< BACK
to Press page

from the Dublin 'Event Guide' , 8-21 January 1997

Braving pounding house beats and rails of kinetic nylon danceware Kieron Owens recently met with Sean Hillen, creator of Irelantis and master of his own destiny...

Tucked away on the top floor of Makullas clothing store on Dublin's Suffolk Street is one of the most interesting art galleries in Ireland. Anya von Gosseln - Art in Progress shows a consistently challenging and intelligent programme of exhibitions, and on show until Fri 17th January is a brilliantly witty and carefully assembled collection of photo-collage works by Sean Hillen.

Included in the show is a selection of new images that form part of the Irelantis series, 'scalpel and glue' juxtapositions of postcard-like images that allow for a magical exploration of architectural and archeological improbabilities. With humorous technique, but serious intent, Hillen has created works such as "Trouble With The Glacier In Henry Street ", " Collecting Meteorities At Knowth ", "The Rope-Bridge To The Oracle At Carrick-A-Rede", "The Great Falls of Carlingford" and "An Expedition Discovers Joyce's Tower at Sandycove" amongst many others. All of these use found photographic imagery to transform the familiar landscapes of rural and urban Ireland into the mythical and exotic land of Irelantis, a place as spellbinding and as spectacular as any ancient land of fairy tale or fable.

Also included in the show, and in fact the central piece of it, is "The Price of Everything", an enormous collage of the artist's own photographs, culled from 77 rolls of film and shot over a three year period. The piece is in fact made up of several seperate projects, including images that document the phenomenon of "synchronised parking", a Theory of Hillen's which suggests that cars can be found to be parked in striking and perhaps significant collections and patterns of colour.
It also contains the images that formed part of the original "Price of Everything" piece, consisting of shots of discarded umbrellas in bins and on the street. Included also are photographs of a homeless person Iying in the street, as well as dozens of frames of whin bushes and tulips which have all been assembled into an enormous mandala-like pattern.
While the parts might sound trivial and trite, the sum of the parts is a mesmerising creation, dwarfing the viewer and inducing a semi-religious or spiritual sensation. The Price of Everything is like a great gate into another world or time or dimension and Sean Hillen, like an explorer returned from this remote place, attempts to reveal some of its mysteries.

KO: Why collage?

SH: Partly perhaps it's a male artist thing about novelty, about making something that no one has seen before. There's not much of it- a few U.S. and other artists using collage in an interesting way, and there is Peter Kennard.

It is partly also an accident, that I came into art through 'lens media', through making photographs, so it was a natural progression. But there is also an issue about making something that would stop people in their tracks. I have made a stick for my own back from that point of view because it's become a very hard act to follow. I'm not sure how healthy that is so the next things I want to do are sculptures using light, which of course other artists have done before, but as I get older I get more at ease about working in ways that are already known, because in the end the works are always made differently.

Also, collage for me is a generational thing because I grew up looking at television and advertising and absorbed that kind of aesthetic.

KO: Does the work have a purpose?

SH: Well I think Kierkegarrd says that art has duties. Firstly it has to provide in the realm of beauty and sensuality. It also has to do its thing in the realm of ideas and morality. And finally it has to deliver in the spiritual realm.

KO: Does this suggest that the beauty in your art has a redeeming power?

SH: Yes I suppose, particularly in the huge piece "The Price of Everything". It's one of the things that it's all about. Finding beauty in the grit and in the gutter. It's the Wildean thing of Iying in the gutter while looking at the stars.
Redemption through beauty can even be found in my earliest political works, trying to make very beautiful lasting pieces of art out of ugly black and white pictures of war. I have always been fascinated by the problems that this contrast creates. Art probably comes through struggle. This is something that has come to me just lately. The art is in the making of the thing. There is a naive and infantile aspect to my art, but it is very sophisticated at the same time. This is a conundrum. I am starting to see these oppositions which are fruitful ones for me. There is a simplicity and humility in little scraps of paper, while trying to make things that are of value and are valuable from bits of stuff that I have picked up in the street.

