This Artist is Destroying His Artwork In An Exhibition At The National Gallery
Words: Dray Morgan
Irish artist Asbestos is no stranger to thought provoking guerilla art, with his murals plastered across Dublin. In his most recent venture, he created the acclaimed film, ‘Don’t Forget To Remember’ alongside director Ross Killeen, detailing his experience of his mother’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
This poignant film saw Asbestos focus on how fleeting memory can be and how memory is far more important than the physical. This process saw him leave 15 blackboards with chalk recreations of family photos across Dublin for the public to interact with. Stables, beaches and pubs lay home to the drawings for months.
“Some were tagged by graffiti, some were drawn on, some had chewing gum stuck to them.” Asbestos said.
Now, he has reclaimed his blackboards from the wild and intends to erase this art over the course of a weekend. Every hour from 12:00 – 17:00 on this Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Asbestos will go through the motions of wiping his art clean, culminating in 15 completely blank blackboards.
“It’s a strange thing for The National Gallery to allow an artist to destroy their own work.” Inspired by artist Joseph Boyce, each duster used on these blackboards will be engraved with quotes from Asbestos’ mother as seen in the film.
“It shows how the memory is not a physical presence, but has strength and stays alive within a collective community.”
In addition to the visual aspect of the exhibition, Asbestos has collaborated with composer Cian Wallker, taking audio and speech from the film and turning it into a beautiful soundscape to be played through the weekend.
On one side of the room, the song will be played from a turntable and on the other side, a 1970s vinyl lathe will be set to record the track and combine it with the ambient human sounds of the exhibition room. This freshly created vinyl record will then replace the original and be played, with the process being repeated 49 times, slowly disintegrating sonically.
“I don’t know how long it will take to disappear into nothing, it could be three recordings, it could be twenty.” At the end of the project, all 49 vinyl artworks will be combined to create an image of Asbestos’ mother.
On Thursday, a screening will take place of Don’t Forget To Remember at The National Gallery, with a final opportunity for the public to see the physical manifestations of memory before they are destroyed.
