John Kelly “The Garden Shed” (2011) at the Göteborg International Art Biennale
The Göteborg International Art Biennale gathers inspiration from John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Pandemonium is the realm Lucifer creates for himself and his fellow fallen angels when he is cast out from heaven, a realm where chaos rules and ideas and actions differ from those in heaven. The subtitle is Art in a time of creativity fever and with that, the biennale wishes to make comment on the creativity which surrounds us in today's society, and furthermore, make room for an alternative, chaotic, different artistic creativity.
Whether they have succeeded or not with this ambitious theme, there is one artwork which has gotten my attention, and the artist behind it is John Kelly, originally from Australia, currently living in Ireland.
The Garden Shed is a huge model of Tate Modern, the museum for contemporary art located in London, UK.
The scale, the rusty exterior and the associations to my own visits to the Tate caught my interest. But there's more to it, you are able to walk inside this structure.
Inside, you are met by sound, light and sculptural models. One is room number six on level three in Tate Modern, exact down to the floorboards. And when you stand beside it, marvelling at the detail, you notice a letter on display on one of the walls; a letter sent from N. M Cummins to Duke Wellington in 1846, where An Gorta Mor, the Great Famine is described. The suffering the Irish people had to endure is juxtaposed to Henry Tate, who at the same time in England made his fortune from selling fruit and vegetables.
In total, there are five pieces inside this amazing Garden Shed, among them a fantasy pavilion for Ireland to place at the Venice Biennale, the Pandemonium Poems, made from the exact words used in N.M Cummins letter and John Kelly's mum and dad at Tate Modern.
If there is one word to describe Kelly's art, I would think multilayered is quite accurate. There is so much to discover, so many stories, and so much thought behind his work. It's fascinating, and very inspiring.
You can find out more at:
http://www.johnkellyartist.com/index.php?pageID=5&PHPSESSID=9844b769ecf8dabf0a91946cd1454343
/J
