1 
 
 MCMULLEN MUSEUM OF ART 
 BOSTON COLLEGE 
 
Pauline Cummins 
 Rita Duffy 
 Mary FitzGerald 
 Finola Jones 
 Eithne Jordan 
 Mary Loti an 
 Alice Maher 
 Deirdre O’Connell 
 Eilis O’Connell 
 Gwen O’Dowd 
 Geraldine O’Reilly 
 Kathy Prendergast 
 Louise Walsh 
 
 EDITED BY JENNIFER GRINNELL AND ALSTON CONLEY 
 
Photographs have been provided courtesy of the following: 
 
 This publication is issued in conjunction with the exhibition 
 Re/Dressing Cathleen: Contemporary Works from Irish Women Artists, 
 at the Charles S. and Isabella V. McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 
 October 5 to December 7, 1997. 
 
 The exhibition was organized by the Charles S. and 
 
 Isabella V. McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, Alston Conley 
 
 and Mary Ar mstrong, curators. 
 
 This publication was supported by Boston College and published by 
 the Charles S. and Isabella V. McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College. 
 
 Copyright © 1997 by the Charles S. and Isabella V. McMullen Museum 
 of Art, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA. 
 
 Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 97-074589 
 ISBN 0-9640153-8-2 
 
 Edited by Jennifer Grinnell and Alston Conley. 
 
 Copyedited by Heather Fryer and Naomi Rosenberg. 
 
 Designed by Boston College Office of Publications and 
 Print Marketing, Monica DeSalvo, Senior Graphic Designer, 
 
 David Williams, Director of Design Services. 
 
 Typeset in Thesis, The Serif and Thesis, The Mix 
 
 Printed by Champagne Lafayette, Natick, MA. 
 
 front cover: 
 no. 32 
 
 Alice Maher 
 Berry Dress 
 1994 
 
 cotton, rose hips and pins 
 12 x 10 x 6 in. 
 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of Modem Art, Dublin 
 
 back cover: 
 no. 42 
 
 Eilis O’Connell 
 
 Cathoid 
 
 1996 
 
 cast lead crystal 
 12 x 12 x 6 in. 
 
 Courtesy of Green on Red Gallery, Dublin 
 
 Kerlin Galleries, Dublin, and Gwen O’Dowd, nos. 1, 2 (pi. I), 
 no. 3, figs. 14,15 
 
 Taylor Galleries, Dublin, and Mary Lohan, no. 4 (pi. II), no. 5 
 Deirdre O'Connell, no. 6, photographer Brooklyn Arts Documentation, 
 New York, no. 7 (pi. Ill) 
 
 Geraldine O’Reilly, nos. 8 - 10, 14, fig. 16, photographer Michael McKelvey, 
 no. 11, 12 (pi. IV), no. 13 
 
 Rubicon Gallery, Dublin, and Eithne Jordan, no. 15 (pi. V), no. 16 
 
 Rita Duffy, no. 17 (pi. VI), nos. 18 - 20 (pi. VII), fig. 18 
 
 Irish Museum of Modem Art, Dublin, and Kathy Prendergast, nos. 
 
 21 - 28 (pi. VIII), nos. 29, 30 (pi. IX), no. 31, and Alice Maher, no. 32 (pi. X), 
 and Pauline Cummins and Louise Walsh, no. 46a (pi. XTV), no. 46b 
 Green on Red Gallery, Dublin, and Alice Maher, nos. 33, 34, (pi. XI), 
 and Mary FitzGerald, no. 35 (pi. XII), nos. 36 - 38, and Eilis O’Connell, 
 photographer Peter White, no. 39 (pi. XIII), nos. 40, 41, no. 42 (pi. XIV), 
 nos. 43, 44, fig. 12, photographer John Davies, fig. 13, and Finola Jones, 
 no. 45 (pi. XV) 
 
 Ludwig Collection, Aachen, fig. 1 
 
 Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London/Photo: Prudence Cuming 
 Associates Ltd., fig. 2 
 
 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and ©1988 Andy Warhol Foundation 
 for the Visual Arts/ARS, New York, fig. 3 
 The Menil Collection, Houston/Photo: Paul Hester, Houston, fig. 4 
 The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York/Photo: 
 
 Jerry L. Thompson, fig. 5 
 Philadelphia Museum of Art, fig. 6 
 
 The Museum of Modem Art, New York/Photograph ©1997 
 The Museum of Modem Art, New York, figs. 7, 8 
 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City, fig. 9 
 National Museum of Ireland, figs 10, 11 
 Merlin Films Ltd., Dublin, fig. 17 
 

 Nancy Netzer 
 
 
 Alston Conley and Jennifer Grinnell 
 
 Pamela Berger, Department of Fine Arts 
 and Irish Studies, Boston College 
 
 Medb Ruane.The Sunday Times (Ireland) 
 
 Katherine Nahum, Department of Fine 
 Arts, Boston College 
 
 Claude Cernuschi, Department of Fine 
 Arts, Boston College 
 
 Angela Bourke, University College, Dublin 
 
 Adele M. Dalsimer, Department of 
 English and Irish Studies, Boston College 
 Vera Kreilkamp, Department of English, 
 
 Robert Savage, Department of History 
 and Irish Studies, Boston College 
 
 Pine Manor College 
 
 1 Marv Lohan Eilis O’Connell Gwen 
 
 James M. Smith, Department of English 
 and Irish Studies, Boston College 
 
 1 O’Dowd, and Geraldine O’Reilly 
 
 Alston Conley, Department of Fine Arts 
 and the McMullen Museum of Art, 
 Boston College 
 
 (-3 Roundinq Up the Ubiquitous Suspects: 1 
 
 Mary Armstrong, Department of Fine 
 
 Kitsch, Camp and Cultural Anxiety in 
 
 Arts, Boston College 
 
 Finola Jones’ LUSCIOUS — (an aesthetic | 
 
 131 Appendix: The American Letter 
 
 Philip O’Leary, Department of English 
 and Irish Studies, Boston College 
 
 Ruth-Ann M. Harris, Department of 
 History and Irish Studies, Boston College 
 
 
 1 138 Objects in the Exhibition 
 
 
 1 140 Artists' Biographies 
 
LENDERS TO 
 THE EXHIBITION 
 
 ARTS COUNCIL OF NORTHERN IRELAND, BELFAST 
 
 DIETER AND BIRGIT BROSKA COLLECTION, IRELAND 
 
 PAULINE CUMMINS, DUBLIN 
 
 RITA DUFFY, BELFAST 
 
 JUSTINA AND PETER FARRELL, DUBLIN 
 
 MAIRE AND MAURICE FOLEY, DUBLIN 
 
 GREEN ON RED GALLERY, DUBLIN 
 
 IRISH MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, DUBLIN 
 
 KERLIN GALLERY, DUBLIN 
 
 PATRICIA MURPHY, DUBLIN 
 
 DAVID MURRAY, IRELAND 
 
 DEIRDRE O'CONNELL, NEW YORK 
 
 GERALDINE O’REILLY, DUBLIN 
 
 RUBICON GALLERY, DUBLIN 
 
 TAYLOR GALLERIES, DUBLIN 
 
 LOUISE WALSH, DUBLIN 
 
 NOTE TO THE READER: 
 
 Numbered images and plates in this book are works in the 
 exhibition. Additional images are designated as "figures.” 
 
 Measurements are given in inches and feet, height preceding 
 width. Figures for engravings, etchings and drawings refer to 
 the size of the plate or pencil mark, or, if not visible, the image. 
 
 Abbreviated references are listed in full at the back of each 
 essay or appendix. 
 
 Letters in the appendix are reproduced with the writer’s 
 original punctuation and grammar. In some instances, 
 however, spelling has been modernized to assist the reader. 
 
 PRIVATE COLLECTIONS, IRELAND 
 
director's preface 
 
 The McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College is 
 proud to present Re/Dressing Cathleen: Contemporary 
 Works from Irish Women Artists, the first exhibition 
 in America dedicated to the works of Ireland’s current 
 female artists. The exhibition and accompanying 
 catalogue are intended to highlight the contributions 
 of these women to both the imaging and recontextu- 
 alization of national identity, as well as to broader 
 currents in European and American contemporary 
 art. Nearly two years ago, the Museum explored Irish 
 painting from roughly the period of the Great 
 Famine, from the middle of the nineteenth century 
 through the first half of the twentieth century, in 
 the landmark exhibition America’s Eye: Irish Painting 
 from the Collection of Brian P. Burns. As I wrote in 
 the preface to that accompanying catalogue, our 
 primary goal was to "introduce an American 
 audience to the riches of Irish painting against an 
 interdisciplinary backdrop." 
 
 We now present similar insights into the art and 
 culture of a subsequent period through the works of 
 thirteen artists. These works, in various media, 
 epitomize the range, innovation, and international 
 importance of contemporary production by Irish 
 women artists. The exhibition evolved from an appeal 
 from Norma Smurfit, Chairman of the Famine 
 Commemoration Committee in Ireland. She asked that 
 professors of Irish Studies at Boston College assume a 
 significant and innovative role in the international 
 event commemorating "Black ’47,” the pivotal year of 
 the Great Famine. Adele Dalsimer, co-chairman of 
 our Irish Studies Program, and I seized upon the idea 
 of an exhibition, accompanied by a program of films, 
 lectures, and readings, that would celebrate the 
 contributions of women to Irish culture and contem- 
 porary society as a fitting tribute to the particular 
 burden borne by them during the Great Famine. 
 Special debts of gratitude to Sean Rowland, director of 
 the Center for Irish Management at Boston College, 
 who helped pave the way for this project from its 
 inception, and to Carmel Naughton, president of the 
 National Gallery of Ireland, who agreed to open 
 the exhibition. 
 
 Alston Conley, museum curator and a professor 
 of painting, and Mary Armstrong, also a professor of 
 painting in the Boston College Department of Fine 
 Arts, selected the artists. Together they scoured 
 galleries and studios throughout the north and south 
 of Ireland. They assembled a distinguished group of 
 professors from the Fine Arts department and from 
 the Irish Studies Program to determine the candidates 
 and to write the essays in this catalogue that 
 cast the selected works in a broad interdisciplinary 
 cultural context. To each of them and to the museums, 
 galleries, and collectors who have lent to this 
 exhibition, I extend heartfelt thanks. 
 
 The Herculean task of editing the catalogue fell to 
 Jennifer Grinnell and Mr. Conley. Ms. Grinnell also 
 oversaw the production of the catalogue and 
 arrangements for loans. In all of these tasks, she was 
 aided by our graduate research assistant Heather 
 Fryer. We are also grateful to Naomi Rosenberg for her 
 careful copyediting of the text, to Monica DeSalvo for 
 her handsome design of this book, and, again, to 
 Mr. Conley for the inspired design and installation of 
 the exhibition. As always, we are indebted to other 
 members of the museum staff for their dedication to 
 this project: Alice Harkins, Aisha Bain, Holly Graham, 
 and, last but not least, our ever-efficient administra- 
 tor, Helen Swartz. 
 
 Exhibitions and catalogues of this scale require gener- 
 ous financial backing. We are especially indebted 
 to Boston College for financial support, particularly to 
 William P. Leahy, S.J., Margaret Dwyer, William 
 Neenan S.J., Francis Campanella, J. Robert Barth, S.J., 
 Richard Spinello, and Lynn Prosser. We also extend 
 thanks to the Friends of the McMullen Museum. 
 
 Finally, I wish to thank the artists participating in 
 Re/Dressing Cathleen. Their talent, creativity, and 
 dedication, which have helped to alter cultural and 
 social attitudes concerning the role of women in con- 
 temporary Ireland, serve as an inspiration to us all. 
 
 NANCY NETZER 
 
 5 
 
ALSTON CONLEY AND JENNIFER GRINNELL 
 
 Re/Dressing Cathleen: 
 
 Contemporary Works from Irish Women Artists 
 
 This exhibition arose from the confluence of 
 interests between the McMullen Museum of Art and 
 the faculty in the Irish Studies Program and Fine Arts 
 Department. In particular, Irish Studies wanted to 
 commemorate the 150th anniversary of “Black ’47’’ — 
 the pivotal year of the Great Famine (1845-49) — and 
 the particular burden it placed on the women of 
 Ireland. The Museum, for its part, had previously pre- 
 sented two historical exhibitions of Irish artworks, 
 and wished to follow these up with an exhibition of 
 artworks by contemporary Irish artists, lest we leave 
 the impression that Ireland, and its art, exists 
 arrested within the nineteenth and early-twentieth 
 centuries. The only previous exhibit of contemporary 
 Irish art at Boston College was held in the early 
 '80s when the Fine Arts Department Gallery, the Irish 
 Studies Program and Northeastern University co- 
 hosted an exhibition of male Irish neo-expressionists. 
 In retrospect we can see that this gender exclusion 
 reflected what was also happening in Ireland: a resur- 
 gence of expressionism dominated almost exclusively 
 by male artists, and exemplified in 1983 by the 
 defining, all male, neo-expressionists exhibit Making 
 Sense: ten painters, 1963-1983, at the Project Arts 
 Centre.’ Subsequently in the late '80s and ’90s, the 
 women artists of Ireland moved into the fore, 
 concurrent with society’s increasing interest in issues 
 that primarily effected women’s lives, such as 
 the Abortion Referendum (1983) and the Divorce 
 Referendum (1986). This exhibition is an opportunity 
 to review the accomplishments of Irish women 
 artists over the last decade. 
 
 These achievements of the last decade are conspicu- 
 ous in the forty-six works by thirteen women artists 
 
 that comprise this exhibition: Pauline Cummins, Rita 
 Duffy, Mary FitzGerald, Eithne Jordan, Finola Jones, 
 Mary Lohan, Alice Maher, Deirdre O'Connell, Eilis 
 O'Connell, Gwen O’Dowd, Geraldine O’Reilly, Kathy 
 Prendergast and Louise Walsh. Varied and diverse in 
 media, visual language, intent and content, these im- 
 ages mirror the active and lively art scene in Ireland, 
 which is supported by businesses, private collectors, 
 galleries, government agencies (like the Arts Council), 
 public art commissions, subsidized studios, an artists’ 
 union, and a rising generation of young artists with 
 the opportunity, support and tenacity to persevere. 
 
 Underlying and connecting these diverse works is 
 the issue of identity. The constant personification and 
 imaging of Ireland as “Mother Ireland” has made 
 identity a particularly rich subject for Irish women 
 artists. Representations of Ireland in traditional 
 folklore, myth, and literature as a fortress or mother/ 
 female incarnation of nationhood have inspired 
 these contemporary artists’ investigations. 
 
 Re/Dressing Cathleen is an interdisciplinary investiga- 
 tion, drawing on the expertise of the Boston College 
 faculty in the Fine Arts Department; the Irish Studies 
 Program (from both English and History Depart- 
 ments); and contributions by scholars from the U.S. 
 and Ireland. The essays examine the negotiation of 
 identity in present day Ireland as reflected in recent 
 contemporary culture, and in particular the visual 
 arts. Art critic Medb Ruane and art historian Claude 
 Cernuschi introduce the artists’ work within a 
 broader context. Ruane summarizes the history of 
 Irish art in this century within a political and cultural 
 context, and the role of the current generation of 
 
 6 
 
artists in mediating and imaging Irish identity. 
 Cernuschi positions the artists within contemporary 
 Western artistic practice, an extension of the pan- 
 European and American traditions of the twentieth 
 century from which the artists under discussion 
 trained and emerge. Literary critics Adele Dalsimer, 
 Vera Kreilkamp, James Smith and Philip O'Leary all 
 connect artists in the current exhibition to similar 
 uses of imagery in Ireland’s better-known literary 
 tradition. Dalsimer and Kreilkamp have given us the 
 title for the exhibition by "re/dressing" historical 
 images of Mother Ireland in their essay — in particu- 
 lar W.B. Yeats’ Cathleen Ni Houilhan — through 
 comparisons of recent feminist imagery in contempo- 
 rary art and literature. Smith investigates Ireland’s 
 recent "narrative retellings" by deconstructing official 
 political and religious stories. Exploring Kathy 
 Prendergast’s Body Map Series (nos. 21-28, pi. VIII, 
 nos. 29-30, pi. IX, no. 31) and Mary Leland's story 
 The Killeen, Smith finds in both the re-negotiation of 
 an "alternative national narrative.” O'Leary correlates 
 the depiction and influence of American popular 
 culture on Irish culture in literature from James Joyce 
 to Patrick McCabe or Roddy Doyle, to a similar 
 reincarnation in the visual arts in the installation 
 by Finola Jones. 
 
 Identity connects the examinations that explore 
 myth and folklore, the body and the land, and land 
 and boundaries in the essays by Pamela Berger, 
 Angela Bourke, Katherine Nahum and Robert Savage. 
 By exploring contemporary representations of 
 ancient Celtic motifs, architecture and the landscape, 
 these essays also collectively encourage further 
 examinations of Ireland’s visual tradition. 2 Berger ex- 
 plores "mythic memory,’’ ancient traditions, artworks 
 and legends that imbued Celtic identity. Acknowl- 
 edged or not, the visual representations of these 
 traditions — from natural formations in the landscape 
 that were highly charged with magic/religious sig- 
 nificance, to the human head (the essence of the 
 human being in early Irish epic) or the genitalia- 
 exposing sheela-na-gigs — reappear in contemporary 
 artworks presented in this exhibition. Angela Bourke 
 demonstrates a connection between the natural 
 features of the Irish landscape and the female body to 
 the folkloric stories surrounding places called uaimh. 
 Bourke contends that the Irish word uaimh, or cave — 
 the name of a series of paintings by Gwen O'Dowd 
 (nos. 1-2, pi. I, no. 3) — enriches the metaphoric 
 readings of the paintings as well as affirming Irish 
 identity. Katherine Nahum portrays the connections 
 between Eilis O’Connell's abstract sculpture (nos. 39, 
 
 pi. XIII, nos. 40-44) and the female body, their refer- 
 ences to nature and historical Irish artifacts such as 
 the sheela-na-gig. Robert Savage gives us a summary 
 of the conflict between the Republic and Northern 
 Ireland and examines, through works by Geraldine 
 O’Reilly (nos. 8, 14) and Deirdre O’Connell (nos. 6, 7), 
 identity as revealed in the landscape, its physical 
 structures and negotiated borders. In O'Reilly's works, 
 he probes a connection among the battles, ancient 
 and recent, that define the warrior past, the Celtic 
 "cult of the head" and the land. 
 
 Ireland’s cultural identity was also shaped by the 
 hardship and loss that resulted from the Great Famine 
 and the subsequent mass emigration. Of approximately 
 one million rural Irish who fled to North America, 
 Britain and Australia, two-thirds were single women, 
 many of whom wrote poignant letters describing the 
 trials of adapting to life in nineteenth-century urban 
 America. Historian Ruth-Ann Harris compiles in 
 an appendix examples of "American Letters,” as they 
 were called in Ireland. We present this collection to 
 encourage further research on the complexities of the 
 immigrant experience. 
 
 In her Emigrant Letter Series (nos. 9-12, pi. IV, no. 13), 
 artist Geraldine O’Reilly also responds to the Great 
 Famine as a pivotal experience in Irish and American 
 history, and its affect on women emigres. Her interest 
 in Irish emigration to the United States arose from her 
 own temporary American experience as a Fulbright 
 scholar researching Irish-American labor history. 
 
 A cache of letters found in the Ellis Island warehouse, 
 written by immigrant Irish women in the U.S. to their 
 families in Ireland, inspired O'Reilly’s collages of old 
 paper, fabric and images executed in watercolor in 
 "the color of bruised memory" which represent the 
 hardship and loss of immigration. Together, the actual 
 documentary letters and O'Reilly's visual symbols 
 poignantly illuminate how the Famine and 
 subsequent Diaspora drastically changed the social 
 and cultural landscapes of Ireland. 
 
 Mary Armstrong and Alston Conley, co-curators of 
 the exhibition and both artists themselves, conducted 
 interviews with several of the artists at their studios 
 in Ireland. The results of these artist-to-artist conver- 
 sations reveal the planning, process and meaning 
 behind many of the works displayed in Re/Dressing 
 Cathleen. Rita Duffy describes her dream-like 
 paintings that re-image issues of childhood, 
 Catholicism and identity; Mary Lohan talks about the 
 importance of the sense of place for the landscape 
 
 CONLEY/GRINNELL 
 
 7 
 
CONLEY/GRINNELL 
 
 painter; Mary FitzGerald describes how the influence 
 of an Asian aesthetic shapes her conceptions of space 
 and structure; Eilis O’Connell relates the impact of the 
 urban environment on her sculpture, and the impor- 
 tance of material to the object’s ultimate form; Gwen 
 O'Dowd describes the multiple readings possible in her 
 paintings that are based loosely on the landscape and 
 blowholes of County Mayo; Geraldine O’Reilly speaks 
 to the influence of the Great Famine, "the Troubles," 
 and Irish-American history on her work; and Pauline 
 Cummins and Louise Walsh invite the viewer to 
 experience their multi-media installation as "a journey 
 from a position of tightness and unease to a place of 
 self-discovery and power.” 
 
 The successful realization of a project such as this 
 depends on the commitment, collaboration and 
 assistance of many participants. The research into the 
 art and artists of Ireland, whose works are rarely seen 
 and little known on these shores, is an exciting 
 undertaking. The resulting choices and exhibition are 
 a reflection of both Irish culture and the curators’ 
 eyes. We are beholden to Mary Armstrong, co-curator 
 of the exhibition, whose insight, understanding and 
 ebullience, her artist’s eye and cultivated perception 
 helped shape and inform the exhibition. 
 
 This exhibition would not be possible with out the 
 generous support of the artists, galleries and private 
 collectors who lent us their works, and assisted in 
 various ways with the organization and planning of 
 this exhibition. We warmly acknowledge their 
 generosity: Catherine Marshall (Irish Museum of 
 Modern Art); Jerome Driscoll, Samantha Harding 
 (Green on Red Gallery); Josephine Kelliher, Margaret 
 Timmes (Rubicon Gallery); Mr. John Taylor (Taylor 
 Galleries); Patricia Murphy; Maurice and Maire Foley; 
 John Kennedy (Kerlin Gallery); Dieter and Birgit 
 Broska; Justina and Peter Farrell; David Murray; 
 
 Pauline Cummins; Rita Duffy; Mary FitzGerald; Finola 
 Jones; Eithne Jordan; Mary Lohan; Alice Maher; 
 
 Deirdre O'Connell; Eilis O’Connell; Geraldine O’Reilly; 
 Gwen O’Dowd; Kathy Prendergast; and Louise Walsh. 
 
 We are indebted to all the contributing scholars who 
 observed the art from the perspective of their 
 individual disciplines and whose essays illuminate the 
 artworks, enriching our readings of the work and 
 culture. The participating faculty of the distinguished 
 Irish Studies Program deserve our profound thanks for 
 their support and efforts on behalf of the project. 
 
 Adele Dalsimer, whose love of art and literature has 
 translated into her enthusiasm for this exhibition is 
 
 given special thanks. This catalogue has benefitted 
 greatly from the advice and expertise of Robert Savage, 
 historian and associate director of the Irish Studies 
 Program, and Vera Kreilkamp, professor of English 
 Literature at Pine Manor College and Literature Editor 
 of Eire-lreland, for which we. extend our thanks. 
 
 Katherine Nahum, Adjunct Professor of Fine Arts, read 
 the catalogue manuscript in its entirety and offered 
 crucial editorial suggestions, for which we offer our 
 thanks. We also thank Naomi Rosenberg for her 
 thoughtful copyediting. Once again we have benefited 
 from her generous spirit and facility with language. 
 
 Heather Fryer, graduate research assistant and 
 doctoral candidate in the Department of History at 
 Boston College, read and copyedited the essays, wrote 
 the gallery wall texts and the preface to the appendix, 
 and expedited the myriad details that attend the 
 organization of an exhibition. The completion of this 
 project and catalogue are due in no small part to her 
 commitment and intelligence. 
 
 Monica DeSalvo of Boston College Office of 
 Publications and Design Services created the graceful 
 catalogue and invitation designs under the direction 
 of David Williams, Director of Design Services. Sean 
 Rowland, Director, Center for Irish Management, his 
 staff and Sara McDonnell in Ireland were supportive 
 and helpful and due our gratitude. Steve Vedder 
 and the audiovisual department provided valuable 
 photographic support. Helen Swartz, Museum 
 Administrator, Aisha Bain, undergraduate assistant, 
 Holly Graham, intern, Alice Harkins, Supervisor of 
 Museum Security and her staff of security officers, all 
 contributed in crucial ways. 
 
 Finally, we are indebted to the enthusiastic support, 
 from the beginning, of Director Nancy Netzer, without 
 which the project could not have been accomplished. 
 
 Notes 
 
 1 Neo-expressionism was promoted as a predominately male 
 international movement. Francesco Clemente, Sandro Chia 
 and Enzo Cucchi fram Italy, Anselm Kiefer, George Baselitz, 
 A.R. Penck and Jorg Immendorff from Germany and in the 
 United States Julian Schnabel, David Salle, were prominent 
 figures. The American Susan Rothenberg is one of the few 
 women to break into this formerly all-male club. 
 
 2 In 1996 Adele Dalsimer and Vera Kreilkamp explored 
 nineteenth and twentieth century Ireland's contribution to 
 the visual arts through their exhibition America's Eye: Irish 
 Paintings from the Collection of Brian P. Burns (also at the 
 McMullen Museum of Art), and helped dispel the notion 
 that Ireland — better known for its literary tradition — lacks a 
 visual imagination. 
 
 8 
 
MEDB RUANE 
 
 Re/Dressing Cathleen: 
 A Local Perspective 
 
 Somewhere deep in the basement of Irish culture, a 
 once-pristine collection of icons lies crumbling, and 
 disowned. Long ago, their power inspired a cultural 
 revival that changed the shape of history. Among 
 these dusty relics is the figure of Cathleen Ni Houlihan, 
 formerly a spiritual aristocrat beloved of such writers 
 as William Butler Yeats and Sean O’Casey, 1 and a true 
 star of popular culture one hundred years ago. 
 
 To contemporary generations, Cathleen is a stereo- 
 type, an empty symbol of times gone by. Consigned to 
 old songs on scratched vinyl, 2 her name may seem 
 to have lost its resonance. But its mythic properties 
 linger throughout twentieth-century Irish history, 
 personifying ideas about culture and women’s place 
 therein which still set teeth on edge. A diva of 
 "high” and "low” art during the cultural revival that 
 articulated Irish nationalism, Cathleen’s persona was 
 once as interchangeable with ideas of Mother Ireland, 
 as of Catholicism's Virgin Mary. Cathleen Ni Houlihan 
 represented the ideal woman in what amounted 
 to a sacrificial social order, which required women to 
 offer up their lives and their bodies in the service of 
 higher ideals. 
 
 What I will call "the Cathleen principle” refers to the 
 sentimentalizing of human experience encouraged 
 by this monolith, and to all the denial of humanity 
 that implied. 
 
 Outside the basement, the generation participating in 
 this exhibition positions itself within a global context, 
 a network of forces that stretches way beyond the 
 territorial limits of national boundaries. All are Irish, 
 yet the description doesn't guarantee either 
 
 citizenship or domicile — some live in the Republic of 
 Ireland, some in Northern Ireland, England, the United 
 States. Set their widely varied practice in that broader 
 context and the issues raised become profoundly 
 resonant — marginality, identity, gender, territory, the 
 place of visual culture; the whole experience of 
 "otherness” within a dominant cultural discourse. 
 
 Read those themes against old stereotypes, and they 
 confirm a radical shift in Irish cultural and social 
 practices, which is reframing ideas about Ireland and 
 Irishness, within both visual art and the wider culture. 
 
 The global context which immediately precedes this 
 generation starts in the '60s, when exclusive models 
 of cultural practice started to shatter across disciplines, 
 not least the modernist ethic which so dominated 
 visual culture. Modernism was a bully, and once its 
 posturing was undermined, "marginal” places like Ire- 
 land could, in theory, claim to be as valid as anywhere, 
 precisely because there was no longer a "center” that 
 could patronize everywhere else. Feminist practice 
 occupied a front-line position in the fight against that 
 ethic, arguing for inclusiveness, for openness, for a 
 way of seeing which transcended sex, race, nationality 
 and medium. Inevitably, the status of women artists 
 improved, irrespective of whether or not their practice 
 was specifically feminist. 
 
 Feminism's reclaiming of the female body was pre- 
 cisely the kind of activity that icons like Cathleen had 
 always disallowed. Despite the powerful contributions 
 of Irish women to universal suffrage, home rule and 
 civil rights throughout the British Empire — the first 
 female Member of Parliament at Westminster was 
 Irish socialist Constance Markievicz — women were 
 
no. 32 (p-10 ) 
 
 Alice Maher 
 Berry Dress 
 1994 
 
 cotton, rose hips and pins 
 12 x 10 x 6 in. 
 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin 
 
 confined to a domestic sphere within both states on 
 the island. Virginia Woolfs dictum "My body is my 
 country” was inverted nowhere more than in Ireland: 
 women’s bodies became political sites. 
 
 In nn p spns e , tbe stor y of the territory itself is told in 
 the story of women. Repressive social and economic 
 legislation eroded the presence of women at all 
 levels of public life, provoking a series of increasingly 
 vociferous debates which persist to this day. But in 
 1990, the Republic’s body politic elected a woman as 
 its Head of State, and attempts to reassert those exclu- 
 sivist, traditional values symbolized by the Cathleen 
 principle were sharply undercut by the living, 
 breathing, and extremely popular figure of President 
 Mary Robinson (served 1990-97), now the United 
 Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Her 
 presidential term in particular marks the transition 
 from that old, monolithic order, even though the rate 
 of transition differs sharply between the Republic 
 and Northern Ireland. 
 
 If the socio-political context affecting women within 
 Ireland is changing, so too is the scope of art practice, 
 and visual culture. While Modernism was enduring its 
 death throes, many Irish artists and critics were 
 anticipating the emergence of a specifically "Irish” 
 genre. Although the world-wide ’60s Zeitgeist 
 occupied Ireland too, expressing itself on fronts that 
 ranged from economic growth in the Republic to po- 
 litical upheaval in Northern Ireland, the culture itself 
 remained enthralled by a vision of Ireland and 
 Irishness which invested heavily in old-style myths. 
 
 The rigorous enforcement of those mythologies 
 reflected their central role in elaborating and main- 
 taining political and cultural identities on the island. 
 Ireland’s colonial status as part of the British Empire 
 had changed in the ’20s, when the British Government 
 established first the state of Northern Ireland (1920), 
 and then the Irish Free State (1922). Northern Ireland 
 was part of the United Kingdom; the Free State 
 became a nominal dominion, and formally declared 
 itself a Republic in 1949. The origins of both states 
 were highly contested, yet their respective cultural 
 identities shared monolithic, supremacist features: 
 both thrived on the poles of Gael or Loyalist as 
 fixed political constructs, wholly singular identities 
 that mirrored each other to a remarkable degree. 
 
 Years before cultural critic Edward Said identified 
 the general principle, Irish- American critic Brian 
 
 12 
 
O’Doherty’s 1971 remarks summarized the effect on 
 Irish art practice of what is now recognized as the 
 post-colonial syndrome. Writing about The Irish 
 Imagination, an exhibition curated to coincide with 
 the four-yearly international show Rose, O'Doherty 
 notes ahout recent Irish, art thaLits “atmosphere is 
 characterized by a mythical rather than a historical 
 sense, an uneasy and restless fix on the unimportant, 
 and a reluctance to engage with anything about what 
 is painted, let alone make a positive statement about 
 it.” 3 Anything that didn't fit the Irish experience was 
 rejected, hence the absence of pop art or technology 
 — or of any contemporary references that assumed 
 a wider visual role than traditional painterly values. 
 
 What this meant in fact was an almost total avoid- 
 ance of Conceptualism, as developed from Marcel 
 Duchamp’s assertions in 1917, 4 an extremely limited 
 engagement with surrealism, and barely a trace of 
 expressionism, for most of the century. Although the 
 '60s did set the tone for limited debates between the 
 more self-consciously avant-garde "minimalist” 
 community (exhibiting together as the Irish Exhibi- 
 tion of Living Art) and the emerging “expressionist” 
 community (showing as Independent Artists), the 
 arguments remained fixed on style, as polarized by 
 those two positions. 
 
 With hindsight, the quest to identify an "Irish” art 
 reads as an attempt to escape provincial status, 
 whether in its drive to articulate a specific identity or 
 its tacit recognition that being "marginal” was a 
 distinct disadvantage. The contest for the soul of 
 Irish art seems to have envisioned a specific type of 
 practice — contemporary testimony presents the poles 
 in stark relief. Witness artist Patrick Collins (1911-94): 
 
 “What’s lacking in Irish art now is, in my opinion — 
 iesus ! I shouldn’t say things like this — everybody 
 wants to look out instead of looking in.. .They haven't 
 realised that they have a Celtic identity that’s 
 endured for five thousand years and that nobody has 
 painted just what that means. Why should we be just 
 a colony, we have something here to say.” 5 
 
 So few resources were invested in cultural institutions 
 generally that the task was guaranteed to be an 
 uphill struggle, however impossible its ultimate 
 objective. Yet from the late ’70s, policy-driven State 
 investment started to build a cultural infrastructure, 
 developing a network of studios, galleries, public 
 art programs and artist-assistance funds, largely in 
 
 response to massive frustrations articulated by 
 cultural practitioners. But it was a mammoth task — 
 there was no museum of modern art, a tiny 
 commercial sector, poor educational facilities, no tra- 
 dition of private patronage, no tax relief to encourage 
 
 spo n s o rs hi p a n d i nv e stment — and an econom y 
 
 weighed down by indebtedness. 
 
 The process of questioning tacit cultural assumptions 
 took much longer. When in 1980 Irish art went to 
 London — its former imperial capital — it gathered it- 
 self together under the banner title The Delighted Eye, 
 a group exhibition that maintained the premise of an 
 innately visual, romantic practice, comfortable with 
 its narrow cultural role. 6 According to its reading, 
 “Irish” art might at times intersect with other cultural 
 features by engaging literary or mythic themes, but 
 its heart was essentially conservative. US art critic 
 Lucy Lippard encountered much the same characteris- 
 tics when she surveyed Irish art in 1984. She called it 
 "tantalizingly indirect,” a polite term of surprise that, 
 in a country racked by unemployment, contested 
 identities and political violence, most artists appeared 
 to exist on another plane. 7 
 
 Whatever “otherness” characterized post-colonial 
 Ireland, Irish women's traditional second-place status 
 made that twice the case. But just as a double 
 negative becomes a positive value in the sphere of 
 mathematics, so many old and formerly negative 
 attributes transform into powerful sources for debate. 
 Landscape, a traditional subject matter, becomes 
 territory, a contested place. Often, the site of conflict 
 is the female body, as herself. 
 
 Challenging dogma in all its complex disguises was 
 among the strategies of feminist practice. Sounding 
 the Depths (no. 46, pi. XVI), a sound/video/photo- 
 graphic installation first produced at the Irish 
 Museum of Modern Art in 1992, repositions female 
 representation from that perspective, one pursued 
 separately by Pauline Cummins and Louise Walsh 
 before this collaboration. 
 
 At first glance a powerfully visceral retort to old myths 
 of vagina dentata, Sounding the Depths operates deep 
 down as a conceptual engagement with Cartesian 
 dualism, which traditionally privileged the place of 
 reason over feeling. When a mussel shell, held like a 
 ventriloquist’s dummy, opens up as if to speak, it 
 mirrors the image of a mouth which emerges, genital- 
 like, from within a naked female torso. The mussel is a 
 
 RUANE 
 
 13 
 
no. 32 
 
 Alice Maher 
 Berry Dress 
 1994 
 
 cotton, rose hips and pins 
 12 x 10 x 6 in. 
 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of Modem Art, Dublin 
 
 hermaphrodite creature; it’s also a symbol of Dublin 
 folk icon Molly Malone; collecting mussels was a 
 past-time for many Irish children. But that is local 
 knowledge, a play on metaphors whose disruptive 
 passion sounds in a far wider context. Cummins 
 _anrl Walsh set up a ser ies of cultural and imaginativ e 
 encounters, centered on the position of 
 owner-occupiers, by skeptically upending cultural 
 assumptions, from tabloid depictions of women to art 
 history’s pro-prietorial gaze at the female body. Mouth 
 and vagina are not separate, are not part of different 
 discourses within a nature/culture debate or the 
 Playboy centerfold. The case for integration is voiced. 
 
 Rejecting dualism implies a return to halcyon days 
 before the Enlightenment, before rationality set its 
 sights on the European art tradition, meandered 
 through the thinkers and artists of imperial Europe — 
 Holland, France, Spain, Italy, in particular — and 
 decided that its labors ended with modernism. But 
 there is no return. Cultural practice is on the brink of 
 changes whose impact can hardly be imagined — the 
 only remote parallels in visual art are the introduction 
 of oils to painting, or the invention of the printing 
 press. Terms like "pre-modern" and "post-modern” are 
 thus at best interim classifications, still fixated on 
 the need to categorize inside a limited set of conditions, 
 when all available evidence suggests that radically 
 new forms will demand a radically new language. 
 
 Alice Maher’s fascination with medieval iconography, 
 fairytale and myth could seem to occupy a pre- 
 modern position, yet her irony, her way of parodying 
 modernist practices, might equally be called strictly 
 post-modernist. Maher’s Familiar series, shown at 
 Dublin’s Douglas Hyde Gallery in 1995, sets up icons 
 all the better to undercut them, colliding international 
 art codes with vernacular materials or themes. 
 Large-scale, apparently abstract paintings combine 
 with attendant floor-pieces made of flax, the latter 
 a commentary on Ireland’s ill-fated flax industry, and 
 as such a direct assault on the negative effects of 
 imperial economic policies. A girl-child transforms 
 from paint to bronze to drawing, the tiny "heroine” 
 of some bittersweet, grown-up games. Dainty 
 three-dimensional dresses made in miniature recall 
 childhood toys, while wryly testing modernist 
 practices of cut-out and assemblage more readily 
 associated with a macho canon. Sweet to behold, but 
 dangerous in fact: Berry Dress (no. 32, pi. X) holds 
 pins inside it, a form of torture for the wearer, as well 
 a promise of more pricks than kicks for unwelcome 
 
 14 
 
voyeurs; Thorn House (no. 33) picks up on hedges and 
 wild shrubs in Maher’s home territory, and allies 
 the Catholic iconography of suffering and crucifixion 
 to the domestic sphere in which earlier generations of 
 women were confined as a matter of course. 8 
 
 consciously applied in the practice of Louis Le Brocquy. 
 Read on different lines, the paintings counter that 
 blatant phallicism which made the penis a virtual 
 hero in the expressionist work of other Irish artists at 
 the time. 
 
 Outside such readings, Maher’s Familiar devises a 
 contemporary means to discuss ideas of rurality with- 
 out collapsing into nostalgia, as the Cathleen principle 
 might prefer. Although increasingly urbanized, Irish 
 society was — and is — rooted in a rural experience, 
 apart altogether from the mythologizing of land and 
 landscape which occupied urban-dwelling poets like 
 Yeats. What in literature provided writers like Seamus 
 Heaney, Edna O’Brien, or Patrick Kavanagh with pow- 
 erful, living themes, was more often an opportunity 
 for romance when considered by painters. Landscape 
 was beautiful, and Irish landscape could indeed 
 provoke pleasant visual encounters. But beauty itself 
 was contested, within feminist debate no less than in 
 art. Given that these same places had engendered 
 countless conflicts — territorial wars, famine when its 
 beauty was skin deep, emigration for the millions 
 it failed to support — traditional ideas of landscape 
 could seem extremely vacuous. 
 
 Ideas about landscape became the testing ground 
 for the way that visual culture might redefine its role. 
 Kathy Prendergast’s Body Map Series (nos. 21-28, pi. 
 
 VIII, nos. 29-30, pi. IX, no. 31), made in 1983, chose to 
 use a classical theme and means of representation — 
 landscape drawn with watercolor and ink on 
 paper — while making women’s bodies the cultural 
 site in question. Linking gender with territory had for 
 years been a mythic strategy — for example. Mother 
 Ireland, first cousin of Cathleen — yet Prendergast’s se- 
 ries represents a major refocusing of both the nature/ 
 culture debate and the theme of gender, insofar as 
 Irish artists had considered them. What marked out 
 Prendergast’s work was her decision to challenge 
 traditional representation on its own ground, keeping 
 things beautiful while demonstrating how traditional 
 media could work to radical ends. 
 
 Eithne Jordan's painting within the neo-expressionist 
 wave, which dominated most of the ’80s, insisted 
 on articulating images of female and familial relation- 
 ships in different configurations, at a time when few 
 women found that format hospitable. Jordan's choice 
 of the human face as subject (no. 15, pi. V, no. 16) 
 invokes changing understandings of portraiture, even 
 references to the head image worked by the Celts and 
 
 The international hype of neo-expressionism offered 
 a vehicle for the Independent Artists flank in Irish 
 art, and was thus uproariously welcomed in certain 
 quarters. For artists like Mary FitzGerald, the new 
 wave set in sharp relief the austere, minimalist 
 discipline she practiced — a discipline which occupies 
 a significant strand of contemporary interest. 
 FitzGerald's personal experience of pain and rehabili- 
 tation after a traffic accident introduced a more 
 explicit dimension to her painting. In one sense, her 
 paintings started to become undone, moving from 
 the flatness of pictorial space into a third dimension, 
 exposing tensions between surfaces she might 
 previously have treated as drawing. In Spine (no. 37) 
 and Heart (no. 38), studded steel bolts and fish hooks 
 combine with planes of glass or draped velvet, the 
 use of fabric allowing her to introduce elements of 
 gender, the glass leaned against the wall playing up 
 ideas of costume and cultural habit. 
 
 Eilis O’Connell’s classical insistence on maintaining 
 opposing forces of weight and space engages with a 
 series of contemporary discourses, across a practice 
 spanning the contested relationships between public 
 art and object-based work. Materials are re-aligned 
 outside their usual properties. Enmeshed (no. 40) 
 treats brass as a natural fiber; Cathoid (no. 42, pi. XIV) 
 looks robust, but is made of fragile crystal. Immediate 
 visual contrasts of inner and outer space work as 
 signals to a metaphysical space where cultural forces 
 can be variously invoked, cued by a surfaces that 
 work like a skin. The gaps between what is, and what 
 seems to be, become her focus: meditative qualities 
 are signaled, yet spliced with potential risk; ideas 
 of containment open into plays on womb and tomb, 
 sexuality and death, otherness and identity. 
 
 Gwen O’Dowd’s highly physical surfaces take osten- 
 sive subjects such as mountain, valley, sea, and give 
 them a distinct pictorial existence. For Mary Lohan, 
 the landscape is constituted as a vista, lit by the par- 
 ticular kind of light or topography in different places 
 (no. 4, pi. II, no. 5). For O’Dowd, the vista is gradually 
 replaced by the close-up: color becomes a structural 
 tool in her practice, creating internal dimensions 
 which lead far beyond painted surfaces. Her Uaimh 
 
 RUANE 
 
 15 
 
series (nos. 1, 2, pi. I, no. 3) — made after field trips 
 to the west of Ireland, long a sacred place in the Irish 
 landscape tradition — brings such issues into sharp 
 focus, turning around the panoramic vistas of 
 world-class geological wonders like the Grand Canyon, 
 which she had studied earlier, conflating that . 
 grandeur and mystery with themes of sexuality and 
 discovery. Uaimh, an Irish word, can mean cave, vault, 
 pit, but may as readily suggest a tomb or grave. In 
 O’Dowd’s hands, the term takes on a disturbing range 
 of possibilities, a sounding the depths of landscape 
 which might or might not be metaphorical, might or 
 might not be dangerous. 
 
 Geraldine O’Reilly’s landscape practice develops into 
 a specific engagement with text and with history 
 through her 1988 Emigrant Letter Series (nos. 9-12, pi. 
 IV, no. 13). Alongside the powerful act of reclaiming 
 the words of individuals who are otherwise lost to 
 history, O’Reilly engages with the concept of the Irish 
 Diaspora, a theme which became central to Mary 
 Robinson’s presidency. The Diaspora concept as 
 championed by Robinson broke the stranglehold of 
 cultural isolationism, which had dominated twenti- 
 eth-century Ireland, by placing “Irishness” outside 
 national boundaries, and outside territorial contests. 
 Its cultural power was formidable: articulating 
 "Irishness" in a global context made strong economic 
 and political sense, enabling alliances across cultures, 
 while identifying a new discourse with the potential 
 to reframe relationships on the island. 
 
 Old cultural costumes no longer fit. Finola Jones’s 
 LUSCIOUS — an aesthetic view of culture (no. 45, pi. XV) 
 installs a medley of icons acquired in discount shops 
 in a virtual post-modernist altarpiece. Action Man, 
 
 St. Martin De Porres and Mickey Mouse share a 
 platform with the Blessed Virgin and Bart Simpson. 
 An innate theatricality operates a system of viewing 
 transactions: various figures and groupings can 
 be classified according to material, economic origin, 
 color, gender - — or disassociated, if desired. Visual 
 culture on this reading positions itself as a cross- 
 cultural discipline, interrogating assumptions about 
 cultural identity and the basis of its formation. It is 
 its own museum without walls, steeled with a sense 
 of itself as commodity and inviting consumption on 
 whichever terms you choose. 
 
 Rita Duffy’s paintings Mother Ireland (1989) and 
 Mother Ulster (1989) offer wicked allegories of 
 women’s place in the authoritarian schemes of Gael 
 
 and Loyalist poles. Duffy’s women are excluded from 
 the public sphere, and visibly colonized by external 
 forces. A cross-eyed, spread-eagled Mother Ireland 
 strains under the weight of a whole posse of babies, 
 secured by an umbilical cord stretching from her 
 brain to a grandiose Gothic c ath edral; Mother I lister's 
 hand-held duster proclaims no surrender to domestic 
 deviance, no matter that the world outside is literally 
 collapsing in upon itself. Even their own kitchen 
 utensils turn against them: the tools of this domestic 
 sphere are savage instruments of torture. While tribal 
 wars rage outside, women are confined to a forgotten 
 outpost, the final frontier represented in Duffy’s 
 Scullery (no. 20, pi. VII). 
 
