Keeping Busy!

I have had a very busy few weeks, getting out and about! A few weeks ago, while my daughter was on mid-term break we made our way in to Dublin The National Museum at Collins Barracks. We thought it would be an awful shame if we didn't get to the special exhibition Proclaiming a Republic in the centenary year! Before going in to that exhibition, however, we noticed a small building dedicated to the yacht "Asgard". This private boat was used for gun-running in the early part of last century, prior to the 1916 Uprising. It was a fairly nice display, the yacht being the centrepiece with smaller historical artefacts, photographs and didactics in display cases and the surrounding walls.

Proclaiming a Republic is quite a huge exhibition, which is incredibly wide-ranging as it takes in both sides of the conflict, social and family issues, the suffragette movement and cultural aspects. I could easily have spent longer than I did (nearly two hours) at the exhibition but my teenage daughter does not have the stamina for museums... Amazingly, the republican flag that was raised at the GPO (General Post Office on O'Connell St (formerly Sackville St) is relatively intact. It was taken down by the British in 1916 but returned by the Crown for the 50th anniversary of the Rising.

At Collins Barracks we bumped into some friends we hadn't seen in awhile, which prompted us to go back into Dublin a few days later to see the VUE art fair that my last blog post talked about. A week later I found myself in Dublin again, at the National Print Museum for the launch of Theo Honohan's book Mechanicsville. The book is an "essay in 11 parts on the character of engineering", which I am finding fascinating and somewhat surreal (though I am not sure if this was the author's intention...). The Print Museum was the perfect setting for the launch, as it was a setting of machines - old printing presses, typesetting machines, paper ruling machines, etc. There were also some artefacts relevant to the centenary celebrations. I thought perhaps this was a draft of The Proclamation.

This was the third occasion I had to see a print of The Proclamation in as many weeks. First, on the day I was dropping off my books to be considered for the Dublin Art Book Fair, I had dropped in to see the Book of Kells at Trinity College, and a copy of The Proclamation was on display in Long Room. The second time was at The Proclaiming a Republic exhibition (above) and now here at The Print Museum.

I was in Dublin again a few days later, at the launch of the Dublin Art Books Fair at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios. My Good Morning books had been accepted into the curated artists' books section of the fair. The launch was pretty packed and there were a lot of art books and artist-made books. The atmosphere was fairly casual with people very interested in picking up and looking through the books. Here is a view of one of the large round tables.

And a close up of a set of my books (all three languages) on the table.

The following day I was back in Dublin, at IMMA for a lunchtime talk. The topic of Wounded Cities was fascinating and led by Professor Karen Till. There were two artists also involved in the talk, including my friend Susan Gogan who discussed her in-progress fictional film set in Berlin.

Though not in Dublin, the launch of the third (re-booted) issue of the Bray Arts Journal, took place at The Mermaid Arts Centre in Bray a few days later. A few of my images were included in the journal, but I was glad that the image of this 2012 painting, Together, was included alongside my poem Waking Dream, written shortly after the death of my Mum at the end of the summer.

Postcard 1916

Postcard 1916 was an exhibition of postcards, curated by artist Eileen Ferguson, which took place in The Old Post Office, Clones. Individual blank postcards were provided to interested artists to create small works in response to a specific word in The Proclamation or The Proclamation itself. The exhibition was a response to the 100th anniversary of the Easter Uprising.

The wall of postcards, though at first daunting in its diversity and jumbled nature, became intriguing for this very nature. The cards were all so different showing an incredible individuality of response to the same theme. 

There was also a great variey in the media used for expression: photography, print, collage, encaustic, paint, cloth

and any mixture of these materials.

Artists responded using the language of The Proclamation, or in their own words.

 Cards used naturalism, abstraction and symbolism...

I cannot comment on or show an image of every card in the display -

but one certainly gets an idea of the diversity in the exhibition.

The exhibition will be packed up and brought to France for further exhibition in La
Vielle Poste, Larroque in August of this year.

My own response (in situ below right) was a response to the word "children". I created a collage using ripped paper, an image of children collecting wood from the rubble of Sackville St (now O'Connell St, Dublin)  on a background of excerpts from my paternal grandfather's Witness Statement of his "military" activities leading to the foundation of the state.

 The postcard my husband, James Hayes, submitted (in situ, above centre left) is a lino print of the anniversary dates collaged onto a background of writing excerpted from The Proclamation.

There were so many interesting responses, it is impossible to showcase them all. The curator of the exhibition, Eileen Ferguson, was delighted with the response -- receiving postcards not just from Ireland, she also received cards from Canada and Germany. Ferguson also spoke of the range of work received and interest from both amateur and established artists, as well as enthusiastic responses from children and young people who had participated in some workshops.

  

The Skipping Project - Postcard 1916

I have mentioned before that I often use card making (for birthdays, special occasions) as sketches to help me work out ideas. Since one of my themes for The Skipping Project deals with the transformation of trauma into children's games I decided to submit a piece when I heard about Postcard 1916. This exhibition, curated by Eileen Ferguson, is of postcards created in response to any word in The Proclamation or The Proclamation itself. I chose the word "children".

The image I have been working with is from a photograph of children collecting wood in the rubble heaps that was Dublin after the Easter Uprising in 1916. The relevant writing in the background of the collage is excerpted from my paternal grandfather's Witness Statement, made for the government in 1950, describing his involvement in the Uprising and other activities leading to the foundation of the state.

I repeated the theme for some recent cards I made.

The Postcard 1916 exhibition will be displayed again in La Vielle Poste, Larroque, France in August and  The General Post Office (GPO), Dublin - which was the HQ of the rebels in 1916 -is interested in acquiring digital images of the works for their archives.