From Rio to Ireland: Sue Dolan presents an Olympic feat of creation
When Rio de Janeiro hosted the Olympics in 2016, ceremonial splendour was preceded by evictions and bloody protest as inhabitants of a slum adjacent to the Olympic Village site battled for their right to stay in their homes.
In Cork, artist Sue Dolan, watching footage of the protests on the international news, immediately became fascinated by the symbolism of the David and Goliath battle.
“I spent about eight months researching what had happened in that community in Rio,” Dolan says.
“I found a clear parallel between what was happening there and in Ireland; it was an examination of the oppressive limbo state we were in.”
Dolan is the recipient of this year’s Student of the Year award from the Lavit Gallery, who choose a graduating Crawford College of Art and Design student at their degree show. The award winner gets a modest cash prize and an exhibition in the gallery.
Sculptural elements of the exhibition — a combination of video installation, sculpture and photography entitled A mala nada na lama — include ghostly, monochrome rows of swimming caps and sculptures described as “sports suits” which also feature in the accompanying video installation.
Dolan’s video piece, ‘Autódromo’, depicts women dressed in white wearable sculptures moving zombie-like down an athletics track towards a podium constructed of stones taken by Dolan from Lios na Gréine ghost estate near Macroom, Co Cork. Vila Autódromo was the name of the favela ultimately demolished.
The video satirises the hollow pomp and pageantry of sports events built on a platform of displacement, but also makes reference to the treatment of women’s bodies in Ireland.
A self-described feminist, Dolan was making her work in the lead-up to the abortion referendum, and drew parallels between the temporary states endured by evicted tenants and Irish women awaiting a change in the law.
Of course, while evictions and homelessness remain an ever-increasing issue of global significance, the specific “wait stage” for Irish women has now been lifted.
“When this work was being made, the referendum was on a threshold itself, I couldn’t believe how quickly this became something that was in the past. Even by the time this work was shown in the degree show, the referendum had happened.”
Although politics and concepts of social justice are embedded in Dolan’s work, she says she doesn’t think of herself as a “particularly political person.”
“I go out marching, I write letters and I cry over my morning papers,” she says, “but I think the reason I make work like this is that it’s how I respond individually. I don’t think of myself as a social justice activist, to me it’s more about tiny acts of resistance.”
Originally from Dublin, Dolan, a mature student, studied music performance in the capital following school before working a variety of jobs, including a stint as a music journalist.
I always came back to art and music. Eventually I decided to do it properly.
Dolan is the first to acknowledge that her “research-heavy” conceptual approach is perhaps less commercially marketable than recent Lavit award recipients: the past two years of the prize have been won by painters, landscape painter Holly Walsh in 2017 and portrait artist Stephen Doyle last year.
“Each time I’ve exhibited the work I’ve had some elements for sale. But a lot of the sculptural work is so fragile it’s even scary to transport so I can’t imagine that anyone would really buy it. Other elements, like the photography, are more saleable.”
“But I think there’s a place for everything and so it’s really nice for conceptual, cross-disciplinary work to have space too.”
Dolan currently has a residency at the National Sculpture Factory and plans to complete an MA in CIT Crawford before embarking the next phase in her career, which she hopes will involve travel to Brazil.
“I hope I can continue to make video and sculptural work in a similar vein, but I don’t know really at the moment.
"This award has been beyond an honour. When you’re busy making work, you don’t stop to consider how it’s going to be received.”
