Irish Arts Review

Crossing the Great DivideAuthor(s): Isabel NolanSource: Irish Arts Review (2002-), Vol. 19, No. 1 (Summer, 2002), pp. 54-57Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25502833 .

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54 | IRISH ARTS REVIEW SUMMER 2002 ^H

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CONTEMPORARY ART

ft ' ?r??.?*^ 4^ i?

'Salve1, an exhibition of new work by Dorothy tSr?ssf^ens in the Kerlin Gallery

on 29 May. It suggests, says ISABEL NOLAN that w?jgre caught between

states, physical and mental, between self and oth$, 'between what we know,

don't know and can imagine. ^$ww*

The Great Divide

?M m W ^y orothy Cross's work strikes me as not being connected by a

jeMW ?W I 1 particular subject or medium, but by the sense that extreme

mmm^m^^mmu^??muW JlL A y curiosity and an excitable and scintillating intelligence drive her

?3BBBP^^^^5||^M^Hpp practice. Cross's passion for investigating the nature of things (animal,

^?J???^r^ vegetable, and mineral), places, and events as well as for re-imagining and

jP^^^^ transforming their meanings and qualities has led her to make a very

diverse range of work both thematically and in terms of media.

Rather than relying on artistic practice to reveal or confirm transcendental truth, Cross seems more interested

in affirming that doubt, strangeness, and ambiguity are natural states: '...art is necessary to generate interest in

life, it confirms uncertainty.'1 In a conversation between Cross and Marina Warner, the latter suggests that rather

than mimicking the Enlightenment project of trying to 'replace fear with knowledge' artistic inquiry results in 'an

illumination of fantasy and feeling.'2 This has a certain resonance with Cross's work which often defies our con

ventional sense of logic and requires a wholly imaginative response that is both intellectual and emotional.

Cross is perhaps best known for showing familiar things in a different or strange form; for example, the

bodies of work created from cows' hides and udders, snakes, and both industrial and domestic detritus. This

method of working is indebted to Duchamp and the surrealists and many of the ambiguities and tensions in

the work were the result of the transformations enacted upon the objects; be it through witty and unusual

juxtapositions (a cow's teat and a stiletto) (Fig 2) or the unexpected re-positioning of things (nipples on a hard

hat, or snakes on a gallows). Her work has played with the social meaning of objects and animals and

confounded the day-to-day associations and functions of ordinary entities, creating artworks that are poignant,

beautiful, witty, and sometimes unnerving.

In recent years her practice has moved into new territory; Cross appears to have developed new methods to

accompany the old (embracing the use of video) and she has gravitated towards objects and subjects that have

an inherent ambiguity; towards 'things' that are 'naturally' unusual or strange. Her practice still often relies on

the representation of familiar 'things' in a new light but in general her latest approach seems closer to a raw

1 (Opposite). Dorothy Cross:

Jellyfish, 2002.

Drawing on Paper.

2 (Inset) Dorothy Cross:

Stilettos, 1994.

Shoes, cow hide, cows' teats.

SUMMER 2002 IRISH ARTS REVIEW |

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...in general her latest

approach seems closer to a raw documentation of

uncertainty than to the surreal transformations of earlier work

3 Dorothy Cross:

Eyemaker, 2000.

Still from video.

4 Dorothy Cross:

Virgin Shroud, 1993. Cow hide, satin train, steel

structure.

CROSSING THE GREAT DIVIDE

documentation of uncertainty than to the surreal transformations

of earlier work.

This way of working is apparent in recent pieces: Eyemaker

(Fig 3) shows a very unusual craftsman at work, meticulously

fashioning a glass eye. At times beautiful and at times grossly

distended, the eye slowly takes shape only to be quite shockingly

destroyed before we have the pleasure of admiring its finished

perfection. Used to satisfy the aesthetic sensibilities of the owner

and onlookers, the purely cosmetic, unseeing eye is destroyed by

the same breath that gave it life. The eyemaker cannot restore the

gift of vision, only its appearance. Endarken (2000) features the

ruin of a country cottage, slowly obliterated by an expanding

(computer-generated) black spot. Time erases the past and mean

ings associated with places and events alter or are forgotten, the

hole both negates and emphasises physicality as in Bible (1995).

It is possible that the straightforward presentation of these scenes

indicates that Cross is preserving an element of these places and

activities from oblivion, but she does it without nostalgia and

acknowledges the inevitability of transformation and the instabil

ity of meanings. She works with, rather than against, the frag

mentary nature of information and memory and relishes rather

than fears the unknown. This is most evident in her work Come

into the garden Maude (Fig 5) which is the first part of the larger Medusae project. It is a poetic celebration of curiosity and passion

and a necessarily sketchy tribute to Maude Delap, an amateur

scientist, who, living at the turn of the 19th century on Valentia

Island, devoted herself to the study and breeding of jellyfish. In May, her new show, Salve, opens at the Kerlin Gallery,

Dublin. Cross came upon the word inlaid in a floorboard in

Goethe's house in Weimar; 'Salve' is a word with many meanings:

it is a salutation, such as Hail, deriving from the Latin salvere - to

be well. It can be an unguent or a remedy for a spiritual disease

or sorrow, something that serves to overcome doubt from the Old

English s(e)alf - ointment and the German salbe and Dutch zalf.

