The artist Yvonne McGuinness believes in stirring up chaos and using it as an opportunity to create. She specialises in community-oriented, participatory art, using a myriad of mediums to encapsulate her experiences including films, costumes, installations, performances, photographs, and sculptures.
In the St Gobnait series in Inisheer, she orchestrated a parade involving children, tourists and locals to honour St Gobnait. In another piece ‘Moving mountains, wishing well, Brigid Cleary we won’t tell’, she created a veiled performance to pay homage to Brigid Cleary, a woman accused of being a changeling and then killed. A separate artwork, Before the Last Sun Sets, saw 80 people participating in a ceremony around the Moylurg Tower in Lough Key forest park.
In the imminent Galway International Arts festival, she’s set to show her latest film, titled ‘What’s Left Us Then’. The film, directed by Michael Kelly, captures the duo visiting abandoned or incomplete concrete structures across the country, and conversing with those they encounter on their journey.
Conducting interviews rather than being interviewed is a novel experience for her, as she revealed in a pub in Galway. In fact, throughout her interview, she proved to be a lively and cordial interviewee, constantly curious and always spurred by her love for art and ideas.
McGuinness, a native of Portmarnock, was industrious and creative from a young age, often trying to create things with hammers, though she wasn’t sure then that she wanted to be an artist.
Recalling her days at Crawford College of Art and Design in Cork, with a degree in her hand, she concluded that indeed she was an artist. The college provided her an affectionate and supportive community. Born in Kilkenny to a businessman father and a political family including the former mayor of Kilkenny as her grandfather and John McGuinness, a Fianna Fáil politician as her uncle, she grew up in Portmarnock. She sometimes feels her work, rooted heavily in community activism, might have absorbed some political influence from her family.
During her college years in Cork in the ’90s, the atmosphere was vibrant and dynamic. It was during these times that she crossed paths with her now Oscar-winning actor husband, Cillian Murphy. She saw significant overlap in the arts with novelist Kevin Barry often seen working at the Bodega bar and the birth of the rave scene amidst financial hard times in Ireland.
Understandably disheartened, she now notices how every potential creative space is being transformed into commercial offices or residential apartments. She recently visited the Printworks in Galway, soon to be developed, where her exhibition will be held.
It was artists like Damian Hirst and the Young British Artists, with their unique use of abandoned spaces such as an empty London Port Authority building for their Freeze show, that influenced her and her college peers. For their degree show at Crawford, they followed suit and picked a multistorey car park as their exhibition venue due to a lack of conventional spaces.
During the vivid time in Cork, where the city mirrored the London scene, everyone was unemployed yet deeply involved in diverse creative ventures. The population was teeming with musicians, fanzine creators, and performance artists, all experimenting without limitations. However, the current art realm seems stifled due to increasing real estate issues resulting in studio shutdowns.
Yvonne McGuinness delved into the world of printmaking, yet she never stuck to producing an identical series of prints. On the contrary, she was fond of the accidental and imperfect aspects. Afterward, she ventured into multimedia and film. For her degree project, she exhibited monitors housed in shopping carts to create a commentary on consumerism.
“I’ve always had an aesthetically offbeat style,” she shares with a chuckle, recounting an art installation at Cork airport. In conjunction with the Triskel Arts Centre’s Intermedia show in 1998, she and her friend, Cill, spent a night at the airport, adorning the baggage carousel with a written stencil piece.
Remarking on women’s work-life balance, Yvonne insists on the necessity for women not to confine themselves to being full-time mothers, provided they have the option. She asserts the importance of their continued participation in the world outside home.
In 2001, Yvonne and her partner relocated to London. Although she had secured admission at the School of Visual Arts in the USA, they decided not to go as her partner would not have been able to accompany her. Consequently, Yvonne continued her studies at the Royal College of Art (RCA). Despite feeling culturally disoriented, she pursued printmaking, challenging the conventional norms.
