An Post C Both Sides - Curatorial Statement
The arrival of a postcard in the home is a proclamation of inclusion. The postcard - from Machu Pichu, Bray, Castlegregory or Sydney - still carries the ability to transport the reader to the place of origin, to be a companion in adventure, and to feel touched from afar. The unspoken postcard protocol meant no-one to whom the card was not addressed read the writing but could admire the photograph – this is universally accepted as good manners – but how many of us have surreptitiously or with permission read the message, knowing that the writer understood the possibility of the wide audience from the start? As Irish Artist Margaret Corcoran puts it, receiving a postcard from China is like being actually in China; when that missive arrived from a journey through many hands from that far flung often exotic place, pored over by the entire family and unlikely to survive the day without marks from daily cut and thrust, the impression is as much of luggage labels as of stamps. It is hard to attach the same rush of curiosity over the email or the text today, so aligned are they to the commonplace and basic equipment of life.
From a box in an old book shop in Paris, I picked up a post card from Sevres dating 27 May 1910, with the simple words ‘A dimanche matin, voulez vous? Marthes’ (Does Sunday suit? Marthes) in elegant longhand on the reverse of a postcard of sepia town house, with 15th century townhall frontage, conjuring up the bicycling lady hitching up her skirt going to tea or otherwise – Marthes knew her postcard would strike home with time for a reply. This reassures us that the appointment did not disappear into the ether. We know that to get a postcard from someone means they really were thinking of us, that they mean the message to be for us and are proclaiming this, that it is about a continuing story? I keep the postcard hooked into a mirror so I can see the back and the front.
 
In the exhibition An Post C Both Sides, a postcard of a grandfather and his grandchild beams out at the viewer, with the writing on the reverse saying how good he felt that his grandchild would not have to leave this island for work like he had to; another shows a child’s view of Croke Park - a line drawing showing matchstickpeople scaling the heights of the new stadium. In another, Paddy the Donkey as the beloved pet is pictured; in yet another, the bright lights of the oncoming traffic jam are dotted for us to see. This exhibition mingles poignancy, affection and aspiration and reality.
The huge response to the invitation from An Post indicates the project caught the public imagination – sending a message, being heard was very welcome. In the response, there was a mixture of imagination and pragmatism, empirical description and irony, the here-and-now and nostalgia. Selection for this exhibition from a vast number might seem doomed – every editor or judge feels the responsibility around excluding. However in this exhibition, amazingly the selection almost rose out by itself, with gracious stepping back of work that fell outside the display parameters. Although hard to see so much that couldn’t be included, finding 250 highly expressive postcards was gratifying and seeing the story emerge very exciting.
The year 2008 during which all the postcards were created and despatched was a year where Ireland turned its face towards a potentially threatening future and glanced rather wistfully at a recent past. Ireland according to those who sent postcards from abroad is a practical place concerned with the local, with the business of living, with notions of work and play grounded in traditions established over decades, not drawn from the Celtic Tiger boom but based on personal relations, the care of elderly, the love for his pet of a disabled child, the painstaking work by prisoners in the tradition of carrying messages to the outside. The postcard life is made up of all this, the future is still the complex weaving of the local team with the yearned for holiday, the friends in the school yard and the joy in wit – the postcard An Toast is a surely a modern classic. Every now and then ‘a dam burst’, to evoke Christopher Nolan, of formal artistic talent – all this in an exhibition which combines design and elegance with spontaneity and talent, telling a story of time and people.
Freedom of expression in children’s drawing worlds shows strong figurative representations of people, animals, houses and sport, telling the story efficiently and faithfully, grounded and earthed stories with strong ties to family and local social organisation that dominate their worlds – schools, shops, siblings – very little celebrity and fantasy. For contributions from older people, their talent in Art and their invitation is a channel for humour and individual stories.
The display of these postcards presented a particular challenge: how to see both sides, a global challenge. The Janus double headed figure seeing behind and in front is something the postcard draws on in itself – writing on both sides, perhaps not reflecting the same thing on either side, it can be one object with 2 faces. Display here presented the challenge of how to do 2 things at the same time. Designer Fiona Coffey examined the context from the first. The Post Office pinpoints the destination of the postcard or letter with speed and efficiency, without needing to know the content of the communication. Sorting Office Pigeonholes leap out as a means of efficient classification without any real or personal knowledge of the people. In the early days, the manual system meant local knowledge was important for the postman’s task. The Exhibition An Post C Both Sides takes these pigeon holes, now being replaced by machines, to display the postcards. Thus a slice of An Post heritage is on display. The pigeonhole frames each postcard, admitting them into the tradition of exhibition, giving them a formality and the vocabulary of an artistic message. Film from sorting offices and the process of making the display show the transformation along with the understanding of the need for a sorting system for the 21st century. Appreciation of heritage goes hand in hand with recycling central to this project.
The exhibition tour venues include Dublin Civic Offices, Linenhall Castlebar, Siamsa Tire Kerry, Galway Museum and Mullingar Arts Centre – all buildings and places with a spirit of service to people and their stories, of today, yesterday and looking forward. Touring the country reflects the wide geographical reach of the postcards to the project, the range of the postal service and of Art as a means of expression. In the workshops run by Artists Edel Flynn O Reilly and Teresa Doyle, from whom the original project idea came, and Ursula Meehan, the guidance of shy or reluctant participants or the direction of the enthusiastic is a skill of Artists engaged in this littoral practice. What they produce lies in the gap between Art and Social Function. Within the workshops, in cultural institutions, in prisons, in schools and public places, from the general public, the postcards are messages in artistic vocabulary, precious for their sincerity and their commitment. They lie between Art and society quite happily, and it is hoped their message will be widely read.
Helen Carey
Curator of An Post C Both Sides Exhibition
March 2009
|
