The Array Collective | Herbert Gallery

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The Array Collective is an artist collective from Belfast that tackle social and political issues affecting them and their communities psych as access to abortion, mental health, LGBTQ+ rights, and social welfare.

The Druidthaib's Ball, 2021

The Array Collective

The Herbert Gallery, Turner Prize 2021 winner

Images courtesy of the author

They won the Turner Prize 2021 with their installation, The Druithaib's Ball, an imagined shebeen (an illicit drinking den) with a ceiling patched together with banners and signs made for protests and demonstrations. The design and placement of each element of this installation was impossible to take in in a short amount of time, and I ended up spending about `half an hour inside this created world.

The Druidthaib's Ball, 2021

The Array Collective

The Herbert Gallery, Turner Prize 2021 winner

Images courtesy of the author

From the empty holy water font at the entrance to the catholic iconography and, what was in essence, a sermon playing on the screens on one wall, the installation made reference to Irish ceremonial practices in every facet of its construction and presentation.

The Druidthaib's Ball, 2021

The Array Collective

The Herbert Gallery, Turner Prize 2021 winner

Images courtesy of the author

It was only upon closer inspection that queer imagery could be noticed, such as "Pegged" zine casually left on a shelf behind the bar, as if put down by an anarchical barista between iced latte orders. The thought put into the parts that these small details play can be seen again in the replica ashtrays and cigarette butts centring the tables in the space as they further serve to create a reality that doesn't really exist. This was amplified by the political statements printed and sewn onto the banner forming the roof canopy; these banners were used in demonstrations and protests by The Array Collective and helped to ground the installation and bring a sense of weight and dimension.

This work is particularly interesting and important to my practice as it was the first time that I'd been able to experience in person a space transformed and transported in place. Also informing my work is the way that catholicism and queerness live together to queer this, I assume typically clinical, space. Without explicit investigation you could have been forgiven for thinking that tinsel and the stuffed clothes of an assumed patron were the extent of the camp utilised; the subtle way that these two juxtaposing ideas are presented, as not only coexisting but elevating each other, shows that camaraderie between minority communities often transcends any superficial and some deeply entrenched divisions.