In a later update via email, Yvonne explains how the UK’s atmosphere following the Young British Artists (YBA) movement felt market-driven, with even professors seeming influenced by this. This led Yvonne to rethink her art-making approach, gradually shifting towards the socially engaged practice she identifies with today, taking inspiration from artists such as Eleanor Antin and Allan Kaprow.
Despite spending 15 years in London with her family, she took a lengthy hiatus from creating art following her Masters. She recalls those times as periods of doubt and frustration, predominantly due to raising her kids and feeling bereft of self-assuredness. She firmly believes in the significance of women returning to work and not being confined to full-time motherhood alone.
In 2005, she found herself a part of the visual artist, Tacita Dean’s team. She was carrying her child, Malachy, at that time and expressed a keen interest in working with Dean. She reminisces about an instance when Dean turned up at a nunnery that she was filming, expressing uncertainty about the day’s plans. Coming from a non-artistic family, the experience with Dean was a tremendous learning curve for her, assuring her that it was acceptable to have days of uncertainty. Even at 51, she constantly strives to overcome her insecurities and enhance her confidence.
As she resumed her artistic endeavours in 2015, upon returning to Ireland, her work took a significant turn. Partnering with Rhona Byrne on the project Mobile Monuments, she saw three of her sculptures mounted on tricycles, travelling to sites with historical significance to 1916. This venture helped further ignite her creative spirit.
She discovered her passion in public, community-based works. She thrives in new communities and fresh suburbs, drawing inspiration from her childhood memories in Portmarnock, surrounded by fields and construction sites. These experiences have been critical, shaping her unique perspective that’s evident in her constant pursuit of the exciting blend of familiar suburban areas and the unexpected dynamics they contain.
She’s been actively involved in the Unit for Radical Belonging, a community project based in the fresh suburban locale of Tyrrelstown, nurtured by the Fingal County Council. Tyrrelstown, a mosaic of multiculturalism in Ireland, is the backdrop for her cultural community centre, aptly titled the Unit of Radical Belonging. This centre fosters conversations about diverse perspectives on belonging. The space forms the nucleus of the project, functioning as a grounding hub, inviting people to engage in discourse. The necessity for this was magnified by the lack of social spaces within Tyrrelstown, such as cafes or churches.
She has crossed paths with many interesting individuals. There was a schoolteacher who spoke of the land’s sacredness owing to its vicinity to Newgrange, spending evenings in fields gazing at stars. An asylum seeker who astonishingly was also a naval reserve member, made her remark, “You’re in the film!” These interactions have certain journalistic elements but aren’t typical reports. Emphasising an artist’s unique touch, she comments jestingly on the atypical aspects saying, “Bad journalism”.
She revives memories of the Central Field project, orchestrated with Rhona Byrne’s help in Adamstown. The project was an integration of earthworks, workshops, performances, including collaborations with local schools, community groups and residents, inspired by the local environment. She fondly recalls shuttling through boardrooms, community spaces and building sites, engaging with everyone from kids to builders. She recounts an anecdote about doing performance work with construction crew just as eager to participate. “With a bemused laugh, she says, “Just two middle-aged white women in an effing field in Adamstown.”
“What’s left us, Then” takes a step off the beaten path and reveals a unique path, interrogating the bizarre and concrete artefacts strewn around Ireland, such as deserted hotels, neglected pieces of art, old-fashioned sheds, construction sites, and quarries. The initiative began with a collection of digital images and videos she had captured during her visit to the forsaken building sites in Greece. Despite all the images getting corrupted, there was a single picture still intact that she used as the starting point of her film. She amusingly added “It was truly Herzogian. Embracing the flaws and wrongness and working with it.”
One exemplar structure that is featured in the film is Lough Key’s brutalist Moylurg Tower, erected on the old Rockingham House site in the forest park by Jim Fehily. The construction appears to be an anomaly sitting blatantly in the scenery – a concept which piqued her curiosity. She called this phenomenon ‘unbelonging’, a feeling of not fitting in, much like she did in London where she felt a longing for her homeland and its landscapes. She ultimately highlighted this sense of incongruous existence, akin to the building, in her film.
