artist had run parallel to each other. The artistic crafts that had quietly been at work for years had come together in a public expressionistic work of art. Word, image, movement, sound, geography, environment, body as site. A figurative nomadic art piece that was all about the presence and proximity of audience/witness/viewer. An ephemeral art piece that took place over 7 days. A life changing catharsis.
A few months later I walked into the Lab in Foley Street and met Louise Lowe and Owen Boss. The room was a bright white studio with images, portraits, histories, drawings, maps, and photographs covering the walls. I felt instinctively that I had met with something very special. Kindred thinkers and artists who were cross pollinating art forms. In a way I had found my tribe. 2010 was a long way from 1993.
It was so very life affirming to meet these artists and begin at that time the development for “World’s End Lane” in 2010. A piece that would combine site, history, archive, design, dance, image, sound, light, environment, community, local historians, performance, duration and audience of one. The first piece of “The Monto Cycle”. As an artist I was asked to respond to archive, to histories of real people, in this case “Honour Bright/Lizzie O’Neill”. We worked collectively and collaboratively as a group of artists. It reminded me of the shared studios I had worked in. Artists working solely, then collectively, provoking, creating, making, presenting new work and critiquing- every day. Yes, every day. This is at the heart of ANU’s work. Provocations are set, artists make and respond through image, film, dance, scenes, music and sound composition. Presenting back to each other and responding. ”Im Only Human” rang out loudly in my head. This work, this excavation of histories, societies, injustices, humanity was incendiary and another addition to the work. My figurative artistic journey continuing, I became the host-body. Part myself, part fictional-artistic creation, part reality-inspired. A brand new way of making and the beginning of creating live-scores for live art performances.
Looking back after making various projects with ANU, one of the most important things that stays with me is the invitation to author and create new work and collaborate. To me they are new works of figurative art embodied by me that co exist in collaboration with a company of artists. Curated and directed by Louise and Owen. As a company we assimilate the language of visual art, of theatre, of dance, of design, of performance art, of durational performance. As a painting or a sculpture, these creations such as “The ANU Triptych” or “The Monto Cycle” exist as works of art, born out of a studio practice and experienced by and communed with audiences.
Is it character creation? Is that the right word? I don’t think so. The creation of the scores for these embodiments have included looking at the histories of women and female bodies over the last hundred years. Honour/Ú, Magdalen/Ú Alpha A/, Bella/Ú, Linenopolis/Ú, Civilian/Ú, all inspired by real women, real histories, unknown knowns. They emerge from the studio work. Everything is to be created. Every embodiment, every physical score, vocal score, durational presence begins with the artist delving into the source. That source is the company of artists, which includes designers, actors, dancers, artists, members of the community, academics, the archive, the research, and the testimonies.
What is also truly special to me is the audience. We, the company, make and create new work that goes live on a date for a certain duration and then end. An ephemeral work shared with audiences, held in memory and body. I always feel like a physiological transformation of energy has taken place as each audience member is placed within the work. Their presence is a constant when creating the work. The audience ignite the work and are intrinsic to it. During the live performances the audience become the “dramaturgs of their own experience”. There really is an exchange between us. A communion of sorts. To me, it feels like the part in a music score where a composer would create a phrase, and between the crotchets, the minums and the semi-breve there is a note that is made every time the audience create it. A note echoed over and over in varying tones.
When I wrapped my arms around the audience in “World’s End Lane” and asked them “Have you ever been loved?” that space appeared in the score for them. When I asked them to hold the bucket of breast milk in “Laundry”, the space appeared. When I asked them to shoot the bell that was rung when the Magdalen escaped in “Vardo”, the space was there. When I asked them to “Look At Me” in ‘Boys of Foley Street” it was there. These, and many more, are some of the most precious moments I have experienced in any work of art. In that moment in time and space our presence co-exist and the reality is forever changed. I feel privileged. I feel that we have both experienced a theatre or art that has transcended the form and held for a breath before the score continues. This is the extraordinary detail in ANU’s work. I feel it. I remember it. I set the provocation for it. I create the physical space for it. It only exists with audience there. That is so exciting. Everybody present.
My artworks have existed within the work too. My first film “Turbulence” played in the foyer of The Lab as part of “World’s End Lane”. I filmed it on site at the door to the Gloucester Street Laundry. A young woman being pushed into a Laundry. A moment of turbulence. This film referenced the second work within The Monto Cycle, “Laundry”. My figurative drawings and sketches looking at male to female and female to male sexuality hung on the walls of “Bella’s” room in “Vardo”, reflecting her interior psychology and identity. “Montopoly”, a game I created from “World’s End Lane”, a version of Monopoly referencing the Now/Then/Now of the geography of the area over 100 years, sat in the window of the Oonagh Young Gallery in “Vardo”. I have a collection of film, photography, drawings, and paintings. Art works inspired by the work with ANU. When we made “Boys Of Foley Street”, one of the lighting states coming from the bedroom was a UV light, referencing a sunbed light. During that long form durational work I took a series of selfies in character at different times of the day. We were performing over 10 hours a day for three weeks. I was embodying “Alpha A“, a figurative work which was inspired by the evolution of the “tough male”. The “Tough Alpha female” evolved to meet it. She was inspired by the culture of drugs, abuse, neglect, violence, rage and oblivion. For years, I have loved Cindy Sherman’s Film stills and endeavoured to make a piece called “Alpha A Thinks She’s Cindy Sherman”- a series of selfies based on Rage and Oblivion. A piece like “Magdalen” that exists through film and photography. All these pieces are inspired by the work and inspire me to make new art works in conversation with these embodiments.
- extract from
ÚNA’N’ANU-THE FIGURATIVE ARTIST; THE PALGRAVE HANDBOOK OF CONTEMPORARY IRISH THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE Edited by Eamonn Jordan & Eric Weitz
“Everyone is an artist”
I am passionate about art and creativity for everyone.
Joseph Beuys famously said “Everyone is an artist” I agree with this.
To this end I mentor, teach, direct and curate artistic collaborations.
I also create workshops, cultural programmes and bespoke live artworks .