Schull gallery pays tribute to 1916 with its own ‘history show'

THE Blue House Gallery in Schull opens its 2016 season with a month-long exhibition, ‘The History Show’.

For the show, twenty five artists have responded to the invitation to produce work, including sculpture, painting, photography and ceramics, on events that are meaningful to them, drawn from the history of the last hundred years – or their own personal history.

‘While commemoration of the Easter Rising is the stepping-off point for this exhibition, individual artists have looked at a remarkably wide range of events over this lengthy period,’ explained Blue Gallery joint curator Brian Lalor.

Among the subjects covered are mining in West Cork (Damaris Lysaght), the poor-white descendants of transported Irish people in the Caribbean (Sheena Jolley), our neglected architectural heritage (John Doherty), Tango and the Irish in Buenos Aires (John Minihan), 1920s hunger strikers (Brian Lalor), marriage across the political divide in the 1930s (Ian MacNinch), the Irish Citizen Army (Cormac Boydell), folklore (Ann Martin), the 1913 lockout (Yoko Akino) and Sir Edward Carson (Holger C. Lonze).

‘These subjects are only a glimpse of the personal and public events that the participating artists have chosen to depict,’ said Brian.

‘All works on show are accompanied by a brief text, explaining what the topic means to the individual artist, what inspired them or what the image might convey to the viewer,’ he added.  

‘Amongst the wall-to-wall Easter Rising commemorative events and exhibitions across the country, this  provocatively presents a unique opportunity for the public to view the wider picture, where human passions collide with reality and bring us, protesting but curious, to where we are today.’