Source Programme of Events Autumn Winter 2019 The Source Arts Centre Programme Autumn Winter 201 | Page 34

AUTUMN | WINTER 2019
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Furey Speaks!
I
gave a lift to a German lad once.
It was the mid-1970’s and he had mistakenly got
off the train at Nenagh instead of Limerick, his
preferred destination.
He made for an interesting sight with a fedora on
his head and wearing a long trench coat; not the
normal type of character you would see in the
evening gloom of the Limerick road at that time.
As I was delivering a trailer of turf to a man in
Birdhill, I took pity and decided to pick him up
bag and baggage and bring him some of the way.
His English was good and he said he was a Doctor
and when I asked him what area did he practice in
and he said; ‘of Art’.
Despite being young I was aware that professors
existed and were sometimes called doctors, but I
said mischievously:
“I didn’t know Art was sick.”
He nodded grimly and said:
“Very.”
And then he laughed.
It turned out he was a professor of arts in
Dusseldorf, Germany and he was giving a lecture
in Limerick, that night about what he called
‘performance art.’
Now the furthest we got to in secondary school was
the ‘Impressionists’, so he was way ahead of me. As
such, over the journey he, his name was Joseph,
filled me in on what had been happening in art in
the past 60 years. Performance art, which was in
infancy at that point, utilized the human body,
often in repeated movements or patterns,
sometimes in a ritualized way to make social or
political commentary. As such, there was no actual
finished physical work that remained, just an event
that took place and ended.
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I asked him, if he was an artist, did he have any
paintings or sculptures to sell and he said he didn’t.
I didn’t respond any further, but it left me in a
quandary as to what such an artist could possibly
live on.
Joseph was very interested in my cargo of turf and
briquettes when he saw it as we stopped in Birdhill.
He helped me unload the trailer at the local garage
owners shop. He asked about both the briquettes
and turf and where they had come from. I told him
the Irish hadn’t any oil or gas, so we were left with
peat, an accretion of plant and organic matter, that
when cut and dried could be burned for fuel and
this was our natural resource. I told him that if
ever got a bag of turf off anyone in Germany, he
was to make sure it was dry, as a fire of wet turf and
it’s allied smoke would clear a house, if the wind
blew the wrong way down the chimney.
He was fascinated by this, and asked to keep two
briquettes and a sod of turf and he held on to them
in the car as if he had been given some great prize.
He was friendly enough and I ran him the rest of
the way into Limerick and dropped him outside
the old library in Pery Square, which was his
ultimate destination. A sign outside proclaimed
‘Joseph Beuys – Lecture tonight - 8 p.m.’
He gave me a thanks and a hearty wave as he
stepped out of the car and stood briefly before the
front of the building like a man about to go into
battle, wielding a sod of turf.
Later I heard he made an artwork from the two
pieces of briquettes, placing a block of butter
between them and called the result an ‘Irish
sandwich’. It sits to this day in the Limerick City
Gallery of Art.