Is it or is it not? We keep getting told by the experts that we are in, or about to enter, the worst recession since the 1980s. Now I can remember the eighties well, but I wasn’t aware that we were in the middle of a recession at the time.
The well known quote says that “ It's a recession when your neighbour loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours.”
Now I didn’t lose my job back in those days, so, I suppose, that’s why it didn’t feel like a recession or a depression. I do remember Gay Byrne telling the whole country to pack their bags and move to Australia where a bit of sunshine and a barbecue on Bondi Beach would solve all our problems.
We didn’t have Big Brother, SUVs, jumbo breakfast rolls or wine sections the size of Croke Park in supermarkets all round the country. We had no stags or hens, the only coke was in a can, most people could afford a house and lap dancing was something that went on in Amsterdam or Soho.
If a recession means all these would disappear I don’t think it would cause too many tears, not from me anyway.
The ‘Reeling in the Years’ programmes in a few years should be interesting. People will look back and think “did we really do that with all the money?”
I often wonder how that garden that was built somewhere out the road between Kilkenny and Carlow is getting on. This is the one that was designed in the shape of Jerry Hall’s body and cost €80,000. I don’t know how the grassy Jerry is looking nowadays, she’s probably got a few mossy patches with all the rain.
There’s still plenty of opportunities to blow €80,000 or more if you have a mind to. Fancy some new furniture or “functional sculpture”, as it’s now described in the auction brochures.
There’s only so much you can charge for a table or a sofa, but call it “functional sculpture” and the sky’s the limit. Christie’s will be holding an auction of the stuff this autumn. You’ll be able to pick up a polyurethane table for £100,000 or a polished steel sofa for £150,000.
It isn’t easy to get your hands on these pieces of high class furniture. You’ll be up against the likes of Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and Roman Abramovich if you want to buy what is, in reality, very expensive plastic or metal furniture.
Pitt is reported to have spent $500,000 at a fair in Switzerland for furniture for the family home, including a marble table for $293,000. The sales pitch seems to be that the wealthy have the same types of houses and cars, so contemporary art and design is a way to stand out, a bit like the Jerry Hall shaped garden.
The town is full of artists this week, many of them struggling to make a living from their work. Maybe they should take a look at some furniture brochures for inspiration and start making some “functional sculpture.”
There’s still plenty of money out there if people are willing to pay €80,000 or more for some uncomfortable furniture, sorry, “functional sculpture.”
ON THE HORNS OF A DILEMMA
I’ve recommended various musical, theatrical and artistic productions in this column over the last few years, but now I’ve a bit of a problem.
Is it correct to plug an exhibition when the artist is known and related, in fact married, to the writer? Going by all journalistic principles and standards it’s probably not. That means that I won’t be mentioning the exhibition of oil paintings by Phyl Cleere that’s currently running down in Cleere’s Bar in Parliament Street.
It’s OK to mention that Judy and Kitty Rhatigan are also exhibiting, as I’m not related to them in any way, but I won’t be mentioning Phyl Cleere’s paintings, even though, in the words of the great Larry David in “Curb Your Enthusiasm”, they’re “pretty, pretty good.”
So, sorry Phyl, I can’t mention the exhibition that’s running until August 18.
ANOTHER REASON TO HATE BODHRANS
I was giving a hand to put up the paintings for the exhibition that I can’t mention last week.
My part of the artistic process was to take down the pictures and posters that adorn the walls of the pub.
There’s a bodhran hanging in the corner that somehow managed to fall, the sharp edge hitting and cutting me on the nose. The bodhran is fine, the nose cushioned the fall, but the old line, “the best way to play a bodhran is with a pen knife” came to mind.
This is definitely a case of suffering for my art, or, more correctly suffering for Phyl Cleere’s art. Sorry, I forgot I wasn’t supposed to mention the Phyl Cleere exhibition.