 Deirdre O’Connell’s practice across drawing, sculpture 
 and installation broadens the debate about how 
 identity may or may not be constructed by challeng- 
 ing the built environment (nos. 6, 7, pi. III). Urban 
 landscapes are territories where identity is restricted 
 and suppressed. Invoking sometimes a parallel 
 imperial past created by lost empires like Greece or 
 Rome, O’Connell filters motifs of socialization 
 through themes of containment or exclusion, encour- 
 aging readings of identity as a cultural complex, and 
 as such reframing the old-style poles. Its immediate 
 political resonance within the context of Northern 
 Ireland is emblematic, but O’Connell’s fluid treatment 
 of the subject admits other readings. Architecture’s 
 neutral mantle is stripped off, and its constructs 
 are scrutinized instead as tacit assertions of civic and 
 public power. 
 
 Women artists in Ireland have long been visible. 
 Mainie Jellett studied Cubism with Andre Lhote and 
 Albert Gleize in Paris while the Free State was coming 
 into being, and pioneered its practice within Ireland 
 for the rest of her life. 9 Women were engaged in 
 founding and organizing the Irish Exhibition of Living 
 Art and Independent Artists. Although being visible 
 is not in itself evidence of status, the quaint, if 
 suspect, assumption that visual culture was somehow 
 exempt from the exclusions and prejudices elsewhere 
 in Irish society is still widely held, even if the view is 
 patently refuted by the most cursory survey of public 
 and corporate collections, or art books and catalogues. 
 
 Many women in this exhibition were themselves key 
 players in devising and developing the conditions 
 within culture and politics which turned the climate 
 away from the dead traditions of the Cathleen 
 principle, and towards the inclusive, wide-ranging 
 
 16 
 
attitudes now being recognized within Irish culture . 10 
 Yet comparisons between the global context with 
 which most engage as artists, and the cosmopolitan 
 model imported by Jellett’s generation, involve 
 two radically different orders and ways of placing 
 visual culture. "Looking in’’ or “looking out,” to borrow 
 Patrick Collins' words, no longer describes the opposi- 
 tion between a center and its subject, or between 
 two poles of defining Irishness, but articulates 
 the prospect of new cultural sittings, far outside the 
 maws of history or geography. 
 
 Notes 
 
 1 See Yeats 1892; O’Casey 1925. 
 
 2 Songs such as Kathleen Mavourneen, (1835), composed by F.W. 
 Crouch (1808-96), and I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen, (1875), 
 composed by Thomas Paine Westendorf (1848-1923). 
 
 3 Dublin 1971, pp. n-12. O'Doherty exhibits as "Patrick Ireland," 
 having changed his name as a protest against British policies 
 in Ireland. 
 
 4 With the urinal entitled Fountain and signed "R. Mutt.” 
 
 5 Dunne 1981, p.922. 
 
 6 See Dublin 1980. 
 
 7 See Lippard 1984 and 1985. 
 
 8 "Oh, Kathleen ni Houlihan, your way’s a thorny way 1" Otd. from 
 O’Casey 1925, Act I, spoken by Seamus Shields. For a discussion 
 on the role of medieval imagery in Maher’s work, see Ruane 
 forthcoming. 
 
 9 Arnold 1991. 
 
 10 Examples of women artist’s involvement abound: Pauline 
 Cummins with the Women Artists Action Group, Eilis 
 O'Connell as a founder of the National Sculpture Factory, 
 
 Mary FitzGerald as an editorial advisor to Circa art magazine, 
 Gwen O’Dowd and Eithne Jordan as founders of the Visual 
 Arts Centre, Louise Walsh through Out Art, Geraldine O’Reilly 
 as a pioneer with community programs, Finola Jones through 
 Dogbowl and Bones publishers, to mention a few. 
 
 Abbreviations 
 
 Arnold 1991 
 
 Arnold, Bruce. Mainie Jellett and the Modern Movement in Ireland. 
 New Haven, 1991. 
 
 Dublin 1971 
 
 The Irish Imagination 1959-77. The Corcoran Gallery of Art, 
 Washington D.C./The Irish-American Cultural Institute, Dublin, 
 1971. 
 
 Dublin 1980 
 
 The Delighted Eye: Irish Painting and Sculpture of the Seventies. The 
 Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Belfast; The Arts Council, Dublin, 
 
 1980. 
 
 Dunne 1981 
 
 Dunne, Aidan. "A Celtic Art ?” in The Crane Bag , vol. 5, no. 2, Dublin, 
 
 1981, pp. 920-924. 
 
 Lippard 1984 
 
 Lippard, Lucy. In Circa, no. 17, 1984. 
 
 Lippard 1985 
 
 Lippard, Lucy. Divisions, Crossroads, Turns of Mind: Some New Irish 
 Art. Ireland-America Arts Exchange, 1985. 
 
 O’Casey 1925 
 
 O'Casey, Sean. Two Plays: Juno and the Paycock and The Shadow of 
 a Gunman. New York, 1925 (premiered 1923). 
 
 Ruane forthcoming 
 
 Ruane, Medb. Alice Maher: in conversation with Medb Ruane. The 
 Works Senes. (Gandon Editions, forthcoming). 
 
 Yeats 1892 
 
 Yeats, W.B. The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics. 
 London, 1892. 
 
 RUANE 
 
 17 
 
* 5 * 
 
 8 
 
CLAUDE CERNUSCHI 
 
 Visual arid Ideological Pluralism in Practice: 
 Contemporary Irish Women Artists in Context 
 
 At a time when contemporary art historians, or 
 academicians in general, are continuously forewarned 
 against the potentially deleterious ramifications of 
 categorization — as if categorizing an artist’s work (or 
 any object of culture) is, per force, to delimit that work 
 within an authoritarian structure of thought — any 
 interpretive study of contemporary Irish women 
 artists faces, from the very outset, a variety of looming 
 methodological challenges. As if the activities of 
 historical or interpretive categorization were not prob- 
 lematic enough in our contemporary critical climate, 
 the very subtitle of this exhibition, "Contemporary 
 Works from Irish Women Artists,” simply compounds 
 the issue by providing its own, incremental combina- 
 tion of discrete, totalizing categories: "contemporary,” 
 "Irish,” "women,” “artists.” The strict definitions and 
 boundaries of each of these terms are not only open to 
 interpretation and debate — requiring justification on 
 their own terms, independently of the overall con- 
 cept — but each and every term can also be effectively 
 recombined with any other, and even further 
 rescrambled so as to produce any number of different 
 potential permutations. Or, the full title may be al- 
 lowed to remain in complete form, but its interpretive 
 emphasis can shift, if only implicitly, from one term to 
 the other. In each case, the subject may be the same 
 (assuming, of course, that agreement can be reached 
 as to what the "real” subject actually is), but the 
 proportional interpretive weight attributed to each of 
 these categories may change accordingly. 
 
 The problem is all the more acute because the very 
 argument against art historical categorization has 
 been forcefully made by a number of feminist critics 
 themselves, i.e. critics who have labeled categorization 
 
 as a specifically masculine, authoritarian, and 
 patriarchal mode of analysis . 1 Since the topic of this 
 exhibition, after all, is women artists (and artists 
 who frequently subscribe to a feminist agenda), these 
 issues become all the more pressing. But for all the 
 negative press categories have received in our 
 contemporary intellectual climate, it must be said (in 
 view of the above) that an object of culture being 
 situated in any one category does not necessarily 
 preclude that same object from being situated in any 
 other category, or in any possible combination (or 
 intersection) of categories. In effect, categories are not 
 necessarily permanent or fixed in any determinist 
 sense-i.e. as agents of authoritarian (or specifically 
 male) control. On the contrary, categories can be both 
 flexible and permeable, heuristic tools scholars may 
 use to make interpretive sense of, or identity 
 connections in, any designated body of material. 
 
 To be sure, categories often give the mistaken 
 impression of cohesion within — or exaggerate the 
 differences across — their preestablished borders ; 2 and, 
 moreover, it is easy to naturalize categories to the 
 point of assuming (wrongly) that the characteristics 
 they identify are no longer pre-prescribed by our own 
 interpretive assumptions, but objective, self-declaring 
 properties of the objects we study. These properties, in 
 turn, can be used in a number of ways to sustain a 
 variety of social and cultural prejudices, or to enforce 
 political or ideological ends. These problems, in many 
 ways, are inevitable. But, by the same token, it 
 must be stressed that, without categories of any kind, 
 no form of interpretation could be conceivable. It is 
 not as if we impose categories upon objects of culture 
 in order to make sense of them, or in order to enforce 
 
no. 18 ( p. 18 ) 
 
 Rita Duffy 
 Becoming 
 1995 
 
 oil on wax paper 
 46 x 48 in. 
 
 Collection of the Artist, Belfast 
 
 a particular reading; it is, rather, that without 
 categories, the making of sense and the possibility of 
 reading would not occur. 
 
 If categories can (and often do) function as prescrip- 
 tive rather than descriptive tools it is after all 
 because all interpretation is prescriptive as well as 
 descriptive. In other words, categories may only have 
 provisional rather than universal validity, but to 
 categorize is an inevitable, inescapable aspect of the 
 interpretive act. And critical awareness of or even 
 self-consciousness about the inevitability of this 
 proposition, moreover, does not make that proposition 
 any less inevitable, or any less inescapable. 
 
 Since, in many respects, categories cannot be "lived 
 with” or "lived without,” a way to counterbalance their 
 prescriptive nature is to place an object of inquiry into 
 as many categories as possible. In this way, their 
 potentially limiting or totalizing effect could be juxta- 
 posed to, and forced to compete with, other (no less 
 limiting or totalizing) categories, but whose cumula- 
 tive impact may allow an object of investigation to be 
 construed against a multiplicity of perspectives. 
 Among these competing perspectives, scholars may 
 decide, by means of trial and error, or on the basis of 
 which interpretations they find most persuasive, or on 
 the basis of their own ideological loyalties, which 
 method of categorization is most conducive to their 
 own interpretive purposes. 
 
 This, in many ways, is the organizational rationale 
 underlying the exhibition Re/Dressing Cathleen : not 
 only to expose the public to a rarely shown body of 
 work in the United States, but also to allow the 
 category of "contemporary Irish women artists” to be 
 construed against a variety of interpretive back- 
 grounds (or other categories) — aesthetic, historical, 
 literary, social, political, etc. — each placing this same 
 specific body of work within a different frame of 
 reference. This, of course, is not to suggest that all 
 investigators contribute a piece to an overall puzzle- 
 i.e. a puzzle whose configuration, once every piece 
 is in place, provides a picture which corresponds to a 
 predetermined or complete whole. The suggestion, 
 rather, is that the very total picture itself is continu- 
 ously being changed or revised by the progressive 
 incorporation of any single piece. 
 
 In view of the above, then, the purpose of this essay is 
 to place the artists included in this exhibition in the 
 context of contemporary Western artistic practice. In 
 this way, the already complex terms "contemporary,” 
 
"Irish,” “women,” and "artists” may sometimes recede 
 (or gain in importance) as they intersect and collide 
 with another set of categories, categories that are 
 themselves no less complex than the ones to which 
 they are being provisionally attached: "feminism," 
 " ne o- e xpre ssionis m,” " modernism, " “ post-m o derni sm,” 
 “body art,” “abstraction,” “the figure,” "landscape,” 
 and so on. In this essay, it will be against these frames 
 of reference that the works in this exhibition will 
 be interpreted. 
 
 The works of both Eithne Jordan (no. 15, pi. V, no. 16) 
 and Rita Duffy (no. 17, pi. VI, nos. 18-20, pi. VII), for 
 example, can easily be placed within the context of 
 the so-called return to figural painting in the ’80s. 
 Given the conspicuously gestural application of paint 
 and emphasis on issues of personal subjectivity 
 frequently evidenced in recent figural painting, this 
 mode was designated by most critics (and not without 
 reason) as neo-expressionism 3 — a phenomenon 
 broad and international enough to cross geographical 
 lines from Germany (e.g. the work of Anselm Kiefer 
 and Georg Baselitz) and Italy (e.g. Sandro Chia and 
 Francesco Clemente) to the United States (e.g. Julian 
 Schnabel and Susan Rothenberg) and Ireland itself 
 (e.g. Patrick Graham, Patrick Hall, Brian Maguire). 4 
 
 The "neo” of neo-expressionism was also closely 
 associated with a postmodern rejection of two key 
 ideas with which modernism had been closely 
 aligned: the concepts of 1) artistic originality and 2) of 
 the incremental theory of history. 5 By resurrecting a 
 mode of representational painting whose first 
 emergence dated from the first decade of the twenti- 
 eth century, neo-expressionists were ipso facto 
 questioning, first, the cardinal modernist directive 
 to be original and, second, the very modernist premise 
 that art moves only forward (say, from figuratio to 
 abstraction), but never the other way. And by engag- 
 ing in a neo-expressionist mode, Duffy and Jordan 
 are not only positioning their works within 
 postmodernism's generally anti-incremental agenda, 
 but they are also, if only implicitly, challenging the 
 widely held assumption — posited by a many feminist 
 critics — that expressionism is an exclusively 
 masculine artistic idiom. 6 
 
 But neo-expressionism can take many forms. 7 It can 
 focus primarily on the human face — as in the work 
 of Jordan (or Baselitz and Clemente) — resurrecting 
 the expressionist fascination with the introspective 
 qualities of the portrait and self-portrait, as well as 
 foregrounding the assumption that the immediacy of 
 
 human emotive states can be directly translated 
 through the rapid and spontaneous application of 
 paint on a canvas surface. In Jordan's work of the late 
 ’80s, the heads occupy almost the entirety of the 
 visual field, confronting their spectators directly, 
 
 and leaving the audience withHew_objects_or_visual 
 
 incidents to observe outside of the immediate 
 frontality of these face-to-face confrontations. The 
 heads, moreover, are generalized and unspecific, 
 providing few clues or signals as to the identity and 
 profession of Jordan’s sitters. Communication, it 
 seems, hinges exclusively on spectator’s interpretation 
 of gesture, form, color, and facial expression — not 
 on the spectator’s recognition of conventional signs 
 or codified symbols. 
 
 In this way, the hieratic and disproportionately large 
 heads of Jordan provide an instructive contrast to the 
 less immediate images of Rita Duffy. Duffy’s images 
 also fall comfortably within the neo-expressionist 
 rubric, but her more diversified technique juxtaposes 
 contrasting areas of spontaneous, gestural brushwork 
 with others of tighter, more controlled execution. In 
 addition, Duffy counteracts Jordan’s ostensible 
 immediacy by suggesting a possible narrative to her 
 images, but without bringing those narratives to fully 
 resolved conclusions. 
 
 For instance, in Journey (no. 17, pi. VI), an elderly man 
 (the artist’s father) and young woman (the artist) 
 share an interior space, yet the very identity of that 
 space remains ambiguous, especially since the style, 
 bordering on caricature, is deliberately crude. From 
 the configuration of the windows, however, and the 
 presence of a rear-view mirror and sun visor, one 
 would be led to assume that the scene takes place 
 inside a modern automobile. But the very posture of 
 the young girl, and the unlikely presence of the piano 
 (its diminutive scale notwithstanding), make any such 
 reading problematic. In addition, the spatial as well 
 as psychological relationship of the man to the young 
 woman is no less clear. Their physical proximity 
 suggests a relationship of some kind (that the sitters 
 are actually father and daughter cannot be inferred 
 from the painting itself), but their psychological 
 remoteness reveals schism and bifurcation. The man’s 
 posture is self-absorbed and self-contained: his eyes 
 are closed and he holds a religious sculpture to 
 his cheek, underscoring his fervent connection to the 
 Catholic faith; the young woman blows kisses (to her 
 father?) through the window, but — paradoxically — 
 turns away from him, striking the keys of an 
 instrument not only too small to play, but an instru- 
 
 CERNUSCHI 
 
 21 
 
FIG. 1 
 
 Jorg Immendorff 
 Cafe Deutschland I 
 1978 
 
 oil on canvas 
 
 Courtesy of the Ludwig Collection, Aachen. 
 
 Photo: Anne Cold, Aachen 
 
 merit condemned to stay silent through the medium 
 of paint. 
 
 On this account, the work seems to bespeak 
 fragmentation: young versus old, male versus female, 
 the internal experience of religion versus the 
 declamatory activity of musical performance. The 
 very nature and destination of the journey, moreover, 
 also remains unclear; the car does not travel 
 anywhere, nor is it driven by anyone. Yet one may 
 conjecture that the journey of which Duffy speaks is a 
 metaphorical rather than a literal one: not the nature 
 of physical displacement per se, but an evocation of 
 the human mind’s potential to be absorbed by 
 emotional states, or to provide individuals with the 
 ability to move beyond the parameters of their own, 
 immediate situation. But the sword cuts both ways: 
 imagination can provide freedom and release, yet it 
 also alienates one figure or one generation from 
 another. In this sense, the work is comparable to Jorg 
 Immendorffs Cafe Deutschland series (fig. 1), paint- 
 ings wherein the fragmentation of a country (in this 
 case, East and West Germany), or the opposition of 
 two political regimes and ideologies (Capitalism and 
 Communism), or the separation of two friends 
 (Immendorff and fellow artist A. R. Penck), could also 
 be represented in an equally metaphorical way. 8 
 
 In Becoming (no. 18), however, Duffy chooses to focus 
 on a single figure: a woman engaging in the incon- 
 gruous act of straining a human fetus. The painting, 
 arguably, is also metaphorical, but, because of its 
 
 ambiguity, the piece may be construed in a potentially 
 more disturbing way. Feminists have long associated 
 the rearing of children and the domestic activity of 
 preparing food with the marginalized and disenfran- 
 chised position of women in patriarchal cultures. But 
 both activities, though co nnected by their identifica- 
 tion with domestic activity, become disturbingly 
 incongruent when combined. The use of the strainer to 
 cradle a baby is blatantly incompatible with its 
 traditional function as a cooking utensil; its womb-like, 
 spherical shape may (at first sight) denote the 
 protectiveness of a baby basin, but its very function to 
 prepare food (when that food is a human child) 
 violently alters its shape to suggest a coffin. The 
 unnatural redness of the baby, moreover, is the chrom- 
 atically brightest section of the painting. Yet this same 
 brightness is ambiguous: it may suggest the beginning 
 of life (i.e. the very moment after birth) or, conversely, 
 the absence of life (i.e. if the baby has been either 
 prepared for consumption or if it was either born 
 prematurely or aborted). 
 
 In view of Duffy's bent towards the metaphorical, 
 Becoming could be interpreted in terms of the politics 
 of abortion, an issue in which the artist herself 
 acknowledges great interest, and whose ramifications 
 are inflammatory enough to polarize a culture to a 
 fever pitch. What is perhaps most disturbing about the 
 work, however, is the facial features of the woman: 
 features betraying fatigue and oppression, on the one 
 hand, but, on the other, little recognition of the 
 implications of the act that has just occurred (i.e. either 
 the birth or death of a child) — as if the artist wanted to 
 suggest that the woman’s plight has been so burden- 
 some as to desensitize her to the very event before her. 
 Duffy herself expressed sympathy for the difficulty of 
 her mother’s domestic situation in a recent interview, 
 as well as her cognizance of alarming instances of child 
 abuse in Ireland, two concerns that, in a variety of 
 ways, inform her general body of work. 
 
 But if Becoming is an attempt to address the politics 
 of abortion, Duffy’s position is a highly ambivalent one, 
 or, rather, one whose stance cannot necessarily be 
 divined from the visual information provided by the 
 painting itself. Like Journey, Becoming coalesces and 
 juxtaposes mixed signals: life and death, sympathy for 
 the woman as well as sympathy for the child. The title, 
 also, seems profoundly ironic: what exactly is "becom- 
 ing”? Is it the woman, the child, or both? And if so, how? 
 
 As in Journey or Becoming, a similar set of contrasts is 
 also evidenced in Dancer (no. 19), a painting whose lone 
 
 
 22 
 
figure seems, despite the mobility implied in the title, 
 restricted in movement. The figure’s restriction is 
 made all the more poignant by virtue of a circular 
 form surrounding her body (a device used to train 
 young children to dance traditional Irish folk 
 dancesjmth-OLutiooking at their feet), as well as by the 
 presence of a number of sculptured images of the 
 Virgin floating above her head. This motif may be a 
 reference to reported incidents of moving statues of 
 the Virgin in remote Irish churches during the 
 mid-’8os. But, by virtue of their contrast to the dancer, 
 the mobility of the statues exacerbate the effect of 
 the dancer's constriction. The painting, again, visual- 
 izes contrast: the dancer, who should move, does not; 
 the statues, which should not, do. The traditional folk 
 dance, moreover, ostensibly a symbol of national 
 identity and pride for adults, can become potentially 
 oppressive for a child forced to partake in an activity 
 whose nationalistic and symbolic implications she 
 may be too young to understand. As in Journey, Duffy 
 seems to strike oppositions between the religious and 
 the secular, the liberating and the oppressive, the 
 actual and the imaginative, but without bringing her 
 audience any closer to a final resolution. 
 
 In this way, the irony and ambiguity of Duffy’s work 
 can also be compared to the irony underlying some of 
 Anselm Kiefer’s paintings. 9 In his series of images 
 dedicated “To the Unknown Painter” (fig. 2), Kiefer cel- 
 ebrates the artists persecuted and labeled degenerate 
 by the Nazi regime. Yet his images are profoundly 
 ironic insofar as Kiefer paradoxically chose to use 
 
 FIG. 2 
 
 Anselm Kiefer 
 German, b. 1945 
 To the Unknown Painter 
 (Dem unbekannter Maler) 
 
 1982 
 
 watercolor 
 
 Courtesy, Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London. 
 Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd. 
 
 Nazi architecture specifically designed to glorify 
 fallen German soldiers for his own, radically different 
 intent of celebrating persecuted artists. Like Kiefer, 
 Duffy uses images in personal, and profoundly ironic 
 ways. The images, then, cannot be read at face value, 
 
 nor do they purport to rely=as Jordan's do — 
 
 exclusively on their immediate physical or material 
 properties for communication. But although Duffy 
 and Iordan’s paintings display a variety of different 
 interpretive and formal concerns (from Iordan's 
 hieratic and frontal heads to the more ambiguous, 
 narrative-oriented paintings of Duffy), their formal 
 properties and subjective connotations can be 
 effectively labeled neo-expressionist. 
 
 In spite of their differences, however, both artists can 
 be contrasted to Geraldine O'Reilly (nos. 8-12, pi. IV, 
 nos. 13, 14). O’Reilly’s works tend to reject the gestural 
 trace of the artist’s hand as evocative of creative and 
 subjective psychology, as well as the use of unresolved 
 narratives as a method of juxtaposing opposites, in 
 favor of the language found in the letters and 
 journals of Irish emigrants. Although language creates 
 more of a stable frame of reference for communica- 
 tion than gestural applications of paint or 
 fragmented narratives, O’Reilly also uses language 
 to reveal fragmentation: the journals of immigrants 
 imply the departure of individuals from one 
 geographical location to another, from one culture to 
 another, as well as the explicit separation of various 
 members of families from each other. Thus, although 
 thematic connections could easily be drawn between 
 the work of O’Reilly and Duffy, the strategies by 
 which these same concerns are translated through 
 their works are radically different: some through 
 expressionist technique and ambiguous narrative, 
 and others through language and conventional signs. 
 
 Another way by which O’Reilly counteracts the 
 neo-expressionist belief in the primacy of the artist's 
 touch as a vehicle of communication, or in the human 
 face as locus of subjective identity, is a work entitled 
 Relics (no. 14) (part of the Land Marks Series) which 
 depicts the multiple faces of individuals who had been 
 killed in Northern Ireland. These faces were appropri- 
 ated from photographs originally published in a now 
 defunct journal entitled Magill Magazine-, O’Reilly 
 collected these photographs with no apparent 
 aesthetic purpose in mind until she decided to create 
 a large print combining all the disparate heads in a 
 single visual field. 10 At a distance, Relics is reminiscent 
 of calligraphy, or of abstract patterns unrecognizable 
 to the naked eye. It is only from a closer vantage point 
 
 CEKNUSCHI 
 
 23 
 
F IG. 3 
 
 Andy Warhol 
 U.S., 1928-87 
 
 Red Disaster (first panel) 
 
 1963 
 
 silk screen; ink on synthetic polymeT paint on linen 
 Charles H. Bayley Picture and Painting Fund 
 Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1981.161 
 ©1988 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/ARS, 
 New York 
 
 that its actual subject becomes recognizable: human 
 heads repeated consistently over the entire surface of 
 the work. But recognizable is a strange word to use. 
 Although the heads have distinctive features, and 
 are thus clearly differentiated from one another, their 
 outlines are so simplified and schematic as to 
 approximate caricature. The repetitive use and dense 
 congestion of the faces, moreover, tend to neutralize 
 their individuality even further. As O’Reilly herself put 
 it, this particular strategy was meant to evoke the "aw- 
 ful repetition of events.’’" O'Reilly’s subtle evocation of 
 death by means of repetition and de-individualization 
 recalls the issues raised by Andy Warhol’s disaster 
 series. 12 During the ’60s, Warhol frequently used the 
 repeated image of a car crash, an atomic explosion, or 
 an electric chair (fig. 3) to underscore how the modern 
 media’s mechanical, repetitive, and impersonal ways 
 of disseminating information actually desensitize 
 contemporary audiences to the reality of events, even 
 events as tragic as death. To get his point across, 
 however, Warhol uses the very same effect that he 
 ostensibly denounces: impersonality and repetition. 
 O’Reilly’s de-individualized heads articulate a similar 
 strategy: one that draws attention not only to the 
 
 tragic loss of life in Northern Ireland, but also to the 
 equally tragic ways by which mechanical means 
 of reproduction tend to deflate the emotive impact of 
 each, individual death. 
 
 those of Warhol is Finola Jones, although her own 
 artistic proclivities tend more towards the ironic 
 rather than the serious side of Pop art’s aesthetic coin. 
 In the installation piece LUSCIOUS — (an aesthetic view 
 of culture) (no. 45, pi. XV), Jones affixes small figurines, 
 dolls, teddy bears, cartoon characters, religious saints, 
 super heroes, or other popular figures on wide 
 expanses of gallery walls. LUSCIOUS, like O’Reilly’s 
 Relics, looks considerably different depending on the 
 spectator’s relative vantage point. From a distance, the 
 identity of the individual figures is unclear, and, given 
 the absence of any specific focal point or visual 
 centers of attention, it is the overall configuration that 
 demands the spectator's attention. At close range, 
 however, the individual identities of the figurines 
 become clearer, but the lack of focal points still 
 frustrates any effort on the part of the audience to 
 make hierarchical distinctions on either thematic or 
 visual grounds. We are forced, it seems, to think of 
 a figure of the Madonna, St. Francis, or an angel as 
 equivalent to ones of Bart Simpson, Donald Duck, or a 
 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. 
 
 On the one hand, of course, LUSCIOUS is undeniably 
 humorous, sarcastic, and tongue-in-cheek. But the 
 piece has its serious side as well. It recalls the 
 fundamental paradigm shift provoked by the Dadaist 
 movement in general, and Marcel Duchamp’s 
 ready-mades in particular: ordinary, utilitarian, mass- 
 produced objects exhibited in the 1910s and ’20s in 
 contexts conventionally reserved for works of art. The 
 "artist,” in effect, no longer created a work of "art” on 
 the basis of subjective "inspiration” or extraordinary 
 “talent,” but selected prefabricated objects irrespec- 
 tive of established norms of "beauty" or “quality.” The 
 point, coming as the works did after the carnage of 
 World War I, was to question not only the fundamen- 
 tal validity of age-old concepts such as "beauty,” 
 “quality," or "talent"; the point was to question the 
 very validity of art itself. 13 By the advent of Pop art in 
 the ’60s, moreover, the collision between "high art" 
 and popular culture was in full force. Warhol exhib- 
 ited paintings of Campbell Soup cans; Roy Lichtenstein 
 of comic strips; and James Rosenquist of advertising 
 billboards. The "aesthetic” status of these pieces was 
 no longer the issue; the issue was to find effective 
 
 24 
 
ways by which art could respond meaningfully to the 
 pervasive dominance of advertising, television, and 
 popular entertainment in modern culture . 14 
 
 LUSCIOUS — (an aesthetic view of culture), of course, falls 
 
 very comfortably within this context. What is most 
 
 intriguing about the piece, however, can be construed 
 from its subtitle, an addition which may be inter- 
 preted in two ways. "An aesthetic view of culture" 
 may refer to studying cultures in terms of the art they 
 produce. Ostensibly, LUSCIOUS is a site-specific piece: 
 each time the work is exhibited, Jones uses objects 
 purchased in the surrounding local environment itself. 
 An intimate connection results, therefore, between 
 the work and the culture in which the piece is 
 exhibited: culture, quite literally, is viewed aestheti- 
 cally. Or, "an aesthetic view of culture" may refer to 
 questioning what a culture means by aesthetics, and 
 to what extent the category of aesthetics is itself 
 culturally determined. 
 
 By placing religious figurines, teddy bears, or action 
 figures on a wall, Jones is quite literally violating their 
 original utilitarian or religious function, forcing us to 
 rethink their status as "art." Art, however, is a tenuous 
 term, because the original function and identity of the 
 objects exhibited can never be fully denied, nor should 
 they be denied since the piece’s effect, arguably, stems 
 from the tension implicit in displaying functional 
 objects as "art,” and from making art out of functional 
 objects. In this way, LUSCIOUS is reminiscent of the work 
 of Jeff Koons or Haim Steinbach , 15 who also display 
 ordinary utilitarian objects as well as figures from 
 popular culture as art, although they generally do not 
 affix objects directly to walls, as does Jones, but place 
 them on pedestals (which, of course, is tantamount to 
 doing the same thing). 
 
 The issue raised by the works of Jones, Koons, and 
 Steinbach is that "art" is not a given, inherent, or 
 self-declaring property of any object. That quality is 
 contingent on context: a Bart Simpson doll in the 
 hands of a child is a toy; in the middle of LUSCIOUS, it is 
 an integral part of a work of art; but if the Bart 
 Simpson doll should fall away from LUSCIOUS, be picked 
 up by a child and taken home, it becomes a toy 
 again. The status of art, therefore, is not an internal, 
 self-declaring property of any object, it is, rather, a 
 property conferred by an audience, a property conferred 
 by a culture . 16 Analogously, if all that survived from 
 our era were Bart Simpson and Ninja Turtle dolls, a 
 future archaeologist may treasure these items in the 
 
 same way as we treasure artifacts from lost civiliza- 
 tions, artifacts that, in their culture of origin, may 
 have been considered nothing more than trifles. In 
 this manner, the work of Jones and Steinbach force us 
 to question strict distinctions between art and non- 
 
 art, between the profound and the trivial, and 
 
 between the sublime and the ridiculous. 
 
 What remains ambiguous, however, or, more 
 accurately, what cannot necessarily be divined from 
 the pieces themselves, is the position of the artist 
 herself on this very same problem. Is the ambiguous 
 relation between art and non-art to be welcomed as 
 an example of the equalitarian democratization of 
 contemporary existence, or, conversely, is it to be 
 decried as the inevitable commercialization and 
 banalization of modern culture? Along the same lines, 
 Jones does not physically create her figurines; she 
 purchases them. Again, how are we to interpret 
 this choice? Is it to be construed as a glorification of 
 collective factory production, or, conversely, as a 
 denunciation of the de-personalization and de-indivi- 
 dualization of contemporary culture ? 17 These are the 
 questions that Jones, through the ostensibly banal 
 figures of Bart Simpson and Ninja Turtles, leaves us 
 to ponder. 
 
 Others, however, chose a different path. Many artists 
 and critics came to believe that Pop art could not 
 escape the very trivialization it exposed, and that 
 even the interpretive assumptions underlying much 
 of neo-expressionism were seriously flawed. The 
 return of figurative painting may have allowed 
 certain artists to indulge in subjective expression, or 
 to practice ways of making that counterbalanced the 
 trivialization of experience in a contemporary 
 mediated culture, but the alleged impulsiveness of 
 gestural painting provided, it was often argued, an 
 illusion, rather than the actual realization, of 
 immediacy . 18 However much they would have denied 
 it, practitioners of both expressionism and 
 neo-expressionism manipulate culturally mediated 
 devices of handling — devices that are themselves 
 time-bound and culture-specific — not devices whose 
 meanings are self-declaring and transparent 
 independently of an interpretive background or 
 frame of reference. 
 
 To circumvent the mediation and aestheticization im- 
 plicit in all artistic practices, some artists preferred to 
 use, as their medium, the human body itself. The rise 
 of Happenings, Performance, and Event art from the 
 
 CEHNUSCHI 
 
 25 
 
late '50s onward comprised attempts to question the 
 legitimacy of the very category of aesthetics, or, to put 
 it another way, to dissolve the barriers between the 
 categories of "art” and "non-art.” Any distinction be- 
 tween the space “of the work” and the space “around 
 t hp work” was made as fluid and permpable as 
 possible; the activity "within the work” was made to 
 approximate activity "outside the work;” and the 
 chronological duration "of the work" was meant to 
 equal chronological duration “outside the work.” Using 
 the human body as a medium, moreover, was a delib- 
 erate attempt to break down the barrier between art 
 and life, or performer and audience, 19 achieving an 
 immediacy unimaginable to artists even as impulsive 
 as the expressionists or neo-expressionists themselves. 
 
 It soon became clear, however, that even the 
 unadorned or unaesthetic use of the human body — 
 despite its claims to having achieved transparent 
 presentation rather than mediated representation — 
 could not ultimately escape the trap of mediation 
 itself. This argument was made all the more forcefully 
 by feminists whose agenda was to undermine the 
 uncritical view of the body as natural sign. Many 
 feminist critics argued that the meaning of the body is 
 hardly natural but — at all times — already predeter- 
 mined from the very outset by the associations 
 attached to gender in our culture. 20 The body, in other 
 words, was no less susceptible to interpretive manipu- 
 lation than anything else — but was perhaps even 
 more dangerous given its ability to pass itself off as 
 "natural” with greater efficiency than conventional 
 symbols or arbitrary signs. As a result, a number of 
 feminist artists began to use the body to problematize, 
 not only the assumption that physicality provides an 
 unmediated avenue towards natural signification, but 
 the ways by which the body is, from the outset, 
 invested with a number of gender stereotypes as well. 
 
 In Interior Scroll of 1975, Carolee Schneemann marked 
 her body aesthetically by painting it, confusing the 
 space of actual physicality with the space of aesthet- 
 ics. Moreover, she proceeded to read a scroll that she 
 slowly removed from inside her vagina, thus not only 
 turning the internal into the external, but willfully 
 transforming the female cavity into its opposite: 
 a near-phallic, masculine form. 21 Vito Acconci raised 
 similar issues, but in reverse. In a 1971 video perfor- 
 mance piece entitled Conversions, Acconci burned the 
 hair off his chest with a candle, and proceeded to pull 
 on his pectoral muscles in an effort to simulate female 
 breasts — again attempting to reverse gender roles, 
 to confuse the ease with which culture inevitably 
 
 imposes and fixes meanings on human bodies, and to 
 undermine the view of physicality as a natural sign. 
 
 In an analogous way, in their collaborative video piece 
 Sounding the Depths (no. 46, pi. XVI), Louise Walsh 
 
 and Paulin e Cum mins co mplicate any attempt to 
 
 construe the body as natural by superimposing filmed 
 images upon a naked female body. Not only does this 
 work situate the "natural" body within a series 
 of intermediary, mediated representations — i.e. the 
 superimposition of images of the body upon the body 
 itself, and those images themselves being filtered 
 through the medium of film, thus putting the audience 
 at a variety of stages of removal from the "original” 
 body-but the very meaning and representation of this 
 "original” body is quite literally turned inside/out. 
 
 By superimposing projections of open mouths upon 
 the outside of female bodies, however, Walsh and 
 Cummins not only violate our expectations of inside 
 versus outside relationships, but reverse our assump- 
 tions of the female body as a fertile, nurturing, and 
 protective entity. The images, then, encourage the 
 audience to rethink conventional stereotypes about 
 women — namely, the proclivity of patriarchal culture 
 to relegate their status to the tired cliches of either 
 domestic reproductive vessels or threatening "femme 
 fatales.” The opening of the superimposed mouth, 
 moreover, revealing menacing teeth and protruding 
 tongue, also suggests the age-old idea of the vagina 
 dentata, a primal male sexual fear. In this regard, the 
 work not only attempts to problematize the idea 
 of the body as a natural sign, but attempts to draw our 
 attention to the social stereotypes about women 
 active in a patriarchal society. 
 
 What is ironic about the work of Cummins and Walsh, 
 however, is that, in the process, they also attempt to 
 subvert the aesthetic sources and prototypes upon 
 which they themselves rely, sources and prototypes 
 that are, more often then not, images created by men 
 which do visual violence to the female body. Walsh 
 and Cummins’s video, arguably, plays off the images of 
 Rene Magritte (whose The Rape superimposes a naked 
 female body upon a woman’s face [fig. 4]), or Willem 
 de Kooning (whose Woman of 1953 superimposes a 
 female face on a woman’s body) — images which use 
 surrealist strategies of surprise and shock, again, either 
 to commodify the female body as the locus of male de- 
 sire, or to give visual form to primal male sexual fears. 
 
 By the same token, however, one should be careful not 
 to construe these ideological stances as representing 
 
meanings or inflections inherent to the images 
 themselves. These meanings, rather, are critical 
 interpretations that we bring to the works ourselves 
 as already biased and committed spectators — not 
 inherent properties of the art work itself. After all, we 
 
 wo uld (arguably) come to So undingihe Depthsjmth 
 
 widely different interpretive assumptions had we, as 
 members of the audience, been foretold that the 
 video had been created by men rather than women. 
 
 In such an instance, we would be far more likely 
 to construe the work as politically analogous to the 
 paintings of Magritte and de Kooning; just as if we 
 had been foretold, conversely, that The Rape or Woman 
 were created by women artists, we would be far more 
 likely to construe those images as feminist critiques 
 (rather than tacit endorsements) of patriarchal 
 ideology. Indeed, to construe ideological or political 
 stances as inherent properties of, rather than 
 meanings retrospectively attached to, works of art 
 would, per force, imply reinvoking the very concepts 
 of natural (rather than socially constructed) 
 signs that feminist critical and interpretive theory is 
 attempting to question in the first place. 
 
 To stress this point is not to argue that there is no 
 such thing as a patriarchal or feminist work of art. It 
 is only to argue that labels such as “patriarchal” or 
 “feminist” are themselves assigned or attached to 
 works of art after the fact — i.e. meanings that are 
 contingent on the ideological loyalties of interpreters 
 who construe works of art against a host of 
 preassumptions and presuppositions about what such 
 labels mean and how they signify — not inherent 
 meanings of the works themselves. And depending on 
 what those assumptions or presuppositions are, 
 what may be labeled “feminist" in one context may 
 be labeled "patriarchal” in another, or vice-versa. 
 
 Along similar lines, another artist who seriously 
 questions interpretive assumptions about the status 
 of the female body as a natural sign is Kathy 
 Prendergast. In a series of works entitled Body Maps 
 (nos. 21-28, pi. VIII, nos. 29-30, pi. IX, no. 31), Prendergast 
 plays on the long established association between 
 women’s bodies and the earth, the fertility of which 
 has often stood as a metaphor for the fertility of the 
 female body (e.g. in expressions such as "mother 
 earth,” "mother nature,” "virgin spring,” or in female 
 allegorical representations of sovereign nations). But 
 this ostensibly positive and flattering association cuts 
 both ways. Just as the land can symbolize fertile 
 abundance or nationalistic pride, it can also symbolize 
 a resource to be tapped, cultivated, or even exhausted 
 
 FIG. 4 
 
 Rene Magritte 
 French, 1898-1967 
 The Rape (Le Viol) 
 oil on canvas 
 
 The Menil Collection, Houston, acc. no. 76-06 DJ 
 Photo: Paul Hester, Houston 
 
 beyond repair. And just as a body can be subject to 
 abuse and control, the land can be used, colonized, 
 and exploited for political, military, or economic 
 purposes. Those purposes, in turn, may or may not be 
 legitimate, especially when they involve unequal 
 power relationships: i.e. men/women or colonial/ 
 colonized nations. Prendergast not only plays on the 
 similarity of the land to the body, but the very 
 subtitles attached to the series (e.g. To Alter a Land- 
 scape [no. 26], or To Control a Landscape — Irrigation 
 [no. 28, pi. VIII]) suggest the extent to which the 
 conventional, allegedly positive identification of 
 woman with the land, can hold darker, more sinister 
 connotations. 
 
 Prendergast’s work, in this respect, intersects a set of 
 interpretive concerns exhibited by recent earthworks 
 artists, artists whose medium is not oil on canvas, but 
 the actual, unadulterated, and unadorned materials 
 found in the natural environment: earth, rock, vegeta- 
 tion, crystals, etc. 22 But just as these artists raise a host 
 of collective environmental issues (e.g. how the land 
 
 CERNUSCHI 
 
 27 
 
is being used, organized, exploited, etc.), this body of 
 work may be construed in a variety of ways, especially 
 if one decides to interpret it in combination with a 
 critical approach to (rather than a tacit acceptance of) 
 the metaphor of the earth as female. 23 From this 
 
 perspective, earthwork or environmental artists may 
 
 not be displaying a set of communal concerns, as 
 much as articulating different strategies that may 
 themselves be divided along gender lines. 
 
 Using the land to fashion a statement — e.g. on the 
 obsolete nature of the art object, or to create works 
 whose very gargantuan scale undermine the 
 commercial practices of the art market, or whatever 
 other issue — may have widely different interpretive 
 ramifications depending on the artist’s own assump- 
 tions about that land. And if those assumptions 
 are inflected by an artist’s gender, they will invariably 
 impact the act of interpretation. Indeed, however 
 much male or female earthwork artists may be raising 
 similar issues pertaining to our culture’s physical or 
 philosophical relationship to the earth, those issues 
 may affect male and female artists differently insofar 
 as female artists may be harboring feelings of 
 co-identity between themselves and that very same 
 earth. This, of course, is not to suggest that these 
 feelings are themselves not culturally constructed, or 
 that they are not predicated on an entire set of 
 preestablished interpretive stances; it only means 
 that these feelings inform the works of artists like 
 Prendergast or Ana Mendietta (who inscribed her own 
 silhouette into the earth in number of pieces in the 
 late ’70s and early '80s) in a way they would not 
 inform the works of male earthworks artists such as 
 Robert Smithson, Robert Morris, or Michael Heizer. 
 
 The difference is that, for female artists, any manipu- 
 lation of, or incursion on, the land may signify a 
 manipulation of, or an incursion on, their own image. 
 
 For these reasons, it may be instructive to include a 
 discussion of media in this essay, or, more accurately, 
 of the potential interpretive ramifications of the use 
 of different media. For example, if Mendietta used the 
 materials of the land itself in order to inscribe the 
 outline of her own image in the earth, one could 
 argue that, implicit in this choice, is a particular con- 
 gruity between meaning and form: namely, that the 
 female form (as a metaphor for the earth) is outlined 
 by means of the earth itself, not by means of any 
 other medium. Prendergast’s work, however, could not 
 be more different. Although the visual outline of 
 the female form is no less present than in Mendietta’s 
 work, and though the identification of the female 
 
 with the earth is no less active, Prendergast’s calculat- 
 ing technique and precise draftsmanship can almost 
 be characterized as deliberately “artless,” a quality 
 she shares with Finola Jones (no. 45). This, of course, is 
 not to deny Prendergast’s images (any more than 
 Jones’)J±ie statusmf art orlojclaim thatfhe images-dcr 
 not rely on aesthetic choices or conventions, it is only 
 to suggest that the careful execution of her pieces 
 (in contrast to the purposefully "personal" gestural 
 execution of neo-expressionist artists such as Duffy 
 [no. 17, pi. VI, nos. 18-20, pi. VII] and Jordan [no. 15, pi. V, 
 no. 16]) invokes modes of representation usually 
 associated with architectural plans or map-making. 
 
 If this particular (almost impersonal) mode of 
 execution deliberately relinquishes the idiosyncratic, 
 ostensibly "psychologically-charged,” mode of nota- 
 tion with which expressionism is allegedly invested, 
 it also raises issues comparable to those raised by the 
 work of Geraldine O'Reilly. If O'Reilly intended Relics 
 (no. 14) to foreground the way cumulative experiences 
 (even the cumulative experience of death) de-person- 
 alizes human life and de-sensitizes an audience to 
 even the most tragic of events, the artist nonetheless 
 uses modes of representation which reproduce the 
 very same kinds of experiences. O’Reilly, in effect, like 
 Warhol before her, chooses to use the very same 
 modes of representation whose effects she criticizes. 
 
 Prendergast — arguably — is no different. Unlike 
 Mendietta, who uses the earth to outline her own 
 silhouette on the earth, forging an even closer 
 co-identity between woman and the fertility of nature, 
 Prendergast’s work approximates the more mechani- 
 cal, impersonal technique typical of geological 
 diagrams, architectural blue prints, or topographical 
 maps. Maps, to be sure, are useful tools; they outline 
 geographical or political divisions, they provide 
 logistical points of reference, and help individuals 
 find their way in unfamiliar surroundings. To 
 Prendergast’s mind, however, maps can also naturalize 
 relationships of dominance and control. A territory 
 can be colonized, arbitrarily partitioned, bought, sold, 
 exploited, and so on, often in ways that have little to 
 do with its natural topography, with the traditions of 
 its indigenous inhabitants, with its local distribution 
 of wealth, with its economic or cultural centers of 
 activity, etc. Yet it is those very same sets of arbitrary 
 relations and enforced political solutions that maps 
 often tend to obfuscate and naturalize. The map, in 
 other words, gives the illusion that the political 
 divisions of the world are fixed and set in stone, geo- 
 graphical inevitabilities rather than the contingent 
 
results of continual political jostling and renegotia- 
 tion. This issue, in fact, is of central relevance to 
 Ireland itself, a country colonized by the British 
 Empire and also victim to being partitioned, divided, 
 and subdivided by an external power whose economic 
 and p nliti raLprinrities are in direct com flic! with, those 
 of its indigenous population. The same, Prendergast 
 seems to intimate, is true of the female body. Its 
 prescribed social role, its proclivity to be exploited and 
 controlled, is arbitrary rather than natural; it is a 
 property — to follow the analogy — of the map, not of 
 the natural terrain. Yet in making this statement, 
 Prendergast appropriates the very same weapons of 
 those whose intentions her purpose it is to undermine 
 (a strategy comparable to that of Geraldine O’Reilly). 
 
