Victoria Children’s Hospital entrancesign,1998) and Dublin (his TeethingTroubles in an Energy EfficientRestaurant, Crow Street ESB sub-sta-tion gates, Temple Bar, 1995), recallsthe industrial nature of a commissionaimed to commemorate the history ofgas in Ireland and ‘those thousands ofworkers and customers who havebeen part of the Dublin gas story’.

1

Bord Gáis not only wanted to markthe completion of its gas mainsrenewals programme, but to provide avisual record of ‘the former presenceof their works in what is now Dublin’sdocklands’, to mark the ‘almost totaldisappearance of the gas industry that

used to occupy most of the land.’Kindness believes his proposal wassuccessful because it avoids nostalgiaand history lessons. Instead, it consid-ers the industry as a ‘composite por-trait of a 20th- century pre-digitalsociety built from observations, anec-dotes and personal memories’2 aswidespread gas distribution heraldedmodernization and the end of theIreland of De Valera (represented bytraditional ingredients and anthropo-morphic gas-cooked and simultane-ously gas-lit dishes). Like his otherpublic, site-specific works, such as the

now iconic 10-metre-long, blue andwhite tile-clad Big Fish (1999)installed beside Belfast’s revived riverLagan, ‘Gaswork’ offers a wealth ofunexpected visual puns and surprisingconflations. Always interested inapplying age-old technical processes to

A U T U M N 2 0 1 2

There is a new arrival onDublin’s Sir John Rogerson’sQuay. Gaswork (Figs 1&2)’,

an unexpectedly human-scale installa-tion commissioned by Bord GáisNetworks from the Belfast-born,London-based artist John Kindnesswas officially ‘unveiled’ on a strip ofcobbles beside the Liffey, once themain artery of the city. Measuring 6 x4 metres and 2.5 metres, its ellipticaldrum form evokes the mighty, now-obsolete gasometers which once bor-ded its site. These provided Dublinerswith gas from coal before the adventof North Sea gas and the transforma-tion of an extensive hard-workingcommunity into leisure-bent, specula-tive property development. Its colour-ful vitreous enamel surface fired onsteel, well-known in other forms toadmirers of Kindness’ many publicand private artworks in Belfast (Royal

IRISH ARTS REVIEW | AUTUMN 201258 AUTUMN 2012 | IRISH ARTS

his witty, idiosyncratic adaptations ofpopular culture, Kindness has enjoyedapplying the skills of Trico, one of thefew companies still using vitreousenamelling, to his graphically painteddouble frieze illustrating the manufac-ture (base) and usage (top) of gas.

He is attracted by friezes as narrativeprecursors of the comic strip, long val-ued as wordless transmitters of visualimagery, as in his Belfast Frescoes(1994, Ulster Museum) which recordhis childhood in a series of twentybeguilingly observed frames, impecca-bly painted in lime fresco onto smallpieces of slate. That mid 20th-centuryvanished world he grew up in reap-pears in the upper frieze. Here, threechildren poke a gas meter to releasecoins, flanked by the hen and chicksand sow and bonhams that used tograce the pennies they needed to buythe nostalgic array of sweets abovethem. More images of the beguilingold Irish animal coinage appear on thegasman’s van beside their friend’sfather and his shaggy dog, poisedbefore a pint with meter money he’dsubstituted with lino-cut discs, andbeside mother with her bizarre aprondepicting her diet of cabbages andbacon and the foetus in her womb.

She proceeds towards her gleaminggas cooker with a beheaded De Valeramasquerading as a ham on a plate,followed by two men bearing a cab-bage and a wild hare for the pot. Thejoys of gas-heated hot water are por-trayed by a naked towelled and tur-banned woman, while U2’s AdamClayton languidly sponges an arm,poised like his namesake inMichelangelo’s Sistine Chapel fresco –but here in an old bathtub from whichsteam rises in the shape of Ireland andthe rest of Europe.

The morphing borders which oftenadorn Kindness’ paintings are heregas flames running uniformly along aterracotta-coloured rim (like Greekpottery decoration) above the indigoblue backgrounds of each frieze. Tothese colours, taken directly from thetriple-layered processional friezes ofthe 2600 BC double-sided Sumerian‘Standard of Ur’ (British Museum),Kindness has added a flat palette ofcream, flesh-pink, black, pale blueand grey. The customs, superstitionsand dangers associated with coal, itstransport and labour illustrated in thelower frieze are drawn from theaccounts of the many people who

spent their lives working in the indus-try. We see coal bags made of nakedminers’ backs hunched on a horse-pulled cart; coal-black faces upturnedin loaded trucks or coal-face piles; acoal steamship risking war-timeGerman shells, children with whoop-ing cough being held over a tar pit bytheir parents to cure them; injuredmen clocking in, then taking refuge to‘work’ in the Store Room to avoidlosing pay. Overalled scientists bearcorroded, menacing-looking old cast-iron pipes for analysis, while a fellowoffice-worker charts their replacementstrategy. Behind them men undertakethe perilous, back-breaking work ofdrilling and digging out hazardous gasfiltration beds with picks and shovels.

The more you look, the more yousee. Once again, with striking imageryand perfectly matched technique, JohnKindness has synthesized ancient andmodern, local history and memory, ina readily accessible yet highly originalrecord of a changed world.

Nicola Gordon Bowe is Associate Fellow, Faculty of VisualCulture, NCAD and Visiting Professor, School of Art &Design, University of Ulster.

1 Bord Gáis Networks press release, 2012.2 Artist’s statement, May 2012.

1&2 JOHNKINDNESS b. 1951GASWORK 2012Sir JohnRogerson's Quay,Dublin

A striking new installation by John Kindness on Dublin’s Sir JohnRogerson's Quay, borrows from the ancients to recall the history of gas inIreland, writes Nicola Gordon Bowe

Gaswork

HE IS ATTRACTED BY FRIEZES AS NARRATIVEPRECURSORS OF THE COMIC STRIP, LONGVALUED AS WORDLESS TRANSMITTERS OFVISUAL IMAGERY