BOLDTYPE ISSUE #61: Artwork by McDermott & McGough
The cover of this issue of Boldtype is a detail of the 1990 palladium
print "Manner of Extinguishing a Candle Placed Behind a Bottle, 1884" by
McDermott & McGough. The photograph is reproduced in McDermott &
McGough: An Experience of Amusing Chemistry, an exhibition catalog
from their recent retrospective of the same title at the Irish Museum of
Modern Art in Dublin. The book was published by the Irish Museum of
Modern Art, in association with Charta, and is distributed by
D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc.
The exhibition, McDermott & McGough: An Experience of Amusing
Chemistry, brought together a major body of the artists' photography
for the first time. David McDermott and Peter McGough met in the vibrant
New York City art scene of the '80s and began what would turn into a
lifelong collaboration. The duo is well known in the international art
community for the anachronistic sensibilities that inhabit its painting,
sculpture, and photography. They are represented by Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris; Cheim & Read, New York; and Nicholas Robinson Gallery, New York.
"Manner of Extinguishing a Candle Placed Behind a Bottle" epitomizes the rediscovery of the Victorian era and the early stages of modernism that McDermott & McGough investigate in their artistic practice. The origin of the photograph is a basic science experiment illustrated in the 1880 textbook by Gaston Tissandier Les Récréations Scientifiques. The artists recreated and photographed the test, then developed the film using palladium, a process that was discovered in the mid-1800s. The resulting photograph appears to be antique, thereby disorienting the viewer's sense of chronological time.
The exhibition catalog further delineates the other antiquated film-developing processes that McDermott & McGough employ, including salt prints, cyanotypes, and gum bichromates. It also includes a series of interviews with the artists that brim with memorable quotes concerning the strains of contemporary life. Each photograph offers a fresh dose of nostalgia, as the artists seamlessly step between the past and the present, subtly questioning the qualities of progress.
- Julia Fryett
