Irish Arts Review

The Everyday GazeAuthor(s): Stephanie McBrideSource: Irish Arts Review (2002-), Vol. 26, No. 4 (Winter, 2009/2010), pp. 62-63Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40421377 .

Accessed: 16/06/2014 22:02

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Irish Arts Review is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Irish Arts Review(2002-).

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.174 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 22:02:02 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

WINTER 2009

EXHIBITION

gHmgrgmg

Nickerson's fine portraiture first

Jackie

emerged in Farm, her series on agricul- tural labourers and landscapes in Africa,

and was followed by her study of religious communities in Faith.

In her latest body of work, 'Ten Miles Round,' she re-enacts the delicate observa- tions of that portrait work, casting her eye on her own locality in Co Louth and point- ing her camera on the people and landscape to rework the overlooked and common-

place. The personal and local are, in Nickerson's gallery, linked - even if this link is undercut by the dogged familiarity of the

everyday, which Maurice Blanchot notes 'one has always looked past... the everyday is what we never see for a first time, but

only see again.' Nickerson's process of cre- ative documenting renews our vision of the well-worn and habitual.

Although it may not be quite the case

that, in John Montague's terms, 'the land-

scape is a manuscript we have lost the skill to read,' nonetheless, economic and other forces have utterly transformed and rewrit- ten the natural contours of the land in many areas, making way for golf courses, housing estates, car-parks and interpretative centres,

uprooting and redefining our links with our rural surroundings. This is why Nickerson's views of her local agricultural environment, those remaining terrains not

yet swept away in the contemporary clear- ances, have a quiet 'shock of the old'. Her

landscapes, though empty of people, carry the small traces of the individuals who walked and worked the land.

Trees in wintry profile, withered vegeta- tion and waterlogged furrows of Hunterstown

(Fig 5), the title itself tugs at older histories and traditions that welded legend, narrative and place.

Two Gates (Fig 3), are reached through a

mucky patchwork of mechanically-made tracks, upturning the earth, wind-blown clouds covering a landscape which denies the picturesque. Unpromising subjects, per- haps, but her camera steadies our gaze onto the dankness of flooded fields, clabber, ruts and sheughs in these rural images. Mother and Child (Fig 2), invoking a long iconic legacy of

62 IRISH ARTS REVIEW I WINTER 2009

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.174 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 22:02:02 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

1 JACKIE NICKERSON b.1960 PUBLICAN 2009

2 MOTHER AND CHILD 2009

art history, is here refracted through her sig- nature engagement with her subjects -y a neutral background presenting a young mother, looking off lens, eyes bright, unflinching, a smile just beneath the sur- face, an ease in her casual but sure grasp of her child. In her open-necked shirt, denim

jeans and hair caught back, there is a sense

NICKERSON'S LANDSCAPES, THOUGH EMPTY OF PEOPLE, CARRY THE SMALL TRACES OF THE INDIVIDUALS WHO WALKED AND WORKED THE LAND

of assurance in the woman's routine role as

protector and nurturer. Her child is wide-

eyed and unaware of the formality of the situation, a bootee lace undone, the denim and colourful clothing echoing the mother's dress, faint shadows echoing in the background, a 'mother and child' por- trait for the local here and now.

A neighbouring portrait, Publican (Fig 1), shows its subject seated, hands clasped in a self-conscious gesture and eyes downward

cast - shy, reticent and thoughtful, not the conventional subject of formal photogra- phy. A pen wedged behind his right ear recalls memories of older, traditional ritu- alistic stances from other times and places - the butcher, baker or ironmonger - and here, again, a pale background casts the

publican in a less familiar mode, denuded

of stereotypical trappings, revealed in his own quiet moment.

Nicker son s interiors also carry a narrative

charge (Fig 4). In the glut of television makeovers and property porn, her photo- graphs, by contrast, rely on subdued natural

lighting, with a stillness that displays a calm disorder in the settings. These are real rooms, where the chairs and table are not

staged by stylists for the camera, nor cush- ions vigorously plumped for the shoot.

Instead she presents a glimpse into a habi- tat, a domestic space, to invite us into a world seemingly known, yet with its own silent hauntings - who sat here to table and

why? Who left a magazine on it? What of the whys and wherefores of the other clut- ter discarded on the floor? A sense of a life's movement is curiously caught in this image of the recently vacated furniture.

Her visual register has a sharp focus and direct address which respects and casts into relief her chosen subjects - her field- work yields new ways of seeing and re-

interpreting. The portraits demonstrate the

power of her restrained simplicity while her landscapes wallow in the mire and

unruly hedgerows, and all resonate with the fundamental concerns of where we live and how we appear to others and, ulti-

mately, to ourselves. ■ Jackie Nickerson 'Ten Miles Round' Gallery of Photography, Dublin 26 November - 24 January 2010.

All images ©The Artist

Stephanie McBride is the author of Ireland into Film: Felicia's Journey (2007)

3 TWO GATES 2009

4 SITTING ROOM 2009

5 HUNTERSTOWN 2009

WINTER 2009 I IRISH ARTS REVIEW 63

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.174 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 22:02:02 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions