Who is the Other?

I was watching the film “Basquiat” about the street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and his fraught collaboration with Andy Warhol, a leading figure in the American art world of the last century.

Both of them worked in turn on the same canvas and I remember Warhol was quite miffed when Basquiat painted a big sloppy red mark over a carefully painted section by Warhol. Ah well, I suppose that’s what can happen when one is collaborating with others.

And we’ve been at it ourselves. “Concerning the Other” is an art project that involves 10 artists working together over each other’s work. All of the artists started off with one image and passed it on to the next artist to work on – and the whole process continued until each artist had worked over all ten images. We’re nearly finished now – we’ve all reached stage 10.

Yes, and I added a portrait that I’d painted of Charlotte Fien (see above) to the collage. This collage had started off with a profile of Kate Murphy’s daughter but then some of the following artists introduced references to the Nazis and to various eugenics programmes. So, if you’re wondering who Charlotte Fien is, she is a young English woman with Down syndrome who delivered a moving speech to the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations in March this year.

The artists involved with “Concerning the Other” were: James Hanley RHA, Brian Fay, Claire Halpin, Joanna Kidney, Gail Ritchie, Miriam McConnon, Kate Murphy, Ben Readman, Susanne Wawra and myself, and the project was curated by Olivier Cornet, Claire Halpin and me.

The final ten artworks along with a selected number of ‘in-between’ images will be exhibited at the Olivier Cornet Gallery in September 2017. The exhibition entitled: Concerning the Other will also feature individual works by the participating artists.

It will be officially opened on Sunday 10th of September by Patrick T. Murphy, Director of the RHA Gallagher Gallery.

There’s a lot more information about the project on our Facebook page at:

https://www.facebook.com/ConcerningtheOther/

http://www.oliviercornetgallery.com/

http://www.eoinmaclochlainn.com/

And of course, your comments are always welcome here!