Dunhill and O'Brien

video still

The Manners of Making and the Useful Bench, Edward Allington, 2005

It was, so they say, very hot that summer in Rome, and there they are: Dunhill and O’Brien, the two of them sitting there beneath two trees, on parched grass with a blue sky behind them. However, they are not simply enjoying the Italian summer they are at work; and sure enough between them like a bolster is a wheelbarrow full of clay. They are sitting there beneath individual mosquito nets, using ropes and pulleys at the end of which are two basalt cobbles which they are, as they put it, using to ‘model with rocks or punish clay (depending on your viewpoint)’ (1). It is an image, which reminds me strongly of the famous scene in Gunter Grass’ The Tin Drum where the boy runs and hides under his mother’s skirt. However, it would seem that visual associations such as this are not intended. Mark Dunhill and Tamiko O’Brien see their collaboration as a practical rather that a metaphorical activity, a means of production, but a means of producing what? Lost sculptures, the making and casting of holes in the ground, the hitting of pieces of clay with stones or the making of sculptures that seemingly can’t be finished. Which is where the useful bench comes in: The Useful Bench 2002 is a mechanism and a work which Dunhill and O’Brien made so that they could both work on the same piece of clay. Again they sit separated by an object in this case a long bench with a pulley system, the aim of which was to allow both artists to work on the same piece of clay for 20 minutes each, but “unfortunately, as each artist was faced with the already modelled form they were compelled to completely alter the work until it was unrecognizable, in this way they could never agree upon where to finish the work”(2) Theirs is a very curious practice, ambiguous and seemingly preoccupied with the etiquette of shared production.

Collaborations, as in artists producing works as dual signatories, are relatively recent phenomena. There is an ancient tradition of artist’s workshops, such the workshop of Phidias or of studios or schools such as the school of Raphael; factories for producing art, that are usually recognized under the name of the master (and master it usually was). In the modern era there is a strong history of groups of artists: the surrealists, the post minimalists and so on. There are couples who are both artists such as Robert and Sonia Delauney, but it is only in the 1970’s that artists took a position of joint authorship, Gilbert and George’s singing sculpture of 1970 is probably one of the earliest. Such collaborations have a limited number of forms; they are filial as in Jane and Louise Wilson or the Starn twins, they are pragmatic, where two artists pool ideas and production such as Fishli and Weiss, or they are couples such as Gilbert and George or Ed and Nancy Kienholz. Most of the better known works by couples such as Christo and Jean Claude are late acknowledgments of a reality that has developed in the actual working practice. Ed and Nancy Kienholz are the precursors to all of this. Ed Kienholz made an announcement at “ The Kienholz Women” exhibition at Galerie Maeght, Zurich in 1981:

My life and my art have been enriched and incredibly fulfilled by Nancy’s presence, and I wish to belatedly acknowledge that fact here.

I further feel I no longer have a man’s right to signature only my name to these efforts which have been produced by both of us…(3)

All the works back to 1972 were then given dual signatures. Dunhill / O’Brien are a couple who with a solid history as individual artists decided in 1998 to work collaboratively. This is not a belated acknowledgment of shared production; it is a clear and categorical decision. What I think this means is that there is a certain wilfulness about their work. A refusal to actually complete the process. The aim would seem to be to find an empirical means of examining the method and the form of the interaction required to work collaboratively above the actual result. Is this a means of letting things be what they are? In a manner similar to Sekine Nobuo’s Phase of Nothingness 1969, Sekine is an artist usually identified with the Mono-Ha (School of Things) group, Phase of Nothingness is simply two tons of oil clay which is placed in the gallery, this work is still being exhibited, visitors have been changing its shape for 39 years. Sekine’s aim would seem to be less the claiming of the material as a sign of his identity, more an act of letting things be what they are. Sekine wrote:

“ The Universe exists in a constant state of being, neither losing nor gaining matter. Therefore, one cannot really create; one can only expose what is there…” (3)

Dunhill and O’Brien have a clear affinity with clay and use its endless malleability, but unlike Sekine the clay is there to act as the material for a sculptural discourse between them, of which we get to see the results. Are they then taking a position similar to Ulrich Ruckriem’s video work Circles 1971(5) which simply consisted of him hammering a circle around himself? This work is the result of the actions Ruckriem has undertaken to complete the work, an almost industrial construct the aim of which was to categorically undermine the idea of aesthetic decision in favour of physical action? This work of Ruckriem’s although seemingly radical relied upon an embedded notion within Western art dating from the Renaissance ‘every painter paints himself’ (6). This gives us the feeling that we are, perhaps, given an insight into the inner being of a single soul. I use this last term purposefully as I believe this to be a particularly Christian notion related to the idea of individual redemption, very different from Buddhist or Taoist thought, which looks toward the loss of individuality. Dunhill and O’Brien’s practice would seem to incorporate aspects of both these Metaphysical ideas. But, perhaps by default as theirs is not only an investigation into collaboration, nor is it just about the negotiations between male and female to achieve agreed results. Tamiko O’ Brien is of mixed Irish/English Japanese birth so this is also about the synthesis of East and West, and their work seems to hover between these polarities of philosophical thought; of allowing things to be what they are and taking possession of it as a means of confirming their identity. The key difference however is the simple fact that there are two of them.

