“The work isn't fully satisfying. There's a kind of contingent element, or an element that you know is only going to exist in a certain way at a certain time.”
Oisín Tozer examines a large orchid design that he has carved into the wall of his studio, as the wood shavings on the floor remain untouched where they fell.
Outside the room, sheets hang from the roof, acting as makeshift walls. They conjure images of wartime field hospitals.
But the mood among the artists who inhabit these crudely partitioned work spaces in Richmond Road Studios is upbeat.
This hive of creativity may not be what one immediately expects to stumble upon within the brutalist, grey structure of Phibsborough Tower.
Yet, it is here that Tozer’s new exhibition is being held as part of Phizzfest 2025, the local Phibsborough festival.
Tozer, who graduated from TU Dublin in 2023 with a degree in fine art, says he is interested in people’s response to art that is “site specific”.
“Work that makes you aware of how it's made but also the fact that it won't exist in the same way ever again,” he says.
“The way this is made to the dimensions of the wall, as opposed to maybe a drawing on paper. It can exist only here and for a certain amount of time. You see it and then it’s gone,” he says.
Phizzfest, which is set for 9 and 11 May this year, boasts a programme of 77 events – music, comedy, art, a flea market, history talks, family events and more.
“Yearn” is part of Phizzfest’s visual arts strand.
Also included is Jim Donnelly’s “The Walk to the Workhouse” exhibition, which features mixed-media sculptures made with hessian, the material of the potato sack. It’s a response to Ireland’s Great Hunger of 1845–1852, the festival programme says.
Eileen Ferguson is hosting a free pop-up exhibition of her work called “Area C”, which involves “paintings, prints and sculpture investigating themes of social, political and cultural landscape”, the festival programme says.
That is informed by the time Ferguson spent in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in 2019, the programme says.
Dorothy Smith, a visual artist who has overseen the visual arts programming for Phizzfest, said that Tozer’s reputation already precedes him.
He only graduated in 2023. But “he really hit the ground running, as a recent, young graduate”, Smith said by phone on Thursday.
Smith first saw his work at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) where – as part of the RDS Visual Art Awards – Tozer won the 2023 R.C. Lewis-Crosby Award.
“A lot of studios and galleries give graduate awards and he received a lot of them,” Smith said. “The studio he has now, Richmond Road, that came about from a graduate award too.”
Smith also points to other awards Tozer already has under his belt – a residency from the Graphic Studio on North Circular Road and another in south-western Kerry’s remote Cill Rialaig Arts Centre.
The idea of impermanence is important to Tozer’s work, he says, as he noodles at his orchid carving – a main feature of the exhibition.
It fits into the broader philosophical and political subtext behind “Yearn”.
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari are two post-modern thinkers whose works influence Tozer.
“They write a lot about the political potential of desire. What I'm thinking about with these works is how they might produce that desire through being kind of inaccessible,” he says.
“The work isn't fully satisfying. There's a kind of contingent element, or an element that you know is only going to exist in a certain way at a certain time, and using that as a device,” says Tozer.
Another strong influence is philosopher Mark Fisher and his 2009 book Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
It is, as Fisher writes in the book's opening chapter, based on the “widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it".
“I mean, he's kind of dead right, isn't he?” says Tozer.
“I guess prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was maybe this idea that there was another way of living, or another economic system,” he says. “Since that, it’s kind of the death of history. It all just feels like we've been in this forever, and it's always the way it's going to be.”
But his art serves to remind that things are not as fixed as they may often seem, he says.
While “Yearn” is not an explicit commentary on capitalism or economics, there is a “quiet political stance” in so far as it resists being a commodity by being unfixed and impermanent, he says.
Tozer is happy to discuss his influences. But he is also cautious not to overly interpret his work for the viewer.
His interest in philosophy is interwoven with much of his creations.
The subject of the wall carving is an orchid, which he notes has a postmodern appeal. He is inspired by how some orchids will mimic the anatomy of insects in order to pollinate.
“It nearly refuses to be categorised as a plant, because it's quite outreaching physically. It has male and female parts but it’s the one thing. It defies categories and binaries,” he says.
This is also referenced in how the piece is made, he says. There are moments when the carving is delicate and other moments where it is more aggressive.
Hanging from exposed pipes in the ceiling of the exhibition space are long, thin braided ropes made of grass.
The grass isn’t treated. Eventually, the stalks will dry to straw. It adds to the sense that this is a fleeting experience.
“It’s kind of like using time as a material and showing that just through the repetitive action of braiding that you can make a sculpture happen out of a very ubiquitous, mundane material like grass,” Tozer says.
On another wall hangs a large metallic painting. As light enters through the windows, it bounces off the reflective painting and plays around the room.
It gives a different expression depending on weather, time of day, and how many people are in the room, he says. “It factors into that unfixed quality of things.”
More fixed, however, is the structure of the building in which Richmond Road Studios is now located after being evicted from its original location in 2022.
The eight-storey Phibsborough Tower is an iconic piece of architecture in Dublin, with locals split between deriding and enjoying its austere, brutalist design.
Brutalism is an architectural style, influenced by socialist principles, that emerged during the 1950s in the post-war United Kingdom.
It is a raw, minimalist approach that uses bare, unpainted concrete as a feature in itself, rather than ornate decoration.
“It's not living up to its intended use as an office, and instead just filling it with these interventions. I find that quite appealing. It’s this relic of brutalism, and it’s being taken over by things like an artist-run space,” Tozer says.
The artist intends to incorporate the building's exterior into the “Yearn” exhibition.
He plans to put a statue, still under construction, outside the windows of the room, he says, another way to disrupt the light that filters in at different times – creating an ever-shifting experience for visitors.
Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.
Garrett Phelan’s latest artwork is made of 28 radio shows broadcast on a loop, that force the listener to hear the landscape anew by showing the old.
It also includes plans for broadening out who gets to decide what public art the council will commission and install around the city.
“We couldn’t continue. It’s become a full-time unpaid job,” says chairperson Jackie Ball.
Aidan Whelan’s 68-minute film “A Destination for the Arts” is due to premiere this Friday, 21 June.
