2015

The Guinness Curse T293, Rome, Italy

Works

The Guinness family is an extensive aristocratic Anglo-Irish Protestant family noted for their accomplishments in banking, politics, religious ministry and even fashion. Most notable of course, is the Guinness brewery business, founded by Arthur Guinness in 1759. Arthur fathered 21 children, of whom only 10 survived to maturity. The “Guinness Curse” (after which this show is named) is a recurring media phrasing, referring to this high rate of death, deemed pre-destined and doomed to be repeated through-out the family tree.

The exhibition consists of a new body of thematic work – a series of wall and floor assemblages exploring the strange high occurrence of premature death’s in the Guinness family. The exhibition toys with speculation, myth, superstition and inevitably pop-culture itself. In suit of Beckett’s vocabulary, the works are developed in a macabre museological sphere, using formal artefact to legitimise peripheral narrative. The pieces combine biographical elements from each family member portrayed with merchandise from the brewing company itself – a mélange evoking discomfort through clash. On a basis of display grids, additional planes of custom printed fabrics and tinted glass evoke an austerity, making for an environment of fatality – then memorial.

 

Beckett exploits this casual media naming of a metaphysical damning, prospecting how elements of both company and person can be integrated into commemorative displays.“The Curse” is for this purpose exaggerated to the point of b-grade horror, with abstract clichés of death appearing in the form of (for example) blood streaks amid snippets of raw nature. The approach sees life in its whole as inapproachable – instead turning to the extended drama of others as provisional model for alternative celebrity. In this sense, as an exploration of yearning and loss, the show negotiates a shallow and sinister form of entertainment.

Tara Browne would be a good case of the afore mentioned. A Guinness heir, Tara crashed his Lotus Elan into the back of a parked truck, swerving at the last minute and crushing his own person in order to save the life of his passenger, model Suki Potier. This event is said to have inspired the Beatle song, A Day in the Life, with the lyrics: “He blew his mind out in a car, he hadn’t noticed that the lights had changed”. The display commemorating this particular death uses car-parts from the same model vehicle Tara was driving, together with a collection of Guinness aprons.

'Tara Brown' Wood, UV printed glass, custom made Guinness velvet, steel rod, car parts from Lotus Elan, 1600, Type 26 S1 Roadster (same model Tara Brown crashed).

'Tara Brown' Wood, UV printed glass, custom made Guinness velvet, steel rod, car parts from Lotus Elan, 1600, Type 26 S1 Roadster (same model Tara Brown crashed).

As the dark stout began to travel the world, the level of hops was boosted to insure it could remain robust whilst passing the equator in shifting temperatures. As parallel, two family members are chosen for portrayal, due to their formative roles in far-flung corners of the globe:

Preacher, Henry Grattan Guinness was responsible for training and sending hundreds of “faith missionaries” all over the world, including his own daughter. Lucy E. Guinness wrote “Across India at the Dawn of the 20th Century”, about her hopes of converting the so called “heathen natives” to Christianity. Tireless pages of concerned verse, illustration and statistic, paint a portrait of a country in dire need of rescue, justifying perhaps a role for Lucy, had she not prematurely perished of septicaemia. Extracts from these pages and occasional photos form the back-drops of such portraits in “The Guinness Curse”.

'Lucy E. Guinness' Wood, UV printed mirrored glass, custom-made Guinness velvet, steel rod, drapery, tassels, porcelain toucan

'Lucy E. Guinness' Wood, UV printed mirrored glass, custom-made Guinness velvet, steel rod, drapery, tassels, porcelain toucan

'Lady Henrietta Guinness' Wood, UV printed mirrored glass, steel rod, drapery, tassels, porcelain toucan

Tara Browne would be a good case of the afore mentioned. A Guinness heir, Tara crashed his Lotus Elan into the back of a parked truck, swerving at the last minute and crushing his own person in order to save the life of his passenger, model Suki Potier. This event is said to have inspired the Beatle song, A Day in the Life, with the lyrics: “He blew his mind out in a car, he hadn’t noticed that the lights had changed”. The display commemorating this particular death uses car-parts from the same model vehicle Tara was driving, together with a collection of Guinness aprons.

'Tara Brown' Wood, UV printed glass, custom made Guinness velvet, steel rod, car parts from Lotus Elan, 1600, Type 26 S1 Roadster (same model Tara Brown crashed).

'Tara Brown' Wood, UV printed glass, custom made Guinness velvet, steel rod, car parts from Lotus Elan, 1600, Type 26 S1 Roadster (same model Tara Brown crashed).

Walter Guinness, (1st Baron Moyne) – assassinated by the marginal Jewish terrorist group Lehi in Cairo, 1944, due to his role as British minister of state in the Middle East. As a member of the house of lords, Walter travelled extensively, one such trip being to Papua New Guinea, which resulted in the publication “Walkabout – A Journey in Lands between The Pacific & Indian Oceans”. The pages of this book appear as excerpt in a series of wall pieces.

'Walter Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne' Wood, UV printed glass, Guinness coaster, tube light, custom-made Guinness velvet, Guinness salt and pepper shakers, page from “Walkabout - A Journey in Lands between The Pacific & Indian Oceans”. (Walter Guinness, 1936)

'Walter Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne' Wood, UV printed glass, Guinness coaster, tube light, custom-made Guinness velvet, Guinness salt and pepper shakers, page from “Walkabout - A Journey in Lands between The Pacific & Indian Oceans”. (Walter Guinness, 1936)

'Lady Henrietta Guinness' Wood, UV printed mirrored glass, steel rod, drapery, tassels, porcelain toucan

'Natalya' Wood, UV printed glass

“For Ivana, boarding school brought some respite from the chaos, but at home Lowell and Blackwood were falling apart, the poet suffering from increasing episodes of mania and Blackwood pickled in drink. In the autumn of 1977 Lowell flew to New York to his first wife, the writer and editor Elizabeth Hardwick, and suffered a fatal heart attack in the taxi on the way in from the airport; Hardwick found him in the back of the cab clutching Lucian Freud’s Girl in Bed painting. Five years earlier Israel Citkowitz had died. Then, a year after Lowell’s death, Ivana’s sister Natalya died, aged 18, from a heroin overdose. ‘That was it, there was no hope,’ Ivana says of the effect of the pile-up of tragedies on the family unit and Blackwood’s drinking. ‘There wasn’t very much parenting [anyway], but if there was any that was kind of it, because my mother gave up then. She always remained a friend, but she couldn’t be a mother.'”

'Natalya' Wood, UV printed glass

'Natalya' Wood, UV printed glass

T293