There is a story of twins (Mark Dunhill is a twin), and of the problem of duality. This is a something, that in some way, we all might share. In 1975 Salvator Levi from the University Hospital In Brussels reported that after an examination of 6690 pregnant women he found that 71% of twin gestations resulted in the birth of singletons, in other words any of us might contain within us the evidence of a twin (Foetus Papyraceus), a trace or shadow of a lost foetal sibling, we may have absorbed our own blood brother or sister, (7) and in a manner akin to the double humans split by Zeus, forever seeking their lost other halves, (as mentioned by Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium on love) we share that longing for a lost part of ourselves.
A troubling but true story from Medina-Sidonia on February 29th, 1793, Father Feijoo, a learned Jesuit was faced with a particular problem arising from the stillborn birth of abnormal conjoined twins. The baptism and last rites were administered to the foot of the expected still born singleton. After which the priest left, the mother then sadly delivered a child that had two legs but two separate torsos and hence duplicate internal organs within the thought structure of that religion there would therefore be two souls. The Christian baptism and hence confirmation of life after death are singular ego te bapitzo, only one of the two souls could be saved. The learned Jesuit however reasoned that the wrong formula had been used and with bureaucratic zeal condemned both souls. (8) The key question all collaborations yield is that of authenticity and as I hope I have demonstrated of having a soul, an individual inner self.

When confronted by a work of art made collaboratively we are faced not only with the more superficial questions about authorship but a much deeper fear about our place within the world, our identity and our cultural beliefs. Our attention is divided and the first position we adopt is that of scepticism. This I would like to argue is a good position; it is the first position of secular critical discourse. From this position of doubt we can begin to make an enquiry devoid of presumptions.

Dunhill and O’Brien’s Useful Bench was a tool with which they could explore the possible mechanisms of collaborative practice. It allowed a democratic use of time and labour to be enacted like a couple eating at either end of a long table, sharing the material in the same way as they might share a meal. They have exhibited this work in the form of a projection of them both working at The Useful Bench. In front of which there is a mechanism that moves a small lump representative of the clay that they were working on so that it interrupts the projection and casts a shadow that moves between them. Interestingly the founding fable of the origins of art in the West is based upon a shadow. The story of Butades, a myth of the origins of painting and sculpture, is recounted by Pliny the Elder:

It was through that same earth that modelling portraits from clay was first invented by Butades, a potter of Sicyon, at Corinth. He did this owing to his daughter, who was in love with a young man; and she, when he was going abroad, drew in outline on the wall the shadow of his face thrown by the lamp. Her father pressed clay on this and made a relief, which he hardened with fire with the rest of his pottery; and it is said that this likeness was preserved in the Shrine of the Nymphs…(Natural History xxxv, 43.) (9)

So it would seem that mythically, at least, the origin of Western art was collaborative. Victor Stoichita discusses this myth in great detail in his book A Short History of the Shadow (from which the quotation above was taken). One of the main points that he raises is that in his opinion this is a fable about loss. The young man was probably about to go to war and the suggestion that his likeness was preserved in the Shrine of the Nymphs means that he probably did not return. Loss is a constant theme in the work of Dunhill and O’Brien, indeed they made a whole series of works called the Lost Works of Dunhill and O’Brien 2000 a group of small resin multiples depicting and dedicated to all the works which they had lost during their individual practices over the past 25 years. This was an act of reclamation but also like Butades relief mask an act of capturing a likeness and with it the melancholy impression of someone or something loved but gone forever. Within their work there is always a concern for recording and animating absences. They have packed things away; The Stored Works of Dunhill and O’Brien1998 or The Left Overs 2001-2002 and advertised themselves as artists who will dig holes The Art Holes (pink) 2002. It would seem that Dunhill and O’Brien have some kind of regret for their old work the work they have lost and abandoned since deciding to collaborate a loss of their singular identities which they ameliorate through their new practice where, as they have put it, they are now aware of a third person, an artist, a persona with no real existence outside of their joint labour.