KO: Do the political works arise from your own direct experience of the troubles in the North?

SH: I grew up in an atmosphere of extreme high tension and I don't think that it has changed greatly. I had mortality vibes quite early, so there is a heightened sensitivity which in a way is a gift to an artist, although it is a poisened chalice, because if you engage with the situation you become deeply unpopular.
When I went to art school first, it was a complete and utter no-no to make any work with a religious or political references. It couldn't be good art if it contained that. I still perceive problems in the work, I like the layeredness and the fact that you get a visual thrill and a sensual delight from the surface of things. It is I think what Duchamp called the retinal, though he believed in moving beyond just that.
I myself would fly the flag for all this work being considered as conceptual, although I think that people may be bemused by that idea because they might think that the instant high they get from the work is all that there is.
There are curatorial schools of course which hold that the less there is visible, the more that there is in the thing. That's a rule of thumb that has worked to my disadvantage.

KO: Classical art would have been respected for its allegorical power, and its ability to convey messages that were not obvious in the individual imagery. Does your work share in the same alchemy that juxtaposition creates?

SH: This maybe I think romantic art. I had been through years of semiological head battering in London art schools which seemed to make it impossible for many artists to actually make pictures.
Two transforming and liberating experiences, though, for me were firstly, at the age of 18, being lectured in foundation by John Carson where I discovered that very serious art could be extremely funny, and vice versa.
Secondly, later on, Victor Burgin came in to LCP and did a lecture where he deconstructed certain forms of oil painting and it felt like scales fell from my eyes. You never really step back from that kind of loss of innocence.

KO: Art seems to have achieved the status formerly held by religion. As we approach the end of the century it possible to say anything bad about art or artists without upsetting its high priests?

SH: I think that there is certainly a lot of bad art around at the minute, but it is also a case of horses for courses. There is entertainment and art, there is decor and art, and all varieties in between. I don't agree that there is no bad art, but a lot of us are afraid to say it

KO: How do you consider you own work in this context?

SH: All the collage work has always been overtly knowing. It has always been saying 'Here we are in an interesting game", which has been its intellectual foundation.
The political work has been seen as propagandistic, which on one hand is a compliment, but on the other has been disastrous from an art career and curatorial point of view and also for exhibiting, because all I ever really wanted to do was make art and show it.

I was always deeply impressed by Duchamp's statement, though, that he made art primarily to amuse himself and then trusted it to posterity. In the end the artist is his or her own only real critic. For myself, I'm a sucker for good art, I really love it, and I love art that realIy gives you something, and I try to do that.

KO: So is art a luxury or a necessity in life?

SH: It is a terrible necessity. There would be great poverty without it. And it is a privilege to make art. The food of your mind is given out freely and hundreds of people come and scratch their chins and take it seriously. That's an incredible thing. And nobody even voted for you.
I certainly also like that idea of the artist as shamen, as outsider, boundary crosser, trickster.

KO: Unlike previous shows containing many political pieces, in this show there is a great geographical mixing of imagery. Is this a development or just a different theme?

SH: Well, a crucial element in the political works too was the comedy, comedy as truth. But I had done enough with it. Like sharpening a pencil, at a certain point it's sharp and there is no point in keeping going. Through it though I became more interested bringing elements of myth into notions of civilisation, race and culture. But the impulse anyway underlying all the work is to try and reveal and give insight.

KO: Is that a key role of the artist, to be an agent of revelation?

SH: Yes.

Sean Hillen's "The Price of Everything" and new works from "Irelantis" can be seen at the Anya von Gosseln Gallery, 2nd Floor, inside Makullas, 11/13 Suffolk Street, Dublin 2, from Mon - Sat 12noon - 5pm. until Fri 17th January 1997.

© event guide 1997