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ARTSDESK ALWAYS BECOMING Derek Jarman’s radical l
egacy as a painter, writer, set designer, gardener and political activist is explored in his largest retrospective to date. IMMA’s Seán Kissane who curated tells us which decisions were made in this attempt to define his output and impact. words Jack O’Higgins For most people, Derek Jarman is defined by his lush cinematic output from the mid ‘70s onwards, explicitly queer work that challenges hetro-normative readings of Shakespeare, biblical stories and the life of baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. 25 years after his death from AIDS-related illness, PROTEST! shows us that this barely scratches the surface. The retrospective is curated by Seán Kissane, no stranger to the art of the retrospective. By his own admission, he came into the project knowing “the same amount of Jarman as everyone else. Seen the films, had a sense of what the political activity was like, read some of the memoirs. I was not a specialist.” So, what was it about his work that convinced Kissane to spend three years sifting through Jarman’s gargantuan output? “I’m interested in those figures that seem really obvious when you’ve done them, but for whatever strange reason, they’ve been neglected. And Jarman fits into that, because no one can imagine what a Derek Jarman painting retrospective would look like.” That’s partly because of a legal case which meant that many paintings weren’t available to be seen until five years ago. But another reason is that Jarman is all too often reduced to his filmography. PROTEST!’s mission statement is to draw attention to a wider array of his practices, such as his painting, writing and his political activism. Walking through the exhibition, the first thing you notice is the sheer scope of the work. Sparse geometric paintings hang next to primitive Super8 film work. Chiaroscuro paintings are a stone’s throw from his mixed media works, which use cutlery, glass and other detritus. Elaborate set designs for Ken Russell’s transgressive historical horror drama The Devils are placed next to a screening of Jazz Calendar, a Royal Ballet performance featuring Jarman’s work. It’s a dizzying selection of pieces that created quite a few headaches for Kissane when trying to find a coherent through line. “The show went through at least ten layout changes. One of the ways of approaching it was to try and be thematic. Because you could pull alchemy out as a subject for example, and you’d find an early painting, a graphic painting, a film reference. You could have made that a room. “But, I thought that as this was the first retrospective in 23 years, I had to give the audience a simpler way in. So, I decided to go chronological and change the media. I suppose what I’m offering is a taster and I’m trying to give three digestible ideas with each room. Because I think – I hope – that this will be the beginnings of other Jarman projects.” There’s one notable break in chronology at the beginning of the exhibition, which pairs Blue, Jarman’s last work, with a self portrait he made in his teens. For Kissane, this establishes that from an early age, Jarman was skilled at likeness and naturalism, and to contextualize his ensuing work as a journey away from figuration. Blue is, of course, Jarman’s famous final film, a series of voiceovers and musical pieces set against an unchanging blue screen, a complete void of image made when Jarman’s eyesight was failing due to AIDS-related complications. Blue serves as a microcosm of Jarman’s creative impulses. The need to create still burned bright even as his sight had begun to leave him. As Kissane notes, his artistic output doubled after his HIV diagnosis in ‘86. He made a feature film a year in his last six years. “There is making on borrowed time,” Kissane says. While Jarman’s politics are always present in the work, they become much more pronounced 70