Beyond the Pale :Australia (the studio as site where notions of Irish national identity are translated into contemporary works of art)

National Museum of Australia, 2011

The University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia, 2012

The exhibition consisted of three enclosed spaces that concealed three sculptural and drawing installations: Our Lady of Currach, Inimireach (Immigrant), and Greetings from the Irish in Australia (large-scale drawing on masking tape as surface). The disjunctive experience of living outside my psychological and cultural living space informed my fascination with place and Irish national identity. The works of art acted as a form of visual exchange between Ireland and Australia.

Inimireach (Immigrant), Australian natural materials, canvas, balsawood and acrylic

The exhibition Beyond the Pale: Australia consists of three small-enclosed spaces that conceal three sculptural installations: Our Lady of Currach, Inimireach (Immigrant), and Greetings from the Irish in Australia. The disjunctive experience of living outside my psychological and cultural living space has informed my fascination with Irish national identity. Here, I examine visually, the cultural and the political landscape of Irish national identity politics, which continues to shape mother Ireland. The works of art in the exhibition Beyond the Pale: Australia act as a form of visual exchange between Ireland and Australia.

The works of art in the exhibition oscillate between strategic applications of history, memory and experience of ‘Irishness’ which is resolved through the re-appropriation of the motif of the Currach: a traditional Irish sea fairing boat constructed from a wood frame and canvas. The Currach concurrently functions as a reappraisal of an enduring cultural signifier of a particular territory in Ireland, which continues to aid the country’s sense of self and articulates the sense of religious displacement in a multi-religious nation and the realisation of the profound influence of the Roman Catholic Church as a source of personal and national identity.

My artistic syntax employs strategies of rupturing and repetition that reveal layers of meaning and accentuates personal experiences of ‘Irishness’. The three rooms evoke images of the ‘Sacrament of Penance’ (more commonly known as confessional boxes) and the configuration is crucifix in form to reiterate the notion of Catholic dominance over Irish identity over a long period. The sculpture Our Lady of Currach embodies a personal perspective of what it means to be a Catholic within a contemporary Irish and Australian cultural context. 

The artwork, Inimireach (Immigrant) is a measurement of the presence of self in the work that is troubled by a sense of loss and absence attached to the experience of migration. The contextual placement of native Australian materials, when placed in an Irish cultural context act as referents to the Irish landscape in their juxtaposition.
The three large-scale drawings in the artwork, Greetings from the Irish in Australia are a nexus of religion and nationalism within an Irish Australian context. The drawings function as historical parchments that discard a linear reading of history and religion, in favour of an ambiguous and multi-dimensional perspective of time and place.

Our Lady of Currach, balsa wood, canvas acrylic, gold leaf, 2012

Greetings from the Irish in Australia, charcoal on masking tape.