On Post-State by Conor Horgan                                             words by Ria Czerniak-LeBov

There is something strangely fitting about an exhibition titled Post-State taking place at the Royal Hibernian Academy, an institution whose very name bears the legacy of contested statehood. The soft grey sans serif announcing my arrival at the Ashford Gallery stands in stark contrast to Conor Horgan’s hasty charcoal scrawlings: POST-STATE. I find myself smiling at the incongruity, the anarchic act of writing on these gallery walls. For all their apparent carelessness, the child-like block capitals succeed in setting the tone of the show within, a note left for fellow survivors in the aftermath of whatever crisis has resulted in this self-declared state of statelessness.

I walk around the space, taking it all in. Abandoned structures, overgrown landscapes, road markings that lead nowhere, man-made boundaries that obstruct the viewer’s gaze. Horgan’s Flag series, crisp and saturated, is at once uniquely Irish and yet somehow universal. The palette, the textures and the resulting ambience of these unpeopled spaces feel familiar. They could be any number of villages and roads I have passed through on drives around the country. That is doubtless one of the defining features of these works. They seem to document journeys but never destinations.

By the seventh image I notice a pattern. I return to the start, cross referencing each work in turn to see if I’ve imagined it and find, that embedded in most of the thirty photographic works, lies a deconstructed tricolour. Perhaps I should have guessed sooner but it suddenly dawns on me why they are titled Flags. Green, white and orange, green, white and orange. Once noticed, I cannot unsee our national emblem in the rusted railings, the crisp white bedsheets blowing in the breeze, the creepers that threaten to engulf all that is left in their path.

It isn’t just the palette either. I begin to recognise flag-like aspect ratios littered throughout the exhibition. Breeze blocks, rotated by 90 degrees, become rows of white flags, symbols of surrender, but to what or whom is their maker admitting defeat? In an age defined by growing political extremism, climate crisis and the recent Covid-19 pandemic, it’s uncertain which factors Horgan is proposing pose the greatest threat to nationhood and state. The strength of the work lies in its ambiguity. The vinyl panels on the white cube walls mark spatial boundaries crossed by images of boundaries, layered motifs upon layered surface, portals which carry us over thresholds, allowing the viewer to walk among the detritus. These photographs only ever allude to the fall. It is up to the audience to visualise it.

As I walk around the space, the sequence of the work is somehow reminiscent of cinematic montage. Image by image, detail by detail, the mise en scene is at once, deceptively simple and yet highly nuanced. The eye is guided from piece to piece, through lines and repeating forms. There is even a point when two frames meet in a corner, edges touching, to allow the segments of rusted pipe to continue, uninterrupted. The offbeat hang gives the overall impression that these images are not intended to be viewed as individual works. It is the thread running through them that gives them meaning.

Flag No. 79 is the only photograph in the exhibition in which we see a figure. A woman sits on a dark leather sofa, her back to us, her long red hair catching the light. The weathered, stained surface of the sofa marks the end of the road. Felled trees, rocks and earth form a hill before the sitter. To the right we catch a glimpse of large black refuse sacks among the bare trees. Transport the figure and the couch to any living room in the country, a TV before her and she would look right at home. Instead, we see her passively watch the mass of waste that faces her. We are observing an observer who cannot meet our gaze. I find myself questioning what the woman is looking at, only to question anew, what it is I myself am looking at. This image seems to conclude Horgan’s journey. I imagine ‘The End’ scrolling skywards, as I ready myself to leave the show.

Like any good dystopian movie, I leave Post-State equally relieved and unnerved, relieved to be back in the wonderfully un-apocalyptic bustle of the city centre on a bright autumn day, unnerved at the thought that maybe the apocalypse has already taken place, but I was just too distracted to notice it.

Review by Ria Czerniak-Lebov