In Fairview, an artist elevates his chosen icons

A seven-foot portrait, curved like a stained-glass window, was leaning against the wall in the corner of Jordan Cassidy’s living room.

The triumphant scene was almost biblical.

On a grassy pitch in Fairview Park at night, a young man in a gold-sequined top, golden lamé shorts and golden heels was being lifted by four muscular men in white sports vests.

Beneath them, another two men kneeled on the ground, their backs muddied by footprints.

The central character’s eyes were closed. His arms were raised in victory. A golden halo shone behind his head.

In his living room, Cassidy sat on his couch across from the portrait, in a red jumper, smoking a rollie and drinking a coffee.

Titled Iconodule I, the oil painting’s central subject was Jack Swift, a viral TikToker from Dublin, says Cassidy. “I was just fascinated with this new wave of celebrities.”

Swift’s videos were one of the few bright spots that would crop up whenever Cassidy was scrolling through the app, he says.

“He’s so cool, and I liked this notion of someone normal who was blown up to be an internet celebrity,” Cassidy says.

The guys propping up the young influencer were supposed to be members of the Emerald Warriors, a rugby team for gay and bisexual men, Cassidy says. “But they had to cancel the day before.”

Cassidy recorded videos and took photos of the scene, he says.

He wanted to create something uplifting, which juxtaposed facets of queer identity, he says. “I liked this idea of more masculine presenting people raising those femme gays who are very much doing the hard work for the community.”

They deserve to be celebrated and platformed, he says. “It was to be like: you can’t get rid of us. We’re here and we don’t give a fuck if you like it or not. Those are the people I want to portray.”

The third space

Cassidy arrived in Dublin six years ago to study fine art in the Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Dún Laoghaire.

From Nobber, a small village in north Meath, he moved to Fairview, and has remained in the same place since, he says. “It’s very much a third space for my friends and stuff.”

This spot has played quite a few roles in his work, he says. “I feel like a lot of my identity is tied up in this house.”

He paints in the living room, he says.

Over the mantlepiece is a nude portrait of the visual artist Kevin Donnelly, a close friend, collaborator and former roommate.

In a shadowy room, Donnelly lies on his side across a wrinkled white quilt, resting up against a red step-ladder, a black cat at his feet, and a CCTV camera on the wall above him.

He called it Olympia and was playing on the 1863 painting of the same name by French modernist Édouard Manet, he says. “We were trying to create, like a modern version of that.”

Beside Iconodule I is an eerie portrait of a baby, its skin silvery blue and its eyes and lips black. It looks extra-terrestrial.

Lurking in the darkest corner of the room is the actual doll that inspired the piece.

Lussekatter is its name, Kevin Donnelly said later over the phone.

“One of the girls living there found it on the street,” he said. “It lived in the house so long, it got this whole lore about it, and through the painting maybe it’s become more mystical.”

Its name was taken from a butter-based saffron-infused Christmas bun in Sweden and Norway that gained virality during the 2011 Norwegian butter crisis, Cassidy says.

“It just became this signifier of my time here and the push to be creative, even if that meant painting a baby that you found on the street outside, it was making that an iconic figure in your own world,” Cassidy says.

He pauses. “She became our mascot.”

Nightlife

As Cassidy speaks, the television in front of the window looking out onto the windswept street played an endless loop of photos, many of moments from nights out with friends.

While also studying fine art, he and a few roommates co-founded Thrust Collective, a club night and music label.

Aoife Keane, one of the co-founders, who DJs under the moniker Sohotsospicy, says the collective evolved out of a conversation in the living room.

“[DJ and producer] Glimmerman was just over at the house, playing music on the speakers, saying, ‘This is the music I want to play out.’ Not just typical of club music, which was very techno,” said Keane.

They didn’t just want to focus solely on music, she says. “We wanted to have a more aesthetic focus as well. It was never a DJ collective, it was an art collective.”

Cassidy was one of the creative directors, she says. “They’d do full on photoshoots, get models. It kinda stepped up music promotion in Dublin.”

His work as a painter, to some extent, drew on the glamour, energy and vivid colouring of nightlife scenes, while also re-imagining these as scenes from mythology.

One such work, Child of Lir, saw him render a photo of his friend Niamh George as a character from the legend of the Children of Lir, he says. “We were all getting ready to go out, and I was one of my old cameras, and she was like an extra-terrestrial beauty.”

The photo was a portrait originally, he says. “But when I saw it on its side, it was like she was lying down. I don’t know where the inspiration came to tie it to mythology, but there was a deep beauty, like a sadness in her face, which reminded me of that.”

Iconography

Cassidy isn’t solely interested in merging the community around him with that of Irish myth.

He has depicted himself as St Sebastian, and rendered people as modern-day versions of the Virgin Mary.

It is the idea of drawing on icons from the distant past, be they religious, mythological or historic, that fascinates him, he says.

“I was like an Egypt kid in school, and I hyperfixate on stuff like that,” Cassidy says.

As Cassidy continues to develop his practice, he is looking to delve more into the notion of iconography, as he has with Iconodule I.

An iconodule is one who venerates a religious icon, something those more strict and literal in their adherence to the Ten Commandments may view as sinful and extravagant, he says.

“The people who believed in the right of the church to display these images were iconodules,” he says.

His subjects are an Irish version of the icons they depicted, he says. “They are the people I want to portray and liken to those important figures from art back then.”