Art In Focus: My Magnetic North, Gary Coyle.
Aidan Dunne . Irish Times Saturday November 17th 2018.


What is it ?

A Photo that forms part of Gary Coyle’s forthcoming Performance Piece incorporating still photographs, moving images and the spoken word – the words written &n performed by the Artist.

How is it done ?
It is not the first time that Coyle has taken on the challenge of, one could say, making a work in the form of a commentary on his work, and the various aspects of his history, experiences and the insights that inform them. A superlative draughtsman, his lens based work and writing are equally impressive.

Where can I see it ?
Coyle will perform My Magnetic North , Direction is By Gina Moxley in The Cube at The Project Arts Centre.

Is it typical of the Artist ?
Sort of, while he has worked effectively with quite a range of media and forms, a seam of autobiographical reflection runs through almost everything he has done. He was born and grew up in Dun Laoghaire, the son of Painter John Coyle, but Gary inclined first towards sculpture studying at NCAD, The Arts students League in New York, and finally the RCA in London. Though one can can imagine him settling easily into London, which he did. He gradually gravitated back towards Dun Laoghaire which has been a rich source of inspiration for him in many ways.

At Sea, The Daily Practice of Swimming.
Developed from his diary documenting his year round swims at the Forty Foot, & formed the basis for another performance piece at The Project. Humour has always been present in his work, but homour with an edge to it. Death in Dun Laoghaire built around a set of vividly concise accounts of growing up delved further into Coyles past and darker side of his hometown. “ All my life I have been fascinated with death in all its guises” he explained. Southside Gothic, the title of another show , aptly describes the morbid trust of his imagination.
That show and several others demonstrated his extraordinary masyert of drawing with Charcoal on a large scale, an unusual choice of medium but one which he has made his own, ideally matched to the density and darkness of his images. In many of his drawings Dun Laoghaire and its hinterland Merged with the Iconography of horror films, the trope of the final girl, the brooding loner in the woods, earlier he’d made charged images of ominously empty spaces , scenes of crimes & the sets of porn films.

With My Magnetic North:
His enduring preoccupations remain, how places are absorbed into out inner lives and can shape us, the fact of mortality , how the flow of time in itself changes everything. His observations keep pace with his own life.
“ whats the fall out when you lose your magnetic north?” he ask’s “ And you find yourself directionless ?”