 Along different lines, Eilis O’Connell (no. 39, pi. XIII, 
 nos. 40-44) also plays with the dual associations 
 between the female body and the earth. Her abstracted 
 yet conspicuously organic sculptures swell and undu- 
 late in a manner highly reminiscent of the human 
 form. Such associations, O’Connell insists, are directly 
 indebted to her carving technique; sculpture, she 
 states, is "much more about the body when you carve. 
 Your body creeps into it, because you’re using the 
 movement of your body to take it out.” On this 
 account, one can infer that In the Roundness of Being 
 (no. 41) is directly related to specifically feminine 
 configurations. Such associations, moreover, are even 
 more pronounced in works such as To Swell the Gourd 
 (no. 39, pi. XIII) or Cathoid (no. 42, pi. XIV), which make 
 direct references to female anatomy in general, and to 
 female sexuality, in particular. In this sense, O’Connell 
 seems to be celebrating female physicality and 
 fertility rather than calling attention to the ways in 
 which patriarchal culture projects primal masculine 
 sexual fears onto the female body (as Walsh and 
 Cummins do). Similarly, the work of O’Connell can be 
 no less effectively contrasted to the way Prendergast 
 chooses to approximate the female body to a mapped 
 and exploited colonized space. 
 
 Feminist interventions in contemporary art practice, 
 therefore, rarely partake of, or reflect, a single formal 
 or iconographical point of view — even if those 
 interventions are often informed by the same general 
 ideology or political agenda. In some cases, the 
 stereotypes often attached to female sexuality in a 
 predominantly patriarchal society can be the object of 
 feminist ideological critique (e.g. Cummins and Walsh 
 or Prendergast), or, in other cases (e.g. O’Connell), 
 those very same stereotypes can be usurped, divested 
 of their original (i.e. negative) connotations, and made 
 
 to celebrate the very principles they were made to 
 denigrate in the first place. 
 
 But O’Connell's stress on physicality, it must be said, 
 is connected as much to the land as to the female 
 b od y. The s culp t ur es, in man y ways^are also meant to 
 evoke the forms of geological specimens — specimens 
 which, in turn, reflect not just nature as a general, 
 abstract concept, but also convey the specific ways in 
 which (and cultural traditions by which) these same 
 natural formations were integrated in rural Irish 
 dwellings. lust as the female body is associated with 
 the earth, O'Connell invests the archaeological 
 remains of Ireland’s pre-historic sites with a powerful 
 human presence. The visual properties of those same 
 specimens, then, not only inform the aesthetic 
 decisions underlying O’Connell’s sculptures, but also 
 carry nationalistic overtones whose more subtle 
 correlations are easily overlooked if an investigator 
 decides to focus exclusively on O’Connell’s evocations 
 of the body at the expense of other meanings. 
 
 By allowing the body to reflect geology, and geology 
 to approximate indigenous aesthetic traditions and 
 specific geographical landmarks, moreover, O'Connell’s 
 work reinscribes and revalidates the body’s very 
 potential to connect with the land that Prendergast 
 had criticized as an instrument of authoritarian 
 control. For O’Connell, the body’s connection, not just 
 to nature, but to an indigenous, local landscape, 
 sidesteps the problematic issue of the body-as- 
 colonized space that Prendergast was at such pains to 
 expose. “In general,” O’Connell states, "I am definitely 
 trying to make some kind of statement about where I 
 am from.” 24 For O’Connell, then, referencing the land 
 or the body carries few nefarious connotations in this 
 specific context — used, as it is here, to stress one’s 
 origins, rather than to draw attention to way the land 
 or body is vulnerable to social, economic, or political 
 pressure. O’Connell, it seems, is precariously walking 
 on a tightrope between the general (the idea that 
 physicality can function as a universal, transcultural 
 mode of communication) and the particular (the idea 
 that the specific forms evidenced in her sculptures 
 are, of necessity, grounded in some kind of nationalis- 
 tic consciousness); it is only by connecting one idea so 
 intimately to the other (the body with the land) that 
 she has miraculously managed to keep her balance. 
 
 Along similar lines, in Point of Observation (no. 6), 
 and Repository II (no. 7, pi. Ill), Deirdre O’Connell (no 
 relation to Eilis O’Connell) also focuses on the image 
 of the land, not so much as metaphor for the human 
 
 CEKNUSCHI 
 
 29 
 
body, but as metaphor for the nation state of Ireland, 
 in order to foreground its potential to stand as a 
 fortress — a secluded and protective entity rather than 
 one susceptible to exploitation and control. It is 
 significant to underscore, therefore, how the same 
 
 symbol (the land), or the same sets of interpretive 
 
 associations (comparing the land to the female body), 
 may have a plurality of often contradictory meanings 
 depending on which artist one chooses to investigate. 
 For Prendergast, those associations have negative 
 ramifications, while for Deirdre O’Connell and Eilis 
 O’Connell, those same associations have strongly 
 positive political ones. The body or the land, therefore, 
 do not have fixed meanings acting independently of 
 an artist’s manipulation of signs and symbols 
 according to her own interpretive assumptions and 
 ideological commitments. 
 
 The architectural configurations of Deirdre O’Connell’s 
 work, in fact, also find echoes in another series 
 created by Geraldine O'Reilly from the Land Marks 
 Series: Strongholds (no. 8), which also evoke both the 
 isolation (but also the pride of the inhabitants) of the 
 island of Ireland. Yet the assimilation of architecture 
 to the land is never complete: however much the 
 island can be approximated to the fortress, the two 
 still betray a contrast, if only implicitly, between the 
 natural and the cultural. The two concepts, in other 
 words, can be compared and associated, but they can 
 never merge. 
 
 A similar precarious combination of the natural and 
 cultural can also be found in the work of Alice Maher, 
 whose Berry Dress (no. 32, pi. X) and Bee Dress (no. 34, 
 pi. XI) also juxtapose natural fruit, or the natural 
 (though dead) bodies of bees, with a key cultural 
 marker of femininity: the dress. And unlike Eilis 
 O’Connell or Prendergast, who refer to femininity by 
 suggesting the immediate physicality of the body, 
 Maher suggests it through articles that normally hide 
 or obscure this very same physicality: external, 
 inanimate clothing. But, by the same token, Maher 
 deliberately violates our own expectations about the 
 utilitarian function of external clothing: instead of 
 clothing that we may construe as comfortable, 
 protective, and sheltering, we are confronted with 
 organic material whose close proximity to our bodies 
 we would, most likely, find exceedingly repulsive. 
 
 The reliance on such discrepancies, or on our sense of 
 physical discomfort, is undeniably indebted to 
 Dadaist or Surrealist prototypes, yet Maher’s inclusion 
 
 of natural matter also relates her work to that of more 
 contemporary performance artists who have also 
 used animals (sometimes alive or sometimes dead) in 
 their own pieces. In How to Explain Pictures to a Dead 
 Hare, for example, Joseph Beuys covered his head 
 
 proceeded to explain works of art (which were 
 hanging from the gallery wall) to a dead hare he was 
 cradling in his arms. 25 In Beuys’ performance, the 
 duality between nature and culture, humanity and 
 animals, life and death is suggested no less than 
 in the work of Maher. Also worth mentioning in this 
 regard are the performances of Mark Thompson 
 particularly a piece where Thompson removed a 
 queen bee from its hive, placed it on his head, only to 
 wait as the rest of the hive swarmed him in search 
 of their queen. Within minutes, Thompson's head and 
 entire upper torso was covered with bees, a visual 
 effect not altogether different from Maher’s Bee Dress. 
 
 Maher's proclivity to reverse associations is also 
 evidenced in Thorn House (no. 33), a sculpture whose 
 thorns evoke the potential of physical harm or threat. 
 In this way, Maher’s work recalls Lucas Samaras’ 
 
 (fig. 5) strategy of adhering pins and needles to small 
 box-like sculptures, forcing the spectator to combine 
 the sheltering and protective associations we usually 
 attach to the private space of the box to the threat of 
 pain we invariably associate with the pins and 
 needles. Yet these thorns, as in Samaras’ pieces, are 
 made to conform to an architectonic space: in this 
 case, the architectural configuration of a house — a 
 structure, again, whose initial function, ironically, is 
 sheltering and protective. Thus, if O’Reilly or Deirdre 
 O'ConneH's architectural references are meant to 
 evoke the impregnability of fortresses, Maher’s work 
 may be interpreted along similar lines. But, by the 
 same token, one is made to wonder as to whether the 
 function of the fortress is to protect or to entrap. 
 
 Just as the associations of the body with the land can 
 accommodate both positive or negative associations, 
 so can the fortress. A fortress can keep intruders out, 
 as much as it can keep captives inside, of predeter- 
 mined spaces; its spatial configurations, therefore, can 
 evoke both comfort and constraint, and, as a result, 
 its meaning is again open to our interpretation and 
 construal. 
 
 Another artist whose work manipulates different 
 materials to evoke a variety of meanings is Mary 
 FitzGerald. In Spine (no. 37) and Heart (no. 38), 
 FitzGerald uses large expanses of fabric (mostly 
 
 30 
 
velvet) to refer to the domestic activities of women: 
 making beds, setting tables, cleaning clothes, and 
 so on. By allowing the cloth to hang from natural 
 points of suspension, thereby allowing the material 
 to behave as it would naturally under the force of 
 gravit y, F itzGerald echoes the wor k of post-minimalist 
 artists such as Robert Morris, Richard Serra, Eva Hesse, 
 and Lynda Benglis — who also use pliant and 
 malleable materials, and whose sculptures allow the 
 inherent properties of those materials to be evidenced 
 in the work’s final form. 26 
 
 Yet FitzGerald intentionally violates these relatively 
 sedate surfaces by the inclusion offish hooks and 
 steel bolts which encourage the viewer to project 
 emotive resonances on the otherwise inanimate 
 materials. Instead of allowing materials to function 
 literally (as many of the post-minimalists do) 
 FitzGerald projects specific meanings and associa- 
 tions onto those materials. Recovering from a serious 
 
 FIG. 5 
 
 Lucas Samaras 
 
 Greek (active in U.S.), b. 1936 
 
 Untitled Box No. 3 
 
 1963 
 
 wood, pine, rope and stuffed bird 
 Gift of the Howard and Jean Lipman Foundation, Inc., 
 acc. no. 66.36. Collection of Whitney Museum of American 
 Art, New York, Photo: Jerry L. Thompson 
 
 spinal injury after a car accident, FitzGerald saw these 
 works as evocative of feelings of illness and 
 vulnerability. On this account, the hooks and bolts 
 suggest tears and damages in need of repair in the 
 same way as stitches tie skin around a wound; and, in 
 _view of FiztGerald's accident.onemay con.jecture.that 
 cloth, in this particular case, becomes another 
 surrogate (or metaphor) for the human body. The use 
 of malleable material is also reminiscent of the 
 sculptures of Joseph Beuys, who frequently used felt 
 to communicate sensations of warmth and insulation. 
 His use of this material, in fact, was (as in the case of 
 FitzGerald) also motivated by biographical events: an 
 aviator during World War II, Beuys was shot down on 
 the Russian front, only to have been ostensibly 
 rescued by Tartars who wrapped his body in fat and 
 felt to preserve heat and facilitate healing. 27 Beuys, 
 moreover, also fashioned works of art from felt 
 (designed in the form of clothing [fig. 6]) which he 
 suspended in mid-air and allowed to hang naturally, 
 
 9 
 
 FIG. 6 
 
 Joseph Beuys 
 German, 1921-85 
 Felt Suit 
 1970 
 
 Philadelphia Museum of Art: Gift of the Friends of 
 the Philadelphia Museum of Art, acc. no.‘7i-4i-gab 
 
 CESNUSCHI 
 
 3i 
 
FIG. 7 
 
 Barnett Newman 
 U.S., 1905-70 
 Onement, III 
 1949 
 
 oil on canvas 
 
 The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Mr. and 
 Mrs. Joseph Slifka. Photograph ©1997 The Museum of 
 Modern Art, New York. 
 
 characteristics which — in their general appearance 
 and in their suggestion of the human body — also 
 anticipate FitzGerald’s pieces. 
 
 FitzGerald’s work, moreover, can also be described as 
 alternating between abstraction and figuration in a 
 rather singular manner. Neither her materials nor 
 shapes can be said to copy nature in an illusionistic or 
 iconic way; nor are the hooks used purely literally. 
 
 Yet the ways in which FitzGerald organizes the shapes 
 and manipulates found objects in her sculptures 
 suggest a human body in various states of injury and 
 harm. These meanings, again, are not objective 
 properties of the materials or objects that she uses 
 (i.e. velvet or fish hooks); they are, rather, meanings 
 that we attach to the works after the fact, and in light 
 of the interests and intentions we assume were 
 motivating their inclusion in FitzGerald’s creations. 
 
 A similar vacillation between abstraction and figura- 
 tion can be discerned in Deluge (no. 35, pi. XII) and Red 
 Sea (no. 36), two works whose general configuration 
 can be construed as abstract, but whose titles 
 encourage representational associations. The gestural 
 
 suggest an apocalyptic landscape, and, as such, the 
 work reinvokes the issues of vulnerability central to 
 Heart and Spine. But vulnerability, in this case, refers 
 not so much to the fragility of the human body per se, 
 but to the insignificant place of humanity within the 
 larger order of nature. In this respect, it is intriguing 
 that FitzGerald’s Red Sea is so reminiscent of the work 
 of Barnett Newman (fig. 7), whose abstract canvases 
 and large areas of unmodulated color are also divided 
 by thin vertical lines, and whose interpretive concerns 
 also revolved around evoking humanity’s sense of 
 helplessness before the void. 28 
 
 By abstract means, then, both FitzGerald and Newman 
 are trying to convey specific meanings about our 
 place in the greater order of the cosmos, i.e. meanings 
 that differ from those originating in arbitrary signs 
 such as language, as well as from those that attempt 
 to evoke the physical or cultural associations we 
 attach directly to the human body. But the intentions 
 motivating FitzGerald’s work may be essentially 
 no different from the ones motivating Eilis O’Connell, 
 Maher, or Prendergast: namely, that sensations 
 originating from our physical experiences can be 
 projected onto a variety of shapes in order to 
 construct and convey meaning. The only difference 
 between FitzGerald and the artists mentioned above 
 is her decision to embrace an abstract idiom — a 
 difference that helps not only distinguish her produc- 
 tion from those of the other artists we have 
 encountered thus far, but a difference that also tends 
 to identify her work as the most idiosyncratic and 
 singular in this exhibition. 
 
 With the works of Gwen O’Dowd (nos. 1,2, pi. I, no. 3) 
 and Mary Lohan (no. 4, pi. II, no. 5), the exhibition 
 comes full circle. The theme of landscape re-emerges, 
 yet it is treated with the same technical handling 
 that was evident in the neo-expressionist canvases of 
 Rita Duffy and Eithne Iordan. But although this 
 technique connects O’Dowd and Lohan's work with 
 Duffy and Jordan’s expressionism — as well as with 
 the belief in gestural painting’s ability to forge a 
 direct, immediate mode of communication — O'Dowd 
 or Lohan’s thematic concerns are closer to FitzGerald 
 and to Eilis O’Connell’s. The land, moreover, is not 
 
 32 
 
FIG. 8 
 
 Jackson Pollock 
 
 U.S., 1912-56 
 The Flame 
 c. 1934-38 
 
 oil on canvas mounted on composition board 
 The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Enid A. Haupt 
 Fund. Photograph ©1997 The Museum of Modern Art, 
 New York. 
 
 depicted as a commodity or resource to be exploited 
 (as in Prendergast), nor is it seen as an isolated but 
 impregnable fortress (as in O’Reilly or Deirdre 
 O'Connell). According to O’Dowd, the references to 
 nature in her paintings are not geographically 
 over-specific; their meanings derive from the way 
 chasms and dark spaces contrast with their surround- 
 ing rock formations — not by overly nationalistic 
 associations, or by correlations between the land 
 and the female body. 
 
 As in the work of FitzGerald, connections can also be 
 drawn between O’Dowd and Lohan’s work and the in- 
 ternational manifestations of abstract expressionism 
 in America and Europe after the Second World War. 
 Even seemingly abstract paintings were often related 
 to landscape imagery, however tenuous the interpre- 
 tive or visual connections were drawn. In some 
 instances, however, the connections were not tenuous 
 at all. In the work of Jackson Pollock, e.g. The Flame 
 (fig. 8) or The Deep, the artist also attempted to 
 suggest, either through titles or through visual clues, 
 the often destructive and uncontrollable aspects of 
 the natural dimension. Similarly, both O'Dowd and 
 Lohan’s paintings are often devoid of a human 
 presence; as a result, spectators have few visual clues 
 or frames of reference against which to gauge the 
 scale of the landscape depicted. 
 
 In O'Dowd’s Uaimh (cave) Series (nos. 1, 2, pi. I, no. 3), 
 a dark form at the center of as work could represent 
 either a slight indentation or a massive chasm. The 
 artist provides a certain amount of information for us 
 to recognize these forms as geological formations, 
 
 but withholds the information nerpssary to interp ret 
 
 scale. The same could be said of many abstract 
 expressionist suggestions of landscape (e.g. the works 
 of Pollock mentioned above, or even the canvases 
 of Clyfford Still). O’Dowd, herself, freely admits to 
 having been trained in the tradition of abstract 
 expressionism, and although her technique is consis- 
 tent with twentieth-century precedents, her evocation 
 of the tradition of sublime landscape painting is also 
 connected to nineteenth-century European prototypes, 
 specifically the works of Caspar Wolf, J.W.M. Turner, 
 James Ward, or John Robert Cozens. 29 
 
 For O’Dowd, the landscape, then, is not necessarily 
 physically or psychologically reassuring, or a national 
 symbol, or a commodity to be ruthlessly exploited 
 and controlled, or an analog for the form or fertility of 
 the female body. It becomes, rather, a locus of 
 ambiguity. Unspecified in terms of geography or scale, 
 it suggests the permanence of nature, a permanence 
 against which the impermanence of human 
 culture can be opposed. This same contrast, of course, 
 is also at the heart of Maher or FitzGerald's work; 
 O’Dowd’s contrasts, however, are not as blatant — they 
 are more implicit rather than explicit, subtle rather 
 than conspicuous. 
 
 For Lohan, the rhythm and energy of the landscape 
 becomes a means of transliterating the energy 
 released during an excessively physical act of painting. 
 The materiality of the paint, moreover, applied thickly, 
 layer after layer, becomes an analog for the physicality 
 and tangibility of matter. Like O'Dowd’s landscapes, 
 Lohan’s works in this exhibition are predominantly 
 dark, a color scheme that, coupled with the absence of 
 human references, and its concomitant ambiguity of 
 scale, suggest nature’s inhospitableness, or its 
 ultimate resistance to control (no. 4, pi. II, no. 5). But 
 although the theme of nature distinguishes Lohan’s 
 work from Jordan's emphasis on the human face, 
 or from Duffy’s human narratives, Lohan's suggestion 
 of the physicality of nature through her own working 
 process- — i.e. her own physicality — reinvokes the 
 personal connotations with which neo-expressionism 
 is usually invested. In other words, Lohan’s work is just 
 as much about herself as it is about nature, a 
 co-identity that strikes remarkable parallels between 
 
 CEKNUSCHI 
 
 33 
 
her work and that of contemporary neo-expressionist 
 painters (as well as with American abstract 
 expressionist artists of the '40s and ’50s). 
 
 In reviewing the diversity of images included in this 
 exhibition, it is rlpar that the application of categories, 
 "contemporary," "Irish,” “women,” or “artists,” in no 
 way enforces a single, totalizing reading of this body 
 of material. As suggested at the outset, these 
 categories intersect a wide range of other, equally 
 forceful categories. Yet against a variety of interpre- 
 tive frames of reference (those provided in this essay 
 as well as those provided by other essays in this 
 catalogue), the complexity of this body of work can 
 emerge in sharper relief. Not only will rarely shown 
 visual material be exhibited in the United States, 
 but further connections (as well as dissimilarities) can 
 be drawn between the artists themselves, between 
 these artists and other manifestations in contempo- 
 rary art, as well as between their work and the 
 aesthetic, historical, political, and cultural contexts 
 out of which these works emerged. 
 
 What these connections reveal, more than anything 
 else, is a kind of visual and ideological pluralism in 
 practice. Whether artists chose to focus on the human 
 form, landscape, architecture, mass-produced utilitar- 
 ian objects, or even if they use the female body itself, 
 the specific interpretive ramifications emerging from 
 these choices can only be discerned on a case-by-case 
 basis. Even if the majority of these artists endorse a 
 feminist perspective, and even if this perspective 
 functions as a broad theoretical framework against 
 which their pieces can be construed, the meanings 
 they attach to each of the thematic concerns outlined 
 above cannot be predicted at the outset. To be sure, 
 each artist in this exhibition falls comfortably within 
 the label of "contemporary Irish women artists,” but, 
 that label notwithstanding, this body of material — 
 in the end — reveals exceptional visual, conceptual, as 
 well as ideological diversity, a diversity unrestricted 
 and unhampered by the label or categorical frame- 
 work this exhibition provides. 
 
 Notes 
 
 I would like to express my appreciation to Alston Conley, 
 Curator, McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College and Jennifer 
 Grinnell, Exhibitions and Publications Manager, McMullen 
 Museum of Art, Boston College for inviting me to participate in 
 this project, and for their generous assistance and valuable 
 suggestions during the preparation of this essay. Thanks also 
 goto Adeane Bregman, Bapst Librarian, Boston College, for her 
 help and assistance. 
 
 1 For a powerful example of a feminist intervention in the 
 history of art, and for an argument for the general 
 overhaul of conventional art historical strategies in 
 scholarship, see Pollock 1988. 
 
 2 For a comprehensive account of the role of categorization 
 in mental life from a cognitive model, see Lakoff 1987. 
 
 3 For a general survey of different international manifesta- 
 tions of neo-expressionism and gestural painting in an 
 international context, see Godfrey 1986. 
 
 4 See Fowler 1990, pp. 52-67. 
 
 5 For a good summary of the ideological and interpretive 
 assumptions behind the modernist paradigm, see 
 Greenberg 1965. 
 
 6 See Barber 1995, p. 12. 
 
 7 For further information on the ideological and political 
 debate surrounding the return to figuration in the ’80s, 
 see Buchloh 1981 and Kuspit 1983. 
 
 8 See Godfrey 1986, pp. 32, 33, 36. 
 
 9 For a survey of Kiefer's work, and paraphrases of conversa- 
 tions with the artist, see Rosenthal 1987. 
 
 10 For further discussion of O'Reilly's use of these images, see 
 the essay by Robert Savage in this catalogue. 
 
 11 O'Reilly 1997a. 
 
 12 See Ratcliff 1983. 
 
 13 For more on Duchamp, see Sanouillet and Peterson 1989 
 and D'Hamoncourt 1973. 
 
 14 See Varnedoe and Gopnik 1990. 
 
 15 See Ross and Flarten 1988 and Gudis 1989. 
 
 16 See Searle 1979, p. 59. 
 
 17 For more on these issues, see Lunn 1982. 
 
 18 See Foster 1985, pp. 58-77. 
 
 19 For an outline of the basic philosophical and aesthetic 
 strategies behind Flappenings, see Kaprow 1966. 
 
 20 For a good summary of these and other issues, see Gouma- 
 Peterson and Mathews 1987, pp. 326-57. 
 
 21 See Sayre 1989, p. 90. 
 
 22 See Beardsley 1984. 
 
 23 See Lippard 1983. 
 
 24 O'Connell 1997b. 
 
 25 SeeTisdall 1979, pp. 101-05. 
 
 34 
 
CERNUSCHI 
 
 26 For a good summary of the issues raised by post- 
 minimalism, see Morris 1970. 
 
 27 This event has been recorded as part of the Beuys "myth,'' 
 although some critics have called the veracity of Beuys' 
 account in question. 
 
 28 See Newman 1947. 
 
 29 See Rosenblum 1975. 
 
 Abbreviations 
 Barber 1995 
 
 Barber, F. "Unfamiliar distillations." Familiar: Alice Maher. The 
 Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, 1995. 
 
 Beardsley 1984 
 
 Beardsley, J. Earthworks and Beyond: Contemporary Art in the 
 Landscape. New York, 1984. 
 
 Buchloh 1986 
 
 Buchloh, B. "Figures of Authority, Ciphers of Regression: Notes 
 on the Return of Representation in European Painting," 
 
 October 16 (Spring 1981), pp. 39-68. 
 
 D’Harnoncourt 1973 
 
 D'Harnoncourt, Anne, Ed. Marcel Duchamp. New York, 1973. 
 
 Foster 1985 
 
 Foster, H. "The Expressive Fallacy." Recodings. Seattle, 1985. 
 
 Fowler 1990 
 
 Fowler, J. "Speaking of Gender: Expressionism, Feminism and 
 Sexuality.”A New Tradition: Irish Art of the Eighties. Dublin, 1990. 
 
 Godfrey 1986 
 
 Godfrey,! The New Image: Painting in the ig8o's New York, 
 
 1986. 
 
 Gouma-Peterson and Mathews 1987 
 
 Gouma-Peterson, T. and Mathews, P. "The Feminist Critique of 
 Art History," Art Bulletin 6g (September 1987), pp. 326-57. 
 
 Greenberg 1965 
 
 Greenberg, C. "Modernist Painting,” [1965] Reprinted in The New 
 Art. New York, 1966, pp. 66-77. 
 
 Gudis 1989 
 
 Gudis, C., Ed. A Forest of Signs: Art in the Crisis of Representation. 
 Cambridge, MA, 1989. 
 
 Kaprow 1966 
 
 Kaprow,A."The Happenings are Dead.. .Long Live the Happen- 
 ings." Artforum 4 (Mamh 1966) reprinted in Sandback 1984, pp. 
 33 - 36 . 
 
 Kuspit 1983 
 
 Kuspit, D. B. "Flack from the'RadicalsLThe American Case 
 against Current German Painting," in Expressions: New Art from 
 Germany, St. Louis, 1983, pp. 43-55. 
 
 Lakoff 1987 
 
 Lakoff, G. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories 
 Reveal about the Mind. Chicago, 1987. 
 
 Lippard 1983 
 
 Lippard, L. Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory. 
 New York, 1983. 
 
 Lunn 1982 
 
 Lunn, E. Marxism and Modernism: An Historical Study of Lukas, 
 Brecht, Benjamin, and Adorno. Berkeley, 1982. 
 
 Morris 1970 
 
 Morris, R. "Some Notes on the Phenomenology of Making: 
 
 The Search for the Motivated," Artforum 8 (April 1970), 
 reprinted in Sandback, 1984, pp. 88-92. 
 
 Newman 1947 
 
 Newman, B. "The First Man Was an Artist." Tiger’s Eye I (October 
 1947). Reprinted in Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and 
 Interviews. New York, 1990, pp. 156-60. 
 
 O’Connell 1997a 
 
 O'Connell, Eilis. Interview. With Alston Conley and 
 Maiy Armstrong, January 1997. 
 
 O’Connell 1997b 
 
 O’Connell, Eilis. Conversation. With Alston Conley and 
 Mary Armstrong, January 1997. 
 
 O’Reilly 1997a 
 
 O'Reilly, Geraldine. Interview. With Alston Conley and 
 Mary Armstrong, January 1997. 
 
 O’Reilly 1997b 
 
 O’Reilly, Geraldine. Conversation. With Alston Conley and 
 Mary Armstrong, January 1997. 
 
 Pollock 1988 
 
 Pollock, G. Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism 
 and the Histories of Art, London, 1988. 
 
 Ratcliff, 1983 
 
 Ratcliff, C. Warhol. New York, 1983. 
 
 Rosenblum 1975 
 
 Rosenblum, R. Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic 
 Tradition: Friedrich to Rothko. New York, 1975. 
 
 Rosenthal 1987 
 
 Rosenthal, LA. Anselm Kiefer. Chicago and Philadelphia, 1987. 
 
 Ross and Harten 1988 
 
 Ross, D. and Harten, J., Eds. American Art of the Late 80s. 
 
 Boston, 1988. 
 
 Sandback 1984 
 
 Sandback, A. B., Ed. Looking Critically: 21 Years of Artforum 
 Magazine. New York, 1984. 
 
 Sanouillet and Peterson 1989 
 
 Sanouillet, M. and Peterson, E„ Eds. The Writings of Marcel 
 Duchamp. New York, 1989. 
 
 Sayre 1989 
 
 Sayre, H. The Object of Performance: The American Avant-Garde 
 Since igjo. Chicago, 1989. 
 
 Searle 1979 
 
 Searle, J. Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory 
 of Speech Acts. New York, 1979. 
 
 Tisdall 1979 
 
 Tidall, C. Joseph Beuys. New York, 1979. 
 
 Vamedoe and Gopnik 1990 
 
 Vamedoe, K. and Gopnik, A. High and Low: Modem Art 
 and Popular Culture. New York, 1990. 
 
 35 
 
ADELE DALSIMER AND VERA KREILKAMP 
 
 Re/Dressing Mother Ireland: 
 
 Feminist Imagery in Art and Literature 
 
 Contemporary Irish women artists inherit a burden 
 of historical imperatives. In Ireland — more insistently 
 than in other countries — national identity is 
 gendered, rooted in an ancient native iconography. 
 Unlike her European or American counterpart, the 
 Irish artist responds not only to the central themes of 
 an international feminist discourse but also to a 
 tradition of representing national sovereignty as 
 female. Thus in poetry, fiction, painting, and sculpture, 
 women artists confront and redress Ireland’s 
 gendered iconography, often through a reclamation of 
 a lost tradition of strong women or through witty 
 parody of patriarchal idealizations. 
 
 In the pre-Christian Celtic world, the female goddess — 
 depicted as warrior, mother, beautiful woman or aged 
 crone — represented the land and the King’s spiritual 
 and legal dominion over it. No king could legitimately 
 assume power without a symbolic marriage to this 
 female deity. Early characterizations of these earth 
 goddesses in Celtic literature depict strikingly 
 aggressive, powerful, and sexual women: figures like 
 the voracious warrior Queen Medb who dominates 
 her multiple lovers; or the Morrigan, a female goddess 
 of both fertility and death who haunts the battlefield. 
 Such representations of women appear as well in the 
 sheela-na-gigs found on medieval Irish churches and 
 castles — grotesque female figures whose postures 
 direct attention to their exaggerated genitalia . 1 These 
 stone carvings reflect, perhaps, the syncretism of a 
 displaced pagan culture’s belief in powerful goddesses 
 of creation and destruction with a newer Christian 
 disapproval of female sexuality. 
 
 Powerful visual and oral depictions of women survived 
 until the Elizabethan plantations. But by the late 
 
 seventeenth century, with the final defeat of Jacobite 
 hopes at the Battle of the Boyne and the eighteenth- 
 century imposition of the Penal Laws on Catholic 
 Ireland, a new female image emerged to represent the 
 defeated and colonized land. The traditional allegoriz- 
 ing of Ireland assumed another form as land 
 and female body fused in the imagery of imperial and 
 nationalist contestation. Instead of a powerful warrior 
 queen, nationalist sentiment envisioned an icon of 
 defeat, surrender, and helplessness. New representa- 
 tions — Hibernia, Erin, the Poor Old Woman, Cathleen 
 Ni Houlihan, the Dark Rosaleen — displaced Mebd 
 and the Morrigan. In the aisling, a new Gaelic form of 
 vision poetry, a defeated people without political 
 status or legal rights exploited the figure of a beautiful 
 young girl or poor old woman in need of protection 
 and rescue by a foreign prince from across the sea. 
 
 Whereas Celtic mythology had offered strong female 
 figures — often sexual and independent — Irish nation- 
 alism and Catholicism erased most of these qualities. 
 The growing nationalism of nineteenth-century 
 Ireland appropriated feminine icons to encode republi- 
 can sentiment, often to escape imperial censorship. An 
 allegorized female appeared not only as a representa- 
 tion of defeat and suffering, but also as an exhortation 
 for change. The traumatic devastation of the 
 mid-nineteenth century Famine and the subsequent 
 triumphalism of the Catholic Church increasingly 
 imposed the image of Mary, the sorrowful Mother 
 mourning her dead son, as the model for Irish woman- 
 hood. Thus the suffering Mother Ireland who 
 demanded the blood sacrifice of her sons merged with 
 the Catholic Mater Dolorosa. Such imagery dominated 
 nationalist rhetoric, most memorably in W.B. Yeats’ 
 play Cathleen Nl Houlihan and in the poems and 
 
speeches of Padraig Pearse, leader of the 1916 Easter 
 Rebellion. As motherhood became the consolidating 
 metaphor of the nation, the family, rather than the 
 individual, became the central social unit. 
 
 Expressed in ' 
 
 : by the 
 
 image of the rural cottage, the ideal of family and home 
 was enshrined in the 1937 Constitution. In his 1943 
 St. Patrick’s Day speech, President Eamon De Valera 
 reiterated this vision by extolling a domestic Eden: 
 
 That Ireland which we dreamed of would be the home 
 of a people who valued material wealth only as a basis 
 of right living, of a people who were satisfied with 
 frugal comfort and devoted their leisure to the things 
 of the spirit; a land whose countryside would be bright 
 with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages 
 would be joyous with sounds of industry, the romping 
 of sturdy children, the contests of athletic youth, the 
 laughter of comely maidens; whose firesides would be 
 the forum of the wisdom of serene old age. 2 
 
 De Valera’s privileging of women’s roles as wives and 
 mothers accorded with church teaching that banned 
 contraception, divorce, and abortion. Legislation 
 barring married women from state employment, for 
 example, underscored the new government’s 
 overt regulations on women and created a nation that 
 virtually excluded them from power structures. 
 Pressure for change erupted in 1983, with the bitter 
 controversy surrounding the abortion referendum 
 written to protect the rights of the unborn child. Such 
 pressure reasserted itself again in 1986 with the 
 referendum for Constitutional changes on divorce. 
 Although, in both cases, conservative forces prevailed, 
 a growing feminist voice in national political life was 
 heard. Contemporary writers and visual artists 
 continue to challenge the traditional constructions of 
 gender that are slowly being eroded in the political 
 realm. In the face of nineteenth and early -twentieth- 
 century idealizations of domesticity, their works 
 subvert and reinterpret the iconography of the past. 
 Their rejoinders to tradition, often defiant and parodic, 
 enter the international feminist exploration of social 
 roles, but respond always to the local and national. 
 
 no. 46a (p.36) 
 
 Pauline Cummins and Louise Walsh 
 Sounding the Depths (detail) 
 
 installation: video projection, light boxes and sound 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin 
 
 Not surprisingly, in recent creative work male and 
 female Irish artists offer different images of gender 
 roles. In Neil Jordan’s prize-winning film, The Crying 
 Game, for example, a patriarchal nation’s anxieties 
 about female power manifest themselves in Jude, the 
 gun wielding I R A, agent, punished with a bloody 
 death for her sexuality and aggression. Thus, despite 
 Jordan’s groundbreaking reinterpretation of traditional 
 political, racial, sexual stereotypes in the film, he 
 attacks precisely that regendering that characterizes 
 much feminist art. In her short story, Naming the 
 Names, however, Anne Devlin sympathetically depicts 
 a female I.R.A. agent who appropriates a traditional 
 male political role. The name of Devlin’s protagonist — 
 Finn — identifies her with a heroic male warrior of 
 Celtic tradition. Through her sexuality, Finn deliber- 
 ately lures her lover, a Protestant judge’s son, to his 
 death; when imprisoned, she, like the ancient warriors 
 pledged to clan loyalty, refuses to betray her associates, 
 to "name the names.” In this haunting story, as in 
 her more widely known play Ourselves Alone, Devlin 
 explores, with sympathy and complexity, women’s 
 involvement in violent politics. 
 
 In Re/Dressing Cathleen, the exhibition presented at 
 the McMullen Museum of Art, a similar appropriation 
 of traditional male imagery and subject matter 
 appears in the work of Geraldine O’Reilly (nos. 8-12, 
 pi. IV, nos. 13, 14) and Deirdre O'Connell (nos. 6, 7, pi. III). 
 Their works evoke an aggressive masculinity, and 
 subvert nineteenth-century domestic ideologies. In 
 Strongholds (no. 8) from her Land Marks Series, O’Reilly 
 etches the fortified military architecture of the 
 northern border counties as a means of exploring her 
 own identity as an Irish woman: "identity for me is 
 bound up with the land and the territory.” In claiming 
 as subject matter these Norman castles, towers, 
 fortresses, and keeps — the physical evidence of centu- 
 ries of colonial warfare and occupation — O’Reilly 
 reinscribes for women’s art the aggressive imagery of 
 forcible occupation and defense. Seeking to evoke both 
 mental and physical imprisonment, she multiplies 
 familiar landmarks and calls the castles "strongholds” 
 to suggest their original functions. "I’m not interested 
 in 'the Troubles’ as a subject for my work but I’m 
 fascinated by how people in the border areas deal 
 with the effects of the Troubles — in order to go about 
 their daily business they have to maneuver through a 
 whole series of complex signs, signals and symbols.” 3 
 While retaining a traditional female interest in the 
 "daily business” of life — obsessively marking the signs 
 and signals that accompany the most ordinary 
 
 38 
 
excursions into the northern countryside — O’Reilly, 
 nevertheless, masters oppressive male imagery and 
 makes it her own. 
 
 Deirdre O’Connell's Point of Observation (no. 6), while 
 
 more indeterminate in its subject matter, also plays 
 
 with traditional masculine forms. The piece illustrates 
 O’Connell’s interest in using “very simple construc- 
 tions which have resonances of other, different 
 images and concepts, and the common factor is the 
 architectural form as a symbol or as a conveyor of the 
 ideological.” 4 Part of her Hinterland exhibition, a series 
 of works created in the industrial wasteland of 
 Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Point of Observation evokes the 
 petrochemical skyline of that decaying urban setting, 
 and through its title, an observatory for watching 
 the stars. But more immediately and aggressively, 
 the image asserts itself as a rusted erect penile form 
 on a mound of stones, curiously reminiscent of the 
 Mussenden Temple, an Anglo-Irish folly on a rock cliff 
 in Derry, built for viewing the coastline. Recalling a 
 primitive stone mound, an eighteenth-century imperial 
 observation point, and a contemporary wasteland, 
 the installation piece exists as a witty depiction of 
 decaying masculine power. 
 
 Other artists in this exhibition parody nationalist and 
 Catholic ideologies that freeze women into 
 programmed identities: Alice Maher’s Thorn House 
 (no. 33), as well as Rita Duffy’s Scullery (no. 20, pi. VII) 
 and Becoming (no. 18), explode idealizations of Irish 
 domesticity. Maher’s impregnable and forbidding 
 miniature house, covered with rose thorns, like Duffy's 
 hellish vision of a washing-up area, reifies the darker 
 sides of domestic spaces. Thorn House draws ironically 
 on the rose as traditional symbol of Ireland and 
 also evokes the conservative iconography of the rural 
 cottage in the west, long a staple of tourist board 
 marketing campaigns. The cottage “as surrogate for 
 the depiction of the rural Irish woman and the values 
 of motherhood, tradition and stability,’’ 5 extols 
 precisely those Irish women who, according to recent 
 demographic data, remain the most underemployed, 
 neglected, and silenced social group in the nation. 6 
 
 Rita Duffy's work also undermines the domestic 
 ideal. In a recent catalogue of her Palimpsest paintings, 
 Tess Hurson’s poem The White Hens of Stranmillis, 
 comments directly on the paintings, as in the follow- 
 ing stanza on Duffy’s Scullery. 
 
 Between the kitchen scissors 
 Some baby is conveniently suspended 
 Above a raging washing machine. 
 
 I would save them all 
 Blanch the arterial spurt 
 
 Crosses carried speechless 
 Beyond the house... 7 
 
 In Duffy's expressionistic painting of a scullery, 
 clothes, ladles, and a baby (affixed to forceps-tongs) 
 hang above a flaming washer and allude to the night- 
 mare of domesticity that controls Eavan Boland’s 
 Tirade of the Mimic Muse. In that poem, another Irish 
 artist exposes the violent reality of women’s lives, 
 berating the "sluttish” falsity of domestic ideals, and 
 vowing to replace idealizations with "true reflections." 
 Like Duffy’s painting, the poem reveals the underbelly 
 of the kitchen and nursery by raising the specters of 
 child abuse, wife beating, female suffering: 
 
 The kitchen screw and the rack of labour, 
 
 The wash thumbed and the dish cracked, 
 
 The scream of beaten women, 
 
 The crime of babies battered, 
 
 The hubbub and the shriek of daily grief 
 That seeks asylum behind suburb walls — 8 
 
 In Becoming, Duffy parodies the sacred mother figure 
 of nineteenth-century Ireland. In this surreal domestic 
 image, the exaggerated weariness of the mother’s 
 face prohibits any idealization of motherhood. From 
 her mouth tumble shamrocks, Ireland’s most cliched 
 symbol, on to her child and the altar/kitchen table. 
 This version of Mother Ireland appears to drain her 
 boiled dead child in a chalice/colander. In thesavage 
 domestic christening rite of Becoming, a burdened 
 contemporary housewife, murderous goddess and 
 Mother Church merge in a dark narrative of Irish 
 Catholic maternity. 
 
 Like visual artists, contemporary Irish poets evoke 
 subversive visions of traditional female icons. In Paula 
 Meehan’s The Statue of the Virgin Mary at Granard 
 Speaks, the Virgin, the intercessor between sinful 
 humans and the divine, responds without pity to the 
 isolated death of fifteen-year-old Ann Lovett, who died 
 after secretly giving birth at one of Ireland’s many 
 shrines to Mary. Lovett’s death occurred a few months 
 after the passage of the 1983 abortion referendum, 
 which gave the unborn child rights equal to that of 
 the mother. In Meehan’s poem, Mary, disgruntled at 
 
 DALSIMER / 
 KREILKAMP 
 
 39 
 
being “stuck up here in this grotto," longs for a fuller 
 life: "My being cries out to be incarnate, incarnate, 
 /maculate and tousled in a honeyed bed.’’ 9 In her self- 
 preoccupation, this detached icon of female 
 perfection fails utterly to respond to the cries of the 
 dying girl in her extremis: 
 
 I did not move 
 
 I didn’t lift a finger to help her 
 I didn't intercede with heaven, 
 
 Nor whisper the charmed word in God’s ear. 10 
 
 Even more parodically, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill attacks 
 the Shan Van Vocht, or Poor Old Woman, as a “cranky, 
 cantankerous” old slut, whose decaying and 
 cancerous body slobbers and whines from its wheel- 
 chair. This Mother Ireland, "whose eyes were radiant 
 once with youth and blue fire,” 11 is memorialized 
 as the murderer of young men. In Yeats’ Cathleen Ni 
 Houlihan, the dominant literary text of romantic 
 nationalism, the Poor Old Woman is transformed 
 into beautiful young queen by the sacrificial deaths 
 of young men. But in Ni Dhomhnaill’s parody, the 
 murderous Cathleen is rewarded with decay and 
 ridicule while her victims are "doomed to be burned- 
 out, dazzled and frazzled" not by “ordinary love/ But 
 with a gnawing, migraine-bright black lust/ And 
 galloping consumption.” 12 
 
 Other images in this exhibition problematize the 
 body of Mother Ireland — creating sculptural female 
 forms in which aggression occludes maternity. The 
 dark resonances of Alice Maher’s Bee Dress (no. 34, 
 pi. XI), a surreal invocation of a hostile female psycho- 
 sexuality, recall the death-dealing Morrigan or 
 warrior Oueen Medb of Celtic tradition, rather than 
 the nineteenth-century’s Virgin/cottage idealiza- 
 tions. Bee Dress turns the honey-generating bee 
 hive inside out as the normally hidden swarm of bees 
 blankets the woman’s body. Instead of evoking 
 associations of sweetness and fertility — as in the 
 idealized “hive for the honey bee" of W.B. Yeats’ The 
 Lake Isle oflnnisfree — Maher clothes the female form 
 in a formidable armored bee shield. She transforms 
 the carcasses of the fertile male drone bees, who 
 perish when they impregnate the queen bee, into the 
 macabre, luxuriant dress of a warrior queen. 
 
 Mary FitzGerald’s Heart (no. 38), a work in glass 
 rendered on the black velvet ground of a dress/ 
 shroud, reinscribes the seat of human affections and 
 love into a sculpture implying pain and assault. The 
 work evokes the iconography of the Sacred Heart, an 
 
 image found universally in Irish Catholic houses, 
 schools, and churches, derived from the visions of 
 Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, who reputedly carved 
 the word "lesus" on her breast with a penknife. In 
 Heart, outlining the tricorn with fishhook, scalpel, 
 and acupuncture needle — pointed metal instruments 
 of aggression and aggressive healing — FitzGerald 
 reconstructs the suffering female body idealized in 
 Catholic doctrine. 
 
 Of all the works in this exhibition, Pauline Cummins 
 and Louise Walsh's Sounding the Depths (no. 46, 
 pi. XVI), is most explicit in its response to the 
 beleaguered status of Irish women and most defiant 
 in its reconstruction of the female body. Cummins 
 and Walsh’s collaborative installation presents the 
 woman’s body in three spaces: a small anteroom 
 of prim and compressed mouths; a larger space with 
 a video tape of shells and sea bed soundings, leading 
 to a shouting, laughing mouth; and a dark space 
 with colored photographs of open mouths projected 
 bn to women’s bellies or chests. This work recalls 
 both the grotesque imagery of the sexually voracious 
 sheela-na-gigs and the ancient Celtic legend of 
 Deirdre, the loveliest woman in all Ireland who, as an 
 unborn child, cried out from her mother’s womb and 
 announced the coming sorrows of Ulster. 
 
