Delorean : Progress Report -

In the course of recording a report for ARENA about this new exhibition in Dublin's Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, I spoke to the artist, Sean Lynch, about his work, a gorgeous series of photographs that trace the history of the Delorean car-making enterprise after the famous arrest and bankruptcy of Northern Ireland's greatest sports car entrepreneur, John Delorean.

What made this an interesting work was the clear undercurrent of the idea of cultural preservation. Lynch followed the machinery and basic components of the Delorean DMC-12 on their journey from manufactoring cultural value (the Delorean itself has massive power as a pop culture icon, from its famous image as the time machine in Back To The Future to its basis as the subject of albums from Neon Neon and the reverently titled Delorean, a band from Barcelona) to abandonment and reappropriation. Lynch is interested in documenting the recent past, in the same way that an archeologist is interested in documenting the slightly less recent past. Photographs provide the evidence of the story, the links in the chain that tell us what happened next to the DMC-12, photographs that stretch from the desolate back lot of the original Delorean factory to the current resting place for some of the machinery vital for the cars' production, the bottom of Galway Bay (above). But they are not enough for Lynch.

In the centre of the white space that is the Kevin Kavanagh gallery, lies a wooden box with metal propped against it, metal that is bent and hammered into the instantly-recognisable shape of a Delorean gullwing door. This is where the crux of the exhibition lies. Lynch has spent considerable time and money arranging for these handmade parts of the DMC-12 to be made, for the first time since since the Belfast factory closed in 1982. And it was these panels that let me into the heart of the exhibition.



This is an exhibition about failure, the documentation and representation of a great failed enterprise, a dalliance with hubris and arrogance that left nothing behind itself, but an underwater home for some Galway Bay lobsters. Although Deloreans are amazingly collectable, and still recognised by a huge amount of people (myself included) who weren't even born when the factory closed down, the bones of the enterprise lie at the bottom of the blue-black sea. The cultural myth may live on, in Back To The Future DVDs and collector clubs, but Delorean's reality is buried treaure, fossilized remains laying on the oceanbed, as dead as dust.

Lynch, of course, totally disagrees. You can find out his opinions for yourself on Saturday 23rd Jan, when he speaks to the writer Caoimhin Mac Giolla Leith in a public lecture which will be held in the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery at 12pm.