A two-person exhibition of the work of Neil Clements and Irina Gheorghe, held at Broadside, Glasgow in December 2023.
Lost and contested histories are reconstructed—crates inhabit the space, marking a sense of mobility, both revealing and obscuring work. A set of scores for a performance not yet completed—notebooks hold text in multiple languages, slowly breaking down, becoming abstract markers.
‘…the obtrusive presence of an absence…’ is a an exhibition bringing together new work by Neil Clements & Irina Gheorghe. Working across installation, painting and performance and united by long-term negotiations of histories, times and places—the exhibition is animated by fundamental questions of what is there and maybe more importantly what is not.
My contribution to this exhibition took the form of an artwork entitled 'Riser (Stranmillis, December 1960)'. This work recreates to scale facsimiles of a dozen paintings that were included in a touring survey of abstract painting from California, which was displayed in Belfast in 1960. It reflects upon the role formalist abstraction played during the Cold War, as emblems of a broader series of American values. A particular focus of this work is the impact this display had in the cultural and political context of Post-war Northern Ireland.
These facsimiles were produced using a range of archival resources and in correspondence with the estates and gallery representatives of the four artists included in the original exhibition.
This project is aligned with ongoing conversations around the political utility of visual art during the Cold War, and the motivations behind touring displays of American abstract painting at this time. It also reflects ongoing attempts to form a historiographic approach to art made in Ireland during the 20th century, and a need to identify the various influences exerted upon such an art.