 The aggression involved in Sounding the Depths plays 
 on male castration fears. By projecting a toothed 
 mouth on a female belly, Cummins and Walsh invoke 
 and parody the vagina dentata, the most frightening 
 male fantasy of female sexuality. Through visual 
 allusions to the male dread of being swallowed up 
 into a hostile toothed womb, of losing the penis 
 inside the feared vagina, they construct their defiant, 
 explicit renditions of talking wombs. They reveal the 
 "open, vulnerable mouth/hole in our belly” through 
 which women will not only be able to speak "but to 
 shout, to roar with laughter, grief and joy, and finally, 
 to be whole, healed and open.”^ 
 
 Sounding the Depths refuses the silencing of women — 
 embracing instead a defiant imagery that conveys 
 the rage and sexuality of women’s voices. In a letter 
 about this work, Walsh and Cummins themselves 
 refuse silence: “We won’t shut up. We’ll not be 
 silenced. We'll find the strength to open up." They 
 announce that their art is committed to "letting the 
 energy flow, loosening the tongue, baring the teeth, 
 stretching the lips, making sounds, beginning to talk. 
 The mouth becomes wide and starts things a 
 moving, giving a voice to the body, locating the 
 
wound, tight and sealed though it is — closing up all 
 that needs to be said ,” 14 In this aggressive installation, 
 the woman’s headless torso — the conveniently mute 
 focus of the male gaze — remains silent no more. 
 
 r nntpmporary Irish wnmpn artists, working in 
 the visual arts as well as in literature, collectively 
 reimagine Cathleen. In some cases they literally 
 reclothe her in a new dress — in the armor of Maher's 
 Bee Dress or in the black shroud-like drapery of 
 FitzGerald’s Heart. By conceptually redressing the 
 iconography of Irish womanhood, established in a 
 colony and sustained in a new nation, artists give 
 voice to Cathleen, making her body speak in powerful 
 ways. The visual imagery of Re/Dressing Cathleen 
 echoes and supports Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill’s abrasive 
 silencing of all traditional idealizations of the Shan 
 Van Vocht, Cathleen, and Dark Rosaleen: 
 
 Folly, I’m saying, gets worse with every generation: 
 Anything, every old cliche in the book, anything at all 
 To get this old bitch to shut the fuck up . 15 
 
 Notes 
 
 1 For further discussion of the sheela-na-gig, see essays by 
 Pamela Berger and Katherine Nahum in this catalogue. 
 
 2 De Valera 1980, p.456. 
 
 3 Otd. in Mohagan 1994, n.p. See the essay by Robert Savage 
 in this catalogue for a summary of "the Troubles.” 
 
 4 Arts Council Gallery 1990, n.p. 
 
 5 Nash 1993, p. 47. 
 
 6 Byrne 1993, pp. 159-60. 
 
 7 Hurson 1995, p.7. 
 
 8 Boland 1980, pp. 10-11. 
 
 9 Meehan 1991, p. 41. 
 
 10 Meehan 1991, p. 42. 
 
 11 Ni Dhomhnaill 1990, p. 129. 
 
 12 Ibid. 
 
 13 Otd. in Roth 1992, p. 6. 
 
 14 Ibid. 
 
 15 Ni Dhomhnaill 1990, p. 131. 
 
 Abbreviations 
 
 Boland 1980 
 
 Boland, Eavan. In Her Own Image. Dublin, 1980. 
 
 Byrne 1993 
 
 Byrne, Anne. "Revealing Figures? Official Statistics and Rural 
 Irish Women," Irish Women's Studies Reader. Ed. Ailbhe Smyth. 
 Dublin, 1993, pp. 140-61. 
 
 De Valera 1980 
 
 De Valera, Eamon. Speeches and Statements. Ed. Maurice 
 Moynihan. Dublin, 1980. 
 
 Devlin 1986 
 
 Devlin, Anne. The Way-Paver. London, 1986. 
 
 Hurson 1995 
 
 Hurson, Tess. "The White Hens of Stransmillis," in The Orchard 
 Gallery 1995, pp. 5-7. 
 
 Meehan 1991 
 
 Meehan, Paula. The Man Who Was Marked by Winter. 
 Loughcrew, 1991. 
 
 Crilly 1989 
 
 Mother Ireland. Dir. Anne Crilly. Derry Film and Video, 1989. 
 
 IMMA 1992 
 
 Sounding the Depths: A Collaborative Installation By Pauline 
 Cummins and Louise Walsh. Irish Museum of Modem Art, 
 Dublin, 1992. 
 
 Nash 1993 
 
 Nash, Catherine. "Remapping and Renaming: New Cartogra- 
 phies of Identity, Gender and Landscape in Ireland," Feminist 
 Review 44 (Summer 1993), pp. 37-57. 
 
 Ni Dhomhnaill 1990 
 
 Ni Dhomhnaill, Nuala. Pharaoh’s Daughter. Oldcastle, 1990. 
 
 Arts Council Gallery 1990 
 
 Deirdre O'Connell, Insula Peninsula. Art Council Gallery Belfast, 
 1990. 
 
 The Orchard Gallery 1995 
 
 Rita Duffy, Palimpsest, The Orchard Gallery. Derry, 1995. 
 
 Monagan 1994 
 
 Land Marks: Exhibition of Prints By Geraldine O'Reilly. 
 Monaghan, 1994. 
 
 Roth 1992 
 
 Roth, Moira."Two WomemThe Collaboration of Pauline 
 Cummins and Louise Walsh, or International Conversations 
 Among Women,''in IMMA 1992, pp. 5-18. 
 
 DALSIMER / 
 KREILKAMP 
 
 41 
 
TO ALTER A LAHDS(APE 
 
JAMES M. SMITH 
 
 Retelling Stories: 
 
 Exposing Mother Ireland in Kathy Prendergast’s 
 Body Map Series and Mary Leland’s The Killeen 
 
 “Cillin: a church yard set apart for infants; cillineach: a 
 place set aside for the burial of unbaptised children” 1 
 
 Ireland in the 1990s is undergoing a distinct shift in 
 its expression of cultural issues. Traditionally a society 
 marked by its silence when confronted with 
 controversial social problems, “speaking out” is today 
 increasingly part of visible public discourse. A 
 demand for greater accessibility and accountability is 
 simultaneously forging a new alliance between the 
 spoken and the written word. Nowhere is this alliance 
 more evident than in the increased media coverage 
 afforded the casualties of Irish society in recent years. 2 
 Examples include the case of Lavinia Kerwick, who 
 was the first Irish rape victim to appear on national 
 television. Her recently published story details 
 her rape, the trial, the suspended sentence conferred 
 on her attacker, and her subsequent battle with anor- 
 exia. 3 Alison Cooper, the young woman at the center 
 of the Kilkenny Incest case, also appeared on national 
 television, and, in the process, affixed a human face to 
 the government’s officially commissioned report. 4 
 The TV drama Family, written by novelist Roddy Doyle, 
 forced domestic abuse onto the nation’s conscience 
 and eventually onto the legislative agenda of Dail 
 Eireann. 5 Finally, Louis Lentin’s TV documentary 
 Dear Daughter compelled a nation to acknowledge the 
 physical and psychological abuse meted out to chil- 
 dren in Irish orphanages in 1950s and ’60s Ireland. 6 
 These traumatic stories were retold again and again 
 across a variety of media, and subsequently became 
 culturally significant events in mainstream Ireland. 7 
 The cultural significance of these events increased 
 because, in addition to verbally recognizing a history 
 Irish society prefers not to acknowledge, they also 
 
 undermined the organizational closed ranks and 
 silence that traditionally accompanies such sensitive 
 issues as rape, incest, domestic abuse, and illegitimacy. 
 
 If Ireland’s “Official" national narrative resists (that is, 
 denies, silences, and conveniently edits-out) the reality 
 of contemporary social issues, then these stories 
 function as "narrative retellings” and, therefore, as 
 alternative versions to the nation’s official story. 8 
 As such, they deconstruct the version of society offered 
 by Irish politics and religion. Only by admitting into 
 visibility such "narrative retellings” can Ireland 
 inscribe an alternative national narrative, one which 
 accommodates the plurality of Ireland’s stories and the 
 inter-dependency among such stories. Only by 
 listening to such "narrative retellings” can Irish society 
 provide accountability for, and facilitate recovery from, 
 the injustices of the past. 
 
 Prior to 1990, the more visible exposure afforded 
 recent “narrative retellings” was almost unthinkable. 9 
 Silence and the "whole spectrum of denial” enabled 
 the nation-state to ride out various controversies such 
 as the Kerry Babies tribunal, the Ann Lovett inquiry, 
 and the Eileen Flynn affair. 10 In addition to these 
 three individual tragedies, political events such as the 
 Abortion (1983) and Divorce (1986) referenda made 
 Ireland in the ’80s a particularly hostile social environ- 
 ment for women. This essay examines two narratives 
 that emanate from and respond to this vexed decade 
 for Irish women: Kathy Prendergast’s Body Map Series 
 (nos. 21-28, pi. VIII, nos. 29-30, pi. IX, no. 31) and Mary 
 Leland's novel The Killeen." Both works represent early 
 manifestations of the alternative national narrative 
 outlined above. 
 
 43 
 
Kathy Prendergast, whose work reflects an ironic and 
 critical response to such an environment, insists that 
 there is "no feminist element” to her body map 
 drawings (1983). 12 Instead, Prendergast claims that her 
 work represents a desire to map "a personal 
 
 geo graphy.” 11 However, t he n epd to map “a personal 
 
 geography” in itself suggests a personal response to 
 the manner in which Ireland in the ’80s politically 
 mapped, altered, and controlled women in society. 14 
 Mary Leland’s novel, The Killeen (1985), also responds 
 to the contested and delineated positions of Irish 
 women during this same decade. This novel’s depiction 
 of a community's containment of illegitimacy, child 
 abuse and infanticide annotates in significant ways 
 its contemporary context. Consequently, Prendergast’s 
 Body Map Series and Leland’s The Killeen can be read 
 as notable "narrative retellings.” This essay argues 
 that the work of artist and novelist self-consciously 
 subverts and re-inscribes the traditional gendering of 
 Irish nationalism in feminine terms, and, in particular, 
 the image of Mother Ireland as nurturer. Moreover, 
 both works make evident the legislative infrastructure 
 fundamental to this gendering of Irish nationalism, 
 and thereby render visible the nation's architecture of 
 containment as it responds to and neutralizes 
 threatened ruptures to the national iconography. 15 
 
 The fusion of Irish nationalism and the feminine is 
 generally understood as a by-product of post-indepen- 
 dent Ireland’s need to re-invent itself, and, in the 
 process, assume the traditionally male role of political 
 power long denied under colonialism. 16 As a result, 
 real-life Irish women were re-positioned so as to 
 signify men’s authority and, accordingly, were "inevi- 
 tably simplified" as passive projections of a national 
 ideal. 17 This national ideal was reinforced by the 1922 
 and 1937 Constitutions, the latter of which redefined 
 women as “mothers” and insisted on the support 
 given to the state by their “duties in the home.” 18 The 
 ideal was further buttressed by discriminatory legisla- 
 tion addressing illegitimacy, divorce, contraception, 
 and eventually the ban on married women working in 
 the civil service. 19 Later social welfare legislation on 
 
 no. 26 (p. 42 ) 
 
 Kathy Prendergast 
 Body Map Series 
 To Alter a Landscape 
 1983 
 
 watercolor and ink on paper 
 30 x 22 in. 
 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of Modem Art, Dublin 
 Vincent and Noeleen Ferguson Donation 
 
 infanticide (1949), adoption (1952) and industrial and 
 reformatory schools (1949, 1957) was equally 
 significant, especially with respect to the nation’s 
 architecture of containment. Legislation, therefore, 
 served to obfuscate the fact that women were to 
 serve, not only as the p assive emblems of the nation, 
 but also as the territory over which patriarchal 
 power was exercised. 20 Post-independent Irish politics 
 literally engineered the necessary legislative 
 infrastructure as supporting scaffold for the fusion of 
 the national and the feminine secured in the symbol 
 of Mother Ireland. 
 
 Kathy Prendergast’s Body Map Series makes explicit 
 this fusion in the symbol of Mother Ireland. In 
 Enclosed Worlds in Open Spaces (no. 22), Prendergast 
 adopts the role of cartographer in order to depict a 
 truncated, and consequently faceless and voiceless, 
 woman’s body as a map of a political territory. The 
 territory is partly surrounded by a sea complete with 
 compass points and ships, mapped onto a grid 
 of longitudinal and latitudinal lines. The areas and 
 features of the body make up the terrain: breasts 
 are labeled as volcanic mountains, the abdomen as 
 desert, the navel as crater, and the vulva as harbor. 
 Moreover, Prendergast’s map suggests a blueprint for 
 the processes of exploring, altering, exploiting and 
 controlling the political territory. But such a blueprint, 
 by necessity, must foreground a concurrent proce- 
 dure, namely, the fact that it is a woman’s body that is 
 being explored, altered, exploited and controlled. 
 Consequently, the artist’s depiction of the woman's 
 body as a mapped political space not only highlights 
 the paradox implicit in this drawing's title, it 
 simultaneously exposes the anomaly implicit in the 
 symbol of Mother Ireland which equates political 
 control of the nation with patriarchal control of the 
 woman’s body. 
 
 Accompanying this map of the body is To Alter a 
 Landscape (no. 26), revealing cross-sections of the 
 volcanic mountains/breasts, the desert/abdomen and 
 a flat plain above the pubic area marked as a moun- 
 tain range. These cross-sections depict how the body/ 
 land can be altered, harnessed and mined for its 
 resources: the fires in the volcanic mountains/breasts 
 may be extinguished, water can be found in the 
 desert/navel, a passage can be mined to the harbor/ 
 vulva through the cavern/womb. Both To Control a 
 Landscape — Irrigation (no. 28, pi. VIII) and To Control 
 a Landscape — Oasis (no. 29) suggest the ultimate end 
 of such a project. The symmetrical machines extract 
 
 44 
 
energy from the depth of the altered land/body and 
 irrigate the surface, thus making it fertile. The text 
 inscribed on the latter drawing details the operation: 
 
 The fires being quenched, water is pumped into the 
 
 rorp of the mountains and stored in tanks. Thp 
 
 connecting tubes are attached to the tanks and as the 
 mills turn water is pumped to the surface through 
 volcanic ducts. Thus instead of emitting fire and 
 smoke, the mountains will now exude water and 
 irrigate the soil . 21 
 
 The threat posed by this naturally volcanic body 
 demands neutralization: the drawings suggest, there- 
 fore, how the igneous, gaseous and aqueous fluids can 
 be siphoned off into pipes, ducts, drains, etc. In this 
 way, the Body Map Series underscores the subservient 
 relationship between the subterranean nature of the 
 territory’s resources and their harnessing so as to 
 make possible a productive/fertile surface. This same 
 relationship is manifest in the manipulation 
 and control of the woman's body in the service of a 
 national iconography. The drawings also reveal a 
 territory altered and controlled by mechanical pumps 
 and wells, shafts, tunnels, caverns, sprinklers, tanks, 
 drains, ducts, mills, etc., but those who erect and 
 presumably operate this mechanized infrastructure 
 are curiously absent. The "civil” engineers who ma- 
 nipulate this territory and reduce it to its reproductive 
 function depend on mechanical apparatus in order to 
 render their anatomical dissection invisible. In the 
 same way, post-independent Irish politics engineered 
 a legislative machinery to maintain the efficacy of a 
 national iconography and, ultimately, this iconogra- 
 phy proved contingent on women being reduced to 
 their reproductive function as mothers. Both sets of 
 machinery, the mechanical and the legislative, 
 conveniently obscure their inherent political design. 
 
 In her essay, "Remapping the Body/Land: New 
 Cartographies of Identity, Gender, and Landscape in 
 Ireland,” Catherine Nash examines Kathy 
 Prendergast’s body map drawings to elicit the renego- 
 tiation of nationalist iconography in the post-colonial 
 moment . 22 According to Nash, political and overtly 
 female iconography was reconfigured to deny 
 "women an autonomous sexuality,” as the patriarchal 
 partners of cultural nationalism, church and state, 
 preferred images of the “old peasant women who 
 could represent the successful outcome of a life lived 
 in accordance with the demands of motherhood .” 23 
 Ultimately, Nash suggests that: 
 
 The cottage in the landscape came to carry the cultural 
 weight of the idealization of traditional rural family 
 life and its fixed morality and gender roles. It became 
 a surrogate for the depiction of Irish rural women and 
 the values of motherhood, tradition, and stability. 
 
 women as preservers of the race, active only as 
 nurturers and reproducers of the masculine Gael . 24 
 
 Like Prendergast’s drawings, Mary Leland’s novel, 
 
 The Killeen, provides a critical response to such 
 iconographic renegotiation and reconfiguration. The 
 novel, like the art works, functions as a "narrative 
 retelling” of its contemporary context and exists in a 
 state of dependency with other "narrative retellings” 
 such as the Kerry Babies tribunal, Ann Lovett, Eileen 
 Flynn or the various moving statues phenomena of 
 the mid-decade . 25 Moreover, The Killeen furnishes a 
 counterstrategic re-inscription of "the cottage,” 
 
 "the old peasant woman,” and ultimately of Ireland’s 
 architecture of containment as they safeguard the 
 emblematic significance of symbolic Mother Ireland. 
 
 The plot of Leland’s novel focuses on Margaret Coakley 
 who is driven from the family cottage in rural 
 Adrigole by her mother to work as a scullery maid in a 
 Cork convent. After Margaret becomes pregnant, she is 
 quickly and quietly moved to the house of lulia 
 Mulcahy, the aristocratic young widow of a martyred 
 republican who starved to death on hunger strike in a 
 Dublin prison. The novel turns on both women’s 
 decision to escape Ireland; lulia in an attempt to save 
 her young son, Pat, from his two maiden aunts’ 
 scheme that he follow in his father's footsteps and die 
 for Ireland, Margaret in an attempt to start a new life 
 free from the stigma and shame of being an 
 unmarried mother. However, it is the fate of Thomas, 
 Margaret’s illegitimate son, who gives this novel its 
 emotional force. Unlike Pat, his legitimate counterpart, 
 Thomas is left behind by his mother. Rescued from the 
 orphanage and returned to Adrigole, Margaret 
 entrusts Thomas to Michael, her older brother, before 
 she travels to England with her new husband. 
 Ultimately, Thomas’ fate also explains why Michael 
 resolves to turn his back on Ireland, as Margaret, lulia 
 and all the enlightened and energetic characters of 
 this novel have done before him. This exodus in itself 
 undermines the symbolism of Mother Ireland as 
 nurturer, but the most telling counterpoint to the over- 
 simplification of such images is left to Mary Coakley, 
 the youngest sibling, at the novel’s end. 
 
 SMITH 
 
 45 
 
Mary Coakley, who initially remains in Ireland as 
 sacrificial caregiver to her decrepit elderly mother and 
 then as economic compensation in the "match” that 
 results in her leaving Adrigole for married life in the 
 city, explodes the vacuous nature of woman as 
 emblem of nation. She admits: '“I never knew h ow old 
 he was, not until the night I married him did I know 
 how old he was’, as she looked out over the hills of 
 the city...to Bantry and Adrigole, where the cravings 
 of her own body had been driven underground by the 
 urgent hungers of the land” (160). Mary’s glance back- 
 ward is devoid of sentiment and nostalgia. Married 
 city life is far from satisfying, but it was in Adrigole, 
 the idealized “Hidden Ireland” of west Cork, where 
 “the urgent hungers of the land” refused to nurture 
 the "cravings of her own body.’’ 26 The door of Mary’s 
 “narrow house in Cork” opens, in her memory, 
 back onto the door of the family cottage where her 
 bitter and resentful mother soured and stunted her 
 children’s lives; lashing them with her tongue, 
 chastising them alternatively with insults and silence, 
 admonishing them not to expand their horizons, 
 driving them away to care for relatives, to work in 
 Cork, and then into exile to England and America 
 (160). But if Mary, Margaret, and Michael are victims 
 of their mother’s enervating environment, they also 
 are survivors. Thomas, when left in his grandmother’s 
 care, is not so lucky, and it is with this illegitimate 
 child that Leland deconstructs the national 
 iconography of Ireland’s traditional thatched cottage, 
 reconstituting it as the site of horrendous child abuse 
 and willed, if not actual, child-murder. Leland’s 
 "old peasant woman," preferred emblem of national- 
 ist Ireland, “plants” her illegitimate grandchild on the 
 scorching kitchen range in demented rage, she 
 “marks” and "scars” his two year old body with bruis- 
 ing signs of her pent-up hatred, she all but succeeds in 
 emasculating him with the kitchen shears, and 
 ultimately her curses permeate, torture and drive "all 
 hope from his frame” (149). 27 Leland’s re-inscribed "old 
 peasant woman” is reduced to a cowering emaciated 
 figure, intimidated into submission only after 
 Michael’s threat to commit her to "the Asylum” and 
 thus bring further scandal to her family name and 
 household (147). 
 
 Ireland’s iconographic cottage proves incapable of 
 containing the threat posed by Thomas’ illegitimacy. 
 When not being abused, Thomas is "kept hidden,” "fed 
 hastily,” concealed in the "back room” where his cries 
 are muted by a closed door (145). Outside the cottage, 
 Thomas’ illegitimacy proves equally menacing to 
 
 Adrigole ’s symbolic community. In illness, the village 
 dispensary, representative of official state health care 
 for children, chooses not to see his obvious signs of 
 abuse and dismisses his condition as "influenza” 
 (149). 28 In death, the parish priest, in the absence of a 
 “b apti s mal ce rtif ic ate ,” denies Thomas burial in the 
 Catholic graveyard (151). Communal ritual breaks 
 down when the village women choose not to observe 
 the traditional "keen” (151). 29 Finally, Michael’s 
 neighbors literally distance themselves as he carries 
 his dead nephew through the village streets. Michael 
 understands these acts of communal containment 
 not only as rejection but also as a form of mutilation: 30 
 
 Michael felt as though he had been told that he could 
 only continue to live the life he knew, among these 
 people, if he cut both his legs off.... The child who was 
 dead was like a branch of his own body; he had been 
 offered to the community when there was no request 
 to be made, no special treatment needed. And he had 
 been rejected (154). 
 
 Such rejection and mutilation are exactly what main- 
 tain the foundations of Ireland’s "Official” national 
 narrative; the community is reaffirmed precisely 
 because of such public acts of repudiation, and para- 
 doxically, these acts thereby preserve and safeguard 
 the national iconography. Leland’s novel, as a result, 
 discloses how Irish society denies, silences and 
 edits-out the plurality of stories that reflect the reality 
 of contemporary social ills. 
 
 Leland’s re-inscription of nationalist iconography is 
 not simply leveled at rural Adrigole. In fact, the 
 ironic force of this novel stems from the fact that it is 
 Margaret, Thomas’ mother, who rescues him from 
 institutionalized care in Cork and returns him to 
 Michael, his grandmother and the family cottage. The 
 alternative urban Ireland, rife with political division 
 and conservative middle-class Catholic morality, 
 proves equally severe on mothers and children, par- 
 ticularly unmarried mothers and illegitimate children. 
 This Ireland intervenes only to contain, and thus 
 conceal, Margaret's "shame” and “degradation” as 
 unmarried mother (33-4). Liberated from the burden 
 of symbolic simplification, Margaret challenges 
 the emblematic significance of the Virgin Mary as 
 exemplary of the asexual motherhood to which post- 
 independent Irish women were expected to aspire. 
 Recalling a childhood replete with processions and 
 week long exhortations of devotion to the “Mother of 
 God," Margaret now remembers the hymns she sang 
 
 46 
 
at the village shrine ‘‘with the indulgence of a parent... 
 someone who knows, at last, what is real” (43). 
 
 Society, however, has erected an infrastructure by 
 which Margaret’s reality can be neatly negated: Father 
 fostelln ,hrother of Margaret's Republican lover 
 Earnan, and Sister Thomas arrange for Margaret to 
 live with Julia Mulcahy. Thomas, after a hasty baptism, 
 is immediately separated from Margaret and removed 
 to the ‘‘special house” operated by the two maiden 
 aunts of Julia’s dead husband. In containing, and thus 
 rendering invisible, the threat posed by Margaret and 
 Thomas, Leland’s novel makes evident the connection 
 between the symbolism of Mother Ireland and its 
 requisite infrastructure of containment. 
 
 As the fictional architects of this infrastructure of 
 containment, the two fanatically nationalist maiden 
 aunts also serve as the urban counterpart of 
 Adrigole’s "old peasant woman,” and therefore as 
 further re-inscriptions of the preferred emblem of 
 nationalist iconography. Referred to as "a couple of old 
 harpies" (72), these two crones mold the male 
 members of their family into “agents” of their vision 
 for a ‘‘nation strong, inviolable, racially untarnished, 
 Catholic from Bantry to Belfast” (55). Both women 
 delight in the minute detail of Maurice’s hunger 
 strike, assured that as "relatives of Maurice Mulcahy, 
 hero and martyr” their "political lineage [is]...impecc- 
 able for eternity” (52). But it is their perverse strategy 
 to school the next generation of Irish martyrs that 
 underscores Leland’s counterstrategic portrait of 
 political sacrifice in the name of Mother Ireland. The 
 two aunts attempt repeatedly to undermine Julia as 
 mother by seeking to ensure that Pat, too, grows up to 
 be a volunteer and martyr like his father. They do 
 not even acknowledge Margaret as Thomas’ mother, 
 and thus claim him as part of the extended Mulcahy 
 family. Hence their "special house,” an alternative to 
 the state legislated orphanage, at once both conceals 
 Thomas’ illegitimacy, thus preserving middle-class 
 Catholic Ireland's demand for respectability, and 
 views him as mere "fodder for the fight” (113). The 
 "special house,” consequently, functions as a further 
 corruption of the traditional cottage, for it too 
 operates in the service of a politicized Mother Ireland 
 nurturing a “breeding ground for volunteers, martyrs 
 if need be” (113). 
 
 Leland’s re-inscriptions of nationalist iconography 
 expose the collusive dependency between symbolic 
 Mother Ireland and the nation’s architecture of 
 
 containment. The results of such collusion are undeni- 
 able: Margaret is married in England, Julia and Pat are 
 safe in France, Earnan is in America. But it is Michael, 
 rejected and mutilated after Thomas’ death, who 
 finally severs any easy correlation between symbolic 
 
 and actual mother, betweerijemblematicLlandscape 
 
 and underlying realities. Michael’s belated efforts to 
 protect Thomas from his grandmother’s violent abuse, 
 and his subsequent attempts to nurture the child back 
 to health, rupture the gendered stereotypes informing 
 Mother Ireland as nurturer. 
 
 Ultimately, Michael, too, emigrates to America. Alone, 
 one individual proves incapable of rectifying this 
 enervating society. But for Michael there remains one 
 final task. He has already waked Thomas with an 
 all-night vigil in the old farm shed, and he has buried 
 the boy in the killeen where each “white stone" marks 
 the grave "of a child, buried unbaptised” (142). All his 
 life, Michael knew what the killeen "contained" (142). 
 He accepted the church dogma taught at school 
 that committed infants to such a fate "all for a drop 
 of water and a Sign of the Cross” (142). Neither did he 
 question why children were born and then were 
 suddenly “dead. ..or killed, or not acknowledged” but 
 taken to the killeen "in a shoe box or a blanket, and 
 placed in the ground, in a hole” (142). Michael 
 now understands, questions and rejects a society 
 constructed on such anomalies. But, he too will mark 
 the landscape with a "white stone” for his nephew, 
 thereby inscribing Thomas’ story in the traditional 
 vestige of communal containment: 
 
 With his hands, Michael hollowed out the hump of 
 grassy soil and then, kneeling so that the grave was 
 like a bed between his legs he pressed the block of 
 stone onto it and pressed the earth back against the 
 edges of the stone.... Born far away from Adrigole, 
 the dead child was now a part of its life, growing with 
 the grass into its landscape. He, Michael, born and 
 reared in that place, was the alien. (158-9) 
 
 Michael’s self-conscious marking of the landscape is 
 simultaneously non-traditional, for in this masculine 
 marking Leland subverts post-independent Ireland's 
 markedly feminine inscription of Irish landscape 
 and of Irish culture. 31 Thomas’ stone will eventually, 
 like the surrounding stones, sink back into a land- 
 scape that failed to sustain life. But each sunken stone 
 in Leland’s killeen leaves its indentation on the land- 
 scape, and it is in these indentations that the temporal 
 nature of Ireland’s architecture of containment is 
 
 SMITH 
 
 47 
 
made manifest: each stone resonates with a story 
 equally traumatic as Thomas’; each indentation 
 resonates in the "narrative retellings" emanating from 
 contemporary Ireland today. 
 
 Like these stones in the killeen, Kathy Prendergast's 
 
 drawings and Mary Leland’s novel not only annotate 
 each other in significant ways, they also exist in a 
 state of dependency with each other. As such, both 
 works of art— the visual and the written — provide a 
 corrective to the “Official” narrative of the Irish nation, 
 and consequently signal the possibility that “narrative 
 retellings” can facilitate justice and recovery from 
 the wrongs of the past. 32 Luke Gibbons in his recent 
 lecture, “Doing Justice to the Past: The Great Famine as 
 Cultural Memory,” presented as part of the Irish 
 government’s desire to bring the official commemora- 
 tion of the famine to the Diaspora throughout 
 North America, calls for a similar "narrative retelling” 
 in order to deal with the cultural trauma of the Great 
 Famine. Gibbons suggests that it was only possible 
 some 150 years after the traumatic events of 1845-49 
 for Irish people to have the "confidence” in order to 
 "create the cultural space” to deal with this "ordeal of 
 colonialism." He concludes: 
 
 Memory, then, is not just a matter of retention or 
 recollection but of finding the narrative forms and 
 sites of memory that will do justice to this troubled 
 inheritance without sanitizing it, but also without 
 succumbing to it. There are those who insist that all 
 these events are firmly behind us, but the cultural 
 experience of catastrophe demonstrates, on the 
 contrary, that the past is not over until its story has 
 been told. 33 
 
 I do not mean to suggest that the traumas experi- 
 enced by individuals in post-independent Ireland can 
 be equated with the "catastrophe” of the famine. I do 
 suggest that it is equally important for the victims of 
 post-independent Ireland to be able to put their past 
 behind them, and consequently their stories too must 
 enter the cultural memory by being told. 
 
 Notes 
 
 1 Dinneen 1996. For a fuller discussion on "child death" 
 practices in Ireland and the regional nature of killeens, see 
 O'Connor 1991, pp. 66-73. 
 
 2 In addition to the "stories" I outline below, I consider the 
 "X"- case, the Eamon Casey affair, the Brendan Smyth affair, 
 the Kelly Fitzgerald Inquiry, the Madonna House Inquiry, 
 and numerous others, as part of this movement towards 
 greater visibility, and consequently greater accountability. 
 
 A further example of this same trend are the numerous 
 inquiries into government practices, e.g.The Beef tribunal, 
 The Hepatitis C tribunal, and currently, the Dunnes Stores 
 tribunal. 
 
 3 Holmquist 1997; McCormack 1997. 
 
 4 O’Faolain 1993; Ireland 1995; Cooper 1993. 
 
 5 Winterbottom 1994; O'Toole 1994b; On Doyle's reaction to 
 criticism of Family, see O'Toole 1994a. 
 
 6 Lentin 1996; Ferguson 1996b. 
 
 7 I want to suggest that the impact of such stories increased 
 with each reproduction across different media, that is to 
 say on television, radio, film, newspapers, biography, 
 memoir, and fiction. For example, Lavinia Kerwick's impact 
 on Irish society, crystallized by her initial appearance on 
 television, was enhanced by the follow-up stories in the 
 press covering the trial and fallout from the trial, and is 
 now reiterated by the biographical account just published. 
 The Dear Daughter documentary led to a massive public 
 debate (i.e. news shows, appearance of victims on TV and 
 radio talk shows, and numerous print stories) in the 
 months subsequent to its airing in February 1996. Roddy 
 Doyle’s Family made its impact felt again in his subsequent 
 best-selling novel The Woman Who Walked into Doors, as 
 did the infamous "X"- case in its most recent articulation in 
 Edna O'Brien's fictional treatment Down by the River. See 
 Doyle 1996; O'Brien 1996. 
 
 8 In his most recent book, Postnationalist Ireland: Politics, 
 Culture, Philosophy, Richard Kearney asserts the need to 
 deconstruct the "Official Story” of the nation-state which 
 presents itself as Official History "into the open plurality of 
 stories that make it up.” According to Kearney, this plurality 
 of stories indicates a "political or ethical community 
 where identity is part of a permanent process of narrative 
 retelling," and where "every citizen's story is related" 
 
 and thus exists in a state of dependency with each other. 
 
 In linking the concepts of "narrative retelling" and 
 "dependency," Kearney provides, I suggest, a way of 
 re-reading "stories," emerging with increasing frequency in 
 recent years, from those victimized by Ireland’s "Official 
 Story." See Kearney 1997 pp. 61-65. 
 
 9 Ferguson 1996a. Ferguson, a leading social studies 
 academic in Ireland, makes this specific claim with respect 
 to the government's initial decision not to publish the Kelly 
 Fitzgerald Report. The rationale for this decision was that 
 the report compromised Health Care professionals in the 
 Western Health Board who failed to intervene on behalf of 
 this fifteen year old girl who was systematically abused and 
 died within five months of returning from England to her 
 parents' home. 
 
 48 
 
SMITH 
 
 10 On Ireland's “spectrum of denial," see O’Faolain 1996. The 
 Kerry Babies tribunal was held to examine the behavior of 
 Irish police in their handling of the case against Joanne 
 Hayes, the young 24 year old woman, charged with murder 
 of two infants found dead in Kerry in 1984, see McCafferty 
 1985. Ann Lovett was the fifteen year old girl from Cranard, 
 Co. Longford who, in early 1984, died together with her new 
 born infant after giving birth behind the town's grotto to 
 the Virgin Mary, see McCafferty 1984, pp. 48-54. Eileen Flynn 
 was dismissed from her teaching post in early 1984 
 because she gave birth to a child outside marriage, see 
 McCafferty 1984, pp. 55-7. 
 
 n Leland 1986. All further references to The Killeen refer to 
 this edition, and will be cited parenthetically in the text 
 with page numbers. 
 
 12 Hanrahan 1990, p. 6. 
 
 13 Ibid. 
 
 14 Aidan Dunne also implies this relationship, see Dunne 1987, 
 P- 63. 
 
 15 By architecture of containment, I mean not only literal sites 
 of confinement, i.e. institutions such as orphanages, 
 mother and child homes, magdalen laundries, adoption 
 agencies, etc., but also both the legislation that inscribed 
 such institutions together with official and public 
 discourses that resisted admitting to the existence and 
 function of such sites. This architecture of containment 
 served the nation state: its function, to confine and render 
 invisible segments of the population whose very existence 
 threatened the vision of Ireland enshrined by de Valera's 
 constitution in 1937. Namely, these groups were composed 
 of unmarried mothers, illegitimate children, abandoned 
 children, orphans, the sexually promiscuous, the socially 
 transgressive and, frequently, those guilty of “being in the 
 way." In addition, the architecture I am outlining was 
 ascribed a regulatory function by the state and, conse- 
 quently, it served as a bulwark to a post-colonial nativist 
 morality, i.e. the existence of such sites of confinement was 
 a constant reminder of the social morals deemed 
 appropriate in Catholic Ireland of the time, and of the 
 consequences awaiting transgressors of this morality. 
 
 16 A number of Irish feminist critics have in recent years 
 examined this fusion in the image of Mother Ireland, and 
 particularly with respect to male assertions of political 
 power in the post-colonial moment. Geraldine Meaney, 
 Carol Coulter, Toni O'Brien Johnson and David Cairns are 
 influenced by Ashis Nandy, the post-colonial critic, who 
 argues that "western sexual stereotypes" produce “a 
 cultural consensus in which political and socio-economic 
 dominance symbolized the dominance of men and 
 masculinity over women and femininity." According to the 
 aforementioned Irish critics, the newly independent 
 Ireland reproduced this gender division and imposed rigid 
 gender roles so as to assert the masculinity and right to 
 power of the newly liberated male subjects. See Nandy 
 1983, p. 4; Meaney 1994, p. 194; CoulteT 1993, p. 23; O’Brien 
 Johnson and Cairns 1991, p. 5. 
 
 17 The most succinct account of this re-positioning is given by 
 Ailbhe Smyth who argues that the "liberation of the state 
 implies male role-shift from that of Slave to Master, 
 
 Margin to Center, Other to Self. Women, powerless under 
 patriarchy, are maintained as Other of the ex-Other, 
 colonized of the post-colonized," see Smyth 1991, p. n.On 
 the resultant "simplification" of Irish women, see Boland 
 1994, p. 81. 
 
 18 Ireland 1937, Article 41. 
 
 19 Coulter 1993, p. 25. Sighle Bhreathnach-Lynch, in a paper 
 presented to the Association of Art Historians Conference, 
 London, April 1997 also points to the 1925 Civil Service 
 Amendment Act and the 1927 Juries Bill as further 
 legislative vehicles by which to “curtail and restrict the role 
 of women in Irish public life," see Bhreathnach-Lynch 1997 . 1 
 am grateful to Dr. Bhreathnach-Lynch for sharing her paper 
 with me and for reading an earlier version of this essay. 
 
 20 Meaney 1994, p.191. 
 
 21 For a more complete reading of Prendergast's drawings, 
 and particularly the text, see Nash 1994, p. 232; Joyce 1990, 
 pp. 7-12; and, in this catalogue, see Pamela Berger's essay. 
 
 22 Nash 1994, p.227. 
 
 23 Nash 1994, p. 236. For further discussion of this 
 reconfiguration of female iconography, see Adele Dalsimer 
 and Vera Kreilkamp's essay in this catalogue. Angela 
 Bourke, in her recent plenary address presented to the 
 American Conference For Irish Studies Annual Meeting in 
 Albany, New York, echoed Nash's distinction by pointing 
 
 to the "official preference” in post-independent Ireland for 
 Peig Sayer's narrative of life on the Blaskett Islands rather 
 than Eric Cross’s more problematic The Tailor and Anstey. 
 See Bourke 1997; Sayers 1974; Cross 1970. 
 
 24 Nash 1994, p.237. 
 
 25 In 1985, set against the context of the Abortion 
 Amendment (1983) and then the Kerry Babies, Ann Lovett 
 and Eileen Flynn cases (1984), a series of moving statues 
 phenomena of the Virgin Mary occurred throughout 
 Ireland, and in a number of instances, these moving 
 statues were particularly visible to young women. See 
 Toibin 1995. 
 
 26 Adrigole’s connection with "The Hidden Ireland" is 
 suggested in the novel when, after reading the introduc- 
 tion to Corkery’s chapter on "The Court of Poetry," Sister 
 Thomas praises Margaret Coakley’s accent as that "from 
 the country" Corkery is describing. Sister Thomas, almost 
 immediately, goes on to criticize Corkery's own impaired 
 vision when it comes to seeing the reality behind his 
 idealized landscape (20-1). Margaret’s pregnancy further 
 undermines this connection in that she can no longer 
 represent "the spirit of Ireland as a majestic and radiant 
 maiden." See Corkery 1989, pp. 95, 128. 
 
 27 Rita Duffy's painting Scullery (no. 20, pi. VII) and its 
 suggested depiction of child abuse is a further example of 
 this re-inscription of Mother Ireland. See Adele Dalsimer 
 and Vera Kreilkamp's essay in this catalogue for a 
 discussion of this painting. For a different reading of this 
 same image, see Claude Cernuschi's essay in this same 
 catalogue. 
 
 49 
 
28 Similar official blindness to domestic abuse is captured 
 and made evident in Roddy Doyle’s title to his novel 
 treating this subject. See Doyle 1996. 
 
 29 The "keen" refers to the Irish "caoin," or lamentation for the 
 dead, traditionally performed by women in the commu- 
 nity. For further information on the “caoin,” see Bourke 
 1993 - 
 
 30 Kristin Morrison makes a similar point regarding Michael's 
 mutilation in her chapter "Child Murder and Colonial 
 Exploitation," see Morrison 1993, p. 73. 
 
 31 I am grateful to my colleague at Boston College, Kate 
 Costello-Sullivan.for helping me think this idea through. 
 
 32 Kearney 1997, p. 66. 
 
 33 Gibbons 1996. 
 
 Abbreviations 
 BhTeathnach-Lynch 1997 
 
 Bh re athnach- Lynch, Sighle. "Landscape, Space and Gender: 
 Their Role in the Construction of Female Identity in Newly- 
 Independent Ireland." Unpublished Paper. Presented at the 
 Association of Art Historians Conference, London, April 1997. 
 
 Boland 1994 
 
 Boland, Eavan.'A Kind of Scar: The Woman Poet in a National 
 Tradition.” A Dozen Lips. Ed. Ailbhe Smyth. Dublin, 1994, 
 pp. 72-92. 
 
 Bourke 1993 
 
 Bourke, Angela. "More in Anger than in Sorrow-. Irish Women's 
 Lament Poetry." Feminist Messages: Coding in Women's Folk 
 Culture. Ed. Joan Newlon Radner. Chicago, 1993, pp. 160-182. 
 
 Bourke 1997 
 
 Bourke, Angela. "Blame, Boundaries, and Otherworld 
 Narratives in Ireland." Unpublished Paper. Presented as plenary 
 address to the American Conference For Irish Studies Annual 
 Meeting in Albany, New York, April 17, 1997. 
 
 Cooper 1993 
 
 Cooper, Alison. The Kilkenny Incest Case: The victim in the 
 Kilkenny Incest Case tells her story. As told to Kieron Wood. 
 Dublin, 1993. 
 
 CorkeTy 1989 
 
 Corkery, Daniel. The Hidden Ireland .-A Study of Gaelic Munster 
 in the Eighteenth Century. Dublin, [1924] 1989. 
 
 Coulter 1993 
 
 Coulter, Carol. "The Hidden Tradition: Feminism, Women & 
 Nationalism in Ireland." Undercurrents. Series Editor, J.J. Lee. 
 Cork, 1993. 
 
 Cross 1970 
 
 Cross, Eric. The Tailor and Anstey. Cork, [1942] 1970. 
 
 Dinneen 1996 
 
 Dinneen, Patrick S, Ed. Focloir Gaedhilge agus Bearla, An 
 Irish-English Dictionary. Dublin, [1927] 1996. 
 
 Doyle 1996 
 
 Doyle, Roddy. The Woman Who Walked Into Doors. New York, 
 1996. 
 
 Dunne 1987 
 
 Dunne, Aidan. "Contemporary women artists," Irish Women 
 Artists: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day. Dublin, 
 1987, pp. 61-70. 
 
 Ferguson 1996a 
 
 Ferguson, Harry. "We owe it to all children at risk to publish the 
 Fitzgerald inquiry report,” The Irish Times March 21, 1996, p. 12. 
 
 Ferguson 1996b 
 
 Ferguson, Harry. "Victims of child abuse must see justice done," 
 The Irish Times December 27, 1996, p. 10. 
 
 Gibbons 1996 
 
 Gibbons, Luke. "Doing Justice to the Past: The Great Famine 
 and Cultural Memory." Unpublished Lecture. Forthcoming 
 History Ireland. 
 
 Hanrahan 1990 
 
 Hanrahan, Johnny. "Notes on a Conversation with Eills 
 O'Connell, Kathy Prendergast and Vivienne Roche.” Edge to Edge: 
 Three Sculptors From Ireland; Eilis O'Connell, Kathy Prendergast, 
 Vivienne Roche. Dublin, 1990, pp. 6-11. 
 
 Holmquist 1997 
 
 Holmquist, Kathryn. "No victory in victimhood," The Irish Times 
 March 25,1997^.13. 
 
 Ireland 1937 
 
 Ireland. Bunreacht na hEireann: The Irish Constitution. Dublin, 
 1937 - 
 
 Ireland 1993 
 
 Ireland. Kilkenny incest investigation: report presented to 
 Mr. Brendan Howlin T.D. Minister for Health. Dublin, 1993. 
 
 Joyce 1990 
 
 Joyce, Conor. “Kathy Prendergast: A Geography," Kathy 
 Prendergast with an essay by Conor Joyce. Dublin, 1990, pp. 7-17. 
 
 Kearney 1997 
 
 Keamey, Richard. Postnationalist Ireland: Politics, Culture, 
 Philosophy. London, 1997. 
 
 Leland 1986 
 
 Leland, Mary. The Killeen. London, [1985] 1986. 
 
 Lentin 1996 
 
 Dear Daughter. Dir. Louis Lentin. Crescendo Concepts, 1996. 
 
 Meaney 1994 
 
 Meaney, GeTardine."Sex and Nation: Women in Irish Culture 
 and Politics." A Dozen Lips. Ed. Ailbhe Smyth. Dublin, 1994, pp. 
 188-204. 
 
 McCafferty 1984 
 
 McCafferty, Nell. The Best of Nell: A Selection of writings over 
 fourteen years. Dublin, 1984. 
 
 McCafferty 1985 
 
 McCafferty, Nell. A Woman to Blame: The Kerry Babies Case. 
 Dublin, 1985. 
 
 McCormack 1997 
 
 McCormack, Micheline. Little Girl: The Lavinia Kerwick Story. 
 Dublin, 1997. 
 
 Morrison 1993 
 
 Morrison, Kristin. William Trevor. New York, 1993. 
 
 5 ° 
 
SMITH 
 
 Nandy 1983 
 
 Nandy, Ashis. The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self 
 under Colonialism. Oxford, 1983. 
 
 Nash 1994 
 
 Nash, Catherine. "Remapping the Body/Land: New Cartogra- 
 phies of Identity, Gender, and Landscape in Ireland." Writing 
 Women and Space: Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies. Ed. 
 Alison Blunt and Gillian Rose. New York, 1994, pp. 227-50. An 
 earlier version of this essay is printed in Feminist Review 44 
 (1993). PP- 39-57 
 O’Brien 1996 
 
 O’Brien, Edna. Down By The River. London, 1996. 
 
 O’Brien Johnson & Caims 1991 
 
 O’Brien Johnson, Toni and Cairns, David. "Introduction," Gender 
 in Irish Writing. Ed. Toni O'Brien Johnson and David Cairns. 
 Philadelphia, 1991, pp. 1-13. 
 
 O’Connor 1991 
 
 O’Connor, Anne. Child Murderess and Dead Child Traditions: A 
 Comparative Study. FF Communications, No. 249. Helsinki, 1991. 
 
 O’Faolain 1993 
 
 O’Faolain, Nuala. "Next time there has to be someone who can 
 say 'well, I tried. I did my best’,” The Irish Times June 3, 1993, p. 11. 
 
 O’Faolain 1996 
 
 O’Faolain, Nuala. "Nice, good folks who bear silent witness to 
 cruelty." The Irish Times March 11, 1996, p. 14. 
 
 O’Toole 1994 a 
 
 O'Toole, Fintan."Rise and follow Cheerio," Fortnight 329, 
 
 (June, 1994), pp. 32-3. 
 
 O’Toole 1994 b 
 
 O'Toole, Fintan.“Life After Charlo." Interview. With Roddy Doyle. 
 The Irish Times May 28, 1994, p. 12. 
 
 Sayers 1974 
 
 Sayers, Peig. Peig: the Autobiography ofPeig Sayers of the Great 
 Blasket Island. Trans. Bryan MacMahon. Introd. Eoin McKiernan. 
 Illus. by Catriona O'Connor. Syracuse, 1974. 
 
 Smyth 1991 
 
 Smyth, Ailbhe. "The Floozie in the Jacuzzi." Feminist Studies 17, 1 
 
 (i99i)- PP 7-29- 
 
 Toibin 1985 
 
 Toibin, Colm, Ed. Seeing is Believing: Moving Statues in Ireland. 
 Mountrath, 1985. 
 
 Winterbottom 1994 
 
 Family. Dir. Michael Winterbottom. BBC/RTE Co-Production, 
 1994. 
 
 51 
 
PHILIP O'LEARY 
 
 Rounding Up the Ubiquitous Suspects: 
 
 Kitsch, Camp, and Cultural Anxiety in 
 
 Finola Jones’ LUSCIOUS — (an aesthetic view of culture) 
 
 Doubtless the first response provoked in the viewer on 
 coming face to face (or faces!) with Finola Jones' 
 LUSCIOUS — (an aesthetic view of culture) (no. 45, pi. XV) 
 is a shocked, bemused recognition. After all, one 
 has seen, and even owned, the like of so many of the 
 gewgaw figurines fixed face-forward on the wall. 
 
 A more considered reaction might, however, be to ask 
 what, if anything, is Irish about the installation, 
 or indeed whether such a question is even relevant. 
 
 But that is precisely one of the more challenging 
 issues the installation raises. An Irish viewer will, in all 
 probability, be as much at home with this campy 
 pantheon as an American, or a Briton, or an Anglo- 
 Canadian, and still more familiar with these four 
 hundred-plus characters than would be a viewer from 
 outside the English-speaking world. 
 
 Obviously it was the universal Church that, through 
 holy pictures and statues, introduced generations of 
 Irish Catholics to an extraordinary cast of saints, 
 ex-saints, and pseudo-saints. Some of whom, like the 
 Blessed Virgin, St. Anthony of Padua, St. Bridget and 
 St. Martin de Porres, appear in LUSCIOUS (the Virgin 
 appears repeatedly, each time in a in different guise). 
 Like their counterparts everywhere in the western 
 world, young Irish Catholics have long forgotten most 
 of the intricate minutiae of hagiographic iconography 
 that enabled their parents and grandparents to tell 
 one saintly player from another. But it is the modern 
 mass media, in particular the comics, movies, and 
 television, that have made it probable that young Irish 
 Catholics will instantly recall hours spent in the com- 
 pany of Mickey and the whole Disney gang, Groucho 
 Marx, Popeye the Sailor, Fred Flintstone, Batman, 
 
 Bart Simpson, Lieutenant Worf, and Flulk Hogan, all of 
 whom are among Jones’ assemblage. 
 
 LUSCIOUS is not the first assemblage of figures and im- 
 ages of U.S. pop iconography to appear in Irish culture. 
 In 1923, James Joyce, of all people, offered a similar 
 collection of “the tribal images of many Irish heroes 
 and heroines of antiquity” in the sculpted "row of 
 seastones which dangled at every movement of.. .the 
 portentous frame" of his arch-patriot and anti-semite 
 The Citizen in Ulysses.' Among impeccably orthodox 
 cultural and patriotic icons like Cu Chulainn, Conn 
 Cetchathach, Eoghan Rua O Neill, Wolfe Tone, and 
 Father Eugene O'Growney, we also find a few Yanks — 
 The Last of the Mohicans, Benjamin Franklin, 
 
 Boss Croker of Tammany Hall, and John L. Sullivan. In 
 Jones’s vision, however, scattered examples of 
 American influence on Irish popular consciousness 
 have multiplied exponentially, so that a lonely kitsch 
 leprechaun stands surrounded by Donald Duck and 
 friends, all watched over by G.I. Joe and a Teenage 
 Mutant Ninja Turtle. 
 
 Jones is by no means the only Irish artist to attempt to 
 bring the fact of this relentless cultural expansion 
 and assimilation to the attention of those experiencing 
 it on a daily basis. Writing in 1925 in the journal An 
 Lochrann, the folklorist Padraig 6 Siochfhradha (who 
 wrote under the pseudonym "An Seabhac” ["The 
 Hawk”]), asserted: 
 
 "There is a big difference between the person who has 
 learned Irish but who finds his spiritual pleasure 
 and satisfaction in Shakespeare, and in Dickens, and 
 in Robin Hood, and in Robert Emmet, and the person 
 who derives that pleasure from Egan O’Rahilly and 
 Raftery and the Churl of the Grey Cloak and Sean 
 O’Dwyer of the Glen. One of them gets his spiritual 
 sustenance from the civilization of another people and 
 
it is to them he will always turn in intellectual 
 matters whether willingly or unconsciously. But the 
 other person gets his spiritual sustenance from the 
 soul and mind of his own people.” 2 
 
 now say about the infiltration of the Irish psyche, not 
 by the high English culture of Shakespeare and 
 Dickens, but (as suggested by the disproportionate 
 representation of American figures in Jones' work) by 
 the myriad denizens of America’s media wastelands, 
 whether animated, fictional, or in whatever state of 
 being that Elvis continues to exist. 
 
 The pervasive presence of America’s pop culture icons 
 in the Irish consciousness has been a consistent 
 theme in a fair bit of Irish writing in the past decade 
 or so. One thinks, for example, of the importance of 
 John F. Kennedy as a potent, if often ambivalent (and 
 even ironic), symbol in Patrick McCabe’s 1989 novel 
 Cam, or even more powerfully in Tom Murphy’s 1985 
 play Conversations on a Homecoming. In this latter 
 work, reference is also made to Jack Lemmon, Paul 
 Newman, A 1 Pacino, Hopalong Cassidy, and Louis 
 Jordan, one of the founders of rock-and-roll and the 
 composer of, among other hits from the ’40s, 
 
 Is You Ain't Ma Baby ? (1946) and Saturday Night Fish 
 Fry (1949). 3 
 
 The equivocal influence of American pop music 
 inspired Roddy Doyle’s 1987 novel The Commitments, 
 although the fact is obscured in the film version by 
 its focus on the soul singer Wilson Pickett, rather than 
 on the far more culturally significant, and troubling, 
 figure of James Brown, the idol of the young 
 Dubliners in the novel. In addition, the movie chose 
 to foreground the parallels between race and social 
 class, while the novel, though by no means marginal- 
 izing that issue, more rigorously questions the extent 
 to which young, working-class Irish people derive 
 their most hopeful mythologies from the US enter- 
 tainment and publicity machine. While the film 
 ends with the characters realizing too late that their 
 returned Yank trumpeter could indeed have intro- 
 
 Finola Jones 
 
 LUSCIOUS — (an aesthetic view of culture) 
 
 Installation view, The Gallery, Dublin Rd., Belfast 
 
 1993 - ongoing 
 
 Wall-attached figurines 
 
 Dimensions variable 
 
 Collection of the Artist, Dublin 
 
 Courtesy of Green on Red Gallery, Dublin 
 
 duced them to Wicked Wilson himself, the novel con- 
 cludes with most members of the now-dissolved soul 
 band re-inventing themselves as an Irish incarnation 
 of the ’60s American folk-rock group The Byrds. 4 
 
 Neither Brown, Pickett, nor The Byrds have, however, 
 made a fraction of the impact on the Irish popular 
 mind made by Elvis Presley. One thinks at once of the 
 portrait of the singer that shares wall space with 
 Pope John Paul II in the Rabbitte home in The Commit- 
 ments. But Elvis, living or dead, is also the major 
 imaginative presence in works as diverse as Mark 
 Watters’ play Last of the Irish Indians (1989), in which 
 young men from the West of Ireland of 1962 draw 
 the imaginative sustenance they need from weekly 
 showings of Presley’s seemingly countless formula 
 movies. 5 Antoine 6 Flatharta's play Grasta i Meiricea 
 (1990), in which two Irish illegals in New York pool 
 their resources to visit the King's grave in Memphis; 
 and the 1986 film Eat the Peach, in which the Elvis 
 movie Roustabout inspires two redundant workers in 
 the Irish midlands to try to create a future for 
 themselves. 6 
 
 For all of these late twentieth-century Irish characters, 
 as was true of Didi and Gogo before them in Beckett’s 
 Waiting for Godot, it is their hope that enables them 
 to go on. It seems, in the end, that it is a chimeric 
 hope; one that can leave those who embrace it unable 
 to go home again, and those who try to root 
 themselves in America as lost as Murphy’s Michael 
 in Conversations, who found that the reality portrayed 
 by the ubiquitous popular images told him little of 
 consequence. 
 
 No one has made this point more explicitly or 
 forcefully than 6 Flatharta, one of whose characters 
 says after their disillusioning visit to Graceland: 
 
 "We are home. We weren't born here; we weren’t 
 raised here; but it’s here we will be. Two more 
 cowboys. Two more cowboys in the Heartbreak Hotel. 
 I’ll make a phonecall home and I’ll tell them that I’m 
 staying here. I’ll tell them that I bought a cowboy hat. 
 My father will laugh and ask me whether I’ve killed 
 any Indians yet. I have. I have. I’ve killed hundreds.” 7 
 
 In this light it is no wonder that one of the role 
 models the bewildered Packie Dudgeon plays around 
 with in Patrick McCabe’s 1995 novel The Dead School 
 is Joe Buck, the lost and hapless would-be gigolo from 
 Texas played by Jon Voight in the 1969 movie 
 Midnight Cowboy. 8 
 
 54 
 
The Ouebecois novelist and playwright Michel 
 Tremblay in his 1976 musical play Les Heros de mon 
 enfance confronted anxieties stemming from the 
 effects of a sustained cultural onslaught from abroad 
 on a small nation — certainly anxieties with which his 
 
 Irish counterparts could ident ify. Mo tivated by what 
 
 he termed "the need to laugh at the European cultural 
 references and myths” (le besoin de rire des references 
 culturelles et des mythes europeenes), 9 he is appar- 
 ently saving the Anglo-American and Anglo-Canadian 
 baggage for a future housecleaning. Tremblay has his 
 initially one-dimensional, all-but-programmed char- 
 acters undergo a series of farcical, transformational 
 encounters involving, among others, Carabosse, 
 Cendrillon (Cinderella), Le Chaperon Rouge (Little Red 
 Riding Hood), the Wolf, le Petit Poucet (a French Tom 
 Thumb), and le Prince Charmant. All of these charac- 
 ters regularly take notice of, address themselves to, 
 and involve the audience in their growing self- 
 awareness, as they begin to shed their predetermined 
 roles for more flexible and individual potentials. 
 
 The challenge for Jones — and her audiences — is to 
 generate some of the same rambunctious fluidity 
 that characterizes Tremblay’s stage world in Les Heros 
 de mon enfance. In a very real and ever renewed 
 sense, the success or failure of LUSCIOUS — (an aesthetic 
 view of culture) is always in the eye of each and 
 every beholder. 
 
 Notes 
 
 1 Joyce 1961, pp. 296-97. Of course The Citizen's bullying 
 xenophobia underscores the converse danger of drawing 
 the overwhelming bulk of one’s stock of metaphors from 
 putatively homogeneous native sources. But that’s a whole 
 other essay. 
 
 2 6 SiochfhTadha 1925, p. 1. "Is mor idir an duine 
 d’fhoghlamuigh Gaedhilg ach a gheibheann taithneamh 
 agus sasamh a anma i Shecspear agus i nDicens agus i 
 Robin Hood agus i Robert Emmet agus an duine eile a 
 gheibheann an taithneamh san as Aodhgan 6 Rathghaille 
 agus Raftairi agus Bodach an Chota Lachtna agus Sean 6 
 Duibhir an Ghleanna. Duine aca — gheibheann se biadh a 
 anma as sibhialtacht cine eile agus is leo a chlaonfaidh se 
 choidhche i gcursai inntleachta da thoil no gan fios do fein; 
 ach gheibheann an duine eile cothu a anma as aigne a 
 chine fein.” 
 
 3 Murphy 1986. See, for example, pp. 15-16, 32. 
 
 4 Doyle 1989. 
 
 5 This play was first performed by Soho Poly Theatre in 
 London on 17 April, 1989 as part of its "Workstage" series to 
 introduce new plays by young writers. It has not to my 
 knowledge been published. 
 
 6 Ormrod 1986. 
 
 7 6 Flatharta 1990, p. 60. An English-language version of the 
 play under the title Grace in America was given a staged 
 reading in London's Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in April, 
 1989. The English text has not been published. "Ta muid sa 
 mbaile. Nior rugadh ann muid; m'or togadh ann muid, ach 
 is ann a bheas muid. Dha cowboy eile. Dha cowboy eile sa 
 Heartbreak Hotel. Deanfaidh me phone-call abhaile is 
 dearfa me leo go bhfuil me fanacht anseo. Dearfa me leo 
 gur cheannaigh me hata cowboy. Deanfaidh m'athair gaire 
 is fiafroidh se diom ar mharaigh me aon Indians fos. 
 Mharaigh. Mharaigh me. Mharaigh me ceadta.” 
 
 8 See, for example, McCabe 1996, p. 68. It should be noted 
 that Francie Brady, the psychotic young protagonist of 
 McCabe’s The Butcher Boy, is also obsessed with the 
 popular media, but the sources of his fantasies are drawn 
 mostly from British pop culture. See, for example, MacCabe 
 1992, p. 53. Both John F. Kennedy and John Wayne do, 
 however, figure in this novel. 
 
 9 Tremblay 1976, p. 8. 
 
 Abbreviations 
 
 Doyle 1989 
 
 Doyle, Roddy. The Commitments. New York, 1989. 
 
 Ormond 1986 
 
 Eat the Peach. Dir. Peter Ormrod. Strongbow Productions, 1986. 
 
 Joyce 1961 
 
 Joyce, James. Ulysses. New York, 1961 
 
 McCabe 1992 
 
 McCabe, Patrick. The Butcher Boy. London, 1992. 
 
 McCabe 1996 
 
 McCabe, Patrick. The Dead School. New York, 1996. 
 
 McCabe 1997 
 
 McCabe, Patrick. Cam. New York, 1997. 
 
 Murphy 1986 
 
 Murphy, Thomas. Conversations on a Homecoming. Dublin, 
 
 1986. 
 
 6 Flatharta 1990 
 
 6 Flatharta, Antoine. Grasta i Meiricea. Indreabhan, 1990. 
 
 6 Siochfhradha 1925 
 
 6 SiochfhTadha, Padraig.“Gaelachas," An Lochrann, November, 
 
 1925. 
 
 Tremblay 1976 
 
 Tremblay, Michel. Les Heros de mon enfance. Ottawa, 1976. 
 
 Watters 1989 
 
 Watters, Mick. Last of the Irish Indians. Unpublished play, 
 
 staged at Soho Poly Theatre, London, April, 1989. 
 
 o’leary 
 
 55 
 
PAMELA BERGER 
 
 Modern Propagators of Ancient Legends and Traditions: 
 Mythic Memory or Serendipity? 
 
 Ireland’s distant past is known to us in several ways: 
 through archaeological discoveries which have uncov- 
 ered structures and objects that are hundreds and 
 sometimes thousands of years old; through classical 
 Roman writings such as those of Julius Caesar or 
 Diodorus Siculus; and through the great Irish epics 
 such as the Cattle Raid of Cooley ( Tain Bo Cuailnge).' It 
 is from these and other sources that we can form a 
 picture of ancient cultural traditions in Ireland. I pro- 
 pose to explore three of those traditions in the hope of 
 illuminating some themes in the art works displayed 
 in the exhibition Re/Dressing Cathleen-. representa- 
 tions of the body and landscape; the "Celtic head”; and 
 the sheela-na-gig. Although the artists themselves 
 may be only distantly aware of the traditions that this 
 essay describes, the visual language that they employ 
 has its roots in Ireland's cultural heritage, and may 
 have influenced their work. 
 
 THE BODY AND LANDSCAPE 
 
 The ancient cultures of Ireland, from the Neolithic 
 through the Celtic periods, were centered around the 
 idea of the sacredness of the land. 2 Many configura- 
 tions of the landscape still retain place-names linked 
 to their earlier mythic associations. Specific topo- 
 graphical features, including rivers, springs, rocks and 
 clearings are imbued with mythic significance; an 
 important part of the Irish learned tradition is called 
 dindshenchas, a word which means the lore of famous 
 places. Among the most highly charged of these 
 natural features are hills and mountain tops, and, from 
 the evidence of place names, we know that in pre- 
 Christian Ireland twin rounded hills were seen as the 
 breasts of the reclining earth mother goddess. 3 
 
 Ireland and the Celtic lands of Europe 4 are not the only 
 places where natural features took on a special 
 magico-religious import. To cite two other examples, 
 Native Americans are known to have given mythic 
 significance to mountains, rocks, waters, and other 
 aspects of the landscape. Many of the towns and natu- 
 ral features in New England have names that relate to 
 Native American mythology and folklore. The Ancient 
 Greeks likewise saw sacred elements in landscape. 
 There, twin hills were sometimes viewed as a goddess’ 
 breasts, and when the "breasts” were in proximity to 
 another single earth swelling — a swelling that was the 
 right size and appropriately oriented — the Greeks saw 
 in that configuration the body of the earth mother 
 goddess, with the swelling viewed as a pregnant belly 
 and the hills as full rounded breasts. On occasion, 
 
 Greek temples were situated on those "sacred 
 mounds,” right on the "pregnant belly,” and oriented 
 toward the “breasts." 
 
 In Ireland, one such example of an earth mother 
 goddess manifest in the land occurs in Killarney. There, 
 two hills, which have the configuration of breasts, have 
 long borne the name Paps Anu, or the Breasts of Anu. 5 
 The idea of seeing landscape as breasts and bellies 
 is used in an ironic way in the Body Map Series by the 
 artist Kathy Prendergast. In several of her drawings 
 included in the exhibition at Boston College's 
 McMullen Museum of Art, To Alter a Landscape (no. 26), 
 To Control a Landscape — Irrigation (no. 28, pi. VIII), and 
 To Control a Landscape — Oasis (no. 29), Prendergast 
 makes breasts into landscape configurations which are 
 then pierced, infiltrated and “inhabited” by the wheels, 
 cogs and pumps of irrigation machinery. In To Alter a 
 
Landscape, (no. 26) milk ducts are shown as white, 
 and become industrial pipelines, while nipples 
 become spouts for the fluid. In To Control a Landscape 
 —Irrigation (no. 28, pi. VIII), ducts become molten lava 
 passages. The discomfort which her images evoke is 
 attenuated by the humor implicit in the texts that she 
 has inscribed on the page, texts that are similar to 
 those written on an engineer’s drawings. 6 
 
 Breasts are not the only body images evoked in 
 Prendergast’s work. In To Control a Landscape — Oasis 
 (no. 29) the image appears to be the profile view of a 
 giant, reclining woman, with her head to the right 
 and her tiny legs to the left. Once more the "human” 
 form is penetrated, this time at what would be the 
 navel. The piercing drill-like instrument penetrates 
 the body to its deepest core. The image is disturbing, 
 for it connotes a technological invasion which 
 grates on our sensibility. Again the text remains aloof, 
 explanatory, and bitterly ironic. Surely, neither the 
 land nor the body is meant to be violated in this way, 
 but the artist’s tone, in both text and image, is 
 seemingly technical and removed. 
 
 Prendergast’s body maps — for example, Enclosed 
 Worlds in Open Spaces (no. 22) — also evoke the notion 
 of body as landscape. In the Celtic world, in both Gaul 
 as well as Ireland, boundaries had a magico-religious 
 import. The boundaries between land and sea, and 
 the borders between forest and meadow, were often 
 the site of sacred shrines. Prendergast uses the idea 
 of the map as a designator of contours and bound- 
 aries, and she makes those boundaries coincide with 
 the female shape. Thus the body itself becomes the 
 abstract indicator of boundary configurations. The 
 contours of the body of the woman are, in her work, 
 the shore between land and water; waves are finely 
 indicated. Boats are drawn upon the empty space, 
 thereby aiding us to read that space as water, and 
 a sign on the left indicates the points of the compass. 
 A grid is superimposed over the image to indicate 
 longitude and latitude. The placement of certain "sites” 
 is indicated by nipples, the navel, and the central line 
 of the rib cage. 
 
 no. 16 (p. 56) 
 
 Eithne Jordan 
 Portrait of a Woman 
 1988 
 
 oil on canvas 
 51 x 43 in. 
 
 Courtesy of Rubicon Gallery, Dublin 
 
 Although Prendergast is, no doubt, unaware of her 
 forerunners in this regard, one such precursor is a 
 rather obscure 14th century Italian. In drawings done 
 after a visionary experience and an "illness,” the 
 monk Opicinus de Canistris (1296-1352) created 
 strange, intriguing “body maps." Qpicinus tells us that 
 he made his drawings in secret after a sickness 
 incapacitated the writing hand he used as an official 
 scribe at the papal court of Avignon. He executed the 
 strangely provocative body maps between 1334 and 
 1337, at a time when coastline maps were first drawn 
 by Italian map makers. The body map entitled Africa 
 Whispering into the Ear of Europe (fig. 9), executed 
 c. 1337, is an example of bifocal vision. When viewed 
 from the side (the south), Europe is rendered as the 
 body of a woman, and Africa is a male whispering in 
 her ear. When the drawing is viewed from the east, 
 however, the ocean and the sea are depicted as 
 malicious, threatening bodies. The Atlantic becomes a 
 wolf that has swallowed the upper part of a human 
 being, and the Mediterranean takes the form of an 
 ogre who appears to punch his fist between the legs 
 of the woman, at a spot indicated as Venice on the 
 body map. Above the ogre’s fist, around Padua, is a 
 minuscule version of the larger drawing, with Europe 
 now rendered as a man. The area, defined in red, 
 looks like a wound. It is curious that this "wound” 
 surrounds Padua, the birthplace of Opicinus. 
 
 Prendergast’s body map is far less complex, and her 
 rendering is serene in comparison to Opicinus’ work. 
 The head and legs of her woman are not depicted. In 
 fact, the form appears truncated. The pose, though in 
 full frontal nudity, is not a sexual one. Prendergast 
 had the freedom of rendering the body far more 
 naturalistically since she does not have to adhere to 
 already-established map boundaries. However, 
 neither artist chose to model the bodies, and neither 
 gave any texture to the epidermis. Both chose to write 
 on their figures, to emphasize the pudenda or geni- 
 tals, and to give us an indication of compass direction. 
 
 Prendergast and Opicinus were drawn to the process 
 of seeing one thing in terms of another. When 
 an artist creates body maps, he or she is essentially 
 transporting themselves above the earth, to an omni- 
 scient perspective. The artist is looking down from an 
 elevated position at lands and waters that he or 
 she has created in the art work. This is a lofty position 
 indeed. Opicinus could only render his images in 
 secret, and he explained his strange drawings to him- 
 self by avowing that, in some miraculous way 
 (through an illness) he had been permitted to create 
 
 58 
 
FIG. 9 
 
 Opicinus de Canistris 
 Pavia, 1296-1352 
 
 Africa Whispering into the Ear of Europe 
 c- 1334-37 
 
 pen on paper in color 
 
 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS. Vat. lat. 6435, fol. 53V 
 Courtesy of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City 
 
 surreptitiously what he called “spiritual” work. 
 Prendergast, although working within the restrictions 
 of her own day, did not have to convince herself 
 that whatever one might find “outrageous” in her 
 work was due to an "illness,” a "vision," or a “spiritual” 
 directive. 
 
 THE CELTIC HEAD 
 
 The enormous heads and seemingly insignificant, 
 spindly bodies of Eithne Jordan’s Split Face (no. 15, pi. 
 
 V) and Portrait of a Woman (no. 16) evoke an impor- 
 tant visual tradition in Irish art that spans nearly two 
 millennia: the Celtic head. 7 The veneration of the 
 human head was a central element in ancient Celtic 
 mythology. Long before the Celts settled in Ireland, 
 when their cultural-linguistic group was still located 
 in continental Europe, the head was seen as the seat 
 of human potency. 8 In the ancient Irish epic the Tain, 
 the head was viewed as the essence of a human 
 being: when one possessed the head of an enemy, one 
 
 controlled the enemy’s power. This belief is attested to 
 when the hero of the Tain, Cu Chulainn, carries off a 
 rival's head, thereby depriving his enemies of their 
 vital forces and demonstrating his own skill and valor. 9 
 
 The Tain rprnrds how C11 Chnlai nn carried thp hpads 
 that he severed back in his chariot to his camp 
 where they would be exhibited. The idea of displaying 
 severed heads of enemies finds archaeological 
 corroboration in the grim Celto-Ligurian shrines of 
 Entremont, where niches were carved to hold human 
 skulls, some of which were still in place when the 
 shrines were uncovered. Classical authors corroborate 
 this Celtic penchant for preserving human heads as 
 trophies. Diodorus Seculus and Strabo record that the 
 Celts returned from battle with their bloody spoils 
 hanging from the necks of their horses. They 
 embalmed these trophies in cedar oil, thereby allow- 
 ing the heads of their most distinguished enemies to 
 be properly displayed. 
 
 Pre-Christian Ireland left archaeological remains of 
 this Celtic fascination with the head. An art work 
 from Corleck is a particularly striking example (fig. 10). 
 A small hole in its base indicates that, like other 
 stone heads of its type in Europe, it was set up on a 
 pillar for display. There is also a small hole in the 
 mouth, another feature held in common with Celtic 
 heads in Ireland and on the continent. This head has 
 three faces, making it an example of the important 
 notion of triplism, an idea deeply rooted in Indo- 
 European myth. 10 
 
 FIG. 10 
 
 Corleck Head 
 
 Corleck, Co. Cavan, c. 1st century A.D 
 stone 
 
 Courtesy of the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin 
 
 BERGER 
 
 59 
 
The emphasis on the head in Celtic culture was incor- 
 porated into medieval Irish art as well, for works in 
 stone, precious metals, and on parchment display the 
 human head. The western portal of St. Brendan’s 
 Cathedral in Clonfert, Co., Galway has an eerie display 
 
 tive pediment; the lower part of the pediment has five 
 blind arches, each containing a human head. Above, in 
 inverted isosceles triangles, are more skull-like reliefs. 
 Set up in this form, the displayed heads bear a 
 resemblance to the pillars with skulls in their niches 
 at Entremont. But the meaning of the heads in the 
 Romanesque Christian context is unclear. Perhaps folk 
 memory retained the idea of the potent spirit 
 encapsulated in the human head. 
 
 Besides infiltrating the repertoire of monumental 
 sculpture on churches, heads are also inserted on the 
 exquisitely wrought Tara Brooch, where two grim 
 faces are found on the chain attachment. Used as a 
 clasp for a cloak or other garment, brooches such as 
 these must have been worn by people of the highest 
 status in society, for the Tain tells us that a prophetess 
 from the continent wore such a broach in the pre- 
 Christian period. Medieval book illumination likewise 
 incorporated the human head as one of the elements 
 it retained from pagan imagery. The Chi Rho page 
 of the Book of Kells" is one example of the many heads 
 that populate the richly articulated imagery of 
 that masterpiece. 
 
 Has the ancient head motif found a new form in the 
 work of this twentieth century artist who seems 
 fascinated by the expressive possibilities of the iconic 
 human head? Another Irish artist, Louis le Brocquy, 
 has been so inspired. His late '70s and early ’80s 
 paintings inventively incorporate the head motif. 12 
 Has Eithne Jordan also incorporated into her visual 
 memory this deeply-rooted tradition? The idea of 
 transforming the head motif into a metaphor for 
 power or ripeness is certainly explicit in her work and 
 in her words. 13 
 
 THE SHEELA-NA-GIG 
 
 Hidden amongst the corbels and capitals on the 
 churches and castles of medieval Ireland were extraor- 
 dinary figures traditionally called sheela-na-gigs. 
 
 Large almond-shaped female genitalia dominated 
 the lower half of their bodies, and above, staring eyes 
 glowered out at the viewer (fig. 11). Although the 
 Romanesque churches of France (for instance, in 
 Poitou) displayed a variety of unusual forms that bare 
 some kinship with the sheela-na-gig,the Irish figures 
 
 are distinguished by their blatant display of female 
 sexual parts. 
 
 The meaning of these figures in their medieval context 
 is controversial. Various suggestions have been offered. 
 
 i.e., to protect the church or castle from evil? Were 
 they designed to warn the beholder of the malicious 
 influences of lust? Could they have been part of a 
 continuum of forms created in other, less permanent 
 media, such as clay or straw sculptures that were 
 originally intended as positive images of fertility? We 
 know that fertility figures were part of agrarian ritual 
 since settled farming began. Those who depended on 
 the land for sustenance created numerous rituals to 
 propitiate the powers they saw as controlling the 
 earth’s fertility. Those powers were personified as an 
 earth mother goddess into whose belly the seed would 
 be placed. Folklore and ritual suggest how closely the 
 fertility of women was linked with the fertility of the 
 land. Thus, perhaps, the birth canal and its threshold 
 could have been viewed as not only the revered portal 
 of human life, but also, through sympathetic magic, 
 as a powerful symbol of the generative forces of the 
 earth’s fertility. 
 
 In the work of Eilis O’Connell, the positive aspects of 
 life’s gateway are alluded to in the many 
 reminiscences of the sheela-na-gig found in her work. 
 In image after image, the striking almond-shaped 
 aperture is significantly placed. Her visual language 
 abstracts and uses the form in a variety of composi- 
 tions, and on occasion accents a phallic shape (for 
 example, no. 43) Her resurrection and interpretation 
 of this shape endows it with a new feminist meaning, 
 a meaning consonant with the wonder and mystery 
 of fertility and birth. 
 
 A particularly interesting placement of the pointed 
 oval shape is found in Hot with Inward Heat (fig. 12). 14 
 The work was created as a site-specific sculpture in 
 Bath, a place where the hot springs were believed to 
 be sacred by the Celts in pre-Roman times. In the 
 Celtic world, springs gushing up from the earth were 
 viewed as magical. There are numerous continental 
 Celtic sites where such springs formed the core of a 
 therapeutic center. (One example of such a center is at 
 the site of the source of the Seine river; another is 
 located at Les Bolards in Burgundy.) 15 The deities wor- 
 shipped at these sites were largely female. O’Connell 
 recalls that she was intrigued by the fact that the 
 springs in Bath had a therapeutic use even before the 
 Roman period. 16 Thus she chose to adorn the site with 
 
a sculpture figuring the "hot with inward heat” of the 
 earth's body exuding from a vaginal shape. 
 
 Another work which uses the shape is Secret Station 
 (fig. 13). Again the oval opening finds its place in the 
 
 upper part of a conic structure. Although this wor k re- 
 
 lates to the industrial history of Cardiff Bay, O’Connell 
 uses the form to suggest regeneration, a motif 
 consonant with this pointed oval in her other work. 
 
 Although the work of the Irish women artists 
 presented in the exhibition Re/Dressing Cathleen can 
 be contextualized against broader, Western artistic 
 movements, there is a particularity to their work that 
 reflects the artists' land of origin. This essay has 
 attempted to illuminate certain themes and images 
 that connect the work of these women to a distant 
 past, not only to the past of modern day Ireland, but to 
 a mythic past common to the Celtic peoples. The 
 woman's body as landscape, the power of the human 
 head, and the reinterpretation of the vagina as a 
 symbol of life and vital force are part of a cultural and 
 visual language that belongs, in particular, to the 
 Celtic-Irish culture. They were strongly manifest in 
 pre-Christian art, and were syncretized into the 
 culture and art of the Christian era as well. Now Irish 
 women working at the end of the twentieth century 
 are, perhaps unconsciously, incorporating these 
 ancient themes into their work. The images can now 
 resonate for a new generation and in a new form. The 
 syncretism we are witnessing here, sometimes done 
 playfully, and sometimes with great seriousness, 
 promises to be most fruitful. 
 
 Notes 
 
 1 The earliest recursion of the Tain is preserved in two 
 fragmentary, but overlapping, portions compiled between 
 c. noo and the late-fourteenth century. See the 1976 edition 
 edited by Cecile O'Rahilly. 
 
 2 The Neolithic period in Ireland began sometime toward 
 the middle of the fourth millennium B.C. Continental Celtic 
 peoples penetrated Ireland toward the end of the first 
 millennium B.C. Although Ireland was Christianized at the 
 end of the first quarter of the fifth century, many aspects of 
 pagan Celtic Ireland survived well into the Christian period 
 and even into modern times. 
 
 3 For a general discussion of this issue see Scully 1962 and 
 MacCana 1991, p. 600. 
 
 4 The Celtic culture covered much of western Europe from 
 the seventh century B.C. until the fifth century B.C. See 
 Cunliffe 1979, pp. 15-17. 
 
 5 Anu is the goddess who figures in the Tuatha De Danann, 
 the mother of the final generation of gods to rule the earth. 
 
 6 The text inscribed on To Control a Landscape — Irrigation 
 (no. 28, pi. VIII) reads: "The fires being quenched, water is 
 pumped into the core of the mountains and stored in tanks. 
 The connecting tubes are attached to the tanks and as the 
 
 mills turn water is pumped to the surface through volcanic 
 ducts. Thus instead of emitting fire and smoke, the 
 mountains will now exude water and irrigate the soil." See 
 James Smith's essay in this catalogue for further discussion 
 of this image and its inscribed text. 
 
 7 For further discussion of this visual tradition and its 
 relationship to "the Troubles," see Robert Savage's essay in 
 this catalogue. 
 
 8 Lambrecht 1954; Mac Cana 1981. 
 
 9 For further discussion of the Tain and the Celtic cult of the 
 head, see the essay by Robert Savage in this catalogue. 
 
 10 For pre-Christian Ireland, an image represented thrice on 
 one object — often called triplism — may have implied added 
 strength or potency, the promotion of greater plenty or the 
 power to protect in the after life. For a bibliography on the 
 concept of triplism, see Berger 1982 pp. 9-14 . 
 
 11 Trinity College Library, Dublin, MS 58, A.1.6, f. 34c 
 
 12 See Albany 1981. 
 
 13 See O'Regan 1994 for an interview with Eithne Jordan by 
 Mairead Byrne. 
 
 14 For further discussion of O'Connell's large, public sculp- 
 tures, see the essay by Katherine Nahum in this catalogue. 
 
 15 Berger 1984. 
 
 16 Gandon Books 1993, p. 12 
 
 Abbreviations 
 
 Albany 1981 
 
 Louis le Brocquy and the Celtic Head Image. New York State 
 Museum and the State Education Department, Albany, 1981. 
 
 Berger 1982 
 
 Berger, Pamela. "Many-Shaped: Art, Archaeology, and the Tain,” 
 Eire-lreland. Volume XVII, No. 4, Winter 1982, pp. 6 - 18. 
 
 Berger 1984 
 
 Berger, Pamela. "La Cybele Bisexuee des Bolards,"£evue 
 Archeologique de I'Est, vol. 35, 1984. 
 
 Bompiani 1991 
 
 The Celts. Palazzo Grazzi. Bompiani, 1991. 
 
 Camille 1996 
 
 Camille, Michael. Gothic Art: Glorious Visions. New York, 1996. 
 
 Cunliffe 1979 
 
 Cunliffe, Barry. The Celtic World. New York, 1979. 
 
 Gandon Books 1993 
 
 Eilis O'Connell. The Gallery at John Jones, London and Gandon 
 Books, Dublin, 1993. 
 
 Lambrecht 1954 
 
 Lambrecht, Pierre. L'Exaltation de la Tete dans la Pensee et dans 
 I’Art des Celtes. Bruges, 1954. 
 
 Mac Cana 1984 
 
 Mac Cana, Proinsia."The Cult of the Head," in Louis le Brocquy 
 and the Celtic Head Image. Albany 1981. 
 
 Mac Cana 1991 
 
 Mac Cana, Proinsia. "Celtic Religion and Mythology," in The Celts. 
 Milan, 1991, pp. 596-604. 
 
 O’Rahilly 1976 
 
 Tain Bo Cuailnge. Ed. Cecile O'Rahilly, Dublin, 1976. 
 
 O’Regan 1994 
 
 The Works Series, Works 16 — Eithne Jordan. Ed. John O'Regan, 
 Dublin, 1994. 
 
 Scully 1962 
 
 Scully, Vincent. The Earth, the Temple and the Gods. New York, 
 1962. 
 
 BERGER 
 
KATHERINE NAHUM 
 
 In the The Roundness of Being of Eilis O’Connell 
 
 Eilis O’Connell’s sculpture works in complex ways. 
 Organic and industrial forms merge coherently, and 
 then the interaction between this paradoxical, 
 succinct sculpture and its surround becomes electric. 
 Her large, public, often commissioned works articulate 
 the charged relation with land; her small private 
 sculptures weld industrial forms with the mysteries 
 of the female body. 
 
 O’Connell was born in Derry and studied at the 
 Crawford School of Art in Cork. In 1974 she came in 
 contact with the formalist principles and welding 
 techniques of the English sculptor Anthony Caro 
 through John Burke, "a teacher who revolutionized the 
 school.” 1 The very next year she studied in Boston at 
 the Massachusetts College of Art where she became 
 familiar with David Smith's work. A pure, formalist 
 aesthetic informs O'Connell’s sculpture; formalism 
 constitutes a surface against which surge primordial 
 natural forces, the fragmented female body, ancient 
 land and Mother Ireland. 
 
 From childhood into adulthood O’Connell explored 
 Ireland’s prehistoric megaliths and circular stone 
 forts. She came to define these monumental forms for 
 herself as "sculpture.” Artists like the Americans 
 Michael Heizer and Robert Smithson who were mak- 
 ing site-specific art, or earth art, inspired O’Connell’s 
 realization that “people in the States are trying to 
 make these things, and we already have them.” 2 The 
 work of these artists made her appreciate the 
 meaning of place and the aesthetic value of Ireland's 
 ancient structures. O'Connell herself wanted to work 
 in steel and to control where her larger works 
 would be placed; she did not want to be controlled by 
 the site, or to be "trapped" by it. 3 Thus, O’Connell's 
 
 "mystery tours” 4 and ground plans of ancient monu- 
 ments in the ’70s, her familiarity with sheela-na-gigs 
 — ancient carved female figures exposing and opening 
 their vaginas — formed part of the sculptural language 
 that she continues to confront and to fuse with 
 modernist formalism today. 
 
 Although O’Connell’s large-scale exterior sculptures 
 have been termed phallic, they can be seen as the 
 upright female figure whose form suggests and com- 
 mingles ancient priestesses, slitted megaliths, trees, 
 insect antennae and industrial stacks. More often than 
 not, O’Connell pairs similar or echoing uprights that 
 stand in tense relation to one other. Their relation to 
 space, the land and its attendant meanings is charged. 
 Hot with Inward Heat (fig. 12) at Bath juxtaposes two 
 blackened, steel cones that have been vertically sliced 
 in half. Their tops are cut away, creating "heads," and 
 just below them vertical slits emit steam that blows or 
 curls out into space. The pulse of animation within 
 these monumental volumes plays against their taut 
 black surfaces. The slits read ambiguously as eyes or 
 vaginas, calling to mind O’Connell's avowed allusions 
 to sheela-na-gigs, but they are also the very forms 
 contained in the megaliths that she studied and wrote 
 about for her thesis. Conflated references to priestesses 
 or nuns, to ancient worship of the springs at Bath, 
 and to the later Roman structures there, condense in a 
 powerful monument. 
 
 Secret Station (fig. 13) whose title comes from "The 
 Diviner” by Seamus Heaney, is part of a redevelopment 
 scheme at Cardiff Bay, Wales, an old, once- 
 industrialized coal port. Two patinated bronze cones 
 rhythmically emit steam from slits during the day, and 
 at night, a fiber-optic system throws changing 
 
 63 
 
no. 41 (P-62) 
 
 Eilis O’Connell 
 
 In the Roundness of Being 
 
 1996 
 
 cast resin, lead polish 
 52 x 11 x 5 in. 
 
 Courtesy of Green on Red Gallery, Dublin 
 
 colored light on opposing arcs that crown each cone; 
 the light then reaches into the darkness. O'Connell has 
 created a dynamic sculpture that activates the envi- 
 ronment and alludes to the city's industrial as well 
 as ancient past. She divines and relates these hidden 
 
 sources to contemporary sites, as the rod exposes 
 
 “Spring water suddenly broadcasting/ Through a 
 green aerial its secret stations" in Heaney’s poem. 5 
 Modern industry and ancient history are meant to be 
 seen through one another; sources are conflated, and 
 we are drawn to the mythic relation of past and 
 present. The ghostly forms that float to the surfaces of 
 Rita Duffy's cartooning, painful Palimpsest series of 
 paintings (no. 17, pi. VI, nos. 18-20, pi. VII) — altogether 
 different stylistically and politically — work in a 
 similar way because we are made to compare specter 
 with specific personage. 
 
 O'Connell admires the American architect Frank 
 Gehry, known for his American Center in Paris, for 
 Tower Records here in Boston, and for the Frederick R. 
 Wiseman Museum in Minneapolis, the “exploding 
 silver artichoke” 6 that is a highly metaphoric building 
 of emergent, organic forms and industrial forces. 
 
 Gehry is also known as an important sculptor. 
 Identifying herself with him, O’Connell would "love to 
 design the shapes of buildings,” and even when she 
 is "making little pieces” she thinks, "this could easily 
 be a big building.” 7 For O’Connell there may be no 
 distinction between architecture and large-scale sculp- 
 ture; both may be metaphors of the enclosing body in 
 dynamic relation to exterior space and to the land. 
 
 For O'Connell both architecture and sculpture bridge 
 the inside, where one is "trapped” behind a 
 taut, resistant skin, and the outside, where grand 
 opportunities for interaction with the environment, 
 where an ideal freedom, nourishment and knowledge 
 are possible. "That’s why I'm interested in outside 
 spaces,” O’Connell says, 8 and that is why she finds the 
 “sculptural experience” one that focuses on the power 
 of space as much as the object itself. 9 The interactive 
 character of this sculptural experience may disguise 
 political interaction; it certainly expresses psychologi- 
 cal interaction. 10 
 
 The form of O'Connell’s public monuments commands 
 and enlivens space as it speaks to the environs. The 
 small personal sculptures truly coalesce aspects 
 of the female body with both organic and industrial 
 forms, and in a manner that we recognize; they seem 
 intimate and familiar. Their charged inwardness 
 makes them seem like fetishes, and they are, if we 
 
NAHUM 
 
 FTG. n 
 
 Sheela-na-gig 
 Ireland, c. 1080 A.D. 
 stone 
 
 Courtesy of the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin 
 
 FTG. 12 
 
 Eilis O’Connell 
 Hot with InwaTd Heat 
 Bath, 1990 
 
 Photo courtesy of Green on Red Gallery, Dublin, 
 and the Artist 
 
 define fetish as an object possessing hidden powers 
 that symbolically organize the self, and magically 
 enhance security. "There's one part of my body that I 
 love, and that’s my small toe, which has an edge to it 
 from having to walk on the floor. We create the 
 environment and the environment shapes us.” 11 So, a 
 shaping interaction with the world works in smaller 
 scale as well, where a revered body part can inspire 
 form. Was it the edge of her toe that inspired In the 
 Soundness of Being (no. 41) The curve is similar to a 
 toe’s edge, but the sculpture is much longer, and 
 more powerfully suggests the neck, shoulder and 
 arm. This body fragment, like a fretful ghost, appears 
 to push against the sculpture’s surface. The work 
 resembles aquatic flipper, angel wing and kitchen 
 carving knife as well; fused organic forms terminate 
 in dangerous, machine-tooled elegance. As a knife, 
 the sculpture embodies the process that produced 
 it because it was carved from polystyrene, and later 
 cast. O’Connell likes the "different kind of feeling” 
 
 carving produces. It’s "much more about the body 
 when you carve. Your body creeps into it because 
 you’re using the movement of your body to take out," 
 to remove material. 12 
 
 Under the Precipice (no. 44) plays on the humor of 
 merging female body parts with industrial forms. 
 Poised at the top of a rectangular, rusted-steel plate 
 are two sharp, rusted steel cones joined together and 
 pointing threateningly downward. These geometric 
 breasts might impale us, squirming beneath. The 
 sculpture, composed of the simplest of industrial 
 parts that have been altered by a process of nature, 
 conjures some snaggle-toothed medieval torture 
 chamber, or twin, monstrous faces joined and watch- 
 ful. The chimney posts atop Antoni Gaudi’s Casa Mila 
 evoke militant medieval figures, and O'Connell, 
 attuned to architectural form, may also have been 
 thinking of them. Somehow she makes all these 
 allusions female, intending, perhaps, a send-up of 
 
 65 
 
militancy and humorlessness sometimes found in 
 women’s issues. 
 
 Entrapment inside and freedom outside is as much a 
 theme for the small “personal” sculptures as it is for 
 the public work. Two rusted steel squares entrap two 
 symmetrical, breast-like gourds whose stems form 
 nipples in To Swell the Gourd (no. 39, pi. XIII). Cathoid 
 (no. 42, pi. XIV), a blue pubic form made of lead 
 crystal, is opened at its center by a tear-drop shape 
 that makes us intensely aware of its interior darkness. 
 Enmeshed (no. 40), made of brass and woven brass 
 wire, resembles a large barnacle, a basket and a 
 breast that is perforated at the center and so made 
 into a vagina. "I often use the vagina shape from 
 the sheela-na-gig,” O’Connell has said, but wants the 
 vagina understood as the entrance to the womb, to 
 an enclosed, vital space. 13 
 
 The central portion of the three-part Earthed (no. 43) 
 contains such a vertical slit that gapes, running 
 parallel to its left, straight edge. Earthed is composed 
 of three pieces of painted, patinated and rusted steel. 
 The floor piece, about 24 inches tall, is an unfurling, 
 organic, emergent form that casts shadows 
 mysteriously within and along the floor. It resembles 
 Wrapt, a larger birch sculpture that delimits a lit inte- 
 rior space; in our exhibited work the curling form is 
 placed in an environment of sculptural elements. The 
 slit, suggesting vagina, eye and navel, is poised just 
 so within the central wall element, apparently made 
 of wood and longer than the floor piece. It is bounded 
 by right angles and an ellipse exquisitely joined to 
 the straight edges. Above, at right, the third element, 
 a rusted steel spike juts out from the wall. It is dan- 
 gerous, yet seems the materialization of the negative 
 space of the slit; one hastens to link presence and 
 absence, although the sizes hardly match. One senses 
 that these three forms have dispersed to the positions 
 they now occupy, much as the continental shelves of 
 the earth have drifted apart. Once, the three fit 
 abstractly into one another, into a kind of integrated 
 female form. The body shown fragmented is disturb- 
 ing because it signals emotional fragmentation. 
 
 These dispersed body parts may also register histori- 
 cal disruptions of the land as female and more recent 
 political concerns about the control of women’s 
 bodies, a concern that in O’Connell’s work goes 
 unmediated by the irony found in Kathy Prendergast’s 
 watercolors. 14 In O’Connell’s sculpture the psychologi- 
 cal expression is primary; the historical and political 
 expression secondary. 
 
 FIG. 13 
 
 Eilis O’Connell 
 Secret Station 
 1990-92 
 
 above: steam generator, day 
 below: fiber optic, night 
 
 patinated bronze, steel, fiber optics, steam generators. 
 Courtesy of Green on Red Gallery, Dublin, and Artist. 
 Photo: John Davies 
 
 66 
 
These forms have deep and abiding resonance 
 because O'Connell makes sculptures that refer to the 
 integration/dispersal of the self in the domain of a 
 widening interrelatedness with the environment and 
 the history of the land; they embody paradox and its 
 
 resolution. These refinements are found in a mahum 
 
 sensuously abstract formal language that allows us to 
 create levels of meaning for ourselves. 
 
 Notes 
 
 1 O'Connell 1997b 
 
 2 Quoted in Hall 1993, p. 26. 
 
 3 O'Connell 1997a 
 
 4 Quoted in Hall 1993, p. 26. 
 
 5 Heaney 1969, p. 36. 
 
 6 Minneapolis 1993, p. 3. 
 
 7 Hall 1993, p. 27. 
 
 8 O'Connell 1997b. O'Connell makes a specific distinction 
 between inside and outside, saying that with her escape to 
 the outside she was free, was better nourished and was 
 able "to learn things out there." 
 
 9 O’Connell 1997a 
 
 10 Both O’Connell's work and her words demonstrate that she 
 is drawn to, and will continue to explore the creative power 
 of interaction. 
 
 11 Hall 1993, p. 28. 
 
 12 O'Connell 1997b 
 
 13 Hall 1993, p. 29 
 
 14 For a discussion of Prendergast's watercolors see the essays 
 by Pamela Berger and James Smith in this catalogue. 
 
 Abbreviations 
 Hall 1993 
 
 Hall, Charles. "The Undomesticated Space," Eilis O’Connell. The 
 Gallery at John Jones, London, Dublin, 1993. 
 
 Heaney 1969 
 
 Heaney, Seamus. "The Diviner" from Death of a Naturalist. 
 London and Boston, 1969 
 
 Minneapolis 1993 
 
 The Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of 
 Minnesota. StarTribune/ Cowles Media Co. Minneapolis, 1993. 
 
 O’Connell 1997a 
 
 O’Connell, Eilis. Interview. With Alston Conley and Maiy 
 Armstrong, January 1997. 
 
 O’Connell 1997b 
 
 O’Connell, Eilis. Conversation. With Alston Conley and Mary 
 Armstrong, January 1997. 
 
 67 
 
ANGELA BOURKE 
 
 Uaimh,' in Gwen O'Dowd's recent work, is a deep 
 vertical darkness between areas of graduated color. 
 
 The paintings are astonishing, suggesting all at once 
 the majesty of landscape, the work of human hands, 
 and the pleasurable or painful intimacy of our bodies. 
 When they were first shown, in Dublin's Kerlin Gallery 
 in the spring of 1997, they were given yet another 
 dimension by their naming, as O'Dowd's choice of title 
 invited the viewer to explore her images as reflexes 
 of traditional stories told in Irish. 
 
 Using the Irish language in a metropolitan setting, as 
 O'Dowd did in Dublin, is a particular kind of code in 
 Ireland at the end of the twentieth century. Familiar on 
 signposts and in government publications, and 
 compulsory in schools, Irish was deeply unfashionable 
 for many years. Like Russian in Hungary, not knowing 
 it was a sign of independence and sophistication; but 
 things have changed. People are rediscovering the Irish 
 language, attending classes in unprecedented 
 numbers. Irish words used in everyday, international, 
 English are code for a code: They mark the way to 
 unpaved places, to a world of stories, to memories both 
 disturbing and liberating, as their semantic contours 
 are presented as larger and more fluid than those of 
 the English words used to translate them. Stories about 
 places called uaimh deal with what is seen and what is 
 hidden. Ostensibly about landscape and community, 
 they are also about imagination, and often about 
 bodies, specifically women’s bodies. 
 
 Uaimh can mean a natural cave, or the mouth of a tun- 
 nel or souterrain; it can be a hollow where water has 
 collected, or even a grave. In the legends of manuscript 
 and oral tradition, it affords access to everything that 
 lies beneath the surface of what is seen: beyond it are 
 
 the pagan Otherworld and the Christian Hell, and 
 what we now call the unconscious. Treasure may lie 
 buried there, awaiting someone brave enough to enter. 
 Uaimh is a common noun, not a specific placename. 
 These images may have begun as representation of 
 real caverns on the coast of north Mayo, but their 
 significance now is wider, inviting contemplation of 
 all cave-like openings. 
 
 Uaimh Phadraig in Ultaibh is the cave known in 
 English as Saint Patrick’s Purgatory, on Station Island, 
 Lough Derg, County Donegal. Now perhaps best 
 known through the poetry of Seamus Heaney, in the 
 middle ages it was an Irish Inferno — an entrance 
 to Hell, where pilgrims were shut in for twenty-four 
 hours at a time to experience for themselves the 
 torments of Purgatory. The pilgrimage continues, 
 arduous and uncommercialized, but the cave has long 
 been closed up. Even before the coming of Christianity 
 it was most probably a site of ordeals — of ritual 
 encounters with the unknown. 2 
 
 Uaimh Chruachan is the cave of Cruachan in Connacht, 
 near the royal home of the legendary Medb and her 
 husband Ailill. It never acquired a Christian 
 pedigree and remains open: a low mouth at the foot of 
 a slope in Rathcroghan, County Roscommon, just big 
 enough for an adult to crawl in. Fearsome things used 
 to come forth from the cave of Cruachan: devastating 
 birds, cats, pigs, even werewolves, according to the 
 twelfth-century Acallamh na Senorach. This text is a 
 compendium of place-lore, framed as a dialogue 
 between St. Patrick and the ancient heroes Oisin and 
 Cailte. It tells of three sisters who changed into wolves 
 and emerged from the cave of Cruachan annually to 
 terrorize the countryside, until lured into their death 
 
 69 
 
NO. 3 (p. 68) 
 
 Gwen O'Dowd 
 Uaimh Series 
 1996 
 
 mixed media on canvas/board 
 53 x 42 in. 
 
 Private Collection, Ireland 
 Courtesy of Kerlin Gallery, Dublin 
 
 by a musician: the only kind of man they trusted. 3 
 Other terrifying women lived there too: notably the 
 Morrigan, loathly goddess of destruction. Yet great 
 wonders awaited anyone who managed to enter the 
 cave. It led to the Otherworld of vernacular narrative; 
 the abode of the si, the fairies, or the “good people.” 4 
 
 Medieval stories of heroes who ventured into the body 
 of the earth through caves are echoed in the narratives 
 of modern folklore. In legends still told in rural Ireland, 
 men make their way through mysterious openings: 
 caves, rock-clefts or magical doorways in fairy forts — 
 places well known, but usually avoided — and find a 
 timeless existence among the "good people.” Men who 
 go innocently, and at appropriate times, are rewarded 
 with gifts of music or money, or with the love of 
 women; indeed many are lured away from normal life 
 by fairy women. Others, whose approach is violent, 
 or who cause damage, find themselves punished: one 
 who cut a stick from a tree growing in a fairy fort 
 later lost the use of his arm; a young man who ripped 
 the roof off a fairy dwelling by cutting heather on 
 a hillside was punished when the fairies abducted his 
 sister and later crippled her by piercing her leg with 
 a long thorn. 5 Injuries to the fairy places of the earth’s 
 landscape are revenged with injuries to the human 
 body, underlining a persistent analogy between the two 
 
 One kind of cavern, in several different parts of 
 Ireland, is called Poulnashantona ( Poll na Seantuinne). 
 Maire Mac Neill has argued that this name may well 
 mean "the hag's hole.” She suggests that the hag in 
 question is no ordinary old woman, but a mythological 
 being, and that the places so-named may once have 
 been understood as entrances to Hell. 6 Several places 
 on the north Mayo coast, where O’Dowd’s images 
 originate, are called Poulnashantona. They are blow- 
 holes or puffing-holes: places where the force of the 
 sea crashing into a cave has caused its roof to fall in, 
 leaving a yawning hole in the ground above. Sea-spray 
 plumes up through these blow-holes in rough 
 weather; people have fallen into them and drowned 
 in the deep water below. 
 
 The Uaimh paintings fall into two groups. In some 
 works the mysterious darkness at the center is curved 
 and inviting (nos. 1, 2, pi. I, fig. 14) in others, straight- 
 sided, hard-angled, vertiginous, seeming to open at the 
 feet of the viewer (no. 3, fig. 15). The first may be the 
 sea-caves; the second, the corresponding holes in the 
 ground above, but it is hard not to have a sense that, as 
 in the stories, the former are sanctioned doorways — 
 
natural openings, like bodily orifices — the latter, 
 gashes made by digging, cutting or collapse: wounds. 
 
 A light-colored foreground which appears in the 
 curved forms (nos. 1, 2, pi. I, fig. 14) could be read as the 
 
 spa, as though the viewer approache d a sea-rave hy 
 
 boat, but it also persuasively suggests a floor a firm 
 surface on which to walk forward and in. This might 
 represent Newgrange (Bru na Boirme in Irish), a 
 famous archaeological site whose sexual resonances 
 Irish-language poet Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill celebrates 
 in "Feis." 7 Newgrange is a prehistoric burial mound in 
 the valley of the Boyne, its doorway flanked by 
 decorated stones, where, at the winter solstice, the 
 
 sun penetrates the full length of a dark passage to the 
 innermost chamber, and where medieval storytellers 
 located the abode of the pre-Christian gods, the si. 
 Alternatively, these curved forms could be huge jars, 
 taller than we are, like the ones which hid Ali Baba’s 
 forty thieves. Their bands nf burnished encaustic color 
 suggest ceramics fired in intense heat. Either way, 
 these images speak of safety, containment. 
 
 Where O’Dowd’s forms are straight, however, instead 
 of reassuringly horizontal stripes at hand and eye 
 level, we find striations parallel to the darkness (no. 3, 
 fig. 15). There is no floor, no right way up; instead we 
 topple forward and down, or gaze up into the place 
 
 BQIIRKE 
 
 
 FIG. 14 
 
 Gwen O’Dowd 
 Uaimh Series 
 1996 
 
 mixed media on canvas/board 
 Private Collection, Ireland 
 
 Photo courtesy of Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, and the Artist 
 
 71 
 
from which we have been dropped. It may be a grave, 
 an archaeologist’s excavation, a turf-cutting, or a hole 
 where the land has suddenly fallen away; or perhaps 
 it is a vulva, and we have just been born. There is 
 nothing gentle about the openings in these images. 
 
 Maire Mac Neill’s monumental Festival of Lughnasa 
 contains many stories of entry to the Otherworld 
 through caves and holes in the ground. 8 One of them, 
 recorded in County Limerick in 1940, says of a hole 
 called Poll na Bruighne, that "the fairies used to come 
 out of the hill through that hole. They used to say that 
 if you threw a stone or a ball of thread into the hole it 
 would be thrown out again, and if there was blood on 
 it when it was thrown out you would die before long.’’ 9 
 Another legend, told of Meelin’s Rock, Duhallow, 
 County Cork, concerns "a natural recess in a steep cliff 
 in a wooded grove by the river Dalua.’’ 10 A girl called 
 Maoilin (anglicized Meelin), fled to this place from 
 her father’s house rather than marry the man he had 
 chosen for her. One account states that a fairy lover 
 bore her away, but in any case, the rock opened to 
 admit her. Later a drunken carpenter broke off the 
 piece of rock that still bore the mark of her hand, and 
 tradition says his own hand withered immediately. 
 
 Anthropologist Mary Douglas has argued that the 
 human body is always a metaphor for the body of 
 society, and that particularly in oral culture, people 
 "use their own bodies as symbolic analogs for think- 
 ing about society and the universe.” 11 As this essay has 
 tried to show, the landscape too provides structures 
 to think with: outside and inside; male and female; 
 known and unknown. Its surface is not continuous or 
 sealed, but penetrable, and marked by wounds as 
 well as by orifices. Access to its secret places is easy 
 for the initiated; dangerous and frightening for 
 others. Painting the anatomy of landscapes, seen or 
 seen through, Gwen O’Dowd conveys poetic ideas also 
 found in Irish legends of the Otherworld. Some of the 
 places she represents are like those spots marked by 
 stories, where an intractable rock-face could open 
 wide enough to admit a horse with rider and pillion, 
 when a human midwife was needed to deliver a 
 fairy child, and could close again behind her when she 
 left. 12 Other places, other images, are horrifying 
 reminders of violence. 
 
 FIG. 15 
 
 Gwen O’Dowd 
 Uaimh Series 
 1996 
 
 mixed media on canvas/board 
 Private Collection, Ireland 
 
 Photo courtesy of Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, and the Artist 
 
 72 
 
BOURKE 
 
 Notes 
 
 I am grateful to Gwen O'Dowd and to my colleague, Coaimhin 
 Mac Giolla Leith, author of the catalogue essay for the Uaimh 
 exhibition, for valuable discussions. I am of course solely 
 responsible for the ideas and interpretations expressed here. 
 
 1 Pronounced ‘oo-wev. 
 
 2 For a good overview of the history and continuing 
 importance of St. Patrick's Purgatory, see Hopkin 1989. 
 
 3 Jackson 1951, pp. 162-64 ( no - 136); Stokes and Windisch 1900, 
 pp. 214-16. 
 
 4 See, for instance, Rees and Rees 1961, pp. 298-305. 
 
 5 Bourke 1993 and Bourke forthcoming. 
 
 6 Mac Neill 1971-73, p. 206-11. 
 
 7 Translated by Paul Muldoon as "Carnival" in Ni Dhomhnaill 
 and Muldoon 1992, pp. 10-19. 
 
 8 Mac Neill 1982. 
 
 9 Ibid. p. 678 
 
 10 Ibid. p. 210. 
 
 II Douglas 1970, p. 72. See also Chapter 5. 
 
 12 6 hEochaidh, Mac Neill & 0 Cathain 1977, pp. 60-65, 
 nos. 14-16. 
 
 Abbreviations 
 Bourke 1993 
 
 Bourke, Angela. "Fairies and Anorexia: Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill's 
 'Amazing Grass'," in Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic 
 Colloquium XIII (1993), pp. 25-38. 
 
 Bourke forthcoming 
 
 Bourke, Angela. "Language, Stories, Healing," in Gender and 
 Sexuality in Modem Ireland. Ed. Anthony Bradley and Maryann 
 Valiulis. Boston, forthcoming. 
 
 Douglas 1970 
 
 Douglas, Mary. Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology. 
 Harmondsworth, 1970. 
 
 Hopkin 1989 
 
 Hopkin, Alannah. The Living Legend of Saint Patrick. London, 
 1989. 
 
 Jackson 1951 
 
 Jackson, Kenneth. A Celtic Miscellany. Harmondsworth, 1951. 
 
 Mac Neill 1971-73 
 
 Mac Neill, Maire. "Poll na Seantuinne and Poll Tighe Liabain," 
 Bealoideas 39-41 (1971-73), pp. 206-11. 
 
 Mac Neill 1982 
 
 Mac Neill, Maire. The Festival of Lughnasa: a Study of the 
 Survival of the Celtic Festival of the Beginning of the Harvest. 
 Dublin, 1982 [Oxford, 1962]. 
 
 Ni Dhomhnaill and Muldoon 1992 
 
 Ni Dhomhnaill, Nuala and Muldoon, Paul. The Astrakhan Cloak. 
 Wake Forest, 1992. 
 
 6 hEochaidh, Mac Neill and 6 Cathain 1977 
 
 6 hEochaidh, Sean, Mac Neill, Maire and 6 Cathain, Seamas. 
 Siscealta 6 Thir Chonaill/ Fairy Legends from Donegal. Dublin, 
 1997 
 
 Rees and Rees 1961 
 
 Rees, Alwyn and Brinley Rees. Celtic Heritage: Ancient Tradition 
 in Ireland and Wales. London, 1961. 
 
 Stokes and Windisch 1900 
 
 Stokes, Whitley H. and Windisch, Ernst. Irische Texte IV (1) 
 Leipzig, 1900. 
 
 73 
 
ROBERT SAVAGE 
 
 Relics: 
 
 Images of “the Troubles 
 
 }} 
 
 Over the past twenty-eight years, Northern Ireland has 
 been traumatized by "the Troubles,” the unrelenting 
 political violence that has claimed over three thousand 
 lives in the contentious province. Since 1969, the Irish 
 Republican Army has waged an unsuccessful and 
 vicious guerrilla campaign intended to force the Brit- 
 ish government to withdraw from the province that 
 remains part of the United Kingdom. The British Army, 
 too, has experienced little success in its attempts to 
 defeat the I.R.A., despite the introduction of controver- 
 sial authoritarian measures intended to crush the 
 organization. In addition, Loyalist para-militaries have 
 resorted to terrorist tactics against the I.R.A., and have 
 further complicated the already tumultuous situation. 
 Irish society is deeply scarred by this ensuing political 
 and military stalemate, and especially Northern 
 Ireland, where a debilitating sense of fear and mistrust 
 complicates efforts to find a solution to "the Troubles.” 
 
 Irish artists have responded to the "the Troubles” by 
 appropriating and reinterpreting the architecture and 
 the artifacts of their contested landscape. In the 
 exhibition Re/Dressing Cathleen, two artists, Geraldine 
 O'Reilly and Deirdre O’Connell, focus on this landscape 
 and seek to reclaim and redefine symbols from Ireland's 
 past. The innumerable casualties of "the Troubles,” 
 south Ulster and the borderland — the Island’s liminal 
 territories — are the focus of O'Reilly’s recent etchings 
 from her 1994 Land Marks Series (nos. 8, 14), while 
 O’Connell, through her sculpture, Point of Observation 
 (no. 6), and drawings, Repository II (no. 7, pi. Ill), 
 recontextualizes the fortifications associated with a 
 romanticized Irish landscape. 
 
 Castles, keeps, fortresses, and strongholds are ubiqui- 
 tous in Ireland and appear frequently in the landscape 
 
 of south Ulster. Many of the structures date to the 
 Norman conquest of the twelfth century, while others 
 were built as late as the nineteenth century. To the 
 casual observer, the impressive stone buildings that 
 stand alone on the magnificently scenic horizon 
 complement the rolling hills that one associates with 
 the Irish landscape. O'Reilly's interest in South 
 Ulster's landscape and its strongholds extends to 
 another structure familiar to the Irish landscape: what 
 the Irish term "outhouses” (fig. 16). These sheds once 
 served as modest homes for the small farmers — 
 members of bustling agricultural communities that, 
 long ago, succumbed to the forces of modernization. 
 Today, many of these outhouses are used by farmers 
 for storage or as shelter for their animals. However, 
 along the border counties between the Irish Republic 
 and Northern Ireland, many of these old sheds have 
 been used by the I.R.A. to store weapons. 
 
 The south Ulster counties of Armagh, Fermanagh, 
 Tyrone, Cavan and Monaghan (fig. 17) lie along the 
 border that separates the Irish Republic from Northern 
 Ireland. The 1920 Government of Ireland Act created 
 the border that divides the island. The act was passed 
 by the British Parliament and accepted by the Anglo- 
 Irish Treaty of 1921, which established the nominally 
 independent Irish Free State. The treaty ended the 
 Irish War of Independence and initiated a short, but 
 brutal, civil war. The new Irish government argued 
 that the treaty it accepted could be used as a stepping 
 stone towards complete independence. Opponents of 
 the treaty insisted that those who came to terms with 
 the British betrayed the revolution. They believed that 
 the war against Britain would not end until Ireland 
 was united as a sovereign republic. The civil war was a 
 traumatic conflict that pitted friend against friend, 
 
and family against family, and still resonates in the 
 contemporary political structures of the Irish Republic. 1 
 
 The border also defined the six county state of North- 
 ern Ireland that remained part of the United Kingdom. 
 
 - -Jhe northern state embraced only six of the nine 
 
 counties traditionally designated as the province of 
 Ulster. The remaining counties of Monaghan, Cavan 
 and Donegal were excluded from the northern state 
 because these counties simply contained too many 
 Catholics. Northern Ireland, therefore, was carved out 
 of Ulster along purely sectarian lines. Ulster Unionists 
 insisted on this division to ensure a loyal Protestant 
 majority that would support the union with Great 
 Britain. Therefore, when Ireland was partitioned, 
 ancient Ulster was also partitioned. 
 
 The partition of the island was by no means easy or 
 clean. Unionists, who were in the minority in counties 
 Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan, believed that their 
 leaders in Belfast had betrayed and abandoned them. 
 Many complained bitterly that they had been set 
 adrift to survive in a state they regarded as hostile to 
 their interests — the fledgling Irish Free State. In the 
 same way, two counties, Fermanagh and Tyrone, 
 which contained significant Catholic majorities, were 
 incorporated into Northern Ireland and excluded from 
 becoming part of the new Irish Free State. Historian 
 Joe Lee has addressed this aspect of partition: 
 
 The border was chosen explicitly to provide unionists 
 with as much territory as they could safely control. Its 
 objective was not to separate unionists and national- 
 ists in order to enable them to live safely apart. It was 
 instead to ensure Protestant supremacy over Catholics 
 in even predominantly Catholic areas. 2 
 
 The fact that counties Fermanagh and Tyrone were 
 part of Northern Ireland created serious problems for 
 the northern state especially when, in 1921, the 
 respective county councils defiantly declared their 
 allegiance to Dublin. James Craig, then the Prime 
 Minister of Northern Ireland, moved quickly to crush 
 this opposition by simply dissolving the two rebellious 
 county councils. Unionists considered the refusal by 
 
 no. 14 (p- 74) 
 
 Geraldine O’Reilly 
 
 Land Marks Series 
 
 Relics 
 
 1994 
 
 etching 
 
 31 x 37 in. 
 
 Collection of the Artist, Dublin 
 
 many northern nationalists to recognize the 
 authority and jurisdiction of the Belfast parliament a 
 threat to the stability of the province. Thirty five 
 years after partition, in 1956, the I.R.A. engaged in a 
 futile “Border Campaign” in a failed effort to topple 
 the northerrLregime. The fact that the IRA, launched- 
 attacks across the border, striking police barracks 
 inside Northern Ireland before slipping back into the 
 Irish Republic, illustrates that the border remained a 
 place where insurgents could stage raids and success- 
 fully evade arrest. The nationalist community along 
 the border, especially in Fermanagh and Tyrone, 
 ignored authorities’ requests for assistance. Moreover, 
 it became apparent that the silence of the community 
 provided the I.R.A. with the oxygen it needed to 
 sustain itself as a guerrilla force. Even today the 
 nationalist population residing in these counties is 
 viewed as suspect by Unionists. 
 
 In the most recent round of “the Troubles,” the border 
 once again has proven to be, to a certain extent, 
 "beyond the pale” of the security forces. Parts of the 
 counties of Fermanagh, Tyrone, Armagh, Cavan and 
 Monaghan are havens for the I.R.A., who, to this day, 
 hide weapons and conduct military training in the 
 area in spite of extraordinary emergency legislation 
 enacted by governments on both sides of the border. 
 The most infamous part of this frontier is South 
 Armagh, known to the British Army as "Bandit 
 Country.” The army patrols this area only by helicop- 
 ter because traveling the myriad country roads, even 
 in armored vehicles, has proven to be lethal. "Bandit 
 Country” and the "Murder Triangle" (which includes 
 parts of counties Tyrone and Armagh) have 
 witnessed some of the most intense violence during 
 the past twenty-eight years of political unrest. Secu- 
 rity forces consider the area impossible to effectively 
 monitor due to its rugged terrain. The British 
 Government has employed the controversial Special 
 Air Services (SAS) which has used clandestine 
 counter-insurgency tactics along the border with only 
 limited success. The fact that an outlawed, guerrilla 
 army and covert, counter-insurgency forces are active 
 in the area enhances its notoriety. Many residents 
 have learned to live in this extraordinary place 
 by understanding how to navigate what Geraldine 
 O’Reilly describes as “a whole series of complex signs, 
 signals and symbols.” 3 
 
 It is along this violent frontier that O'Reilly has chosen 
 to work, living intermittently in Monaghan over a 
 ten year period. With the etching Strongholds (no. 8), 
 O’Reilly presents the area's physical structures as a 
 
narrative that provides a broad local and national 
 history about the identity of the landscape, and the 
 people who inhabit and inherit the land. The 
 fortifications represented are not the highlights of a 
 romantic landscape or images of bucolic scenery 
 .made famous in the postcards of lohn Hinde. 4 For 
 O’Reilly, the strongholds symbolize a violent past, and 
 they are proof of a troubled history of colonization, 
 confiscation, repression and exploitation. 
 
 The oil stick drawings entitled Repository II (no. 7, 
 pi. Ill) by Deirdre O’Connell also evokes architecture 
 that is commonly associated with a powerful military 
 presence. Replete with small, high windows that pre- 
 vent access to the outside world, these fortifications 
 announce an entrenched presence. In a similar vein, 
 her sculpture Point of Observation (no. 6) depicts a 
 heavy defensive structure isolated on a small rocky 
 island. As has been pointed out in this catalogue, 
 
 Point of Observation recalls the Mussenden Temple, 
 an Anglo-Irish folly perched on the County Derry 
 coast. 5 In the context of O’Connell's piece, the temple 
 is another relic of an imperial past, built by a 
 conquering power and standing today as testimony 
 to a complex colonial legacy. 
 
 O’Reilly and O’Connell examine structures that one 
 associates with a male military tradition. Their 
 images might express fear of a hostile and violent 
 world, where brutality, rape and plunder await those 
 who venture beyond the safety of thick, protective 
 walls. Conversely, the images could symbolize the 
 presence of a brute physical force, an imperial 
 military presence, intent on holding onto the land it 
 has captured while keeping watch over a suspect 
 native population. The strongholds are part of a 
 warrior past that witnessed countless battles for the 
 land that they now help define. By reclaiming the 
 structures from a male-dominated, colonial past, 
 O’Reilly and O’Connell challenge the traditional and 
 romantic interpretation of the images, and place 
 them in a more complicated historical context. 
 
 For O'Reilly, strongholds connect past and present. By 
 reclaiming the structures, she implies that this 
 
 in 
 
 connection must be understood from a post-colonial 
 perspective. Although many of the fortifications date 
 to the Norman invasion, their original, military pur- 
 pose still resonates in Irish society today. Indeed, one 
 could argue that “the Troubles" — that have haunted 
 
 Ireland over the past twenty-eight years — have 
 
 produced a mentality and a language that is deeply 
 rooted in the legacy of these ancient structures. 
 
 Terms such as "siege mentality” are part of a contem- 
 porary vocabulary used to describe the political 
 psychology of Unionists in Northern Ireland, while 
 slogans such as “No Surrender!” and “Not an Inch!” 
 recall exclamations that may have been heard along 
 the walls of these bastions centuries ago. Unionism 
 identifies with gates and castles, partly because its 
 culture celebrates the tenacity and perseverance of a 
 people who withstood the brutal siege of Derry by 
 James II’s Catholic forces in 1689. The Protestant 
 population that fled to Derry endured a fearful ordeal, 
 but survived the siege behind the massive stone walls 
 of the fortified city. By the same token, within the 
 nationalist tradition, the term "Castle Irish” is used by 
 self-proclaimed soldiers of destiny to disparage those 
 nationalists who are considered weak on the 
 "national question.” 
 
 O'Reilly has also worked as a teacher in prisons and it 
 is partly through this experience that she under- 
 stands how architecture can function to confine not 
 only physically, but mentally. O'Reilly explains that 
 she is well aware of what she terms the “physical 
 assault of [these] surroundings” 6 ; and it is O'Reilly's 
 understanding of mental circumscription that she 
 applies to her representations of the south Ulster 
 area. The artist describes coming to terms with south 
 Ulster’s landscape as having been a process of digging 
 beneath the surface to uncover a complex history: 
 
 "It’s going beyond the surface of things. Growing up 
 one accepts things at face value until perhaps 
 through some crisis you suddenly look at something 
 in a completely different light. Its not what you 
 thought it was at all. And to reading the landscape- 
 suddenly I could read the human history of it through 
 how it was built. ..defended, marked [and] divided. 7 
 
 FIG. 16 
 
 Geraldine O’Reilly 
 Land Marks Series 
 Outhouses 
 1994 
 
 etching , edition of 25 
 Photo courtesy of the Artist, Dublin 
 
 
 SAVAGE 
 
 77 
 
The south Ulster landscape is also famous for the 
 Celtic stone heads that have been unearthed over the 
 years. Some of the more famous of these heads have 
 been uncovered on Boa Island in County Fermanagh 
 and in Corleck, County Cavan, the border areas that 
 
 O’Reilly explores in her work. Archeologists believe 
 
 that the heads date to the pagan Iron Age and Early 
 Bronze Age, and, although these experts maintain that 
 "the precise cultural affinities of this material are 
 difficult to establish,” many theorize that the heads 
 are part of a Celtic warrior culture. 8 Tain Bo Cuailnge 
 or The Cattle Raid of Cooley, the central saga of the 
 famous Ulster cycle, provides a vivid description of 
 Celtic society and its warrior traditions. 9 The heroes 
 portrayed often fought in single combat to distinguish 
 themselves as accomplished soldiers. Historian 
 Michael Richter, who has studied and written exten- 
 sively about medieval Ireland and the Tain, points out 
 that such a contest "may have been sporting, but it 
 was also to the bitter end, for the battle trophy was 
 the head of the opponent” which the victor kept and 
 displayed. 10 Collecting these gruesome trophies 
 defined the hero’s power and prestige. Popular legend 
 maintains that the head was considered the 
 repository for the soul, and by collecting the heads of 
 their vanquished enemy the Celtic warriors would 
 rob them of their “essence.” 
 
 O’Reilly's interest in this other, south Ulster visual 
 and military tradition — the Celtic cult of the head — 
 is reflected in the etching Relics (no. 14), also part of 
 the Land Marks Series. Here, the artist again connects 
 the past to the present, linking the Celtic cult of the 
 head with what she describes as Ireland’s "contempo- 
 rary tribal warfare.” 11 The artist was influenced by 
 Magill Magazine, a popular Irish monthly published 
 in the '80s under the editorship of Vincent Browne. 
 
 The periodical earned a reputation for its aggressive 
 investigative reporting before folding under financial 
 difficulties. Every year of its existence, the magazine 
 published photographs of those killed in the violence 
 consuming Northern Ireland at the time: multiple 
 rows and columns of police officers, soldiers, para- 
 militaries and civilians were featured in black and 
 white photographs. These photos were not attractive, 
 nor were they meant to be: they were intended as a 
 grim reminder of the human toll exacted by "the 
 Troubles.” They resembled mug shots one might find 
 on an American post office wall, and were strategically 
 presented to capture the attention of the customer 
 who might be casually browsing a magazine rack. 
 O’Reilly recounts that collecting these images from 
 Magill in a scrapbook was the genesis of Relics: 
 
 »ho« percent if • 
 
 FIG. 17 
 
 Map of Ireland in 1911, showing partition and provincial 
 boundaries with percentage of Protestants in each county 
 of Ulster 
 
 From The Treaty ©Thames Television plc/Screen Guides 
 1991 
 
 Courtesy of Merlin Films Ltd., Dublin 
 
I’d tear the photographs out and put them in my 
 notebook for what seemed no apparent reason until I 
 started to work on this [Land Marks ] exhibition. 
 Suddenly I found the link to the past so I made a large 
 print of all the heads I'd collected... .1 was attempting 
 
 to place past and present side by side. The awful 
 
 repetition of events. 12 
 
 Here, O’Reilly draws a parallel between the violence of 
 the ancient, Celtic past and the present "Troubles.” 
 
 O’Reilly executes the sugarlift etchings as high 
 contrast, black and white shapes. Devoid of modulated 
 grays that would soften the image, the faces are 
 simply constructed, direct caricatures, alternately 
 innocent and menacing when viewed up close, though 
 from a distance they seem a featureless, abstract 
 crowd. The repeated images confront the viewer with 
 the faces of individuals who are not easily forgotten. 
 When taken up as a whole, the mass of faces are 
 oppressive, provocative and haunting. Relics presents 
 the viewer with an unsettling portrait of the darker 
 side of human nature. 
 
 Today, possession of the land remains a contentious 
 issue, and is used to justify the murder and mayhem 
 that continues to torment south Ulster and much of 
 Northern Ireland. The work of O’Reilly and O’Connell 
 challenges the viewer who might chose to view 
 Ireland superficially. By questioning indifference and 
 romanticism — whether native or foreign — these 
 women artists seek to reclaim and reinterpret ancient 
 symbol and myth, maintaining that each has meaning 
 in contemporary Irish society. 
 
 Notes 
 
 1 For a comprehensive history of Ulster see Bardon 1993. 
 
 2 Lee 1989. 
 
 3 See Monagan 1994. 
 
 4 John Hinde produced postcards that idealized the Irish 
 countryside and Irish cities in the 1960s and '70s. 
 
 5 See the essay by Adele Dalsimer and Vera Kreilkamp in 
 this catalogue. 
 
 6 Otd. in Monagan 1994. 
 
 7 Ibid. 
 
 8 Kelly 1993. 
 
 9 See Pamela Berger's essay in this catalogue for further 
 discussion of representations of the Celtichead and 
 the Tain. 
 
 10 Richter 1988. 
 
 11 Otd. in Monagan 1994. 
 
 12 Ibid. 
 
 Abbreviations 
 Bardon 1993 
 
 Bardon, Jonathan. A History of Ulster. Belfast, 1993. 
 
 Kelly 1993 
 
 Kelly, Eamon. Early Celtic Art in Ireland. Dublin, 1993. 
 
 Lee 1989 
 
 Lee, Joseph. Ireland 79 12-7985 Politics and Society. Cambridge, 
 1989 
 
 Monagan 1994 
 
 Land Marks: Exhibition of Prints By Ceraldine O'Reilly. Monogan, 
 1994. 
 
 Richter 1988 
 
 Richter Michael. Medieval Ireland, The Enduring Tradition. 
 
 New York, 198,8. 
 
 SAVAGE 
 
Gwen O’Dowd 
 1996 
 
 mixed media on canvas/board 
 60 x 42 in. 
 
 Private Collection, Ireland 
 
PT.ATF. IT (nQ.4) 
 
 Mary Lohan 
 Donegal Bay ’97 
 1997 
 
 oil on board 
 55 x 20 in. 
 
 Courtesy of Mr. John Taylor, Taylor Galleries, 
 Dublin 
 
 82 
 
S3 
 
Deirdre O’Connell 
 1996 
 
 oil bar on paper 
 40 x 64 in. 
 
 Collection of the Artist, New York 
 
 85 
 
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 Geraldine O'Reilly 
 
 1988 
 
 acrylic, gouache, watercolor, collage, stitching 
 on paper 
 20 x 19 in. 
 
 Collection of the Artist, Dublin 
 
Eithne Jordan 
 
 1988 
 
 oil on canvas 
 59x59 in. 
 
 Courtesy of Rubicon Gallery, Dublin 
 
PLATE VI (NO. 17) 
 
 Rita Duffy 
 
 Journey 
 
 1994 
 
 oil on wax paper 
 46 x 48 in. 
 
 Collection of the Artist, Belfast 
 
 PLATE VII (NO. 20) 
 
 Rita Duffy 
 
 Scullery 
 
 1995 
 
 oil on wax paper 
 46 x 48 in. 
 
 Collection of the Artist, Belfast 
 
 88 
 
8g 
 
PLATE IX(nQ.3Q) _J 
 
 Kathy Prendergast 
 Body Map Series 
 South-West Region 
 1983 
 
 watercolor and ink on paper 
 30 x 22 in. 
 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of Modem Art, 
 Dublin, Vincent and Noeleen Ferguson Donation 
 
 PLATE VIII (NO. 28) 
 
 Kathy Prendergast 
 Body Map Series 
 
 To Control a Landscape — Irrigation 
 1983 
 
 watercolor and ink on paper 
 14 x 24 in. 
 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, 
 Dublin, Vincent and Noeleen Ferguson Donation 
 
 90 
 
91 
 
PLATE XI (NO. 34 X 
 Alice Maher 
 Bee Dress 
 1994 
 
 honey bees and cotton wire 
 6 x 4 x 4 in. 
 
 Collection of the Arts Coucil of Northern 
 Ireland, Belfast 
 
 92 
 
PLATE XII (NO. 35) 
 
 Mary FitzGerald 
 
 Deluge 
 
 1996 
 
 oil, on steel with velvet, glass and steel bolts 
 49 x 50 in. 
 
 Courtesy of Green on Red Gallery, Dublin 
 
 93 
 
PLATE XIII (N O. 39) 
 
 Eilis O’Connell 
 To Swell the Gourd 
 1996 
 
 rusted steel, gourd, birch wood 
 
 (i) 12 x 24 x 3 in. 
 
 (ii) 5 x 5 x 7 in. 
 
 Courtesy of Green on Red Gallery, Dublin 
 

 
 95 
 
Eilis O’Connell 
 1996 
 
 cast lead crystal 
 12 x 12 x 6 in 
 
 Courtesy of Green on Red Gallery, Dublin 
 
 Finola Jones 
 
 Broadway Windows Installation, 1996-97 
 Wall-attached figurines 
 Dimensions variable 
 Collection of the Artist, Dublin 
 Courtesy of Green on Red Gallery, Dublin 
 
Pauline Cummins and Louise Walsh 
 
 installation: video projection, light boxes and 
 sound 
 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of Modern ATt, 
 Dublin 
 
 Pauline Cummins and Louise Walsh 
 
 Cibachrome print 
 Collection of the Artists, Dublin 
 
 98 
 
NO-1 
 
 Gwen O’Dowd 
 Uaimh Series 
 1996 
 
 mixed media on canvas/board 
 42 x 60 in. 
 
 Private Collection, Ireland 
 Courtesy of Kerlin Gallery, Dublin 
 
 101 
 

 NO. 5 
 
 Mary Lohan 
 Sliabh League ’97 
 1997 
 
 oil on board 
 55 x 22 in. 
 
 Courtesy of Mr. John Taylor, Taylor Galleries, Dublin 
 
 102 
 
NO. 6 
 
 Deirdre O’Connell 
 Point of Observation 
 1995 
 
 plaster, rust oxide, stone 
 3x4x8ft. 
 
 Collection of the Artist, New York 
 
 103 
 
NO - 8 
 
 Geraldine O’Reilly 
 Land Marks Series 
 Strongholds 
 1994 
 
 sugar lift and aquatint etching 
 on Fabriano paper 
 39 x 27 1/2 in. 
 
 Collection of the Artist, Dublin 
 
 NO- 9 
 
 Geraldine O’Reilly 
 Emigrant Letter Series 
 Shanty and Lace 
 1988 
 
 acrylic, lace, collage on paper 
 3 x 2 ft. 
 
 Collection of Patricia Murphy, Dublin 
 
 104 
 
NO- 10 
 
 Geraldine O’Reilly 
 Emigrant Letter Series 
 Emigrant’s Bag 
 1988 
 
 collage, gouache and acrylic on paper 
 27 x 17 in. 
 
 Collection of Maire and Maurice Foley, Dublin 
 
 105 
 

 NO. 11 
 
 Geraldine O’Reilly 
 
 Emigrant Letter Series 
 
 Emigrant’s Letter and Envelope Fragment 
 
 1988 
 
 watercolor, gouache and acrylic on paper 
 20 x 19 in. 
 
 Collection of Justina and Peter Farrell, Dublin 
 
 NO. 13 
 
 Geraldine O’Reilly 
 Emigrant Letter Series 
 Emigrant’s Passport 
 1988 
 
 watercolor and gouache on paper 
 23 x 13 in. 
 
 Collection of the Artist, Dublin 
 
 Photograph op beare. 
 
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 106 
 
NO. 19 
 Rita Duffy 
 Dancer 
 1995 
 
 oil on wax paper 
 46 x 48 in. 
 
 Collection of the Artist, Belfast 
 

 NO. 21 
 
 Kathy Prendergast 
 Body Map Series 
 Vertical Section 
 1983 
 
 watercolor and ink on paper 
 30 x 12 in. 
 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, 
 Dublin, Vincent and Noeleen Ferguson Donation 
 
 108 
 
NO. 22 
 
 Kathy Prendergast 
 
 Body Map Series 
 
 Enclosed Worlds in Open Space 
 
 1983 
 
 watercolor and ink on paper 
 30 x 22 in. 
 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, 
 Dublin, Vincent and Noeleen Ferguson Donation 
 
 no. 23 
 
 Kathy Prendergast 
 Body Map Series 
 Vertical Section 
 1983 
 
 watercolor and ink on paper 
 30 x 12 in. 
 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of Modem Art, 
 Dublin, Vincent and Noeleen Ferguson Donation 
 
 Vl-RTJCAt snrTloi; 
 
 109 
 
m o. 27 
 
 Kathy Prendergast 
 
 Body Map Series 
 
 To Control a Landscape — Tunnel 
 
 1983 
 
 watercolor and ink on paper 
 14 x 24 in. 
 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, 
 Dublin, Vincent and Noeleen Ferguson Donation 
 
 no 
 

 no. 29 
 
 Kathy Prendergast 
 
 Body Map Series 
 
 To Control a Landscape — Oasis 
 
 1983 
 
 watercolor and ink on paper 
 14 x 24 in. 
 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, 
 Dublin, Vincent and Noeleen Ferguson Donation 
 
 
 m 
 
no. 33 
 
 Alice Maher 
 Thorn House 
 1995 
 
 wood, rose thorns and glass 
 6 x 4 x 4 in 
 
 Dieter and Birgit Broska Collection, Ireland 
 
 112 
 
NO. 36 
 
 Mary FitzGerald 
 Red Sea 
 1994 
 
 oil on canvas with glass and graphite powder 
 33 x 67 in. 
 
 Collection of David Murray, Ireland 
 
no. 37 
 
 Mary FitzGerald 
 
 Spine 
 
 1996 
 
 velvet under glass with steel bolts and fish 
 
 hooks 
 
 72 x 24 in 
 
 Courtesy of Green on Red Gallery, Dublin 
 
 no. 38 
 
 Mary FitzGerald 
 
 Heart 
 
 1996 
 
 velvet under glass with 
 fish hooks, steel scalpel blades and 
 acupuncture needles 
 72 x 24 in. 
 
 Courtesy of Green on Red Gallery, Dublin 
 
 114 
 
no. 40 
 Eilis O’Connell 
 Enmeshed 
 1994 
 
 welded brass and woven brass wire 
 16 x 8 x 6 in. 
 
 Courtesy of Green on Red Gallery, Dublin 
 
 115 
 
no 43 
 
 Eilis O’Connell 
 
 Earthed 
 
 1994 
 
 patinated, painted and rusted steel 
 
 (1) 22-1/2 x 10-1/2 x 2-3/4 in. 
 
 (2) 43 x n x 3 in. 
 
 (3) 22-3/4 x 7-3/4 x 2 ‘ 1/2 ' n - 
 Private Collection, Ireland 
 
 Courtesy of Green on Red Gallery, Dublin 
 
 116 
 
no. 44 
 
 Eilis O’Connell 
 Under the Precipice 
 1996 
 
 rusted steel 
 24 x 12 x 4 in. 
 
 Courtesy of Green on Red Gallery, Dublin 
 
 
 
 117 
 
ALSTON CONLEY AND MARY ARMSTRONG 
 
 Interviews 
 
 An Interview with Pauline Cummins 
 and Louise Walsh 
 
 Sounding the Depths 
 (detail), no. 46 
 
 MA: Sounding the Depths (no. 46, pi. XVI) is 
 provocative. I feel strongly that it presents us with the 
 opportunity to educate in a spirit of open discourse. 
 The opening question of those who are seeking to 
 comprehend a challenging work of art is, "what is this 
 supposed to mean?" What would you answer? 
 
 PC/LW: Sounding the Depths charts a journey from a 
 position of tightness and unease to a place of 
 self-discovery and power. That simplified reading can 
 contain several layers of meaning, dependent on each 
 individual’s life experience. First, the video which 
 identifies anxiety and the shocking image of the body 
 opening. Then the second room where the still images 
 of the completed open people exist with the sound of 
 laughter. The work is meant to be experienced and felt. 
 Our intention is that the narrative of the work would 
 invoke a parallel experience within the viewer. 
 
 AC: Louise, you are quoted in the Irish Museum of 
 Modern Art (IMMA) catalogue as suggesting that you 
 are "abandoning defensive self-repression” through 
 making this piece by “loosing the tongue, baring the 
 teeth, stretching the lips, making sounds, beginning 
 to talk...giving voice to the body.” 1 Your quote describes 
 the imagery of Sounding the Depths. Is it a visualiza- 
 tion of your underlying feminism? 
 
 LW: Not really. While I feel that Sounding the Depths 
 is a very female work, and my work has always been 
 informed by my feminism. It’s more that the quote 
 is about "abandoning self-repression and “loosing 
 the tongue” about a strategy for creativity, for living, 
 for moving forward. The female body in Sounding 
 the Depths is a representation of humanity, not just 
 femaleness but definitely made by woman artists. 
 Therefore the angle/point of view is gendered as 
 feminine. We have always seen that work as 
 mainstream art practices. 
 
 MA: In your piece, you move the mouth, the locus of 
 language, from the head to the center of the body. 
 
 In what way do you intend this as a visual metaphor 
 for the integration of mind and body? Or is it 
 disintegration? 
 
 PC/LW: Sounding the Depths does not operate through 
 a verbal language. The mouth is used as an expressive 
 channel but not particularly as the locus of language. 
 It is viewed as an organ that can be clamped shut; 
 self-protective but cutting off communication. In this 
 work the mind, body and soul are all integrated. 
 
 AC: Pauline, the body/mouth image is extremely 
 unusual, perhaps surreal. You said that, “they can be 
 read as sexual images — but even more they are 
 really inner images.” Can you elaborate on what you 
 mean by inner images? 
 
 PC: We used the mouths as a visual connection 
 between the exterior and the interior. We put it onto 
 the belly to enable the body to “speak,” and to be 
 perceived to be open. It is a view of the body that is 
 rarely seen, but we feel things in our bodies that 
 cannot be easily expressed visually. These experiences 
 of an inner life are where the work stems from, hence 
 the term “inner images." 
 
 118 
 
MA: As the woman gazes down into herself, is the 
 idea of "the male gaze” confronted here with a 
 sense of freedom? What replaces it? 
 
 PC/LW: As the woman gazes down into herself there 
 is no gaze that concerns her except for her own. The 
 "male gaze” t hat you speak of grazes on the surface 
 of the body. This work is concerned with a depth that 
 cannot be possessed by passing consumption. 
 
 AC: You also said about the piece, this "vulnerable 
 mouth/hole in our body” not only gives “a voice to the 
 body” but enables women "to shout, to roar with 
 laughter, grief and joy, and finally to be whole, healed 
 and open.” 2 Do you see the artist as a shaman who 
 heals society through their art? 
 
 PC/ LW: No. I don’t see artists as shamans. I see artists 
 as practitioners engaged in a particularly wide arena 
 of cultural and visual activity. Often artists take on 
 re-presenting and re-interpreting situations for the 
 viewer, and themselves. In Sounding the Depths, we 
 addressed a particular theme; we used the body, 
 representation of the visceral body, to map a process. 
 In this work we wanted people to identify through 
 their own bodies with this experience. 
 
 MA: In what ways do you see this particular work 
 exploring the connections between the landscape of 
 the woman’s body and the landscape contained in 
 the island of Ireland? 
 
 PC/LW: This work does not connect literally with the 
 landscape of Ireland. 
 
 AC: Pauline, you once paraphrased Virginia Woolf by 
 saying “my body is my country." 3 Is this an outgrowth 
 of your feminism, or of Ireland's literary projection of 
 the nation onto women, as in "Mother Ireland"? 
 
 PC: I first paraphrased Virginia Woolf referencing "my 
 body is my country” during an abortion referendum 
 held in Ireland in 1983 . 1 strongly feel that everyone’s 
 body is their own territory and that interference from 
 church or state shouldn’t be tolerated. There was a 
 climate of repression through legislation in Ireland 
 throughout the ’80s. Sounding the Depths is in part a 
 response to that attempted repression. It felt as if our 
 bodies were being colonized, hence the wish to 
 declare independence. It also refers to an exploration 
 of the body as a site for constant new discoveries. 
 
 Notes 
 
 1 Roth 1992, p. 6 
 
 2 Ibid. 
 
 3 Ibid. 
 
 An Interview with Rita Duffy 
 
 RD: I have used wax paper for these images. This wax 
 paper is a by-product of a light-engineering industry. 
 
 I started to draw on it with heavy crayon and then 
 I put washes of oil paint on it. The surface tensions 
 possible on this type of paper are terrific and facilitate 
 the dreamlike quality of the visual landscapes. 
 
 In Journey, [no. 17, pi. VI], my concerns are personal. 
 They deal with my relationship with my father. He was 
 always an aged parent. He’s 84 now, and has always 
 filled my imagination with memories of his past, 
 which are part of Belfast’s past. His own father died 
 fighting for the British Empire in The Somme. This was 
 a huge contradiction for my father, a Catholic from 
 the Nationalist area of Belfast, called The Falls Road. 
 
 When he married my mother, also a Catholic, from the 
 South of Ireland, they went to live in Stranmillis, an 
 aspiring Protestant working class area, and very much 
 outside his cultural and political territory. His attitude 
 has always been to keep your head down and work 
 hard, and you'll get on, despite of being Catholic. Partly, 
 because of his attitude we [his children: three girls and 
 one boy] all worked hard to get good educations, and 
 we now realize that my father always tried to protect 
 us from the worst excesses of living in a divided 
 society. He used to draw pictures for us when we were 
 children, of gypsies and policemen. His main fear was 
 displacement, and there was no way for him to fight 
 the system, so he had to be careful. 
 
 His national identity and religion blurred somewhere 
 — it was almost like his identity was his religion. I’m 
 very interested in the whole idea of post-colonial 
 experience, in the idea of a kind of cross-cultural sense 
 of fractured identity. I was twelve years old before 
 I realized the significance of Belfast on the world 
 political stage. 
 
 MA: So what is happening with you in Journeyt 
 
 RD: I am in a car with my father. He is sitting and I am 
 standing: [I am] in control somehow. The piece is about 
 
 CONLEY / 
 ARMSTRONG 
 
 119 
 
learning to manipulate as well and there’s a playful 
 element as well. It’s part of a series really. For example, 
 I’d like to show you my most recent work Awakening 
 Triptych [fig. 18]. It deals with my relationship with 
 my mother. These [gesturing to the drawings] deal 
 with puberty and are quite intense in terms of that 
 particular period in my life. 
 
 MA: What is the significance of the eels? 
 
 RD: The eels started to come into these drawings 
 because of the “journeying” motif. Each year, these 
 eels traverse the oceans of the world from the 
 Sargasso Sea to the River Bann in Northern Ireland 
 in order to spawn. It’s like a kind of ritual, invested 
 with a sexual mysticism. Ireland is the only place in 
 the world where the eels travel along this dark water. 
 Perhaps it’s a kind of metaphor for me; a way of 
 visually representing how the Irish deal with issues 
 of sexuality; often in dark furtive ways. You can see 
 how all of this is bound up in my own confusion 
 about issues of Catholicism and identity. 
 
 AC: They’re very dark, powerful drawings. 
 
 RD: This figure here is Thomas Aquinas [fig. 18]. It’s 
 about the Irish fear of Intellectualism, and of the way 
 we as children were held in thrall to these dreamlike 
 figures, and scared into religious and theological 
 obedience by our teachers, nuns, and priests. 
 
 AC: Well, Boston College is a Jesuit college. 
 
 RD: [laughter] Good, that should prove interesting! 
 
 As a figurative artist, I used to work a lot from 
 photographic representations of images. But you end 
 up going back to the studio and just regurgitating 
 images that are already extant. I now use my 
 notebooks in a very intense way; I usually have a very 
 fleeting moment to catch something. This happened 
 with The Shoe Piece for my current show, and I hope 
 the shoes have that kind of ephemeral quality. I 
 usually have a very strong sense of how these images 
 should be drawn, and how they should evolve. I like to 
 try to actively encourage my subconscious. 
 
 AC: You are not doing preliminary drawing? You are 
 just drawing? 
 
 RD: I draw away for a day and I am absolutely 
 exhausted, and next day go in and think that’s crap 
 and put it away, or maybe turn it upside down and 
 rework it. That's how the most recent show got its title 
 
 I don’t really like a piece of work at the beginning, but 
 often, when I start fiddling around with them, they 
 start to work and it’s like one big long epic. 
 
 AC: It’s really an epic of childhood. 
 
 RD: People have looked at Scullery [no. 20, pi. VII] and 
 read it as a sort of abortion thing because of the 
 incinerator. In Scullery, I am reimaging my mother's 
 kitchen, which had tongs hanging on the wall. This 
 image connected with the essential brutality of 
 forceps delivery and the idea of an innocent child 
 being born into a torturous world. The piece is also 
 about my mother’s twin-tub washing machine. To 
 have a twin-tub washing machine in the late fifties 
 and early sixties was incredible in terms of the 
 drudgery it saved [my mother] on a daily basis. This 
 was the era of hand-washing after all. It was a 
 real liberation for her. William Orpen's painting, The 
 Washer-Woman, always reminds me of my mother. 
 Strangely, it has become confused in my mind with a 
 romantic or idealized image of a woman working. 
 
 I remember coming home from school, the place 
 smelling of soap, and my mother moving the twin-tub 
 out — everything was steaming and damp. In a 
 strange way, all the confused love and often helpless- 
 ness I felt towards my mother seems to coalesce in 
 this domestic image. 
 
 AC: What is going on in this painting with the girl and 
 the flying figurines? 
 
 RD: Dancer, [no. 19] essentially, is about me learning to 
 dance the Irish reels and so forth. Obviously the whole 
 idea of Irish Dancing has changed since Riverdance, 
 but when I made this image I was thinking of the way 
 I learned as a child; how everything was invested in 
 religious significance and nationalism; how learning 
 
 F IG. 18 
 
 Rita Duffy 
 
 Awakening (triptych) 
 
 1996 
 
 charcoal on paper 
 Courtesy of the Artist, Belfast 
 
to do Irish dancing was a way of expressing 
 "Irishness,” or uniqueness, or distinction from Britain. 
 I imagined myself frenziedly dancing, ringed round 
 by helicoptered nuns. It says everything about the 
 chaos of life of a young Catholic girl or boy; it’s like 
 outside things are imposed in on you, a correct way of 
 being, that you e ither a dh ere to or are estranged 
 from. It's bound up with the idea of the Gaelicization 
 of Ireland — de Valera's Ireland — that I can’t relate 
 to at all. 
 
 AC: This is a very unusual image with the red baby in 
 a colander? 
 
 Well, Becoming [no. 18] is very difficult to talk about. 
 My mother had this colander for straining vegetables, 
 and [as a child] I imagined myself as a mother 
 straining my child or something. I used it in a chalice- 
 like way to cradle a baby/doll. Shamrocks are floating 
 ambiguously between my mouth and the doll’s 
 mouth. It is concerned with issues of communication 
 and identity. There seems to be a lot of anger in this 
 painting. I’m not sure about the source of it. 
 
 An Interview with Mary FitzGerald 
 
 ♦ X 
 
 MA: Tell us a little bit about your work and the pieces 
 Deluge [no. 35, pi. XII] and Spine [no. 37]. 
 
 MF: Ten years ago I was badly injured in a car 
 accident. I couldn't move for about a year. A lot of the 
 work has to do with vulnerability and how small the 
 world gets when you can't move. 
 
 I have this compulsion about vast or empty spaces, 
 and the idea of human beings being very vulnerable, 
 very tiny in the vastness of time as well as space. I 
 did a series based on the notion of horizons, and the 
 horizons in the paintings are made by sheet of glass. 
 What I’m trying to get at is that feeling of 
 nothingness. 
 
 In the case of the Deluge piece, when you look into the 
 blue-black all you can see really is your own reflection 
 and the vastness behind, solidity and a sense of 
 openness. This other piece, Spine, which combines the 
 two ideas, while not trying to re-create it in such a 
 way that it’s too pinned down. It’s made from glass, 
 fishhooks and cloth. I try to use objects that have a 
 vague sense of pain and vulnerability without neces- 
 sarily having to write it in great big letters. 
 
 AC: With the materials and human scale of Spine you 
 certainly see the reflection... 
 
 MF: I use the glass to trap things behind. Many of my 
 works are done as installations that are built for a 
 specific room or gallery space. You’re completely 
 surrounded. You get the sense of the large space and 
 then you have to move in order to see the detail. So at 
 that point the viewer interacts with the work, you 
 physically have to move and that’s part of the work. 
 
 AC: Is this diptych part of a series? It appears to have a 
 little flash of light on the piece of glass — it glows. 
 
 MF: Yes, it’s part of a series of painted pieces based on 
 different seas, the Black Sea, Red Sea. We were in 
 Istanbul a couple of years ago and there was a point 
 where you could actually stand on a bridge with one 
 foot in Asia and one foot in Europe and so I made this 
 
 CONLEY / 
 ARMSTRONG 
 
 121 
 
painting with the actual sliver of glass. And the 
 same is true of Red Sea. The great divide between the 
 world religions. 
 
 MA: Do all of the Deluge pieces have a dark velvet 
 panel, each one under glass? 
 
 MF: Yes, it was ceremonial. 
 
 MA: How does the process in the Deluge series work? 
 Do you use oil paint on the steel panels, and do you 
 pour it? 
 
 MF: Just oil paint, and I lay them all flat on the ground. 
 
 MA: And then did you wipe off sometimes and pour 
 again? 
 
 MF: No, They're literally instant, they are done the 
 way they are. I didn’t want them to be as if "painted.” 
 
 MA: That’s part of the expansiveness you’re talking 
 about. 
 
 MF: I started basically from a sculpture background. I 
 don’t actually view these as pictorial works at all, I’ve 
 never worked in that tradition. The works that I make 
 are spatial. In a way they’re like flat sculptures rather 
 than like paintings as such. The work I do will always 
 go right out to the edge. 
 
 A lot of pieces are built up as well. Small little areas 
 that aren't necessary, are slightly off focus. I made a 
 series of these little island drawings which are made 
 of fishhooks. Some of the larger work in that series 
 concentrates on that tiny little thing about refuge and 
 that great big expanse. You can view that as benign 
 or malign, depending on the way you’re feeling at 
 the time. 
 
 MA: This reminds me to ask you about the time you 
 spent in Japan and the Asian influence on your work, 
 and the particular relationship they have to space? 
 
 MF: Japan was very influential. I lived there for two 
 years, and I went to college in Japan. I actually 
 couldn’t see the influence at all myself. I do think that 
 the influence came more from things like architecture 
 and gardens rather than painting. I learned how to 
 make paper and I haven't made it since because you 
 need a whole village for the process, but I wanted to 
 understand about the quality of the materials. 
 
 I think that the influence really came from this notion 
 of expansion of space. Again, because it’s at such a 
 premium in Japan. It’s a rare commodity. The way 
 architectural space is organized is based on the tatami 
 mats and everything expands from there. No two 
 
 houses look the same, but they’re all built with 
 exactly the same measurements. I thought that was 
 quite an interesting principle on which to build work. 
 That you create structure to begin with and then you 
 actually operate within that space. It’s the way that 
 I've worked since then. Everything I did was built on 
 grids . Rut you’re still l eft with the notion that no 
 piece is enclosed, they always work outwards. Scale is 
 actually funny, it doesn’t have to be big to have that 
 kind of expansiveness. That would be the oriental 
 influence. I have this affinity with the place that does 
 something to my heart. 
 
 AC: How do you see that in terms of being Irish? 
 
 I mean, here you are with this eastern aesthetic, and 
 your roots are in Ireland, so you have this unusual mix. 
 
 MF: Remember I was saying to you about the two 
 quite strong traditions in the contemporary Irish art 
 of this century? One comes from this nation-state 
 approach in which the founders of the state wanted 
 to create images of Ireland that were of pure, Catholic 
 and in some cases celebrating rulers... 
 
 SC: The social realist images of farmers, fishermen... 
 
 MF: Yes. And then there was a backlash against that 
 by people like Evie Hone and Manie Jellett who 
 created a type of art they effectively brought from 
 France. They created the beginnings of — I suppose 
 you would call it — a Modernist tradition. I have 
 always come from that perspective rather than the 
 pictorial tradition in sculpture. I wouldn’t consider 
 what I do now as Modernism, but it does come from 
 the roots of those kinds of structures. And I suppose 
 you’re saying that eastern influence confounded 
 that. But equally, one was at such a remove, one could 
 see much more clearly where one comes from, 
 which is such a benefit. 
 
 122 
 
An Interview with Mary Lohan 
 
 Donegal Bay ’97 
 (no. 4 detail) 
 
 evidence is there, the ruined homesteads, the lazy 
 beds where they grew potatoes, even in the most 
 remote, the bleakest places. It's inescapable, and it 
 may not provide an obvious take on the paintings but 
 it is relevant to the emotional response that the 
 landscape draws from you. 
 
 MA: Do you have a specific site in mind with these 
 paintings? 
 
 ML: Yes, specific places in County Donegal. I find it an 
 extraordinarily beautiful place. I have a sister living 
 the south of the county and I've spent a lot of time 
 living in that area. I’ve also stayed on Tory Island off 
 the northern coast. 
 
 AC: Is Donegal at all like County Mayo? 
 
 ML: Well, yes, there are broad similarities, but there 
 are also differences. Mayo has a hugeness, a sweep 
 that takes your breath away. There are places like that 
 in Donegal, but because of the nature of the 
 topography, many of the particular places that I like 
 feel much closer, more intimate. Each valley, each 
 inlet opens up its own little world. 
 
 MA: But this is exactly what interests me about your 
 painting. Because of the love of abstraction they seem 
 both intimate, as if you’re looking down at a tide pool, 
 and also they could imply great distances because 
 they have so much atmosphere. They’re both very 
 intimate and very far. 
 
 ML: I start from the realization that it’s impossible 
 to paint a landscape. You just can’t do it, because you 
 experience a place on so many levels and in such a 
 complex way. So you have to paint what you see, 
 which isn’t the same thing. And you hope that some- 
 thing of the feeling of the place will come across. 
 
 AC: Had you gone to Mayo before you went to the 
 Ballinglen Arts Foundation? 
 
 ML: No. I’ve been back two or three times since. Mayo 
 is spectacular. 
 
 AAA: When you walk the land like that, when you’re 
 there, you’re not actually painting a lot of the time, 
 you’re absorbing? 
 
 ML: That’s right. It takes time. You have to establish a 
 connection with the landscape. When you stand 
 anywhere in Mayo, Donegal, Sligo you become aware 
 that it was hugely populated 150 years ago. All the 
 
 AAA: What is the relationship between what you are 
 looking at and how you paint it? 
 
 ML: I prefer to be there, on the spot. I paint on wood, 
 because it can take quite a bit of punishment. I lay the 
 panels out flat. I use a lot of paint, I love paint — 
 perhaps making a painting is an excuse to use paint. I 
 like that feeling of trying to get the landscape, you 
 wrestle with it, and the physicality of the paint seems 
 somehow to be a direct connection with the 
 landscape for me. 
 
 AC: Do you find yourself connected to a particular 
 painting tradition? 
 
 ML: Yes, just recently I’ve begun to call myself an 
 Irish painter. 
 
 AC: Not ten years ago? 
 
 ML: I thought I wanted to be an American abstract 
 expressionist. I can still see what appealed to me in 
 the work of Gorky or Rothko, I still like them and see 
 the connection. But I think that aspiration had a lot 
 to do with the fact that we don’t have a strong visual 
 tradition in Ireland. There is a very strong literary 
 and oral tradition but visually a sense of identity is a 
 much more recent thing. I’m beginning to see 
 painters that I do connect with, so that I can look back 
 and see myself in relation to someone like Nano Reid 
 or Evie Hone. 
 
 AC: How did you get from that early interest to what 
 you're doing recently? 
 
 ML: With huge difficulty. I think it’s an advantage to 
 have reached the stage of being a woman with kids. 
 With age and maturity you realize much more clearly 
 that this is what you love doing, and that makes it 
 easier. 
 
 AC: Do you like any of the Europeans, the Cobra school 
 or others? 
 
 ML: Not so much the Cobra painters or the European 
 abstract expressionists. But I absolutely adore 
 Bonnard and Vuillard. The French have so many 
 fantastic painters. Yet when I was in France earlier 
 this year I looked at a lot of painting and the 
 overwhelming feeling that I got from contemporary 
 French art was that it's actually burdened with this 
 
 CONLEY / 
 ARM STRONG 
 
 123 
 
An Interview with Eilis O’Connell 
 
 weight of tradition. It makes things much more 
 difficult for young artists. And I thought it’s not such 
 a bad thing that in many respects we don’t have that 
 in Ireland. 
 
 MA: In some ways, this painting Loughras Mor is 
 more resolutely abstract. 
 
 ML: I don’t mind how abstract the painting becomes 
 so long as that sense is there for me of knowing those 
 rocks, those houses. As long as I know, I feel okay. That 
 sense of place is still very important. 
 
 AC: Most of the paintings are where the land meets 
 the sea... 
 
 ML: I find the sea hard to get away from. There has to 
 be water somewhere. 
 
 AC: The water is your subject, where the water meets 
 the land and the sky as — a source of light? 
 
 ML: I can see why some people might think that my 
 paintings are muddy, that they have no color, because 
 I go for those days when land and water and sky tend 
 to merge. The light spills from one to the other. That’s 
 really what I’m trying to get all the time, the sense 
 that they're all the one. Sometimes when you're 
 painting the sky, you’re painting the water. I'm wary 
 of skies that are too like skies. When it’s bright and 
 sunny, I can't see. 
 
 AC: How do you know when you’re done? 
 
 ML: Something tells you that you should leave it 
 alone. But it’s difficult because I paint wet on wet, so 
 I have a limited amount of time. Often I’ll paint with 
 a lot of energy for hours until it’s just too dry to go on. 
 It gets to the stage where it will physically disinte- 
 grate into balls of paint. It would be nice if someone 
 could find a way of keeping the paint at just the right 
 consistency, but I don’t think anyone has yet. 
 
 AC: So it’s a keep it or reject it decision? 
 
 ML: It is. There are quite a few rejections. Sometimes 
 I’m pleasantly surprised when I come into the studio 
 in the morning, sometimes I’m shocked. You can trick 
 yourself into thinking the painting’s okay when it’s 
 nothing of the sort. 
 
 To SwpII the Gourd 
 (no. 39, detail) 
 
 AC: Ireland has a rich archaeology from its Celtic past, 
 including standing stones and megaliths like New 
 Grange. Did these affect your work, especially your 
 outdoor public sculpture? 
 
 EOC: They made me aware that a sculptural experience 
 isn't just focused on the object — the space in which 
 we perceive it is very powerful, too. Experience of these 
 things made me realize that some sculpture should be 
 outside, absorbing the weather and the changing 
 light conditions. They made me aware of the power of 
 place — how place traps people, how their lives become 
 molded by it. Landscapes have meanings which 
 have power over thinking and perception, but it’s very 
 subtle. Place outlives us all and we can only leave 
 traces of our existence. 
 
 AC: You work in many materials, from industrial 
 welded steel to cast resin, but your sculptures 
 emphasize organic and biomorphic forms. Is there a 
 relationship to nature expressed through your 
 formal language? 
 
 EOC: My work doesn’t always emphasize organic 
 forms, although that is often a starting point or refer- 
 ence for me. My relationship to nature has changed 
 totally since I moved to London. I find myself trying to 
 compensate for the absence of nature in my life. 
 
 MA: Your work often sets up a relationship between 
 man-made, tooled or machined forms and those more 
 purely nature-derived or organic. Is this a response to 
 the conflicts and contradictions experienced in 
 growing up in the rural agrarian culture of Ireland and 
 then residing in an urban, industrialized one? 
 
 EOC: Yes, there is a conflict there. I first noticed it when 
 I lived in New York — there was this complete absence 
 of nature, which you have to get used to. Now, in 
 London, I’m used to it, my work is more focused on the 
 body. It’s more inward-looking and more private. I try 
 to balance this by working for outdoor spaces. 
 
AAA: Sometimes the organic and the inorganic are 
 paired in an obvious way as in To Swell The Gourd 
 [no. 39, pi. XIII]. Do you prefer to create this tension 
 using found objects such as the gourds? 
 
 EOC: What’s important about that piece is that the 
 gourds have grown. Their hollowness emphasizes the 
 factthat their skin has stretchedJtself into being — you 
 can sense that kind of energy around it. Although [the 
 gourd is] a "found object” I actually had to go hunting 
 around for it. I spent ages looking for gourds with a 
 circular circumference. The tension lies in the fact that 
 they appear fused to the steel structure, which itself is 
 rusting back to its original iron oxide state. 
 
 MA: How do you select the materials for the small 
 sculptures? 
 
 EOC: Well, first, I collect lots of different kinds of 
 materials. Wherever I go I bring back things and these 
 things lie around my studio for years before they get 
 used. I really need to get a feeling for them. Materials 
 trigger different reactions and memories in me. 
 
 By having them around me I’m allowing my subcon- 
 scious to absorb them. From then on I can follow 
 my instinct. 
 
 AAA: How do the small sculptures differ fundamentally 
 from the large site-specific ones? 
 
 EOC: I make the smaller works myself and they tend to 
 be very personal and more about the body. The larger 
 pieces are commissioned and are very much about 
 the place they’ll exist in. Being commissioned they are 
 very planned works and it can take from two to 
 five years before they actually get built. It's a totally 
 different process from my other work, lots of other 
 people are involved, it’s like being part of a team. That’s 
 very exciting when it works, it’s engaging with the 
 real world. 
 
 AC: Both Cathoid [no. 42, pi. XIV] and Enmeshed [no. 40] 
 have openings in tear drop or pointed elliptical shapes. 
 Is this a reference to the Celtic sheela-na-gigs [fig. 11]? 
 
 EOC: I’ve been using arcs for a long time and it’s impos- 
 sible for me to use an elliptical shape and not think of 
 body references and sheela-na-gigs. Until recently, 
 they were kept from public viewing in the Irish muse- 
 ums, which demonstrates the level of repression the 
 Catholic Church has imposed on the Irish people. We 
 are only now acknowledging that we grew up in a sort 
 of fascist society which tried to make people ashamed 
 of their own culture. However, since there was such a 
 taboo surrounding the sheela-na-gigs, I was a bit 
 disappointed when I finally saw them. I thought they 
 would be more erotic. There’s nothing fertile about 
 
 them. What I do like about them is their abstract qual- 
 ity — the variations in body proportions, for example. 
 There’s one I saw that resembles an African sculpture. 
 It’s from Birr. The figure has her hands on her hips, her 
 breasts are so far apart that they are lodged in the 
 space between her elbow and her hip. Completely out 
 of sync w ith reality. 
 
 AAA: How do the small sculptures relate to the human 
 body: male or female? 
 
 EOC: I’m always very surprised when my work starts to 
 make body references — I don’t set out with that in 
 mind. My subconscious works its way into the process 
 of making. That’s why my work in general tends to 
 be about the female body, because that’s what I know 
 best. Sometimes people mistakenly read phallic 
 references in my work simply because an element is 
 pointed or stands upright. Well, all human beings stand 
 upright. I don’t know what it’s like to be in a man’s 
 body. I know what I know. 
 
 AAA: Several of these pieces strongly suggest an 
 enclosed interior space. Are they, in fact, hollow? 
 
 EOC: Yes, they are, and the chamber inside is a very 
 important aspect of the work. Sometimes the apertures 
 are quite small, so the inside remains dark and 
 unknown. That sort of trapped space gives the work an 
 internal energy which empowers it. A lot of my work 
 has multiple elements and the space between them is 
 as important as the elements themselves. I’m 
 interested in the way the eye creates a rhythm when 
 we look at the different parts of a piece while we 
 physically move around it. 
 
 AAA: The surfaces of many of these small pieces are 
 very sensuous. Do you think of this surface as a skin? 
 How do you arrive at a patina-like surface as In The 
 Roundness of Being [no. 41]? 
 
 EOC: The surface is always very important because it's 
 what the eye sees first. I think of it as a skin, tense and 
 full of energy, with the possibility of expansion. In The 
 Roundness of Being was cast in a clear acrylic resin, 
 because I wanted it to be translucent, like another work 
 of mine, Spoonwomen. This piece had given me a lot 
 of trouble — it didn't work when it was originally cast 
 in bronze. The translucent qualities of In The Roundness 
 of Being, however, killed the form and I realized that 
 light had to bounce off it rather than go through it. 
 
 I abandoned it and later, in desperation, I began spray- 
 painting it. I noticed that the paint was building up a 
 very subtle texture. There are lots of layers on it and 
 to emphasize the surface I polished it with a lead polish. 
 It worked really well, so it’s trial and error all the time. 
 
 CONLEY / 
 ARMSTRONG 
 
 125 
 
An Interview with Gwen O’Dowd AC: But the sexual content is not intended? 
 
 GO: No, not specifically. 
 
 AC: You’ve been to so many different places on the 
 west coast, do you connect differently to places or do 
 they all become fuel for the painter’s fire? 
 
 GO; Yesjt's definitely the wild Atlantic roast that is 
 the inspirational one. And you do accumulate 
 knowledge with each new series of work. 
 
 AC: Do you see yourself connected to any tradition? 
 
 GO: Well, there’s both an Irish and an English "abstract 
 landscape” painting tradition and I could associate 
 with either, the Irish coming from more of a romantic 
 tradition, the English one coming from the abstract 
 expressionists and as a consequence theirs is a larger 
 format. 
 
 Uaimh (no. 2, detail) 
 
 MA: The Uaimh series [pi. 1, nos. 1- 3] is about the 
 stones, the rocks in Mayo? 
 
 GO: Well, actually it’s not. It’s more about the space 
 in between.. .those dark spaces. The outer structure 
 emphasizes the depth of these spaces and also 
 counterbalances the vacuous with its own density. 
 
 AC: Do you paint in response to the place? 
 
 GO: The Uaimh series paintings originate from a 
 place in North Mayo, which you know and recognized 
 when you came in [the studio], so I could have called 
 them the North Mayo Series. But I did want them to 
 be more anonymous than that. Does it matter that 
 it’s North Mayo or not? Their life really begins here in 
 the studio. 
 
 AC: When you were at the Mayo coast you did 
 drawings, studies, watercolors, photos and you would 
 have memories of experience... 
 
 GO: Yes. I made several working trips up there where 
 I did the initial studies. 
 
 AC: When you say "abstract landscape painters,” 
 you’re walking an edge between the two... 
 
 GO: Yes, it’s enjoying the abstract quality of painting 
 without being too specifically literal. 
 
 AC: Do you think that your Irish experience shows up 
 in your work? 
 
 GO: I don’t think these paintings could have been 
 painted anywhere else. It would always be different. 
 Knowing something of the local folklore and history 
 of a place always subconsciously adds to the work. 
 The knowledge that a number of people were chased 
 down one of these blow holes and drowned is one of 
 the tragic facts associated with the place. 
 
 AC: And the larger drawings are also done when you 
 get back? 
 
 GO: Yes, I wouldn’t even attempt to do something 
 resolved outside, it wouldn’t interest me, you know... 
 
 AC: So the other half when you get back is really the 
 personal, emotional response? 
 
 GO: Well, yes, the imagery goes through a lot of 
 changes as you begin to get to know it and know 
 what you want from it. People are reading all sorts of 
 things into this imagery. 
 
 AC: When you say people are reading into this, are 
 they reading things that you intended? 
 
 GO: Not exactly. It could be seen to be full of sexual 
 imagery which in some cases is perhaps blatantly 
 obvious. So people have to make their own 
 commentary and I certainly don’t mind any number 
 of associations. That is why I wanted to disconnect 
 with North Mayo one, because of its limitations. 
 
 AC: For you, is there a recent tradition of Irish 
 painting? Who was the generation ahead? 
 
 GO: Well, of course, you have an older generation of 
 artists who are all actively painting away like Tony 
 O’Malley, Sean McSweeney, Barrie Cooke, Camille 
 Souter, etc.... 
 
 AC: Did the women’s movement, probably when you 
 were in college, have any affect or influence on you? 
 
 GO: It did, more so when I left college because women 
 artists were in demand at art colleges so there was a 
 lot of part-time teaching work available. 
 
 AC: When you were a student were there any women 
 faculty at your college? 
 
 GO: No full-time women faculty at all in the Fine Art 
 department. To this day, I believe there's only one. 
 
MA: Your generation seems to be the first generation 
 to really blossom as a larger group of artists. 
 
 GO: Yes, we were very lucky. We were very well 
 supported, especially during the crucial early years 
 after leaving college. In my mind those are the telling 
 years when you have to enforce your own working 
 discipline . 
 
 AC: When you say you were supported, you were 
 getting grants from the council, or for exhibitions? 
 
 GO: Yes, both and the council helped set up the group 
 studios that are still in existence today. This was a 
 fundamental necessity, having somewhere to go to 
 work everyday. So yes, they gave us great 
 encouragement. 
 
 MA: Your paintings look many-layered. 
 
 GO: Yes, they take a long time, and as you can see 
 there, they’ve dried unevenly so that will have to be 
 done again. The danger is once you start back into a 
 painting all sorts of things can happen. It takes a long 
 time to get the finish I’m happy with. 
 
 AC: So if they take that long, do you work on more 
 than one at a time? 
 
 GO: Yes, three or four sometimes as many as six, you 
 just keep rotating them when you get stuck on one. 
 Move on to another. 
 
 MA: Does the location of the empty spaces and forms 
 happen immediately or do you shift the placement of 
 that around? 
 
 GO: I shift a lot and you can see the remnants of that 
 in some places. ..scored lines like that, which become 
 an integral part of the finished work. A lot of changes 
 go on. You have to make the painting work. 
 
 MA: Well, they become very abstract in terms of how 
 you’re formalizing and looking at them. 
 
 AC: The surface shows the history, the layers of what 
 happened underneath. 
 
 GO: They're destroyed often in the process...it’s a very 
 frustrating way to work. 
 
 MA: What is the biggest frustration of it? 
 
 GO: I would never trust anything on the first attempt 
 — it would have to be re-worked and re-worked 
 before I’d allow it to survive. 
 
 AC: Have you used encaustic, the hot -wax medium, 
 since college? 
 
 GO: No, but I’ve always used more sculptural materi- 
 als. In college it was usually a mixture of china clay 
 
 and polyvinyl, adhesive-like mediums to use as a 
 foundation to work on. 
 
 AC: And are you mixing oil paints or dry pigments 
 with hot wax? 
 
 GO: Both. But mostly oil paint. You get used to 
 particul a r co lors from var i ous bran ds . I used to make 
 my own paint as I really liked the process of using dry 
 pigment, but now, only occasionally, and again for 
 particular colors. 
 
 MA: What is your favorite part of the process? 
 
 GO: When they’re finished! 
 
 MA: Is it that top layer when you have enough layers 
 to "trust" it? 
 
 GO: Well yes, when you’re looking at it for several 
 months and out of the corner of your eye you know 
 it's all right. Every time you look at it, it’s fine.. .then 
 you can go to the pub and congratulate yourself 
 with a pint! 
 
 CONLEY / 
 ARMSTRONG 
 
 127 
 
An Interview with Geraldine O’Reilly 
 
 59 Emigrant Ships 
 
 Lost (detail), no. 12 
 
 AC: Tell me about the Land Marks Series [nos. 8,14, fig. 16]. 
 
 GO: In 1993 , 1 was invited by Monaghan County 
 Museum to do an exhibition for their gallery 
 (Monaghan is a border county). I had been staying on 
 and off in the Monaghan area for years. I decided to 
 look at the border landscape in terms of how it is 
 marked by the two traditions. I looked at what sort of 
 dwellings occupied the landscape, like castles, 
 monuments, empty houses. Castles, nowadays, would 
 be seen as tourist attractions — but once they were 
 strongholds, there to protect and defend. What I was 
 attempting to do was to re-read the landscape in 
 terms of its history. As a child my father would always 
 translate the English place names back through the 
 Irish to arrive at the real history of the landscape. This 
 series of work Land Marks got me interested in how 
 landscape is mapped and the purpose of mapping in 
 the first place. Land Marks led me into a second series 
 of work titled, Entwined Histories. 
 
 AC: So in this show the different strongholds or 
 monuments are...? 
 
 GO: The exhibition Land Marks started with the 
 piece Outhouses [fig. 16]. All over the Irish landscape 
 abandoned houses are used nowadays as sheds. 
 They’re small. In the last century under the penal 
 laws, people were penalized for making improve- 
 ments to their houses — so often the houses had no 
 chimney, the windows tiny. The outhouse is also a 
 symbol for emigration for me. People abandoned 
 their houses, in some cases leaving their belongings 
 behind, to go to a new land. I’ve been to a house in 
 Sligo where the owners emigrated and left all the 
 furniture behind — the sheets were still on the bed, 
 cutlery left on the table. Nobody had interfered with 
 the house or its contents. The house was as it was 
 left some forty years before. I repeated the image, like 
 a stamp, to get the viewer beyond the obvious 
 response to seeing the outhouse. I was trying to get 
 under the surface of what is a very familiar image in 
 the Irish landscape. Some of the images in the Land 
 Marks series were printed up in black and yellow — 
 
 colors that denote danger or sound a visual warning 
 in border road signs. 
 
 AC: The imagery then refers to both the landscape 
 and the landscape’s history. I'm getting a sense that 
 as foreigners we look at the landscape and see only 
 
 little bit of the history and a lot of the scenery 
 
 MA: Yes, we’re seeing romantic nature... 
 
 GO: Yes. If you build a fortress, you’re automatically 
 adopting a defensive position. It's extremely difficult 
 to step out of that position. The images from the 
 Entwined Histories series reflected my observation of 
 what was happening in the peace talks. In this series 
 the outhouse appears again and this time symbolizes 
 for me the Ireland I know and relate to. I trace it back 
 to the time after the great famine of the 1840s. I refer 
 in my work not to the great Celtic past as that link 
 was broken with colonization. 
 
 As an artist I’ve had to create an identity. In my work 
 I’ve tried to read the landscape not in terms of seeing 
 it in a romantic haze but through its history of 
 derelict buildings, monuments, strongholds. 
 
 AC: How did the Emigrant Letter Series [nos. 9-12, 
 pi. IV, no. 13] from the late ’80s start? 
 
 GO: I have a batch of emigrant letters which I 
 collected when I was in America. They’re very moving. 
 I used them for an exhibition entitled Journal in 
 1988. At the exhibition, people were visibly moved — 
 there aren’t many people in Ireland who haven’t 
 been touched by the pain of emigration. People 
 referred to letters they had from family abroad and 
 said that they had never considered these letters as 
 anything important in terms of the social history of 
 the country. The exhibition seemed to stir something 
 unconscious in the viewers. At the time I was too 
 close to the work, so I was taken by surprise by the 
 reaction of the public. People sent me material. 
 
 AC: People sent you letters? 
 
 GO: Well, yes. People still remember this series of 
 work. People would stop me and say things like, “I had 
 an uncle in America, but we never saw him again 
 after he left but we have his letters..." 
 
 Hummingbird Productions here did a television series 
 called Bringing It All Back Home, an overview of how 
 emigration to America affected Irish music. To 
 coincide with the television series, an evening of 
 emigrant songs and letters was held at the Harcourt 
 Hotel in Dublin. I donated the letters I’d collected 
 
which were read between the songs. The letters 
 became a symbol for the emigrants’ experience after 
 the famine as they had arrived to America carrying 
 nothing but the clothes on their backs. When 1 was in 
 New York researching for the show Journal, I found 
 no artifacts belonging to the Irish who had emigrated 
 
 the letters. 
 
 I found the original passport for Emigrant’s Passport 
 [no. 13] at a warehouse in Manhattan owned by the 
 Ellis Island Museum. 
 
 AC: This was when you were in the United States on 
 your Fulbright? 
 
 GO: Yes. 59 Emigrant Ships Lost [no. 12, pi. IV] was used 
 as the cover illustration for the re-issue of a book 
 entitled The Great Famine originally published on the 
 one-hundredth anniversary for famine. The piece is 
 inspired by a ship's log for 1849, it’s got a map of 
 Ireland, and a piece of text taken from the Liverpool 
 Gazette of the 1850s where the journalist is describing 
 the number of ships sinking in Liverpool with 
 emigrants aboard. There is stitching used in the piece. 
 In a lot of the pieces I used skills like stitching which 
 referred to the fact that this is one activity Irish 
 women would have done in American households 
 when they came over. A surprising number of Irish 
 women went into domestic labor when the arrived 
 in America. 
 
 I first heard the expression ‘‘shanty and lace” from 
 Irish American historians. It referred to the Irish who 
 lived in shacks and the lace curtain referred to the 
 Irish who’d come up in the world. Apparently this 
 group had a fondness for lace curtains. 
 
 AC: To go back to artistic heritage and roots, who 
 do you see as part of an artistic line or heritage that 
 you can connect to? There are not a lot of older 
 women artists... 
 
 GO: No, but one artist I did connect with is the 
 American artist, May Stevens. She came to Ireland to 
 an artists’ colony called The Tyrone Guthrie Centre. 
 
 I was resident there at the time. I believe she was in 
 her sixties at that stage in the late ’80s. 
 
 AAA: Well, you’re interested in the personal and the 
 political... 
 
 GO: Right, this was the first artist I’d ever met who 
 put together the personal with the political. At the 
 time she was working on a series called Ordinary/ 
 Extraordinary Images of Her Mother and Rosa 
 
 Luxembourg. She told me it was all right to talk about 
 the personal. 
 
 AC: In terms of lineage, this is someone who made 
 you think it was possible to put politics and 
 painting imagery together. And there is nobody like 
 
 that in Irish ? 
 
 GO: There are now, but they would be more my age. 
 She would have been one of the first artists to have 
 talked to me about "identity,” heritage, your sense of 
 place and so on. When I was in art school we looked 
 toward New York, London, France for inspiration. 
 
 I felt there was no visual tradition here in Ireland to 
 build on. That’s all changed now. 
 
 CONLEY / 
 ARMSTRONG 
 
 129 
 
COMPILED BY RUTH-ANN M. HARRIS 
 
 The American Letter 
 
 The year 1997 marks the 150th anniversary of "Black ’47," the darkest year of the Irish Potato 
 Famine. Between 1845, when the blight damaged a portion of the harvest, and 1849, when 
 Ireland's staple crop failed for the fourth consecutive year, at least one million Irish people 
 are said to have died of starvation or famine-related diseases such as dysentery, cholera, 
 and typhus. As many as one and one-half million others emigrated to North America and 
 Britain seeking new lives in strange lands. Historians consider the "Great Famine” a 
 watershed in the social, political and economic history of Ireland. 
 
 During and after the worst of the famine, the paucity of human and material resources 
 left a terrible social legacy for all Irish people, and placed particularly difficult obstacles in 
 the paths of young women. Unless women were able to marry the inheriting sons of 
 landholders, or were inclined toward religious life, they were considered drains on their 
 families’ resources. While emigration was already well-established in rural Ireland, the 
 numbers of peasants fleeing the country increased dramatically during the famine. Of the 
 thousands of Irish immigrants who landed in America during the deadliest years, two- 
 thirds were young single women. 
 
 Often the first links in a chain of migration, women emigrants maintained ties to family 
 and friends in Ireland by reporting on the course of their new lives in letters sent on a 
 basis as frequent and regular as harrowing work schedules allowed. The women left much 
 unsaid in their letters, however, omissions that were widely noted and expressed in the 
 saying, "Fine and well, just like an American letter,” which became a standard reply to the 
 standard, “How are you?” Those omissions were not accidental; letters were often written 
 in coded language to minimize the hardships of immigrant life, and to ensure the privacy 
 of certain passages. 1 As both public documents and the medium of intimate exchange, 
 these letters give the contemporary reader a sense of the famine and the emigration experi- 
 ence as being both historic and deeply personal for Ireland and its dissipating populace. 
 
 We present examples of these "American letters" as a testimony to those whose lives were 
 affected by the famine and Irish Diaspora, and to encourage further research on the 
 complexities of the immigrant experience. 
 
 -h.f. 
 
 131 
 
Between 1850 and 1890 Irish entrepreneur Vere Foster sponsored the emigration of 
 approximately 40,000 Irish women to America. In the letter transcribed below, Mr. Foster 
 reports, to an unknown correspondent in Ireland, on the American labor market and the 
 conditions young working women should expect: 
 
 The demand for Females appears to be everywhere even greater and more uniform than 
 
 that for males...The wages are from 75 cents to $2 a week, varying according to experience 
 and capacity. Many, especially at the West, report the customary position of such girls in the 
 family as that of daughters, sitting at the same table, dressing as well or better, riding 
 to the village church in the same vehicle, and say that they appear to marry even quicker 
 than the ladies. The tendency throughout the West to immediate marriage is a subject of 
 general complaint. One counts over his girls on his fingers with this curious statistical 
 result: “In the last eight years I have had in my employ 23 girls, 19 of whom have married out 
 of my house...Labourers of one year are the employers of the next, increasing by so much 
 more the constant demand, and exhausting the stream of supply. 
 
 Vere Foster to unknown correspondent (n.d.), nipro (uncatalogued letter). 
 
 A.E. Alderdice, in an undated letter to Vere Foster, wrote of overcoming the terrors that 
 accompanied her arrival in New York, which she credits to the kindness she encountered in 
 her new position: 
 
 ...You will think me very unkind for not writing to you before now and so it is but I hope 
 you will excuse me sir. I am sure you would lack [like] to hear how I got along from I left 
 farm. Well I was very sick indeed the whole voyage and it was pretty rough but the[y] were 
 very kind to me on board and now I must tell you of How I got on when I landed. I stopped 
 at Castle Gardens when I arrived here. On Thursday to Friday afternoon Mrs. Eccles was 
 there...but at the wrong place. The gentleman you give the letter for was not there...the next 
 day and when he came He sent as [his?] man...me, so I got there alright, thank God and 
 before the door was opened I could here [hear] the Girl say, oh Mrs. Smith, Hear is the Girl so 
 I was not sorry to hear that for I was both tired and weary and indeed...I must thank you 
 very much for the trouble you took...at all times. I am so Happy Hear [here] and do not think 
 one bit sorry. There is not one in the House but is so kind to me. I found them as good and 
 better even than you told me of. I hop[e]...God spares me I shall never forget you. I hop[e] the 
 Lord will reward you for I cannot. 
 
 A.E. Alderdice to Vere Foster (n.d.), nipro D3618. 
 
 Julia Fields, a maid to the Emmets, the great Irish patriot family, emigrated to the United 
 States after the death of her employer. The postscript to her November 1844 letter from 
 America to Mrs. Corrigan, another housekeeper still living in Ireland, records her immediate 
 impressions upon debarking: 
 
 [P.S.] My friend, this Country is very good and markets cheap — but all persons coming here 
 has to encounter an abundance of hardships and difficulties unknown when they land 
 on the shore unprovided — and destitute of friends or money, and no matter how clever they 
 may be at home in abilities of earning bread they must here begin anew for they are in a 
 new world among multitudes of strangers possessed of customs and laws entirely foreign — 
 and it is a second apprenticeship only that can gain them the result of their adventure as 
 I have experienced in many. Adieu. 
 
 Julia Fields to Mis. Corrigan, November 1844, nipro T3258/42. 
 
 Evidence shows that Irish women keenly recognized the significance of how they dressed. 
 Clothing became, for the newly arrived, an expression of their intentions to assimilate with 
 the host culture, as well as an emblem of their dreams of new lives, lives far better than 
 
 132 
 
they could have hoped to attain in the old country. The wife of one of the Carrothers 
 brothers of London, Ontario, enthusiastically describes the new-world dress styles in a letter 
 to her mother in Maguiresbridge, County Fermanagh: 
 
 Dress of every kind is worn the same here as with you only much richer and gayer. You have 
 
 always the first of the fashions as the[y] come out from England here. This has become a 
 
 very fashionable place. You would see more silks worn here in one day than you would see 
 in Maguiresbridge in your lifetime and could not tell the difference between the Lady and 
 the Servant Girl as it is not uncommon for her to wear a Silk Cloak and Boa and Muff on her 
 hands and her bonnet ornamented with artificial flowers and veil and can well afford it, 
 wages is so good. 
 
 Mrs. Carrothers to her mother, August 1851, nipro T3440. 
 
 Margaret McCarthy, writing to her parents and siblings in 1850, encouraged them to take 
 advantage of assisted passage, as she had, to join her in New York. Her letter is a typical 
 "American Letter,” conveying news of the immigrant to her relatives in Ireland, expressing 
 at least a cautious optimism (and perhaps stretching the truth), and noting the immigrants’ 
 equal, if not greater concern for the country and people she left behind: 
 
 ...My dear father, I must [say] only that this [is] a good place and a good Country for if one 
 place does not suit a Man he can go to Another and can very easy please himself. But 
 there is one thing that’s Ruining this place especially the Frontier towns and Cities where 
 the Flow of Emigration is most. The Emigrants has not money Enough to take them to the 
 Interior of the Country which obliges them to remain here in [New] York and the like places 
 for which Reason causes the less demand for Labour and also the great Reduction in wages. 
 For this reason I would advise no one to come to America that would not have Some Money 
 after landing here that would enable them to go west in case they would get no work to do 
 here. But any man or woman without a family are fools that would not venture and where 
 you will not be Seen Naked, but I can assure you there are Dangers upon Dangers Attending 
 coming here, but my friends nothing can venture nothing have. Fortune will favour the 
 brave. Have courage and prepare yourself for the next time that worthy man Mr. Boeyan 
 is sending out the next lot; and come you all together courageously and bid adieu to that 
 lovely place the land of our Birth... 
 
 But alas I am now told — it's the Gulf of Misery, oppression, Degradation, and ruin of every 
 Description which I am sorry to hear of so Doleful a History to be told of our D[ea]r Country. 
 This my dear Father induces me to Remit to you in this Letter 20 dollars, that is four pounds, 
 thinking it might be some acquisition to you until you might be Clearing away from that 
 place all together and the Sooner the Better, for Believe me, I could not Express how great 
 would be my joy at our seeing you all here together where you would never want or be at a 
 loss for a good Breakfast and Dinner. So prepare as soon as possible for this will be my last 
 Remittance until I see you all here. 
 
 ...I am sure it’s not for slavery I want you to come here. No, it’s for affording my brothers and 
 sisters and I an opportunity of Showing our Kindness and Gratitude and Coming on your 
 seniour days that we would be placed in that position that you, my D[ea]r Father and 
 Mother could walk about Leisurely and Independently without Requiring your Labour, an 
 object which I am Sure will not fail even by myself if I was obliged to do it without the 
 assistance of Brother or Sister for, my D[ea]r Father and Mother. 
 
 I am proud and happy to be away from where the country charges man on the Poor Rates 
 Mans or any other Rates Man would have the Satisfaction of once Impounding my cow or 
 any other article of mine, oh how happy I feel and am sure to have looke[d] at the Lord, had 
 
not it destined for me to get married to some Loammun 1 or another at home that after a 
 few months he an I may been an encumbrance upon you or perhaps in the Poor House by 
 this [time]. 
 
 So my D[ear] Father according as I have Stated to you I hope that whilst you are at home I 
 ho pp that yon will givp my Sistpr Mary that privilege of Fnj o ying herself Innocently on any 
 occasion that she pleases so far as I have saw Innocently and as for my D[ea]r Ellen York I am 
 in Raptures of joy when I think of one day seeing her and you all at the dock in New York... 
 well I have only to tell my D[ea]r Mother to Bring all her bed close [clothes] and also to bring 
 the kettle and an oven and have handles to them and do not forget the smoothing irons and 
 Be ware when you are on Board to Bring Some good floor [flour] and Engage with the 
 Captain’s cook and he will do it Better for you for very little and also Bring some whiskey 
 and give them [to] the cook and Some Sailors that you may think would do any good to give 
 them a glass once in a time and it may be no harm. 
 
 Ever Dear and Loving Child, 
 
 Margaret McCarthy 
 
 Margaret McCarthy to Mr. Alexander McCarthy, September 22, 1850, ORO (uncatalogued). 
 
 Rose McCormick Williams wrote home to Ireland from New Orleans twenty-seven years 
 after arriving in America, in search of an aunt with whom she had lost contact. In this 1879 
 letter, she recalls her reliance on the kindness of strangers in the days following the 
 death of her parents: 
 
 I was under the impression that you all had left Ireland. At last I resolved to write and make 
 inquiries, and I thank God that I have met with success. You certainly must have been 
 astonished when you read my letter. But the old adage "Tis better late than never," proved 
 true in this instance, though I had but very little hopes that the letter would have ever reached 
 you. You ask me to tell you how long my Mother and father are dead, also my brothers; It has 
 been so long and I was so young that I have a faint recollection of what transpired. We had 
 been ten weeks on sea and had a very rough voyage of it. We all landed in New Orleans 
 safe, sound and healthy...everything seemed to be prosperous for us, but unfortunately it did 
 not remain so for long, for seven days after we landed Mother and James died and were 
 buried the same day. They all died with a sort of cholera, which was at the same time raging 
 here. We had a priest to attend to them in their last moments. Being in a strange land, 
 amongst strangers and not being able to help one another we had to separate and do the best 
 we could. Of course being young we did not miss the loss of our parents but many and many 
 a time since have I missed them. 
 
 Patrick was taken in charge by a gentleman who took him to Cincinnati, where he remained 
 for some years when he came back to New Orleans, and then learned [the] trade of ship 
 carpenter. He remained in N.O. for some time, and then went off traveling and finally settled 
 [in] Columbus, Georgia, were he still resides. He is married and has three children, Is engaged 
 in Steamboating and doing well. I had not seen him for twenty years when this month a year 
 ago he came home unexpectedly and I tell you I was very glad indeed to see him. I get a letter 
 from him occasionally. William remained in N.O. for a long time. A few years previous to our 
 late rebellion he went to Texas, and I had not seen him for some years when he was taken 
 prisoner by the Federal forces and brought to N.O. So I went to see him nearly every day 
 during his imprisonment here. He was kept a captive here for a long time, and when released 
 went to a place called Lake Charles where he resides at present, and engaged in business 
 there for himself. He also is making a good living. He is married but I do not believe he has 
 any children. It has been eighteen years since I last saw him, But if possible I am going to 
 
 134 
 
send my son out to see him in a few weeks. Tom and myself remained in N.O. and therefore 
 have always seen one another. He is married also, and has had seven children, three of which 
 are dead. He is still living in N.O. 
 
 As to myself, I was taken in charge by a lady from the County Cavan, and remained with her 
 
 until I was capable of going to work. After working around for some time, I was married APPENDIX 
 
 and lost my husband some years after. I have three children. One boy 21 years of age, named 
 James, one girl, aged 17, named Rosa, and another Elizabeth, aged 15, all of which are very 
 healthy. I having been keeping a grocery store for the last four years, and all of my children 
 remain at home with me. Business is very dull, therefore not making any money, just a 
 living. My brothers and I had a rough time of it, but always managed to make an honest 
 living. To my recollection I have never [known of] any body that had ever been to my native 
 town since I have been here, although I have asked many and many a one. In your next 
 letter write to me about all the folks, what has become of them, etc. Tell me also how you are 
 getting along, and how is your husband, and how many children you have. Also what 
 profession or trade your son John is engaged in. Also how long after we left Ireland did my 
 Uncle Burke leave for America, and how long it is since you heard from them. Tell me also 
 what became of the old Homestead. Be Kind enough if possible to go to the chapel and 
 obtain a correct list of our ages, also my mother's age. Inform me all about Ireland, as I have 
 but little recollection of it... 
 
 Rose McCormick Williams to her aunt, May 1879, NIPRO T3258/28. 
 
 Women immigrants’ letters frequently refer to networks of individuals and institutions, such 
 as Irish Catholic parishes, that not only assisted newcomers in finding housing, work, and a 
 supportive ethnic community, but also provided safety nets when emergencies arose. Sarah 
 Shaw, who emigrated ahead of her niece and nephew, took responsibility for their care upon 
 the sudden deaths of her brother and sister-in-law: 
 
 I wrote you on the 4th October that on the 30th of said month Matilda was to change her 
 name to that of Bell, he is of...stable...habits but poor which was a very great Objection with 
 me, if she was of a strong constitution with his Industry the[y] might do well. Farming when 
 you have to hire all your help is not a money making business in this family, as negroes hire 
 is very expensive, but, I trust the lord will bless their endeavours and with that if the[y] are 
 not rich the[y] will be happy. Mr. Bell speaks of moving at least one hundred miles from here, 
 if so it will nearly kill me to part with her, as I have never been more than a few mile distance 
 from any of them for the last two years. 
 
 I have been teaching in Judge Perry’s family, which is only 7 miles from Sarah and Alicia and 
 5 from M. Jane, so that if any of them is taken sick I can and am with them in a few hours. I 
 assure you Aunt Sarah is a great somebody with her Nieces, we are truly happy in each other. 
 
 I intend to suspend teaching this year for the purpose of Visiting Edward, (whom I have 
 not seen since he left Ireland) and dear George, Matilda and myself made our arrangements 
 before she thought of getting married which has put a stop to her going, but I intend, if 
 spared life and health to start in March. I cannot get any of the girls persuaded into spending 
 twenty or thirty dollars on a visit. You see how Economical the[y] are, dear Richard. I hear of 
 you all through E. Morowitz who writes often. Mary Moats has a houseful of young ladies 
 and young men. I wish I could see you all, all young...[I hope all] are well and unite with me 
 in kind love to you, Mary & Robert & all the family 
 
 and believe me dear Richard 
 
 your same Old Aunt Sarah 
 
 Sarah Shaw to unknown correspondent (n.d.), private collection of the William Shaw family, Belfast. 
 
 135 
 
In a subsequent letter, dated January 10, 1852, Sarah describes the hardships of helping 
 emigrating relatives and friends. Networks of support strained under a swelling migrant 
 population, complicating the task of providing assistance: 
 
 I have just rec’d a letter from E. Morowitz, she is most anxious for me to send for her. Poor 
 
 girl she little knows how hard it is for females without a father to get along in this Country, 
 
 close hard work and in many instances looked upon as hirelings. None but the assuming have 
 any share in this little place. The[y] talk about the equality of the South but I can assure you 
 the Lexington folk are as aristocratic as the[y] know how, it would at least take one hundred 
 dollars to bring her here and what would I do with her [?] To pay board would be out of my 
 power it is true I have saved a little but I am advanced in life and may not be able long to do 
 for myself and to be thrown an dependent on my friends I never will. She says if I send for her 
 she will pay again, that I would never look for if I had any prospect for her when here. 
 
 I have paid eight dollars per month for very different accommodation. My bed room had 
 neither fire nor glazed window in a cold winter morning it was any thing but pleasant but it 
 was the best I could do and therefore must submit. Seasons are much changed here. The winter 
 fully as cold as them in Ireland but not so long. ..Dear Richard I wish you to write and give my 
 your advice, will I or not make an effort to bring E. Mowritz out here. I have stated my Situation 
 to you precisely as it is but poor Orphant [sic] child my Heart Sympathizes for her if I had her 
 here I might take a school in the Country and have her as an assistant which would be...but it 
 would be doing a duty. Every letter I receive [from] her makes me unhappy for a length of time. 
 She said in her last she could get £16 per year in Dublin. That is nearly as much as I am now 
 receiving for teaching (say one hundred dollars) and it takes it all to keep me genteely [sic] 
 dressed as I am Obliged to be amongst such people as I live with and every article double the 
 price of what it is at home. Dear Richard this is rather an uninteresting letter but I struck on a 
 subject that interests me at present and you must excuse me. 
 
 Sarah Shaw to unknown correspondent (n.d.), private collection of the William Shaw family, Belfast. 
 
 Mary Gayer Anderson, unlike most of her counterparts, emigrated with enough resources to 
 bring her maid Margaret with her to America from Rostrevor, County Down. Her letter 
 describes Margaret’s performance and the tensions that existed across class lines within the 
 Irish- American community, as well as the degree to which Margaret’s adoption of American 
 manners and customs exacerbated the strain: 
 
 Margaret is doing very well— and since I spoke to her about keeping her Irish ways and 
 manners, has behaved very well — but it is considered quite "infra dig” 2 for a "Help” to work 
 with children, and she is not going to do it. She is, however, very friendly with and I think 
 fond of them. She has an easy time here. I make the beds, settle the rooms and do anything I 
 can of that sort. She goes out after 6 o’clock tea every Sunday and does not come in ‘till 10. 
 
 Margaret does very well in all she does for us and is always cheerful and good-tempered but 
 each week I see less inclination to do things, trying to put more and more on me and do less 
 and less herself. She has a fine time of it— constantly out and more and so little work to do, 
 she never touches the children, nor my room, nor the drawing room nor the parlor except to 
 lay the table. She makes the nursery bed, but does not sweep the floor unless told to do so. 
 Would not put coal on the fire...However it is a blessing to have her, so few have any help. 
 
 Aunt M. says it is the way always with girls brought from home. When Henry was explaining 
 to her about how much wages she was to have, in paying us back for her expenses he said, 
 
 "You agreed to come for £30 a year, I will make it $3 a week, that is about £33 a year, are the 
 usual wages here.” 
 
 Mary Gayer Anderson to her mother, October 20, 1884, NIPRO T3258/4/5 
 
 136 
 
Notes 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 1 Prior to reliable mail service (around the middle of the nineteenth century) most letters were 
 entrusted to persons who would hand-carTy them back to Ireland, so the confidentiality of the 
 documents was never assured. 
 
 2 An Irish word, meaning "a poor man with no prospects." 
 
 3 From the Latin infra dignatatum, meaning “beneath one's dignity." 
 
 Abbreviations 
 
 Harris 1991 
 
 Harris, Ruth-Ann and B. Emer O'Keeffe, Eds. The Search for Missing Friends: Irish Immigrant 
 Advertisements Placed in the "Boston Pilot.” Boston, 1991 
 
 Harris 1977 
 
 Harris, Ruth-Ann. "Where the Poor Man is Not Crushed Down to Exalt the Aristocrat: Vere Foster’s 
 Programmes of Assisted Emigration in the Aftermath of the Famine,” in The Meaning of the Famine. 
 Ed., Patrick O'Sullivan. London and Washington, 1977 
 
 Lee 1978 
 
 Lee, Joseph. "Women and the Church Since the Famine," in Women in Irish Society: the Historical 
 Dimension. Eds., Margaret MacCurtain and Donna O’Corrain. Dublin, 1978, pp. 37-45 
 
 McNeill 1971 
 
 McNeill, Mary. Vere Foster, i8ig-igoo, An Irish Benefactor. Belfast, 1971 
 
 NIPRO 
 
 Northern Ireland Public Record Office, Belfast 
 
 O’Crada 1977 
 
 O’Crada, Corma"Some Aspects of Nineteenth-Century Irish Migration” in Comparative Aspects of 
 Scottish and Irish Social and Economic History i6oo-igoo. Ed., L.M. Cullen andT.C. Smout, Edinburgh, 
 1977, pp. 65-73 
 
 ORO 
 
 Quit Rent Office, Dublin 
 
 137 
 
Objects in the exhibition 
 
 Landscape 
 
 no. i 
 
 Gwen O’Dowd 
 Uaimh Series 
 
 1996 
 
 mixed media on canvas/board 
 42 x 60 in. 
 
 Private Collection, Ireland 
 Courtesy of Kerlin Gallery, Dublin 
 
 pi. I, no. 2 
 Gwen O'Dowd 
 Uaimh Series 
 
 1996 
 
 mixed media on canvas/board 
 60 x 42 in. 
 
 Private Collection, Ireland 
 Courtesy of Kerlin Gallery, Dublin 
 
 no. 3 
 
 Gwen O’Dowd 
 Uaimh Series 
 
 1996 
 
 mixed media on canvas/board 
 53 x 42 in. 
 
 Private Collection, Ireland 
 Courtesy of Kerlin Gallery, Dublin 
 
 pi. II, no.4 
 Mary Lohan 
 Donegal Bay ’97 
 
 1997 
 
 oil on board 
 55 x 20 in. 
 
 Courtesy of Mr. John Taylor, Taylor 
 Galleries, Dublin 
 
 no. 5 
 
 Mary Lohan 
 Sliabh League ’97 
 
 1997 
 
 oil on board 
 55 x 22 in. 
 
 Courtesy of Mr. John Taylor, TayloT 
 Galleries, Dublin 
 
 no. 6 
 
 Deirdre O’Connell 
 Point of Observation 
 
 1995 
 
 plaster, rust oxide, stone 
 3 X4X 8ft. 
 
 Collection of the Artist, New York 
 
 pi. Ill, no. 7 
 Deirdre O’Connell 
 Repository II 
 
 1996 
 
 oil bar on papeT 
 40 x 64 in. 
 
 Collection of the Artist, New York 
 
 no. 8 
 
 Geraldine O’Reilly 
 Land Marks Series 
 Strongholds 
 
 1994 
 
 sugar lift and aquatint etching 
 on Fabriano paper 
 39 x 27 1/2 in. 
 
 Collection of the Artist, Dublin 
 
 Emigration 
 
 no. 9 
 
 Geraldine O’Reilly 
 Emigrant LetteT Series 
 Shanty and Lace 
 
 1988 
 
 acrylic, lace, collage on paper 
 3 x 2 ft. 
 
 Collection of Patricia Murphy, Dublin 
 no. 10 
 
 Geraldine O’Reilly 
 Emigrant LetteT Series 
 Emigrant’s Bag 
 
 1988 
 
 collage, gouache and acrylic on paper 
 27 x 17 in. 
 
 Collection of Maire and Maurice Foley, 
 Dublin 
 
 no. 11 
 
 Geraldine O’Reilly 
 Emigrant LetteT Series 
 Emigrant’s Letter and Envelope 
 Fragment 
 
 1988 
 
 watercolor, gouache and acrylic on 
 
 paper 
 
 20 x 19 in. 
 
 Collection of Justina and Peter Farrell, 
 Dublin 
 
 pi. IV, no. 12 
 Geraldine O’Reilly 
 Emigrant LetteT Series 
 59 Emigrant Ships Lost 
 
 1988 
 
 acrylic, gouache, watercolor, collage, 
 stitching on paper 
 20 x 19 in. 
 
 Collection of the Artist, Dublin 
 no. 13 
 
 Geraldine O’Reilly 
 Emigrant LetteT Series 
 Emigrant’s Passport 
 
 1988 
 
 watercolor and gouache on papeT 
 23 x 15 in. 
 
 Collection of the Artist, Dublin 
 
 The Figure/Body 
 
 no. 14 
 
 Geraldine O’Reilly 
 
 Land Marks Series 
 
 Relics 
 
 1994 
 
 etching 
 
 31 x 37 in. 
 
 Collection of the Artist, Dublin 
 
 pi. V, no. 15 
 Eithne Jordan 
 Split Face I 
 
 1988 
 
 oil on canvas 
 59 x 59 >n. 
 
 Courtesy of Rubicon Gallery, Dublin 
 no. 16 
 
 Eithne Jordan 
 Portrait of a Woman 
 
 1988 
 
 oil on canvas 
 51 x 43 in. 
 
 Courtesy of Rubicon Gallery, Dublin 
 
 pl.VI.no. 17 
 Rita Duffy 
 Journey 
 
 1994 
 
 oil on wax paper 
 46 x 48 in. 
 
 Collection of the Artist, Belfast 
 
 no. 18 
 Rita Duffy 
 Becoming 
 
 1995 
 
 oil on wax paper 
 46 x 48 in. 
 
 Collection of the Artist, Belfast 
 
 no. 19 
 Rita Duffy 
 Dancer 
 
 1995 
 
 oil on wax paper 
 46 x 48 in. 
 
 Collection of the Artist, Belfast 
 
 pl.VII.no. 20 
 Rita Duffy 
 Scullery 
 
 1995 
 
 oil on wax papeT 
 46 x 48 in. 
 
 Collection of the Artist, Belfast 
 
 no. 21 
 
 Kathy PTendergast 
 Body Map Series 
 Vertical Section 
 
 1983 
 
 watercolor and ink on paper 
 30 x 12 in. 
 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of 
 Modern Art, Dublin, Vincent and 
 Noeleen Ferguson Donation 
 
 no. 22 
 
 Kathy PTendergast 
 
 Body Map Series 
 
 Enclosed Worids in Open Space 
 
 1983 
 
 watercolor and ink on paper 
 30 x 22 in. 
 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of 
 Modern Art, Dublin, Vincent and 
 Noeleen Ferguson Donation 
 
 no. 23 
 
 Kathy Prendergast 
 Body Map Series 
 Vertical Section 
 
 1983 
 
 watercolor and ink on paper 
 30 x 12 in. 
 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of 
 Modem Art, Dublin, Vincent and 
 Noeleen Ferguson Donation 
 
 no. 24 
 
 Kathy Prendergast 
 Body Map Series 
 North-West Region 
 
 1983 
 
 watercolor and ink on paper 
 30 x 22 in. 
 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of 
 Modern Art, Dublin, Vincent and 
 Noeleen Ferguson Donation 
 
 no. 25 
 
 Kathy Prendergast 
 Body Map Series 
 South-West Region 
 
 1983 
 
 watercolor and ink on paper 
 30 x 22 in. 
 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of 
 Modern Art, Dublin, Vincent and 
 Noeleen Ferguson Donation 
 
 138 
 
OBJECTS 
 
 no. 26 
 
 Kathy Prendergast 
 Body Map Series 
 To Alter a Landscape 
 
 1983 
 
 watercolor and ink on paper 
 30 x 22 in. 
 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of 
 Modern Art, Dublin, Vincent and 
 Noeleen Ferguson Donation 
 
 no. 27 
 
 Kathy Prendergast 
 
 Body Map Series 
 
 To Control a Landscape — Tunnel 
 
 1983 
 
 watercolor and ink on paper 
 14 x 24 in. 
 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of 
 Modern Art, Dublin, Vincent and 
 Noeleen Ferguson Donation 
 
 pi. VIII, no. 28 
 Kathy Prendergast 
 Body Map Series 
 
 To Control a Landscape — Irrigation 
 
 1983 
 
 watercolor and ink on paper 
 14 x 24 in. 
 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of 
 Modern Art, Dublin, Vincent and 
 Noeleen Ferguson Donation 
 
 no. 29 
 
 Kathy Prendergast 
 
 Body Map Series 
 
 To Control a Landscape — Oasis 
 
 1983 
 
 watercolor and ink on paper 
 14 x 24 in. 
 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of 
 Modern Art, Dublin, Vincent and 
 Noeleen Ferguson Donation 
 
 pi. IX, no. 30 
 Kathy Prendergast 
 Body Map Series 
 South-West Region 
 
 1983 
 
 watercolor and ink on paper 
 30 x 22 in. 
 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of 
 Modem Art, Dublin, Vincent and 
 Noeleen Ferguson Donation 
 
 no. 31 
 
 Kathy Prendergast 
 Body Map Series 
 South-East Region 
 
 1983 
 
 watercolor and ink on paper 
 30 x 22 in. 
 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of 
 Modern Art, Dublin, Vincent and 
 Noeleen FeTguson Donation 
 
 pi. X, no. 32 
 Alice Maher 
 Berry Dress 
 
 1994 
 
 cotton, rose hips and pins 
 12 x 10 x 6 in. 
 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of 
 Modern Art, Dublin 
 
 no. 33 
 
 Alice Maher 
 Thorn House 
 
 1995 
 
 wood, rose thorns and glass 
 6 x 4 x 4 in 
 
 Dieter and Birgit Broska Collection, 
 Ireland 
 
 pl.XI.no. 34 
 Alice Maher 
 Bee DTess 
 
 1994 
 
 honey bees and cotton wire 
 6 x 4 x 4 in. 
 
 Collection of the Arts Council of 
 Northern Ireland, Belfast 
 
 Body and Nature 
 Implied 
 
 pi. XII, no. 35 
 Mary FitzGerald 
 Deluge 
 
 1996 
 
 oil, on steel with velvet, glass and 
 steel bolts 
 49 x 50 in. 
 
 Courtesy of Green on Red Gallery, 
 Dublin 
 
 no. 36 
 
 Mary FitzGerald 
 Red Sea 
 
 1994 
 
 oil on canvas with glass and 
 graphite powder 
 33x67 in. 
 
 Collection of David Murray, Ireland 
 
 no. 37 
 
 Mary FitzGerald 
 Spine 
 
 1996 
 
 velvet under glass with steel bolts 
 and fish hooks 
 72 x 24 in 
 
 Courtesy of Green on Red Gallery, 
 Dublin 
 
 no. 38 
 
 Mary FitzGerald 
 Heart 
 
 1996 
 
 velvet under glass with 
 fish hooks, steel scalpel blades and 
 acupuncture needles 
 72x24 in. 
 
 Courtesy of Green on Red Gallery, 
 Dublin 
 
 pi. XIII, no. 39 
 Eilis O'Connell 
 To Swell the Gourd 
 
 1996 
 
 rusted steel, gourd, biTch wood 
 
 (i) 12 x 24 x 3 in. 
 
 (ii) 5 x 5 x 7 in. 
 
 Courtesy of Green on Red Gallery, 
 Dublin 
 
 no. 40 
 
 Eilis O'Connell 
 Enmeshed 
 
 1994 
 
 welded brass and woven brass wire 
 16 x 8 x 6 in. 
 
 Courtesy of Green on Red Gallery, 
 Dublin 
 
 no. 41 
 
 Eilis O’Connell 
 
 In the Roundness of Being 
 
 1996 
 
 cast resin, lead polish 
 52 x 11 x 5 in. 
 
 Courtesy of Green on Red Gallery, 
 Dublin 
 
 pi. XIV,no. 42 
 Eilis O’Connell 
 Cathoid 
 
 1996 
 
 cast lead crystal 
 12 x 12 x 6 in 
 
 Courtesy of Green on Red GalleTy, 
 Dublin 
 
 no. 43 
 
 Eilis O’Connell 
 Earthed 
 
 1994 
 
 patinated, painted and rusted steel 
 
 (1) 2i'/i x 10V2 x 2 3 A in. 
 
 (2) 43 x 11 x 3 in. 
 
 (3) 22 3 A x 7 3 A x 2’A in. 
 
 Private Collection, Ireland 
 Courtesy of Green on Red Gallery, 
 Dublin 
 
 no. 44 
 
 Eilis O’Connell 
 Under the Precipice 
 
 1996 
 
 rusted steel 
 24 x 12 x 4 in. 
 
 Courtesy of Green on Red Gallery, 
 Dublin 
 
 Installation 
 
 pl.XV.no. 45 
 Finola Jones 
 
 LUSCIOUS — (an aesthetic view 
 of culture) 
 
 1993 - ongoing 
 Wall-attached figurines 
 Dimensions variable 
 Collection of the Artist, Dublin 
 Courtesy of Green on Red Gallery, 
 Dublin 
 
 pi. XVI, no. 46a 
 
 Pauline Cummins and Louise Walsh 
 Sounding the Depths 
 
 installation: video projection, light 
 boxes and sound 
 Courtesy of the Irish Museum of 
 Modern Art, Dublin 
 
 pi. XVI, no. 46b 
 
 Pauline Cummins and Louise Walsh 
 
 Sounding the Depths 
 
 Shell in Hand 
 
 Cibachrome print 
 
 Collection of the Artists, Dublin 
 
 139 
 
Artists’ Biographies 
 
 PAULINE CUMMINS 
 
 b.1949 
 
 1966-74 Student at National College of Art, Dublin. 
 Specializing in painting and ceramics 
 
 Recent Exhibitions 
 
 1997/90 Inis Oirr. Irish Geographies: 6 Contemporary 
 Artists. Djanogly Art Gallery. University of 
 Nottingham, England, touring exhibition and 
 Ladengalerie, Munich 
 
 1997 Good Confession-in Loco Dei. Inner Art: North 
 Inner City, Dublin. 2 monitor video installation 
 in the confessional boxes of Our Lady of 
 Lourdes Church, Sean McDermot Street. 
 1996/95 Video Exhibition: Becoming Beloved. 
 
 Hermitage of Maria Magdalena, Lanzarole and 
 National Maternity Hospital, Dublin 
 1994 Potatoes, a street installation. Irish Days. Art 
 Centre Uska, Poland 
 
 1994 Flowing, circular sculpture/video installation. 
 
 Life Cycles. Design Council Gallery, Dublin 
 1994/93/92 Sounding the Depths, a collaborative 
 3-part installation with Louise Walsh. Street 
 Level Photographic Gallery, Glasgow, Tate 
 Gallery, Liverpool, KunstleThaus, Graz, Austria 
 and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin 
 ■1992/90 Unearthed. Inheritance and Transforma- 
 tion. The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 
 and Ladengalerie, Munich. 
 
 1991 Available Resources. Derry, Northern Ireland 
 1991 The 5th Province. Edmonton Gallery, and 
 touTing Canada through 1992 
 1990 Sexuality and Gender. Douglas Hyde Gallery, 
 Dublin 
 
 Select Awards 
 
 1989 Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Equipment 
 1988 Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Bursary 
 Award 
 
 1986 The George Campbell Memorial Travel Award 
 1985 Irish Exhibition of Living Art, Bursary Award 
 
 PITA DUFFY 
 
 b. 1959 Belfast 
 
 1985-86 University of UlsteT, Belfast, MA Fine Art 
 1979-82 Art and Design Centre, Belfast, B.A. Hons. 
 Fine Art 
 
 1978-79 Foundation Studies, Ulster Polytechnic 
 
 Recent Solo Exhibitions 
 1997 Banquet. Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast 
 1996 Crossing Boundaries. Exhibited in Belfast and 
 at San Francisco State University 
 1995 Palimpsest. Touring Exhibition, Orchard 
 
 Gallery, Derry, Limerick City Art Gallery, Model 
 Art Gallery, Sligo, and the Triskel Gallery, Cork 
 1993 Drawings. Newry Arts Centre, Newry 
 1992 Icarus Project. Old Museum Arts Centre 
 
 1992 Small Works. Cavehill Gallery, Belfast 
 1991 Inflated People. Wexford Arts Centre 
 
 1991 Judith Ward Paintings. Galerie and Edition 
 Caoc, Berlin and Old Museum Arts Centre, 
 Belfast 
 
 1990 New Works. Touring Exhibition, Project Arts 
 Centre, Dublin 
 
 Select Awards 
 
 1996/95 Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Major 
 Bursary 
 
 1993 Ulster Museum Artist in Residence, Bursary 
 1992/89 Artist in the Community Residence Bursary 
 1991/90 An Chomhairle Ealaion Travel Bursary 
 1990 Gold Medal R.U.A. 
 
 1988/83 Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Exhibition 
 Bursary 
 
 1988/87/86 Prizewinner Arnotts National Portraits 
 Awards 
 
 1987 Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Materials 
 Bursary 
 
 1986 Conor Prizewinner R.U.A. 
 
 1985 Cresent Arts Centre Residency 
 
 140 
 
BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 FINOLA JONES 
 
 MARY FITZGERALD 
 
 b. 1956 Dublin 
 
 1990 Member of Aosdana 
 1980-81 Tama University of Fine Art, Japan 
 1979-80 Osaka University of Foreign Languages, 
 
 Japan 
 
 1973-TJ National College of Art and Design, Dublin 
 
 Recent Solo Exhibitions 
 1995 Paintings. Rhok Gallery, Brussels 
 1994 FJorizon. Green on Red Gallery, Dublin 
 1993 Aftermath. Model Art Centre, Sligo 
 1993 Continuum. Jain Marunouchi Gallery, New York 
 1992 Orientation. Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, 
 Cork 
 
 1992 Orientation. Oliver Dowling Gallery, Dublin 
 
 1991 Counter/Act. Oliver Dowling Gallery, Dublin 
 1989 New Works. Riverrun Gallery, Limerick, and 
 
 Boole Library, University College, Cork 
 
 Select Awards 
 
 1992 Department of Foreign Affairs Travel Bursary 
 1988 Claremorris Open Art Exhibition Award 
 1987 Insh Exhibition of Living Art, Invited Artists 
 
 Bursary 
 
 1986 Department of Foreign Affairs/Arts Council 
 Travel Bursary 
 
 1986 Patron’s Award, EV+A, Limerick 
 
 b. i960 Dublin 
 
 1989 M.A. College of Fine Arts, The University of New 
 South Wales, Sydney, Australia 
 
 1984-86 B.F.A. (Sculpture), CenteT for the Arts, 
 University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania 
 
 1977-81 Advanced Diploma in Exhibition and Display 
 Design, College of Marketing and Design, Dublin 
 
 Recent Solo Exhibitions 
 
 1997-96 LUSCIOUS — (an aesthetic view of culture). A 
 window installation. Broadway Windows, NYC 
 
 1996 “You look crazy on the outside.” Green on Red 
 Gallery, Dublin 
 
 1996 “please DO NOT TOUCH.” Newlyn Art Gallery, 
 
 Penzance, England 
 
 1995 BIAS — (forget roses — theres nothing like the 
 smell of crisp, freshly printed, sequentially- 
 numbered $100 bills). First Draft Gallery, Sydney, 
 Australia 
 
 1995 Open Studio. The Clocktower Gallery, New York 
 
 1994 LUSCIOUS — (an aesthetic view of culture). 
 
 A window installation. The Gallery, Belfast, 
 Northern Ireland 
 
 1994 ALL THINGS BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL, a 
 commissioned thematic installation. St. 
 Andrews Church, Suffolk, St., Dublin. 
 
 1993 LUSCIOUS — (an aesthetic view of culture). 
 Berkeley Gallery, Thomastown, co. Killkenny, 
 Ireland 
 
 1993 THE ARDENT LOVE OF AN OBJECT— (the art and 
 science of cultivation). Green on Red Gallery, 
 Dublin. 
 
 Select Awards 
 
 1996 Five month studio residency, Artist Work 
 Program, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin 
 
 1996 Overseas Exhibition Grant. Cultural Relations 
 Committee. The Irish Department of Foreign 
 Affairs 
 
 1996/93/91 Arts Council of Ireland, Materials Grant 
 
 1996/93 Arts Council of Ireland, ArtFlight New York; 
 Venice Biennial 
 
 1995 Arts Council of Ireland, Travel Award for 
 exhibition in Australia 
 
 1994-95 One year Fellowship, International Studio 
 Program, PSi Museum, ICA, New York 
 
 1990 Arts Council of Ireland, Documentation Grant 
 
 141 
 
EITHNE JO RDAN 
 
 b. 1954 Dublin 
 
 1990 Member of Aosdana 
 
 1987-88 Artists Residency, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Co. 
 Monaghan 
 
 1984-87 Lived and worked in West Berlin on DAAD 
 Scholarship 
 
 1979-83 Founding membeT of, and worked in, 
 the Visual Arts Centre, Dublin 
 Lecturer in Painting, NCAD 
 1972-76 Studied at Dun Laoghaire School of Art 
 
 Recent Solo Exhibitions 
 
 1996 LAtrium de Chaville, Paris 
 
 1995 Limerick City Gallery of Art, Limerick 
 
 1994/92 Rubicon Gallery, Dublin 
 
 1990 Riverrun Gallery, Dublin 
 
 1990 Garter Lane Arts Centre, Waterford 
 
 1990 Triskel Arts Centre, Cork 
 
 1990 Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast 
 
 Select Awards 
 
 1994 EV+A, prize for painting awarded by Jan Hoet 
 1986 Guinness Peat Aviation Award 
 
 1984-85 DAAD Scholarship to West Berlin 
 
 1980 Independent Artists Large Scale Painting Award 
 
 1985/82/78 Arts Council Bursary for Painting 
 
 MARY LOHAN 
 
 b. 1954 Dublin 
 
 Studied at the National College of Art and Design, 
 School of Painting 
 
 Recent Solo Exhibitions 
 
 1995 Sea, Sand, Land and Light. Taylor Galleries, 
 
 Dublin 
 
 1994 Recent Paintings. Grant Fine Art, Belfast, 
 Northern Ireland 
 
 1993 New Works on Paper. Carrol Gallery, Longford 
 1992 Elements. TayloT Galleries, Dublin 
 
 1991 Donegal. Taylor Galleries, Dublin 
 1990 First Solo. Riverrun Gallery, Dublin 
 
 Select Awards 
 
 1995 Annamkerring One Month Residency 
 
 1994 DHL Artlift Award 
 1993 Fellowship, Ballinglen Arts Foundation 
 1992 1st Prize, Claremorris Open Exhibition 
 
 1991 Taylor De Vere Award, RHA 161st Annual Show 
 for "An Artist of Promise in any Medium.” 
 
 ALICE MAHER 
 
 b. 1956 Tipperary 
 
 1986-87 San Francisco Art Institute, Post Graduate 
 (Painting) 
 
 1985-86 University of Ulster, Belfast. M.A. Fine Art 
 1981-85 Crawford Municipal College of Art, Cork. 
 Diploma in Fine Art 
 
 1974-78 National Institute for Higher Education, 
 Limerick. B.A. (European Studies) 
 
 Recent Solo Exhibitions 
 
 1997 LArpent. Le Contort Moderne, Poitiers 
 
 1996 Growths. Todd Gallery, London 
 1996 Familiar. Newlyn Gallery, Penzance 
 1996 Swimmers. Le Credac Centre DArt 
 
 Contemporaine, D’lvry, Paris 
 
 1995 Familiar The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, 
 
 The Orchard Gallery, Deny, Crawford Municipal 
 Gallery, Cork 
 
 1995 Works on Paper. Green on Red Gallery, Dublin 
 
 1992 Keep. Old Museum Arts Centre, Belfast 
 1991-92 Recent Work Touring Exhibition. Triskel Arts 
 
 Centre, Cork, Project Arts Centre, Dublin, Orchard 
 Galleiy, Derry and Belltable ATts Centre, Limerick 
 
 1989 Tryst. Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick 
 
 1987 Transfiguration. Kerlin Gallery, Belfast 
 
 Select Awards 
 
 1996 Nominated for the IMMA Glen Dimplex Award 
 1992 Arts Council of Ireland Bursary 
 
 1990 GPA Emerging Artist Award 
 
 1990 Arts Council of Ireland, Artists-in-schools 
 Residency 
 
 1989 L.S.A.D. Teaching Fellowship, Limerick 
 
 1988 Arts Council of Northern Ireland Bursary 
 1988 An Chomhairle Ealaion Bursary 
 
 1987 Fulbright Scholarship (San Francisco Art 
 Institute) 
 
 1986 Peter Moore’s Foundation Bursary for Further 
 Study 
 
 142 
 
DEIRDRE O'CONNELL 
 
 b. 1956 London 
 
 1979-80 M.A. Fine Art, University of Ulster, Belfast 
 1975-78 B.A. Hons. (1st Class), North Staffordshire 
 Polytechnic, Stoke-on-Trent 
 1974-75 Foundation Course, Hertfordshire College 
 of Art & Design, St. Albans 
 
 Recent Solo Exhibitions 
 
 1996 Hinterland, Orchard Gallery, Derry 
 
 1996 Works on Paper, Green on Red Gallery, Dublin 
 
 1994 In the Cisterns of Carthage. Fenderesky Gallery, 
 Belfast 
 
 1990 Insula Peninsula. Arts Council Gallery, Belfast 
 
 1989 Artifact. Exhibition in conjunction with 
 Young Arts Festival, Peacock Gallery, Craigavon 
 
 1986 Sentinel. Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast 
 
 Select Awards 
 
 1991-92 Aer Lingus Travel Award 
 1991-92 P.S. 1 Studio Scholarship, New York 
 
 1990 Arts Council of Northern Ireland Bursary 
 1987-88 Arts Council of Northern Ireland Rome 
 
 Scholarship 
 
 1985 Arts Council of Northern Ireland Bursary 
 
 EILIS O'CONNELL 
 
 b. 1953 Demy 
 
 1996 Residency at Delfina Studios, Manilva, Spain 
 1996 Residency at Centre du Sculpture, Montolieu, 
 France 
 
 1987-88 Irish Arts Council PSi (NewYoTk) Fellowship 
 1983-84 Arts Council of Northern Ireland British 
 School at Rome Fellowship 
 1974-75 Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, USA 
 1970, 1975-77 Crawford School of ATt, Cork 
 
 Recent Solo Exhibitions 
 
 1996 To Swell the Gourd. Green on Red Gallery, 
 Dublin 
 
 1995 Appetites of Gravity. Hat Hill Sculpture 
 Foundation, Goodwood, West Sussex 
 
 1994 New Work. Green on Red Gallery, Dublin 
 1994 The Bridge Project. Arnolfini, Bristol 
 1994 New Sculpture. Oriel, Cardiff 
 1994 And on a Smaller Scale. Martin Tinney Gallery, 
 Cardiff 
 
 1993 The Undomesticated Space. The Gallery at 
 John Jones, London 
 
 1990 Ancient Rain. Artsite Gallery, Bath 
 
 Select Awards 
 
 1996 Art and Work Award, Wapping Art Trust, for 
 "Nyama,”at 99 Bishopgate, London 
 
 1990 Sunday Tribune Visual Artist of the Year 
 Award, Dublin 
 
 1990 Nordic Art Centre, Guest Studio Residency, 
 Helsinki 
 
 1988-90 Delfina Studios Trust Residency, London 
 
 1987 Irish Arts Council, PSi New York Fellowship 
 Award 
 
 1983 Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Rome 
 Fellowship Award 
 
 1981 Guinness Peat Aviation Award for Emerging 
 Artists, Dublin 
 
 1980 Mont Kavanagh Award for Environmental 
 Art, Dublin 
 
 GWEN O’DOWD 
 
 b. 1957, Dublin 
 
 1991 Member of Aosdana 
 
 1976-80 National College of Art and Design, Dublin 
 
 Recent Solo Exhibitions 
 
 1997/95/92/90 Kerlin Gallery, Dublin 
 
 1989 West Cork Arts Centre Butler Gallery, Kilkenny 
 
 1987 Fishguard, Wales 
 
 1984 Project Arts Centre, Dublin 
 
 Select Awards 
 
 1990 Arts Council Visual Arts Bursary 
 
 1990 Prize Winner, Oireachtas Art Bursary 
 
 1989 Irish-Canadian Exchange, The Leighton Artists' 
 Colony, Banff, Alberta 
 
 1988 Arts Council Documentary Grant 
 
 1987 Department of Foreign Affairs Grant 
 
 1987 Irish/Welsh Exchange, Artist-in-Residence, 
 
 Fishguard, Wales. 
 
 1986 Irish-Welsh Exchange, Artist-in-Residence, 
 Aberystwyth 
 
 1985 Prizewinner, International Print Biennale, 
 Lostowel,Co. Kerry 
 
 1984 The George Campbell Memorial Travel Grant 
 (to Spain) 
 
GERALDINE O'REILLY 
 
 b. 1956 Westmeath 
 
 1993-94 Member of the Graphic Studio 
 1992-93 Courses at the Graphic Studio 
 
 1990 Etching Workshop at the Black Church Print Studio 
 
 1989 Hunter College, Manhattan, NY, Post-graduate 
 1983 National College of Art and Design, Dublin, 
 
 honors degree in painting 
 1982 AnCO Industrial Training Authority, certificate 
 in screen printing 
 
 1979 National College of Art and Design, honors 
 diploma in painting 
 
 Recent Solo Exhibitions 
 
 1996 Entwined Histories. Context Gallery, Derry City 
 and Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick 
 1995 Entwined Histories. Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin 
 
 1993 Land Marks. Monaghan County Museum 
 1992-93 Rites. Project Arts Centre, Dublin 
 
 1991 Works from a Residency. Midland Arts Resource 
 Centre, MullingaT, Co. Westmeath 
 
 Select Awards 
 
 1995/91/90 Arts Council of Ireland, Documentation 
 Grant 
 
 1995 Borough of Dun Laoghaire and Rathdown, 
 Artist-in-Schools Residency 
 
 1994 Arts Council of Ireland, Artists-in-Schools 
 Residency 
 
 1994 Cultural Grant, Department of Foreign Affairs, 
 Dublin 
 
 1994 De Grandmaison Scholarship to attend 
 
 residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada 
 1994/93 Arts Council of Ireland, ArtsFlight 
 1993 Arts Council of Ireland, Materials Grant 
 1991 Arts Council of Ireland, Once-Off Exhibition Grant 
 
 1990 Dublin Corporation Art Grant for Dublin 
 European City of Culture 
 
 1988 Fulbright Scholarship to America awarded by 
 the Irish Scholarship Board, Department of 
 Foreign Affairs, Dublin 
 
 KATHY PRENDERGAST 
 
 b. 1958 Dublin 
 
 1983-86 Royal College of Art, London, M.A. 
 
 1982-83 National College of Art and Design, Dublin 
 B.F.A. 1st Class Hons. 
 
 1980- 81 Trained and worked as Studio Camera 
 Operator, Radio Telifis Eheann, Dublin 
 
 1976-80 National College of Art and Design, Dublin 
 Dip. F.A. 1st Class Hons. 
 
 Recent Solo Exhibitions 
 
 1997 City Drawings. Art Now Project Room, Tate 
 Gallery, London 
 
 1994 PeteT Scott Gallery, Lancaster 
 
 1994 Royal Festival Hall, South Bank Centre, London 
 
 1991 Camden Arts Centre, London 
 
 1990 Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin and tour 
 1987 Unit 7 Gallery, London 
 
 1987 Henry Moore Foundation Fellow Exhibition, 
 Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, London 
 
 Select Awards 
 
 1995 Premio 2000, Venice Biennale 
 
 1992 Rome award in Sculpture, British School in Rome 
 
 1990 Arts Council of Ireland, Bursary 
 
 1988 Arts Council of Ireland, Macauley Fellowship 
 1986 Henry Moore Foundation Fellowship, 
 
 Camberwell School of Arts & Crafts, London 
 1986 Royal College of Art Major Travel Award 
 1984 Arts Council of Ireland, Bursary 
 
 LOUISE WALSH 
 
 b. 1963 Cork 
 
 1985-86 University of Ulster, M.A. Fine Art 
 
 1981- 85 Crawford Municipal College of Art, Cork, 
 Diploma in Fine Art (Distinction) 
 
 Recent Exhibitions 
 
 1997-98 Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast. Public Art 
 Re-Development 
 
 1997 Solo Exhibition. The Belltable Arts Centre, 
 
 Limerick 
 
 1997 Driving Spectacle, a public artwork. University of 
 Limerick 
 
 1996 Pride in Diversity. City Arts Centre, Dublin 
 1994/93/92 Sounding the Depths, with Louise Walsh. 
 
 Glasgow, Liverpool, Graz and Dublin 
 
 Select Awards 
 
 1991 Arts Council of Ireland, Major Bursary Award 
 
 1989 Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Grant 
 1988 Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Equipment 
 1986/85 Peter Moores Foundation Bursary