Recalling another incident in the film, during the exploration of some forsaken train carriages, McGuinness and Kelly encountered a seasoned concrete businessman, Jackie Whelan, who shared his intriguing tale. He established a quarry, anticipating the establishment of Moneypoint power station, aware that transporting concrete from the north would burn a hole in his pocket. McGuinness expressed, “That’s the modern Ireland in essence, the real Haughey stuff”. The former taoiseach was a significant figure for her family as she recalled. The influence of Fintan O’Toole’s book “We Don’t Know Ourselves” on her and Cill was profound.
McGuinness remarks on O’Toole’s view of Irish people as “renters in their own homeland”, influenced by a history of being colonised, gaining independence and then observing figures like Haughey who assume the role of a land-owning elite. This reverie was frequent when she and Michael Kelly toured around Ireland. The question remained, “do we still behave like occupiers, plundering without consideration?” The topic of mining for lithium also arose, suggesting that the modest size of the country wasn’t sufficient to support such activities.
The cinematic production’s intent is consciously vague, leaving the audience room for interpretation. Kelly’s distress over the environmental consequences of extensive mining and construction is shared by McGuinness, but she also finds fascination in this human endeavour and initiative. This is mirrored in the documentation of her family home being built in Kerry, adopting an ancient Irish custom of incorporating a horse’s skull into the floor for a hollow sonic effect associated with dancing.
McGuinness recognises the importance of these scenes, aware of her own contribution of pouring concrete into Ireland’s rural landscapes. The movie signs off at a quarry, a place they meditated on for two days, overwhelmed by its immense scale serving as a humbling reminder of our individual insignificance.
Throughout the conversation, collaboration emerges as a prominent topic, with McGuinness often citing other artists like Kelly, Byrne, her editor John Murphy or musician Nina Hynes. However, she chuckles at the suggestion of collaborating with Cillian, owing to their different working styles. McGuinness considers herself more haphazard, essentialising a process of “dump, then refine and refine”.
She acknowledges that her art sphere differs vastly from that of her spouse’s. Unlike him, who’s usually involved in high-profile films enjoyed by a sea of viewers, she creates community-centric artful experiences, ultimately transient in nature, tailored for modest groups in localities.
Transitioning from these grassroots art endeavours to glittering events, such as the Academy Awards, is peculiar. The Oscars, she views, is all pomp and play – a grand spectacle. Her husband, Cillian, entirely justified the accolades he received, given his diligent efforts. Nonetheless, she admits to struggling with the pageantry of it all, finding it challenging to adopt a façade. She confesses to being more comfortable instructing a class of young kids in an open field or deliberating on electrical issues with an electrician rather than basking in the glitz of the red carpet.
She and Cillian often converse about their work, right? Not quite. With their busy schedules, their discussions usually circle mundane chores. Their interactions are more about fortifying each other, fostering the space to trust and follow their instincts. They occasionally share their work, each appreciating the other’s creations.
Her preferred art style is fluid and unanticipated. Being dyslexic, her approach is non-linear, scattering in all directions. Her personal definition of art? It’s vital, gnarled, hard to make sense of, much like the world itself.
She thrives in the mystery that art brings. For her, understanding every facet of art isn’t a necessity. She confesses that this uncertainty exhilarates her. Overthinking her process would cripple her. Instead, she prefers to venture into the unknown, figuring things out along the winding journey.
Yvonne McGuinness’s ‘What’s Left Us Then’ is set for display as part of the Galway International Arts Festival at the Festival Printworks Gallery from 15th-28th July. Photographs snapped by Rich Gilligan. The cover image includes shoes designed by Phoebe Philo with trousers by Better Us and Emer Roberts’ necklace.