Flags, banners and banners are sewn together from the ceiling of the illegal pub. Because Northern Ireland is a land of flags, banners and banners. Of symbols, of political statements, of protest. It is twilight, cozy and comfortable. You would like to drink a pint there. But it’s not a real pub, it’s an art installation, with photos, video, posters and objects. When you’re in the back, one canvas on the ceiling is the most noticeable. White with black text: “Most of the time, I don’t think about where I came from”. This is a place to be together, apart from the harsh, sectarian divisions that still characterize Northern Ireland.
The recreated Irish síbín – a pub where you can drink illegally distilled whiskey – is the work with which the artist collective array collective from Belfast in 2021 surprisingly the Turner Prize winner, the most important British art prize. And now, after a tour of Coventry in England and Galway in Ireland, it is back in the Ulster Museum in Belfast.
In the month in which Northern Ireland commemorates the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, which brought peace to the north of the island of Ireland after thirty years of violence, the installation has even more significance. “These weeks it is only about orange and green politicians. That is too limited,” says Emma Campbell, one of the eleven members of Array. She refers to the Protestant Unionists, who want to stay with the United Kingdom, and the Catholic Nationalists who work for a united Ireland. “In Northern Ireland, religious identities are placed above everything else. But there are so many more voices that need to be heard.”
Clown
They get their worst and best ideas in pubs. And they are important in Northern Irish society. That’s why Array made the síbín, says Campbell. Druthaib’s Ball it’s called work. Druthaib comes from the Irish word Drúhacht, which means something like prankster or clown. It is a place where everyone is safe, where lightness and humor prevail. Another canvas has the text: “Prepare for peas, ready for a sausage war”. It is a reference to a slogan that still adorns a wall in a Protestant neighborhood: Prepared for peace, ready for war.’ And it refers to Brexit and the separate status that Northern Ireland received as a result. Stephen Millar, another Array member: “Politicians were only talking about whether we could still import English sausages. No one was talking about human rights.”
Any artist who thinks he is an individual artist is fooling himself
Emma Campbell array member
Emma Campbell and Stephen Millar have come together to the Array Studios in the center of the Northern Ireland capital to talk about the ideas and perspective of the artist collective. They always do this with at least two members, because one person cannot speak for all eleven. There is certainly no leader of the collective. They make decisions when eight members agree.
It’s cold because of the energy bill. There are half-finished paintings, drawings, costumes everywhere. There are only six studios, there is not enough room for the whole group. And the collective can lose the studios in three months, if the rent is terminated. The new owner wants to sell the building, he announced a year or two ago. “But we haven’t heard anything about it in a long time. I don’t think he can sell it. The economy is not doing well.” They fear, like other artists’ collectives, that they will eventually be pushed out of the city.
Read also: Strong together. The power of the collective
Array Collective is activist. The group consists of street artists, photographers, painters, visual artists. With street art, performances and workshops they fight for women’s rights, for the LGBT community, for the Irish language, for mental health, against inequality, against British colonialism, against the gentrification of Belfast. There was only a first exhibition in 2019, in a gallery in London.
Northern Ireland never wins
And in 2021 the Turner Prize. “We really never expected that. It was already special that we were nominated. During the awards, a few of us were a little drunk. Nobody thought we had to go on stage anymore,” says Campbell. Millar: “Northern Ireland never wins anything.” They became the first Northern Ireland winners.
The price brought a lot of good. They are invited to schools and universities, workshops are better attended. But most importantly? “We didn’t stop.” Because in 2019 a few members wanted to quit. Making art and doing all kinds of jobs to earn money was no longer sustainable.
And now? Campbell laughs out loud. “Financially we are clearly not successful.” All members have other jobs or odd jobs. Campbell herself works for an NGO that advocates for the right to abortion and is a researcher at the university, Millar is an art psychotherapist at primary schools in West Belfast.
Reactions to the award were mixed. That’s how the newspaper described it The Guardian the work as ‘a theater set without a play. It has only a thin layer of artistic meaning.” Array was really just “a group of ordinary artists whose work you can hardly stick the word art to”. Two Irish writers took it in the London culture magazine Elephant on for array. In the criticism they saw the deep gulf with England, which also does not take cultural exports from Northern Ireland seriously. And that Northern Ireland does not receive half as many national cultural subsidies as England.
At the Tate Gallery, which organizes the Turner Prize, the jury’s plan to only nominate artist collectives after the corona year 2020 was not immediately well received either, so told the judges in the podcast Talk Art.
“There was quite a bit of resistance,” Emma Campbell heard. Questions they get a lot since the prize are: Isn’t creating art something individual? Can good visual art emerge from a group process? As a collective, don’t you always make something that is a compromise? “I have a very strong opinion on this,” says Campbell. “Any artist who thinks he is an individual artist is fooling himself. I photograph. There are people I photograph, there are people who make the photo paper, who print the photo. You do nothing alone. We are all dependent on each other. Every artist who has exhibited or done a project has been inspired by someone else. You have always learned your skills from others and borrowed your ideas from others.”
“I couldn’t have put it better,” says Stephen Millar. The art world is dominated too much by art collectors, so by money, they think. “Those people aren’t really interested in innovation or elevating the human spirit.” Campbell: “Even Damien Hirst, who presents himself as an individual artist, uses a large group of underpaid employees in his studio.”
Another major project is still in its infancy. Something about Cavehill, an impressive mountain north of Belfast, which is said to have inspired Jonathan Swift when writing Gulliver’s Travels. There are some notes from a joint brainstorming session in the studio, next to a photo of the mountain. ‘Beyond the border’. ‘Genderless’. ‘2024 Star Trek’. “But maybe it won’t work out,” Campbell sighs. There’s still a lot of work to do.
Druthaib’s Ball can be seen until the end of September. The installation then goes to the storage of the Ulster Museum, which now owns the work. “Maybe a Dutch museum is interested in an exhibition?” Millar laughs. “The Empire. It appeals to me. Or even better, somewhere in Rotterdam.”
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