'I tend to exist on a wing and a prayer'
Artist Sean Lynch tells John Rainsford about his life and work ahead of his participation in the Surplus Value exhibition at Occupy Space
Artist Sean Lynch's arrival at Shannon Airport this week suitably reflects his own fascination with winged flight. Indeed, it formed the basis of his 2008 video 'Peregrine Falcons Visit Moyross' - a work which typically combined artistic beauty with raw social reality.
He had been thinking for many years about attaching a miniature camera to a bird's body and recording its 'free-flights'. When finally he came to Moyross the project just seemed to come together naturally.
Ecologist David Attenborough's own production company in Bristol came on board and were the only experts back then who knew how to achieve the effects that he wanted.
It was they who suggested using Peregrine Falcons-the fastest birds on the planet. Three birds and their handlers came over from England to do the filming on the estate with Sean speaking with Attenborough several times about the technicalities involved.
The project, however, was not just about making a video. Sean wanted to highlight the fact that Moyross had a heart and a soul.
"My wife is from Limerick and I have great difficulty with the way the media dealt with Moyross in 2008. The archetypal view generated is of a troubled place, with images of boarded-up doorways of derelict houses reproduced frequently in local and national newspapers, portraying and definitively identifying the area as 'down and out'.
"This journalistic impulse created a haze of oversimplification, damaging any understanding of the community and physical infrastructure of the area to the casual outsider. With this issue in mind, an attempt was made to generate a different kind of visuality of Moyross."
First he introduced the birds informally to residents of the area. There were falconry classes and children would talk of seeing them flying here and there. Everyone on the estate subsequently got a copy of the DVD.
"Over three days we edited three hours of film, meeting residents from all the different parks. I had a long time interest in the philosophy of animal behaviour. I noted with interest that Peregrines were used to keep Seagulls away from landfill sites. The theme of birds as guardians of human detritus really interested me. The BBC had huge experience of working with eagles in Scotland and in getting them to do what you wanted on film.
"One person subsequently claimed that they got motion sickness looking at it. So I suppose you could say that it achieved the dramatic effects that we had hoped for."
Sean Lynch was born in Kerry in 1978. He studied firstly at the School of Art (1997-2001) in Limerick and then art history at the University of Limerick before travelling to Stadelschule in Frankfurt. In 2008 he was the artist-in-residence at the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
He has completed solo exhibitions at Heaven's Full, London (2008), Galway Arts Centre (2007), Limerick City Gallery of Art (2007), and has featured in recent group exhibitions at the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork and Office Baroque, Antwerp. He was awarded the Gallery of Photography Artist Award for 2008 and the 2009 Banff Residency by the Arts Council.
His work focuses on the strange parallels between historical and modern events juxtaposing current social problems with often unpleasant historical antecedents. It is no accident that he returns to exhibit a work based on the local economy in Limerick - a city where he spent many of his formative years.
After graduation he worked from a base in the grounds of St. Joseph's Hospital called 'Contact Studios' where he was a studio co-ordinator. Initially sculpture was his main discipline. The project was a unique exchange between the health board and artists in Limerick city. The latter received work space in exchange for running community art classes with patients.
Sean began his career in sculpture - a skill which he continues to practice - but his focus now entres on photography and film. Making objects is a different process from media work, he notes.
Videos and film have become increasingly popular since the 1960s paralleling the rise of multimedia technologies. For Sean, however, art is essentially about the generation of ideas.
"I spend a lot of my time doing research and finding creative ideas, for example, using Ireland in the 1960s. It is the usefulness of ideas that is important not creating beautiful art objects as such.
"It takes a lot of patience to find ideas but one thing leads to another. An artist needs to inform themselves and to develop a trail of interest increasing their repertoire of information.
"I tend to exist on a wing and a prayer today but that is my choice. I support myself by teaching and get some grants for studio time. Ireland has a very good system of financing the arts compared to other countries.
"The Arts Council have a good organisational structure. They provide what artists need, not just the galleries. Today the recession has created a lot of empty space around the city centre and the city council is making some of this available for artists to work in.
"It is my decision how I live my life. I could be teaching full time, but I like to travel and attend exhibitions and display my work. I do not need a studio at the moment but I rent a workspace to store exhibits. That is a conscious decision by me."
Recently he attended exhibitions in Berlin and Madrid which displayed sculptures he made in Ireland. He is back in Limerick to renew acquaintances with old friends as much as to attend an exhibition in the 'Occupy Space' Centre on Thomas Street from May 7.
Five artists will be exhibited for one month on the subject of 'Surplus Value' - that is the value added by the labour of workers alone. Sean will be displaying a film made about Ranks mills once located on the Dock Road in Limerick. Sentenced to demolition the buildings seemed to bounce back up no matter how much explosive was used to destroy them.
The film could well be a metaphor for the struggle of Irish workers generally. Between 1858 and 1860 journeyman bakers organised meetings throughout Ireland to agitate for better working conditions and against working at night and on Sundays.
They successively established exclusive day labour in many bakeries throughout Ireland. Indeed, Karl Marx, in his work Das Kapital, quoted the Report of the Committee for Baking in Ireland for 1861.
"My father was an entrepreneur and I suppose I view art as being largely self employed. You have to appreciate its shape and form, but art is not all about beauty. The world has to be interpreted as it is. It cannot always be beautiful."
Sean's work in Surplys Value can be seen at Occupy Space from May 6 until June 7, from 1 - 6pm, Wednesday to Saturday
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