Fergus Feehily: Fortune House
Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin
★★★★☆
The title of Fergus Feehily’s exhibition conveys a specific set of ideas, all of which are germane to the experience of viewing his work. First, it suggests that contingency or chance plays a role in the presence and arrangement of the art, as though the order of the pieces could change suddenly, or their contents might transform, or that the whole exhibition might simply vanish overnight. Second, the title also suggests an environment designed for games, such as a casino or bingo hall: Fortune House is surely the name of a gambling den in some far-flung corner of the world. Third, it implies good luck and prosperity, a place for visitors to change their karmic state, improving the destiny of all pilgrims passing through.
The Dublin-born artist’s affinity for semantic proliferation is well established. Over the past 30 years he has developed a visual practice that produces minimalist, subtle objects that invite close attention and prolonged inspection. Feehily’s paintings and wall constructions are exercises in restraint, abstemious interventions in acrylic, plywood, aluminium and found materials.
The simplicity of these objects – what you might call their low-density visual information – is what prompts the viewer to narrativise them, to assign different stories or concepts to them. They are not sheer, impervious monuments, like some classic works of minimalism – think Ad Reinhardt’s experiments in black – but porous and light works that seduce you to speak on their behalf. Feehily encourages this atmosphere of narration with his own writing, which often appears in the midst of his exhibitions.
Consequently, Feehily’s book The Horse and The Rider plays a fundamental role in Fortune House. A small, 60-page volume that fits neatly in the palm of your hand, it contains an abundance of philosophical passages, history, biographical fragments and narrative episodes. Near the beginning the artist writes about his aversion to artworks as variations, where each iteration is produced using the same principle and method. Preferring instead to stage an exhibition where every work is an individual, Feehily gambles (that idea again) that an intimate relation will emerge spontaneously, “deeper”, he writes, than any “visual similarity”. The text flashes into a short account of the many Hindu deities, then an equally brief reflection on The Beatles’ White Album, where the songs “attest to the personal and aesthetic fragmentation” within the band.
Protein: Are we eating enough of it? And is ‘high protein’ branding just a fad?
Cameron Diaz: ‘I left movies because I wanted to live my life differently. We started our family, and that was all I wanted to do’
Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin: ‘I mourned friendships for too long that were actually past their time’
‘The phone would ring and it would be Mike Scott from the Waterboys or Bono from U2. Everyone wanted to talk to my father’
On the walls, works such as Reverse Ampersand and Himself are typical of Feehily’s style. The former is a thin circular object, crossed by string or wire, and gilded with a smattering of aquamarine material. It’s like the bottom of a lampshade: the catalogue refers to it as a found object. Himself consists of three vertical panels: the top is red enamel, vaguely mirrored, with strokes of white paint; below are two uneven pink pieces of plywood. These works negotiate a delicate balance between provocative and mild.
An intriguing show, well worth visiting, though perhaps not to everyone’s taste.
Fortune House is at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin, until Sunday, February 23rd
