An Apprentice Verse-Maker’s Take on the Exhibition -
Postcript: Visual Artists Respond to Seamus Heaney’s Poem.
Transfixed, I was listening to the radio in my kitchen when I
heard the Chair of the Irish Countrywoman’s Association, Bridin Twist, say that
she was in favour of legalising divorce. There was now every chance something
heretofore unimaginable could happen. I was reminded of that as the votes were
counted in the recent referendum. It was
one of those heart-stopping moments when time is suspended and you know the
landscape has irrevocably changed. A few years later I met my hero in her home
The Burren Holistic Centre below Mullaghmore Mountain, where I was to
facilitate a workshop.
Bridin, who sadly died a few years ago, brought my attention
to the poem Postscript, by Seamus Heaney.
I bought a copy from the Kinvara shop named after the poem and had it
hanging in my own house afterwards.
On Saturday evening last in the Russell Art Gallery, just
north of the flaggy shore road that inspired the poem, I attended the opening
by Micheal O’Suilleabhain of ‘Postscript: visual artists respond to Seamus
Heaney’s poem’ - an exhibition curated by Tim Emlyn Jones. Introducing Micheal,
Tim spoke of the transformative powers of the Gallery space where, if you stop
by for a cup of coffee before walking the flaggy shore, anything can happen.
You can even find yourself agreeing to curate the exhibition to which you had
agreed to contribute!
The response of the artists he invited was so generous that
the Burren Art College is now going to host more of the exhibition. It will be
formally opened there by Fintan O’Toole on Thursday 9th July at 7pm.
Both sections of the whole exhibition will continue until the end of July. Just
over a week later, on Friday 17th July, The former RTE radio
producer, John Quinn, will introduce and present “Remembering Seamus –
interviews & correspondence,” a selection of radio interviews with his
friend.
The RHA artist, Donald Teskey’s Longshore II - a wild
seascape created in mixed media, waves crashing the rocks of the shoreline,
immediately grabs attention on entering the Russell gallery space. To the left
of that is an exhibit where lines drawn in black interact with thick white
paper, drawing attention across the waves to the horizon and the sky’s lines
above. This picture had me smile without quite knowing why - the horizon, with
its persistent waves, its sense of timelessness maybe. It is the work of Tim
Emlyn Jones himself and there is a smaller similar piece of his further along
the wall, with more variety in the waves and light. The juxtaposition of colour
and black-and-white is striking in the montage of images in mixed media in
Judith McKimm’s work, while The Blue Flower, in oil, by Nick Miller and
Geraldine O’Reilly’s work give a more immediate take on the Burren landscape -
as does RHA Charles Harper’s, striking piece Burren Day highlighting mountain
and flagged Burren landscape – although in a very different style. I was also
particularly taken by the abstract work of the other artists: Ann Quinn,
Lorraine Wall and David Ferry. Conor
McGrady’s ‘Borderland 1’ and 2, undertaken in Gouache on Paper, revealed to the
returning eye of this observer a zen-like sense of stillness. I wondered was
the artist influenced by Japanese landscapes: a black sun above a strong I Ching-like line was suggested
to this novice when I reflected further. And the placement of the scene on the
paper in his second piece, reminiscent of rocks planted in the Japanese
landscape – timeless and natural, yet carefully placed, this time here in Co
Clare, suggested it further. The blurred boundaries of the gouache medium
somehow only strengthen the outline. Again, there’s the suggestion of a
here-and-there-ness.
The boundaries of the exhibition itself are blurred in the
Gallery. Hunting for treasure, glance moving from catalogue to walls, it became
clear all the paintings on the walls are exhibits. The other work, enjoyable
for itself any other day and propped on shelves among exceptional craftwork,
cards and jewellery that, one suspects, assist the gallery to host such
exhibitions – they have related books too – inevitably distract somewhat from the
exhibition.
‘Heaney’s “…neither here nor there” might be taken as an
insult but it also reveals something of poetry’. ‘It is the place where poetry
meets you’, Micheal O’Suilleabhain suggested as he reflected on Heaney’s lines.
‘Everyone should have a flute carrier’ he remarked as the young man kneeling at
his feet unbent himself to extend the instrument. The musician did not want the
audience to be trying to imagine wild swans or any such – ‘we’ll just see what
happens’ and the notes trickled and danced.
Across the road, as I left, across the fields and the grey
sea in the bay the white and yellow light was highlighting dark edges in the
white clouds. Silver glanced the arms of the wind turbines lit from the
disappearing light behind them as they turned on the hills – straight across
from the place Heaney visited and wrote, in Postcript, ‘You are neither here
nor there,/a hurry through which known and strange things pass/As big soft
buffetings come at the car sideways/And catch the heart off guard and blow it
open.’
Relevant links:
Russellgallery.net
aica.ie/postscript-group-exhibitions-at-the-burren-college-of-art...
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