126 Gallery
15 St Bridget’s Place, H91 NN29
2-17 November 2024
Mon-Sun 12-6pm
Jorge Satorre
Mexican artist Jorge Satorre lived on Sherkin Island in West Cork for five months in 2005. Known as a storyteller of repute, with an interest in how personal histories and encounters come together to shape the world we share, he realised several artworks involving the local community.
In Windows Blow Out, Satorre makes reference to an artwork of the same name by American artist Gordon Matta-Clark. Known for his conceptual critiques of architecture and the built environment, in 1976 Matta-Clark, as part of his contribution to an exhibition entitled ’Idea as a Model’ at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York, fired shots from an airgun at the windows of the gallery space. The broken panes of glass were replaced before the exhibition opening. Satorre notes that his 2005 video “consisted in recovering, almost theatrically, this referential piece through the construction of three windows, made to measure, to be installed in an old abandoned house near the town of Skibbereen.”
Barry’s Van Tour is another artwork made during Satorre’s Sherkin stay, and still remembered on the island today:
The main character in this work is Barry, a young fisherman popular on the island, who died prematurely in 2002. Since the day of his death his van remained parked where he left it, with his fishing utensils, his coffee mug and the keys still inside it. Back then, it was common to find abandoned cars around the island, a new situation explained by the economic boom the country was experiencing. It was often simpler to buy a new car than taking it outside the island to be repaired.
In the previous years, Barry’s relatives and the community had prevented its removal from the island. Therefore, the van had become the oldest abandoned vehicle in Sherkin. Its sudden loss of functionality and the special meaning that the van had acquired in the eyes of the community turned the vehicle into a spontaneous meaningful local monument. Two or three months after my arrival I found out that a decision had been finally made for the van to be taken to a scrapyard on account of its dilapidated condition. However, Barry’s family, knowing that I had taken interest in the vehicle, asked if I wanted to do something special with it before its destruction.
I proposed to organise a team made up of friends and relatives of Barry in which each one of them contributed with something: his brother helped with a small cargo ferry, one of his friends brought a crane, another one offered his mechanical workshop and a few of them contributed recording with their video cameras. Together with their resources, we organised the removal of the van from its location to the workshop in Skibbereen.
For about a month, basic repairs were carried out on the engine and the chassis, new brakes were fitted and the tires were changed so it could start running and return to its original site on the island without having to be towed. A few days later the van was taken to the scrapyard.
In The Indirect Gaze, Satorre spent time gathering information and visiting sites where prehistoric megaliths were destroyed without a remaining trace. A 35mm slide projection details a perambulation of places in The Netherlands, parts of northern Spain, and Pays de la Loire in France.
Photo: Installation view of Jorge Satorre exhibition, 126 Gallery. Photo: Ros Kavanagh
TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
The Salvage Agency
Curated by Michele Horrigan
1 - 17 November 2024
Galway, Ireland
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126 Gallery
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Seating provided
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