The Night Garden, 2024. Photo: Ros Kavangh
Stephen Brandes
Stephen Brandes is well known for an artistic language that meshes together unlikely characters, from both historical and fictional worlds, into spiraling and ever-absurd narratives.
In recent times, Deirdre and Ken from popular soap opera Coronation Street, Ancient Greece’s chief philosopher Socrates, and Catherine Leary, the Kerry immigrant wrongly blamed for the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, have all been drawn into his orbit.
Plans are afoot for a new drama, with permissions now almost in place for an intervention inside the courtyard of the University of Galway’s hallowed Quadrangle building. While wandering around the campus, Brandes came across a large architectural sculpture, seemingly removed from its original location and placed innocuously, despite its scale, on the edge of a small access road. Representing the Royal Coat of Arms, a lion, unicorn and ornamental shield all feature. We learnt that the piece was commissioned for the portico
of Galway City Courthouse under British rule. During the War of Independence, it was removed to the university for ‘safekeeping’ (Galway had form for toppling statues at that time; a decades-long campaign to get rid of Lord Dunkellin’s bronze in Eyre Square saw him pulled off his pedestal, dragged through the streets, given a mock funeral and dumped into the Corrib River, surrounded by cheering crowds in 1922). The university, founded by Queen Victoria’s Royal Charter in 1845, was seen as a refuge to prevent the potential public toppling of a symbol of law.
In Brandes’ vision, the piece takes centre stage; a relic of a bygone age now moving nervously into the future, joined by a group of taxidermy animals, including some found on display around the campus. It’s hard to know if these characters are friends of the crown or are there to lampoon it.
The Quadrangle
University of Galway
Galway H91 FN8X
Access
Wheelchair accessible
Accessible toilets (Quadrangle Building)
Seating provided
Accessible parking (Quadrangle Building)
TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
The Salvage Agency
Curated by Michele Horrigan
1 - 17 November 2024
Galway, Ireland