Fergus Martin 'Car'

CHELSEA space was pleased to hear that Fergus Martin is showing at the Green on Red Gallery in Dublin. Fergus showed with us as part of CHELSEA space #30, With Words Like Smoke curated by Isobel Harbison. For his show at Green on Red Fergus is, for the first time, exclusively showing photographs. These photographs are shown in the same way that he showed Table 2009 at CHELSEA space - unframed on rag paper.

Fergus Martin's 'Table' 2009 (far wall) at CHELSEA space alongside Kit Craig, Carl Andre and Aoife Collins

Fergus Martin 'Table' 2009

Fergus also showed a minimal spatial piece: Hoops 2009 which was shown as a series of stainless steel rings of varying sizes each seemingly floating and touching the wall at a single point.

Fergus Martin 'Hoops' 2009 installed on the ramp at CHELSEA space

Isobel Harbison’s curatorial theme for With Words Like Smoke was abstraction and re-figuration , appearance and disappearance, and took its title from Samuel Beckett’s Texts For Nothing 1953. As a result of CHELSEA space #7, Rehearsing/Samuel Beckett we already had an established connection with Beckett’s nephew, musician Edward Beckett, and the Beckett estate and with his help Isobel was able to produce a With words Like Smoke broadcast for Resonance FM on Friday 19th February 2010 including a 1958 recording of the eighth text of Texts For Nothing narrated by Irish actor Jack Mcgowan, which was later published in Aspen Magazine issue 5+6 edited by Brian O’Doherty. The broadcast also included new and adapted works by Anna Barham, Marcelline Delbecq and Cally Spooner. Cally, of course, had already worked with CHELSEA space in April 2009 as the curator of December 1952 a series of performances, rehearsals and events made in response to a score by American composer Earle Brown.

curator Isobel Harbison with Kit Craig, Donald Smith and Mike Iveson during the installation of 'With Words Like Smoke'

Isobel Harbison very much created a community around those involved in With Words Like Smoke through performances, events, and informal social gatherings and the arrival and departure of the various individuals seemed to relate to the theme and title of the show. The CHELSEA space team enjoyed meeting and working with everyone, not least Fergus Martin. Fergus’s show at Green on Red Gallery, (26-28 Lombard Street East,Dublin) finishes on the 9th April, the same day that CHELSEA space sadly ends Stephen Willats’ seminal West London Social Resource Project Public Monitor. If you are in the Republic of Ireland next week be sure to see his work as it will soon be gone - like smoke.

Fergus Martin installing 'Hoops' 2009 at CHELSEA space

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