Oisín Byrne: smell the book

By Patricia-Ann Young, 20.09.2024

Oisín Byrne, smell the book, 2024. Mount Stuart. Photo by Keith Hunter

The feeling of language is something London-based Irish artist Oisín Byrne thinks about a lot. His latest exhibition, smell the book, is currently on display at Mount Stewart, the lavish Neo-Gothic mansion on the Isle of Bute. Its arts programme invites artists to respond to something in or about the house, and Byrne chose to focus on its little-known collection of Gaelic and Irish books and pamphlets.

In the library, Byrne has laid out his inspiration in two vitrines. In one, Mount Stewart’s collection of Gaelic and Irish books. In the other, well-thumbed books owned by Byrne himself – poetry by Frank O’Hara, a novel by Doris Lessing, a facsimile of one of James Joyce’s handwritten notebooks.

The first of Byrne’s paintings line the bookshelves here. Canvasses are painted in jewel emeralds and burgundies, while words, sentences, letters and punctuation dance across them, caught in various poses. Sentences slope downwards as if hastily scrawled on a birthday card, and jaunty letters seem to run and leap as if they are trying to escape the canvas altogether.

There’s a stickiness to the paintings, as if Byrne is trying to trap an idea on the canvas before it's gone. On some, the brushstrokes are wide, rough and rugged, while on others they are small and frenzied. It might even be that the paint was applied by Byrne’s fingertips here, fruitlessly grasping at language before it was uttered and lost to the air forever.

There is also the placement of the paintings, in which Byrne mischievously plucks at the delicate, translucent chord that connects language with colonialism. Mount Stewart is grandiosity itself. Everything about it; its manicured gardens, its imposing façade and awe-inspiring interiors, are an orgy of splendour. It's hard not to stand in the white marble chapel and wonder where the money to build it came from, and if the earning of it was always holy work.

It is here in the whiteness that Byrne has chosen to place ‘CREOCH’. The painting’s lushness, all green and blue, joyously defiles the space, breaking up the pristine purity of the chapel right at the foot of its altar. ‘CREOCH’ is spelt out in large spindly letters, the word itself meaning something like ‘end’, ‘border’ or ‘final’ in Gaelic. Byrne lifted the word from one of Mount Stewart’s Gaelic books, which uses it to signal the volume’s ending. Here, it calls attention to the ‘ending’ of these languages by wealthy oppressors, and perhaps of their defiant, vibrant resurgence.

It is also here that a film of Byrne performing three songs he created for the show plays on a loop. In a black and white film shot on 16mm, Byrne’s baritone is accompanied by a string quartet, and the grandiosity of a strong voice and beautiful instruments fills the space well. It’s the lyrics of the songs which are the most interesting though. Each of them has been patchworked together using words, sentences and phrases that struck Byrne. One of the songs, the eponymous ‘Smell the Book’, refers to a time when a grieving Byrne was reading alone. Suddenly, the air was filled with sweetness, and Byrne sniffed the book to find out if it was the source of the smell. According to Byrne, it wasn’t but it also was, as if the words in the book mingled with his sadness and affected his senses, in a way that only the power of language can do.

 

Oisín Byrne’s exhibition smell the book is exhibited at Mount Stewart, Bute, until 20^th October