Fragments

VISUAL is pleased to present Fragments by Peter Pearson.

Fragments brings together disparate but inter-related strands of Pearson’s work; as a painter, largely of urban scenes, and his long-running practice of collecting and preserving pieces of the built environment.

Pearson been working as an artist, writer, historian and collector for over 50 years. A through line through his various work is a dedication to preserving and sharing material traces of the past. In celebrating the craftsmanship, skill and beauty inherent in building and decorative craft, he highlights these traces as part of our shared heritage.

Pearson began this work in earnest at a time of great disregard and perhaps even wilful destruction of Ireland’s - particularly Dublin’s - built environment in the 20^th century. Buildings were torn down at an extraordinary rate, and the architectural merit of a distinctly Irish expression of largely Georgian architecture was ignored or disdained. This period included the 1963 demolition of 16 buildings in Fitzwilliam Place to facilitate the building of a new headquarters for the ESB, in what was once the longest unbroken row of Georgian houses in Europe, and the building of Council offices over one of the most intact Viking sites in the world at Wood Quay.

Fragments acts as a testament to what has been lost, and what is still worth preserving. The wide assortment of materials seen in the Link Gallery represents only a selection from Pearson’s own collection, and a miniscule amount of what was destroyed. An enormously wide range of media is on display, each testament to the skill and craft associated with it; plasterwork, ironmongery, woodcarving, stone carving, joinery, glassblowing, wallpaper painting, leadwork, and more. The installation utilises the scale of the Link Gallery at VISUAL to create a kind of streetscape: as the viewer passes through the gallery, they encounter a series of doorways formed out of pillars, columns, fanlights, friezes, shutters, doors, paintings and assemblages. Each one acts as a memorial to a disappeared house, shopfront, building; what Pearson has called ‘little tombstones’.

Pearson was a pioneer – he and his contemporaries were often dismissed as cranks or eccentrics, but history has proved them correct. Preservation is largely agreed to be a positive thing, both in preserving the physical beauty of the built environment and from an ecological point of view; the most sustainable building is the one that already exists. These issues are still at stake though; the most recent painting in the exhibition depicts a site on Dublin Street in Carlow, where a building was illegally demolished on a bank-holiday weekend to build a carpark. Years later, the site sits empty.

Pearson’s painting practice inevitably shares the same concerns as his other work; records of demolished or threatened buildings, with surreal elements appearing on the streetscapes; an oversized classical urn lies in the middle of a street, an enormous sanitation pipe protruding from a building nearby; a crane, midway through demolishing a building, becomes host to a washing-line and a skeleton. A central painting depicts the Sick and Indigent Roomkeeper’s Society, Ireland’s oldest surviving charity that once operated from the building that bears its name on Palace Street, Dublin. Today the Society continues to give relief to Dubliners struggling to remain in their homes.  This building and the charity’s ongoing work reminds us that the housing crisis in Ireland is not a new phenomenon, and suggests that one way of serving the population is to better preserve, use and celebrate the buildings we already have.

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Peter Pearson is a renowned artist, historian and conservationist. After studying art history at Trinity College Dublin, he began his artistic career with a scholarship-funded exhibition in Venice in 1978. Since then, he has exhibited widely throughout Ireland and Europe. His work is in the collections of Irish Life, ESB, Chester Beatty Library, Dublin City Council, Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, The Merrion Hotel and An Taisce. 

An accomplished author, Pearson has published a range of acclaimed books detailing Ireland’s architectural heritage, including The Heart of Dublin; Between the Mountains and the Sea and Dun Laoghaire: Kingstown.

Pearson has been involved in numerous campaigns for architectural preservation and restoration, including the restoration of Drimnagh Castle, the regeneration of Temple Bar and the safeguarding of numerous private and public buildings.