GERARD BYRNE & MARK ORANGE: PS1
Catalyst Arts, Belfast

For Irish artists on both sides of the border, the annually awarded PS1 scholarship is one of the most prestigious accolades. The two arts councils fund one artist each, providing recipients with a stipend, living quarters and a studio in New York for a year. With so many frills, one might be forgiven for expecting a show of more immediately apparent substance, but both Byrne and Orange have opted to display their spoils of 1998 in a particularly honed fashion. The four large photoworks by Byrne are hardly startling, but interesting nevertheless. He photographs dormant spaces—offices between working hours—or semi-constructed interiors; unsettling urban Marie Celestes that somehow seem timely. Shipping his works back from America must have been a doddle for Orange, whose work in the lower gallery consists of a slick video and a small framed screenprint of a newspaper cutting. The latter laments the "critical roasting" of an adaptation of Juno and the Paycock, but concedes that what the production did to O'Casey's text was "...enough to drive anyone to drink". The Morning After, a short—but sweet—16mm film by Orange, transferred to video, depicts an actor bumbling about New York city to the accompaniment of a heavenly soundtrack. Despite its modest duration, the jape has many of the trappings of a grand production. Unusually—for video installation—it is worth watching two or three times.

Gavin Weston


The Sunday Times, 21 March, 1999

The Sunday Times, March 21, 1999


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