Testimony: The Eye/I of the Writer with Cristín Leach (in association with Hugh Lane Gallery)

Course Summary

Led by art critic, author, and broadcaster Cristín Leach, this course will provide a unique environment for participants to explore and establish a distinctive writerly eye/I, in response to the theme of ‘testimony’ in Irish painter Brian Maguire’s major exhibition La Grande Illusion. Participants will learn the practical skills and methodologies of a traditional newspaper art critic and together interrogate ways in which the role has evolved and expanded in response to new media platforms, digital publishing, and changes in art writing, art criticism, and arts journalism commissioning practices in the years 2007-2024, which anchor the works in the show.

Course Outline

Week One:

This session will provide an introduction to Brian Maguire’s practice and paintings through a tour of the exhibition and group discussion of some existing critical responses to his work. A selection of readings and or listening material will be provided in advance of the first session. Participants will be allocated a fixed period of time for making notes in front of artworks in the gallery.

 Week Two:

Introduction to traditional journalist art critic methodologies. Practical exercises. Application of these skillsets to begin to transform notes made in the gallery into a first draft of a newspaper-style exhibition review. Participants will be asked to work on this text over the week and email and/or return in week 3 with a second draft of the review.

Week Three:

Group discussion and (anonymous) group editing of some participant review texts. Readings. Deeper dive into making consciously informed decisions about style, medium, voice, tone, register, language, platform/outlet, and the eye/I of the critic. Considering the place of activism in art criticism, in light of the relationship between activism and art in Maguire’s work.

Week Four:

Radicality and experiment. Audio texts. Haptic responses. Commissioned collaborations and critical distance. New mediums and formats: what’s next? Participants will be asked to return in week five with an example of their favourite kind of contemporary art criticism or art writing, by another writer or critic, in any medium or format.

Week Five:

The critic is dead; long live the critic. Analysis and discussion of shared favourite work. Space to further explore pertinent aspects of ideas introduced in previous weeks.

Week Six:

Participants will attend with their finished critical response to La Grande Illusion (or other related exhibition or exhibitions), in their chosen format, and reflect on the decisions they have made about voice, register, language, medium, and the shared critical eye/I of the writer.

Course Outcomes

Together, participants will take a deep dive into the question of writerly persona in art criticism. They will learn key practical skills to produce art criticism as specialist reportage, informed by journalism methodologies and selected approaches to an expanded practice. Throughout the course, they will learn more about the work of Brian Maguire and explore ways to craft responses to his practice. The overall aim of the course is open space for lively questioning and experimentation, and to support participants to find their medium and unique voice in writing about art in the 21^st century.

Cristín Leach is an art critic, broadcaster, and author of the bestselling memoir Negative Space and the RHA bicentenary book From Ten Till Dusk. A critic for The Sunday Times for 20 years, her art writing, creative non-fiction and short fiction have been published in Winter Papers, RTÉ Culture, Irish Arts Review, anthology collections, artist monographs, and broadcast on RTÉ. Her mobile cube poem, To the Line, is on tour as part of the OPW Art Collection until June 2025.

Booked out? To be added to the waiting list for this course, please email info@irishwriterscentre.ie.