Hereafter

Paddy Jolley was curated by Aisling Prior and commissioned by Breaking Ground to make a work to mark the impending demolition of Ballymun’s 1970’s tower blocks.

In the Autumn of 2003, and after a period of research and discussion locally, Jolley chose to work with two other artists; German artist Rebecca Trost and Norwegian artist/animator Lise Inger Hansen. The three artists came to live in Ballymun, where they stayed in the Breaking Ground artists' house in Coultry, and made a work which ultimately manifested itself in two parts; a site specific multi-media installation in one of the blocks of flats and a 12 minute film, a composite as such, of the installation. A small publication, designed by Peter Maybury, and with a foreward by Aisling Prior and an essay by Sarah Pierce was also produced for the commission.

Hereafter was a combination of an on-site installation held over two weeks in Ballymun in 2004 and a black and white film of the installation. The 'Hereafter' exhibition was installed throughout 16 rooms of four recently vacated flats in one of the spine blocks in the Shangan neighbourhood of Ballymun in February 2004. Animated film images of abandoned flats where projected directly onto, the often wall-papered, walls and other surfaces of the flats. The audio was piped through each room also. The images had been filmed on location in recently vacated flats on the  8th floor of a tower block on Shangan Avenue, Ballymun. Sound and lighting interventions were placed among and the discarded items and furnishings left behind by the former residents, and the artists used a variety of camera techniques to produce subtle animations conveying the life of the abandoned furnishings once the families had left for their new houses.

In one scene, kitchen chairs and other items of furniture are swallowed up by a sink-hole in the decaying floor. An iconic image of a mattress balletically falls from a height through a large void in the floor, bouncing gently onto a heap of crumpled mattresses in yet another flat below. The sound for the film is based on recordings made in the empty flats, and was post produced by Berlin-based sound engineer Robert Merdzo, and worked into an overall soundscape built by Dublin-based producer Nick Seymour. 

After the installation event, Jolley, Trost and Hansen made a permanent artwork; a 12-minute-long film which combined Super8 and 16mm footage. Breaking Ground wrote to all the former inhabitants of the Shangan flats, prior to sanctioning the artists to enter the empty flats, (where they subsequently worked over the course of three bitterly cold months in the Winter of 2003) and to invite them to the installation and finally, to offer them a copy of the film. 

The installation was manned, invigilated and mediated by local residents, one of whom was a local historian, and it attracted huge interest especially amongst the children in the neighbourhood, who referred to effect of the multi-media projections and sound installations in the block as the "haunted flats".

By request of Breaking Ground, the artists gave permission for 1,000 copies of the film to be made on DVD and to be distributed freely throughout the community and beyond. Many former residents have a copy of the film, while IMMA purchased the film from Jolley for its permanent collection.

Hereafter, the film, was reviewed on RTE's arts show, The Black Box. 

'Hereafter' Press Release:

“A block of flats stands empty. The inhabitants have all moved out. Liberated from their people, the furniture and fittings enjoy new freedoms. However, a melancholia soon takes hold and they lapse into accelerated decay..”

Cristin Leach Hughes:

“..normally static domestic objects move and disintegrate with unexpected violence and energy. The mattresses that plunge through a hole in the roof crumple and bounce under their own spring-loaded weight.”

Rosa Abbott, Aesthetica Magazine:

“Dramatically set to a hauntingly entrancing soundtrack, the beautifully shot film documents the decay and destruction of the infamous structure in the final days before its demise. Abandoned bedrooms are left with cut outs from cheap teen magazines still adorning the walls. Water drips down, slowly filling the desolate homes with a dusty solution. Furniture crashes through a hole in a ceiling at the tension-swelling climax to the piece”. 

Nicolas De Oliveira and Nicola Oxley, Patrick Jolley - All that Falls (Gandon Editions: Ireland, 2012) IBSN9780946846993

http://www.broadstonestudios.com/2012/12/12/patrick-jolly-all-that-falls-gandon-editions-patrick-jolly-estate-2012/

Exhibition review – Cristin Leach Hughes ‘Patrick Jolley at LCGA’ (2013)

Exhibition review – Rosa Abbott ‘Twenty: Celebrating 20 Years of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin’, Aesthetica Magazine, June 2011

‘Hereafter’(2004) can be viewed here

Gallery Exhibitions:

Meeting House Square, Dublin (2004)

Nicola Fornelli Gallery, Prato, Italy (2004)

Axis, Ballymun, Dublin (2004)

Tallaght Community Arts Centre, Dublin (2006)

‘Prelude Speaker: Contemporary Castletown’ (2013)

Film Screenings:

‘Absences and (Im)possibilities: Traces of an Avant-Garde Cinema in Ireland’ – a touring programme of experimental Irish film from November 2014 onwards, commissioned by the Irish Film Institute, curated by the Experimental Film Club, distributed internationally by LUX Moving Image, and supported by Culture Ireland. 

Patrick Jolley was born as one of four children in Co Down in 1964. He grew up in Northern Ireland but moved to County Waterford in the Republic of Ireland at the age of 15. He was an insatiable traveller, spending long stretches of time in North and South America, in Northern Europe, Russia and India. He had returned to live in Ireland until his sudden death in Delhi, India, in 2012 at the age of 47.

Sound Editor: Bobby Good

Sound Design & Music : Robert Merdzo & Nick Seymour

Dublin City Council Housing Maintenance Department.

Dublin City Council Removals and Waste Departments.