Betty Gannon
http://fionarobinsonwritings.wordpress.com/
I came across an exhibition of Betty Gannon's drawings by chance in Westport during my Fellowship at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Co. Mayo. I was struck by the power and complexity of these large works and arranged to go and visit her in her studio.
Ballinglen Arts Foundation Fellowship Blog
http://blankspacebooks.wordpress.com/
Fiona Robinson
Betty Gannon’s large powerful Structure drawings dominate any space in which they
are hung. Graphite powder, sticks, pencils, even blocks of this shiny carbon mineral
are manipulated on square or generous rectangles of hot press paper. The work is
process based, rubbed, scratched, manipulated. Powerful physical marks made using
the whole strength of her arm are contained within a series of grids, which gives an
element of control. She works very quickly and the energy that this speed generates
suggests the interior energy contained within the buildings she draws. Her working
method is rhythmic and repetitive, the size of the work necessitating long periods
inside a meditative space in which, she says, she gets lost and which she finds is “a
nice place to be”.
She is interested in architecture and urban spaces often homing in on derelict and
abandoned buildings as well as the many construction and demolition sites that still
litter the Irish countryside following the collapse of the boom years of the Celtic
Tiger. “In the last four or five years, everyday there has been a new house on the
landscape. There are half-built housing estates on the edges of towns. They call these
ghost towns.” In 2008 she had an opportunity to work with two other artists inside
Bellacorick peat-fired power station in north Mayo before it was decommissioned. In
March 2010 together with photographer Michael Gannon and Ian Wieczorek her large
drawings were part of an exhibition, 'Bellacorick-impressions of a place', at the North
Mayo Arts Centre, Aras Inis Gluaire.
Gannon has a huge vocabulary of marks and tones at her disposal from the darkest,
so deep there is a waxiness to the texture, to the palest of gently rubbed graphite. A
chaos controlled by the order of geometry; softness versus hard and deep unrelieved
black opposed to ever lightening tones of grey. She is interested in change and returns
again and again to the same place, recording the changes photographically. This
element of repletion occurs in the physical making of the work too! Although it
is essentially all about mark-making and a sense of enclosure. House shapes with
energetic marks inside them, not desperate to get out, I don’t think, but certainly not
going over the edges of the shape, reveal an element of autobiography in the sense
that they are directly sourced from her surroundings and her situation. Choosing to
work at home in order to be there for her family as her children grow, her work has
often centred on the location of her daily life. In her house drawings, the structure
of the external shape contains and supports the skeleton of the drawing. Circling
lines weave and curve around the rectangles hinting at other interpretations: pipes
and wires carrying water and electricity within the fabric of a building; lifeblood
moving around the body in veins and arteries; family life flowing through the spaces
of a home. Far from restricting her as an artist, her daily routine has provided rich
sources of inspiration as she looks outwards through doors and windows, the gaps in
walls. She constantly gathers references, which will feed into a new set of drawings,
as diverse as: the footsteps of children running between her garden studio and her
kitchen; the worn sections of the yellow lines on a road; to a discarded red ribbon
in a Renaissance painting of St George and the Dragon. Her perennial concern is to
explore change, to let things move and develop, to retain the sense that everything is
always in a state of flux. However she says, “It is important to contain an element of
control, otherwise it would be chaos”.
On occasions the drawings metamorphose into structures themselves as she bends
and shapes the paper into cylinders, rectangles and boxes with lids. “After I have the
drawings done I need to put them into 3D. They seem to want to come off the page.”
An interesting development arising from this necessity to create a three dimensional
form is that the form itself takes over the structural element of the drawing, leaving
her free to draw in a looser more organic way. This softer approach is evident in
her new series of drawings inspired by broken surfaces. In the ‘Breaking Down’,
drawings, the enclosing rigidity of strong verticals and horizontals has been replaced
by circles and curves; dividing and multiplying like cells; spreading out from the
centre of the paper like a stain. Ink becoming a species of decay where the bruise
moves from the initial source of impact to contaminate the surface of the pristine
page. However, the circles spreading outwards in these recent organic drawings
have unbroken lines. In a volte-face it could be the white of the paper, which is
encroaching on the inked marks so these curving lines still function as a boundary,
protecting the disintegrating miasma within them.
© Fiona Robinson 2010