Michael Moynihan: Decay and decline is the landscape in Cork and we need to change that

Once you notice one or two zones, a couple of tumbledown stretches, you see them everywhere. It seems like every street has its mandatory pair of rotten teeth, and it’s depressing.

But then someone rings or you remember why you came into town and you’re off again. Until the next time.

All of this is by way of preface to what happened a couple of days ago when my eye was caught by an exhibition opening in the Lavit Gallery over on Wandesford Quay.

'There Is No Place Like Home, In Ireland' was described thus by the gallery itself, starting with the artist herself: “Andrea Newman is a visual artist and recent graduate, working and living in Cork City. In her recent work, she utilises lost Irish language to explore Ireland’s current housing crisis. She is specifically interested in documenting socioeconomic issues and does so through the combined mediums of photography, print, installation, and bookmaking. In her degree show the artist embarked on a case study featuring derelict council houses on the north side of Cork City and the irony and classism this represents amidst a housing crisis.”

Provocative posters

The exhibition is eye-catching — provocative posters juxtaposed with photographs of boarded-up buildings — so I decided to ask the artist herself about it.

“I’m a council tenant in Mayfield myself,” Andrea told me.

“From walking around I noticed these houses always seemed to be boarded up with these aggressive metal boards. It’s hard not to notice them.

“There was one house in particular, not too far from the Super Valu, which was derelict for at least five years, I’d say. I ended up taking photographs of it over three years — that’s what really stood out for me, and it made me angry. I wanted to look into this even more because I couldn’t believe it could be derelict for so long.

“Then I started walking around and noting how many derelict houses there were in the area. There’s a walk that I do up to do my shopping in Dunnes, and it takes about half an hour. While taking that walk I noticed about 13 houses, which I thought was a crazy number of derelict houses to see on a half-hour’s walk — and very concentrated in that part of Mayfield as well.

Seeing these derelict houses everywhere I went, I just started to read the council statistics and so on, and that was my starting point.

From there she set to work, focusing on the project in the course of her final year in college (last year she graduated from MTU Crawford College of Art and Design with a first-class honors degree in Fine Art) and it took about a year altogether: “Half a year of research and half a year of making, roughly. I was really lucky that the Lavit Gallery chose me as their student of the year, which was great — that’s how they came into the picture.”

It’s interesting to me that artists in Cork are not just cognisant of the horrific level of dereliction within the city; they’re building entire exhibitions around the phenomenon. The grim conclusion is that this decay and decline has now reached a level where it’s not just part of the landscape. It’s the very landscape.

Artistic engagement with such issues offers another twist, of course. Andrea Newman said social engagement was very much part of her motivation.

“Definitely. I wanted people to see this. My neighbours in Mayfield and I see this all the time and we want other people to see it. We know what the city council is like, and what it’s like to deal with them as tenants, and there’s a large group of people who don’t know about that.

“I want people to see the work, and it’s been noticeable that the imagery of the metal boards has been new to a lot of people, that it’s shocking to them. I’ve had people say, ‘I can’t believe this is going on’, ‘I didn’t know about that because I’ve never seen those boards before’.

“And my visceral reaction is, ‘God, I see this all the time.’ It makes me happy now that there are people who are seeing this and reading the posters to learn what the city council is up to, or not up to.” 

 There’s a crucial point here: as Newman points out, there are parts of the city where these boarded-up houses are a rarity. Making people aware of these differences in the city is valuable, then, in raising consciousness of different realities in the city.

“I agree, as an individual you can wonder why people aren’t looking at this, or noticing it, but I try to be more positive when it comes to the artwork.

To be fair, it’s not people’s fault if they don't know about this either, and when they do see it they’re interested in what’s going on.

“What’s happening with this, I hope, is that it’s starting a conversation about this subject, and about the work itself as well. I’d hope that when it comes to my next exhibition people would go into that knowing what I do, having the context of what I’ve done with this exhibition.

“I’ve also gotten involved with CATU (the Community Action Tenants’ Union) recently and we’ve launched a campaign in Mayfield to get more people to join the organisation.” The art runs in parallel with that activism, she added.

“To keep making art — that’s the dream. I have another show coming up in August in Studio 12, so I’m lucky to have that deadline in mind to work towards. The aim is to keep making the work, so we’ll see.” 

It doesn’t reflect well on the city that the level of dereliction is so marked that it can be the engine of an award-winning art exhibition. That’s not good news no matter how you spin it.

The good news is that there are people who recognise that level of dereliction and are working to get others to recognise it, and doing so in fresh and imaginative ways. And if those people are in Cork then there are grounds for optimism.

• There Is No Place Like Home, In Ireland by Andrea Newman Student of the Year Exhibition sponsored by Roberts Nathan Accountants, Cork, runs until February 17 at the Lavit Gallery, Wandesford Quay, Cork