Bassam Al-Sabah at The LAB

A few weeks ago, I made my way into Dublin's The LAB gallery in order to see an exhibition by Basam Al-Sabah, Illusions of Love Dyed by Sunset. I first came across Al-Sabah when he was an art student at IADT a few years ago, and I was curious to find out how his work was developing.

I did a double-take at the entrance: in previous exhibitions at The LAB, the small square space gallery was used to exhibit a different artist than the main space, but here was an introduction to Al-Sabah's work. The colourful drapery beautifully printed with spaceships and rockets could have been from a child's bedroom (curtains or bedclothes).

In the corner of the space, there were roughly made, unglazed clay forms, which despite their organic shape seemed distinctly ominous and malevolent to me.

The main room displayed a number of individual works in a variety of media, but one could tell that a story was unfolding and further examination would be enlightening.

I am not sure whether it was from a direct conversation I had had with Bassam Al-Sabah or a written accompaniment to his work at some point, but I remember being struck by him recounting that he thought their had been musical drumming at night when he was a child in Iraq - only later understanding that this was the sound of his city being bombed. As one might expect, such a strong memory informs the Al-Sabah's work: innocence, loss, melancholy, a certain sadness and fear feature poignantly in images of family and the remnants of anime cartoons that Al-Sabah watched when he was a child.

While not hugely au fait with the world of anime myself, I could recognise a circling hero figure seeming very confused in a video tower piece.

This same hero figure was portrayed as broken on a nearby table, hero body parts intermingled with human body parts. The broken pieces for me displayed a shattered innocence, a child's identification with the hero, both fictional hero and human child reduced to "doll" parts.

Against the furthest wall, at mantle level, were several shelves containing images obviously painted from family photographs encased in resin, almost as an attempt to preserve the images. The simplicity of this group display was given a huge amount of power after watching the longer video behind the wall, in a separate room.

An almost architecturally sterile cgi video of a house walk-through with a difference. There were a few personal pointers within the rooms: a paper bag on the floor in the kitchen, a fridge magnet of a family photo, Persian designs on furniture upholstery. Ominously though, something was intruding from the outside world -- via radio and tv -- forms and shapes were enveloping the architecture. Most of the soundtrack to the video walk-through is droning and eerie, but then towards the end there is voice-over and subtitles translating the speech of Al-Sabah's Grandmother. Full of sorrow for her dispersed family, as her children and their families leave the dangers of Iraq for various countries, she burns all family photos. Home is no longer home.

Illusions of Love Dyed by Sunset is a powerful exhibiton and I think personally momentous work for Bassam Al-Sabah that allows me to empathise with experiences so far removed from the safety of my own.

Day in Dublin

I had a few things to do on the north side of Dublin and passed by this drawbridge. Actually, I am not sure exactly what this is (formerly a canal lock?) but it seems to be a bit out of place. It reminded me of old Dutch landscape paintings and I thought this was appropriate as I planned to go to the Eugeen van Meigham show at the Hugh Lane Municipal gallery later in the day (which I will post about next week).

In the meantime I took the opportunity to have a closer look at the giant iris outside the NCI building. I had spotted this on a previous visit to Dublin, but the rain kept me from further investigation then.

This stainless steel piece was created by Vivienne Roche and commissioned by the National College of Ireland (NCI) and entitled NC Iris.

On the way to The LAB to see a couple of exhibitions, I came across this plaque on Foley St  in commemoration of specific women who had fought in various places in Dublin during the 1916 Uprising, and generally to all women who had taken part in the activities of 1916, the War of Independence, and the Civil War, which followed.

Although it was in the smaller gallery at The LAB, Lucy McKenna's exhibition, "Astronomical Mashup", was  definitely the main attraction (and totally perfect in the entrance exhbition space).

McKenna combines sci fi mythology with factual knowledge about Mars to examine the way information is understood about our neighbouring planet in specific and on a wider scale in general.

The exhibition is intriguing: it possesses both beauty and humour. McKenna's small scale painted images are delicate while the large graphics are in-your-face technical wallpaper! The overlaps keep perspective shifting while all the time the viewer is aware of the set-like tentacle streams (a la War of the Worlds) hanging from the scenery, and always in peripheral vision in this small space.

Like a moth, I was drawn to the curiosities of the light bulbs, which had subtle photographic images on their back surfaces: a darkened crescent moon on one and tiny spots (the Pleiades) on the other.

I also enjoyed the other exhibition, IAWATST (Interesting And Weird At The Same Time), which took up the main gallery (including upstairs space). It was a group exhibition of work from the OPW collection curated by students from an inner city primary school. I didn't get any pictures from this exhibition, but they are available online and further information is available on The LAB website.