Who might this third ‘person’ be, what role might it (I presume it has a neutral gender) play in the work of Dunhill and O’Brien? There are two key forms of absences in the history of art, one, which we have dealt with above, is the absence of the subject: the likeness of the beloved young man preserved in the Shrine of Nymphs, the other is the loss or absence of the artist. This is a concept related to the making of religious ikons known as acheiropoieton, which means not made, by the hand of man. The earliest Buddhist Sculpture in Japan falls into this category. The Zenkoji Amida Triad is a secret image. Hidden from public gaze deep within the main temple at Zenkoji in Nagano City. The Icon is believed to be alive. Its arrival at Zenkoji is believed to date from the Heian Period (794-1185). In its Western application acheiropoieton can be understood as god acting through the artists hands. In this Eastern example at least, the artists have simply been removed, indeed are considered not to have existed (10). So is this other presence that Dunhill and O’Brien refer to an absence of the author that mirrors the absence of the subject that is so apparent in their work? In a way I believe it is, but not in either of the senses of acheiropoieton considered above. I think this sense of a third artist created through their collaborative process is closer to a literary rather than an artistic model.

In his book Six Walks in the Fictional Woods (11) Umberto Eco examines the role of the reader. He describes a first level reader, who might simply enjoy the story, and then he describes a second level reader; a model reader. This is a reader who not only enjoys the story but who also enjoys understanding the constructs that the author has used to construct the story, to create it’s tone, to build the fictional world which the author is inviting the reader to enter. Eco describes what he terms the empirical author, and uses Edgar Allan Poe as one of his examples. The empirical author would be Poe himself, in the same way as Mark Dunhill and Tamiko O’Brien are the empirical authors of their work that is Poe is the actual writer and they are the actual artists. Eco then goes on to explain the complex literary uses of intervening characters that authors use to separate themselves from the text so as to create a more convincing world for their model reader. Without these interventions the reader will be prone to making the same assumptions we have looked at earlier, that ’ every painter paints himself’ and that we will believe that some truth about the author is directly accessible to us. As Eco explains, when the empirical author then invents a fictional narrator as in Poe’s Arthur Gordon Pym and when in this case he includes a note about himself (Poe) written by Pym criticizing Poe as an inadequate previous editor of the story. Then the reader is removed from the empirical author and situated deep within what Eco calls the fictional woods. What I believe occurs in collaborative practice and in the practice of Dunhill and O’Brien in particular is that because there are two artists, or authors to the work a similar construct to the literary model described so well by Umberto Eco is an automatic consequence. We are removed from the empirical authors, we cannot be sure if we are accessing some part of their ’Soul’s’ or if they are deliberately abandoning their work in some way as in the example of Sekine Nobuo’s Phase of Nothingness. Because of this we also have some sense that the work has some how arrived thanks to an unknown agency acheiropoieton. In fact this third artist they have referred to is an ‘artificial construct”’ which we meet under the name Dunhill and O’Brien, or through the highly formalized arrangements in which we are allowed to view the artists in the work. In matching overalls at each end of The Useful Bench for instance. This is a construct that functions in the same way as a fictional narrator in a novel. We can simply enjoy the work as first level readers or viewers but there is also a strong invitation to enter into their investigations and participate as a second level reader.
Finally back again to that hot, mosquito-infested day in Rome. I think my mental picture of both of them somehow hiding under their mothers’ skirts is not so bad after all. In reality a simple preventative act against mosquito bites, but also a useful clue as to how Dunhill and O’Brien raise fundamental issues to do with origins. Theirs is a performative practice in which they are developing an etiquette of making, and one should never underestimate the power of meanings of manners for as Margaret Visser has written:

Behind every rule of table etiquette lurks the determination of each person present to be a dinner and not a dish. It is one of the chief roles of etiquette to keep the lid on the violence that the meal being eaten presupposes. (12)

One would hope that the etiquette of making they are enacting conceals less violence than the manners of eating, but perhaps not, as Dunhill and O’Brien say, they intend to continue punishing clay.

(1) From unpublished notes by the artists

(2) Mark Dunhill and Tamiko O’Brien, ‘Holes and Other Undertakings’, (Far Ahead Publications 2002). p9

(3) Groom Simon, ’Encountering Mono-Ha”in Mono-Ha-school of things, (Kettles Yard, Cambridge 2001). p6

(4) Kienholz , a retrospective. Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York with Distributed Art publishers, 1996). P256

(5 ) Lippard Lucy R, ’ Six Years: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 -1972’ ( Studio Vista, London 1973). p 244

(6) Stochita, Victor I, ’ A Short History of the Shadow’ ( Reaction books 1997). p91

(7) Schwartz Hillel, ‘The Culture of the Copy, striking likenesses, unreasonable facsimiles’, ( Zone Books NY 1996). p20

(8) Gonzalalez- Crussi. F, ’ Notes of an Anatomist, ( Picador, London, 1986). p22

(9) Stoichita, Victor I, ’ A Short History of the Shadow’ ( Reaction books 1997). p11

(10) McCallum. Donald F, ZenKoji and its icon, ( Princeton University press, Princeton, USA 1994.

(11) Eco, Umberto, ’ Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, (Harvard University press, Cambridge Massachusetts and London 1995).

(12) Visser, Margaret, ’ The Rituals of Dinner; the origins, evolution, eccentricities and meaning of table manners, (Viking, Penguin books, London, 1991). p4