Last month Republic of Ireland artist Michael Fortune received a significant commission to continue his work in creative writing after publishing a number of well-read pages of “made-up lies disguised as real news” in an established, popular west county paper.
Presented as newspaper articles and advertisements in the Donegal News last year, the pages of ‘artistic text’ were designed to “bring attention to what it is that we accept: what we wear, what we read, what we see,” Michael Fortune told Arts Hub in a recent interview. The artwork forms part of the artist’s ongoing examination of the distribution of local news, by re-presenting information with an ironic twist.
One advertisement featured in the newspaper promoted the selling of the whole town of Letterkenny! The town was said to be for sale by public auction at ‘the back of the Tesco car park’, by ‘Sherlock Homes Ltd: We’ll find a way around the legal stuff!’
Other submissions published by Michael Fortune in the Donegal News include an article about a Donegal street trader who was mistaken for Bin Laden. The article read, “A Pakistani street trader was assaulted in Donegal on Friday morning last when a man from Rossnowlagh mistakenly took him for Bin Laden. Street trader, Mr. Rizwan Khawaja, who runs a clothes stall every Friday in the town was “punched, bitten and held on the ground for twenty minutes” by 62-year-old Mr. Edward Sweeney until Gardai arrived. Mr. Sweeney, a bachelor farmer, had come into Donegal to buy an angle grinder from the weekly street traders when the incident occurred. Mr. Sweeney told Gardai his “nerves were at him” because he had heard a rumour that “Al Qaeda were planning an attack in the county” due to the American planes using “Ballyshannon” as a stop off point on the way to Iraq. Gardai say that since the incident Mr. Sweeney has apologised to Mr. Khawaja and that the matter would not be brought before the court.”
With creative writing such as this, Michael Fortune has taken interventionist art to the extreme. He has also appeared on national radio with similar stories, based on urban myths and beliefs, centred around “defining territory and how we are connected to the place where we live”, states Michael. “Although the pages had to have a disclaimer on them – which was in the centre of each page – people still fell for it!” The work was made in response to a brief called Conflict and Resolution, and was carried out in cooperation with the newspaper.
Michael Fortune explains, “I am looking at issues and concerns that crop up, subverting and magnifying them slightly. People know how bad things are, and I want to acknowledge the current state of affairs in a funny way. People want to be challenged. For so long they’ve been told to underestimate themselves.”
Following on from an astonishing response to the tongue-in-cheek articles, Michael Fortune is the 2007 recipient of a €30,000 grant from Arts Council Ireland’s
Multidisciplinary Arts New Work Award. Michael explains, “I am creating a fictional parish journal for Enniscorthy in County Wexford. It will look exactly the same but completely fabricated, and sent out to every household in the district.”
Michael’s last name says it all. The good fortune keeps rolling in with two more awards announced since September. The fast establishing artist will receive a €38,000 commission through Wexford County Council’s ‘Percent for Art’ Public Art Award. The public art piece for the town of Ballinrobe will be unveiled in December 2009.
Adding to his success, the Republic of Ireland’s annual COE contemporary art exhibition in County Mayo recently announced that Michael Fortune won joint first prize. The exhibition is hosted every September in the rural town of Claremorris, and it is the second year in a row he has jointly won.
As a writer, performer, photographer and video artist, Michael Fortune has spent 2007 presenting work locally, as well as in Iceland ( 700IS Experimental Film Fest), Dublin and London, ( House Projects), CEAD in China, and most recently a 3-minute video installation in Spain for Video-Carros.
The video, Hunter Gatherer, was filmed in his family home and reveals the unpacking of the weekly shopping. Reflecting upon domestic rituals, the work poses questions about the role consumable and convenience products play within our contemporary lifestyle. Currently Michael is presenting artist talks throughout Newfoundland, Canada.
With a Masters degree in screenwriting following a degree in arts, much of Fortune’s work is motivated by local issues surrounding language, ritual and belief. “There are many long standing myths that people still believe in. For instance, that we Irish are a fixed breed of people. This brings problems when dealing with new people that arrive into the country. Nationalist Ireland in the late 1800’s rammed home these notions of fixed identity. The rise of the formation of the free state brought forward the notion of impermanence, as opposed to the perfect Celtic person. And we are not all Catholic.”
Sarah Tuck, Director of Create, the Republic of Ireland’s development agency for collaborative arts, describes Michael Fortune’s work as, “piercing narratives of nationhood with irreverence”. This young artist is fast on his way to achieving for Ireland with writing and video what FrenchMottershead are doing for London, and Alastair MacLennan for Scotland with live art (although Alastair is based at University of Ulster, Belfast). These interventionist artists are all looking at identity through the place where we live, but with a similar axiom: the activities of the ‘everyday’, and the everyday person.
McLennan said, “Art is not in, of, or ‘unto’ itself. It’s FOR PEOPLE” (Live Art Now Performance Magazine n.37 1985 – Performance Art Survey). Whilst FrenchMottershead create live work exploring human identity, physicality, interaction, social ritual and the everyday public and private realms in which they are played out. And Michael Fortune says, “The work wouldn’t exist without people and circumstance. As an artist I am making work with and for the people, not out of good will.”
Bring on art for the people. Perhaps that’s when art is at its most real and influential.
