Eamonn Maxwell is from County Antrim, Northern Ireland, since graduating from Camberwell College of Arts, Maxwell has been involved in over 40 exhibitions in UK, Ireland and Europe. While he was Curator at Universityof the Arts, London he founded the unique Emerging Artists Programme which has helped to give many new artists an audience and exposure to their practice. Aside from working with international artists, including Peter Doig, Mark Wallinger, Gillian Wearing and Gerard Byrne, he has also advised some of the leading collectors of contemporary art. He is the Director of Lismore Castle Arts, County Waterford, Ireland.
Ireland
Additional note on the exhibition by Eamonn Maxwell [Curator]
Corban Walker’s work responds to the built environment and is the physical interpretation of how he experiences it differently to others. His amalgamation of the notions of late 20th century sculptural practice and materials that reflect the Post-War emergence of Modernism have led him to be attributed as a new Minimalist.
Walker’s sculptural installations and objects involve a truth to materials and sometimes a challenge to their usual appropriation. To date Walker has employed materials more readily associated with the construction industry, such as glass, Plexiglas, stainless steel and light emitting diodes. This relationship to the built environment is influenced by the strong architectural heritage of the Walker family, in particular the architect Robin Walker (the artist’s father) who was a leading proponent of Modernism in Ireland. Walker’s own height, 1290mm or 4 feet, has been a central concern in the work as he consistently explores his experiences of “a world that has been mapped out, both ergonomically and discriminately, for the benefit of others, namely the able-bodied man”. This experience will often manifest itself in the scale of his objects or in the installation criteria which might include multiplications or divisions of the number 4 - his own ergonomic truth.
The work Please Adjust, 2011, formally involves the recurring rule of the number 4. Utilising 4mm thick stainless steel bars, the work comprises 160 cube structures which are interlocked and stacked on top of each other, representing the number code 4 in a unique format. The core material is incredibly strong, almost unbreakable, yet the construction method is extremely precarious; the slightest human intervention could transform it, and the work could never be built in the same way again. The title signals this precariousness; the phrase ‘Please Adjust’ highlights the consequences of one action against another: the interlocking cubes depend on each other for stability but a change in placement will result in a new configuration. The work is Walker’s response to the economic crises that have ravaged countries globally since 2008 and refers to the adjustment that many have had to make to the realigned economic landscape that now exists. Please Adjust is Walker’s first overtly political work and questions the apparent ease with which capitalism was brought to its knees and the impact this has had internationally but particularly in Ireland.
Walker has always been interested in mapping spaces and he has responded to the architecture of the Istituto Santa Maria della Pietà, with two vinyl drawings on the windows of the building, one leading from the garden: Modular, 2011 and one leading from the canal: Transparent Wall, 2011. Using mathematical formulae, Walker has mapped his own physicality and specific dimensions using vinyl applied directly on the glass. Although Walker has often used glass as a principal medium in his work, in these drawings he makes the material secondary, thus challenging any preconceptions about him and his practice.
Collectively, these works offer a transparency through themselves and the Pavilion. There is no beginning or end; one can enter the space from the canal or the street – a typically Venetian architectural experience. Only the viewer remains opaque.
Eamonn Maxwell, Curator