And it can mean to salvage, or to vindicate, or to save an opinion

from objection?from the Latin salvar?to save, which is also, the

root of salvation. The exhibition will feature a piece of driftwood

approximately twelve feet long with the word 'salve' inlaid.

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It could be the float that saves the man overboard and is itself

salvaged from the sea. Perhaps its presence in the gallery suggests

that art can also be a saviour: a means of offering us relief from

sorrow, or of reassuring us that doubt is normal, echoing what

Cross has said previously: 'For me, art is an adventure that helps

me cope with the ridiculous situation of being alive.'3 Or perhaps

it simply proposes that art can be a way of greeting the world and

other people.

Cross's work is never didactic, rather it invites and deliberately

cultivates a variety of responses. The show at the Kerlin promises

to be the product of a desultory intelligence, somewhat enigmatic,

refusing any single reading or narrative that would connect all the

pieces. The exhibition will include works that are created from

raw materials, transformed-found objects, and video pieces. There

are, however, many conceptual and visual connections between

the works; the sea, for example, is a preoccupation that runs

through many of the pieces.

Jellyfish are the latest creatures to arouse Cross's interest: they

featured in Come into the Garden Maude and their 'otherness' is the

subject of a new video piece and a body of works on paper (Fig 1 ).

The jellyfish is the most 'alien' and unfamiliar of all the animals

to appear in her work; it appears to be asexual and it can also be

deadly. Its eyes (the means of any anthropomorphic identification

with an animal), if it has any, are hardly visible and it does not bear

a physical resemblance to any other creature. Part of her fascination

stems from the fact that the jellyfish not only cannot survive out

of water, but that it physically loses its fantastical and graceful

form and looks entirely different than when it is in the sea. Most

of us only encounter jellyfish as repulsive, gelatinous puddles on

the beach. With this in mind and knowing that their bodies are

approximately 98% water, Cross placed the jellyfish on sheets of

paper; their bulbous, fringed forms have dried out to shiny, brown

smudges, some look like blue latex; another has a fish in its guts.

Their mostly transparent bodies are reduced to a visceral and del

icate residue and are only given structure by the piece of paper. It

is akin to a negation of natural history where the understanding

of structure, form, and the mechanics of life are sought by dis

secting death. Each one will be individually framed in the exhi

bition and they will hang as a shoal of 'drawings'; art will return

a form of sorts to them, but in an entirely alien environment.

In contrast, the video work shows the jellyfish in their natural

surroundings. The piece opens with a shot of dozens of small

frilly jellyfish; the camera pans to the right and comes upon a

naked woman, floating vertically with her face just above the

water; shoals of jellyfish bump and brush against her. The human

is cast as anonymous subject, as the alien presence meeting the

jellyfish skin to skin; it is both beautiful and disturbing, but never

surreal. Her hair flowing like the fronds of a sea-creature, her

languorous demeanour, and the mesmerising way the mechanical

eye of the camera drifts around her creates an air of calm. It is as

if she is trying to become invisible, to belong to this alien envi

ronment, where she is the odd one out, without being an

intruder. The jellyfish are beautiful, strange creatures pulsing and

floating through the water. The video has a dream-like quality

which, combined with a raw immediacy and simple production

values, distances it from the expert 'gaze' of the documentary.

There will be some photographs in the exhibition, one show

ing a half-submerged swimmer, another a large beautiful close-up

of a forehead waved with wrinkles, created, I like to think, by

puzzlement, concentration, and surprise, as much as time. A third

is of an old woman's face shown behind a mirror that has lost

much of its silver backing, so that the bottom half of her face is

submerged by one's own.

Dorothy Cross's work suggests that we are caught between

states, physical and mental, between self and other, between what

we know, don't know and can imagine. Rather than trying to

domesticate that which is different and unknown, Cross challenges

our complacencies and certainties. She values doubt, scepticism,

otherness and alterity, over easy truth, essences and sameness.

Isabel Nolan is a writer and artist living in Dublin. She is exhibiting in 'How Things Turn Out' at the Irish Museum of Modern Art until 27 May 2002.

'Salve', a new exhibition by Dorothy Cross opens at the Kerlin Gallery on 29 May 2002.

1 D Cross, Art Monthly, no 203 (Feb 1997) p.20. 2 Unpublished conversation between Cross and Warner at the T?te Modern (Oct

2001) on the occasion of the Public Art Development Trust screening of Come into the Garden Maude.

3 D Cross, 'even' (Arnolfini: Bristol 1996) p. 18.

5 Dorothy Cross:

Come into the

Garden Maude, 2001. Installation

still.

6 Dorothy Cross:

Figure, 2001. Still

from video.

7 Dorothy Cross:

Figure, 2001. Still

from video.

SUMMER 2002 IRISH ARTS REVIEW |

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