COMMISSIONING EDITOR THOMAS POOL INTERVIEWS COMEDIAN AND CAMPAIGNER AILISH MCCARTHY

Thomas Pool: How did you get your start in comedy?

Ailish McCarthy: In 2018, I joined the Gaiety School of Acting short course for comedy, because, when I went to college, I turned my back on being creative. But when I finished my masters, I thought “remember when you had fun?” So, the comedy course was a really good way to restart my creativity. I’d set aside time, three hours a week, to write, to laugh. It was a great course. I would recommend it to anybody. I think it’s still running, which is a great indicator of success for the school and those delivering the course.

At the very end of the course, we all got to present our ten-minute standup to friends and family. I then started to approach comedy clubs, asking if I could do a five or ten-minute set or participate in an open mic. After doing this for a while, I was approached by another club who asked me if I wanted to come and do a short set on their stage.

Then it just snowballed from there. I kept getting invited, I kept showing up, I kept on going. Then I started to apply for stages in Vancouver, Scotland, England, and all over Ireland.

TP: You’ve been helping lead the campaign to get comedy included in the Arts Act. How did you first become involved in this effort, and how do you feel it is progressing?

AMcC: It was January 2023 and I wanted to write a show. I thought about applying for the Arts Council Agility Award, in order to develop and research the new show, with the aim of touring once it was finished. Then I learned that the Arts Council doesn’t fund comedy, so I shelved my idea of writing a show just to investigate this. I had a look at the Arts Act, and comedy wasn’t explicitly listed the way theatre, music, and visual arts are, despite the fact that it is a performing art form.

I wrote to the Department of Culture, Communications, and Sport, and wrote separately to the Arts Council of Ireland, to ask whether they regard comedy as an art form. The Department came back and said, yes, it is technically in the Arts Act under theatre as a subgenre. The Arts Council, however, came back to say that they don’t fund comedy because they don’t fund commercial arts. However, I noticed that there are other art forms that have a commercial aspect, like music, that they do fund. So, I began this crusade, to get comedy explicitly included in the Arts Act.

As an artist, I put my practice on the backburner to discover why this group of artists are being excluded. Thankfully, I got some support from Minding Creative Minds at the very beginning. They gave me a platform at their annual summit to discuss art forms that are also feeling excluded, like musical theatre or line dancing. Their director, Emma Olohan Sarramida, introduced me to TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh in 2024, and I spoke to him about the dilemma comedians in Ireland were facing.

There’s nothing explicitly stating that comedy should be excluded from Arts Council funding; I think this was just a decision made years ago that hasn’t been challenged. Aengus had the same view as me, and after the general election, he was assigned to the Committee of Arts and Culture, where he worked to put forward an amendment to the Arts Act to explicitly include comedy.

We started to get support from TD Brian Brennan of Fine Gael. The new Minister for Culture Partick O’Donovan has also been very supportive of the amendment. It’s great to see opposition and government coming together to state that comedians are artists and that they should be funded and supported.

Then in November 2025, it just took off. I had an interview with Joe.ie. I think I got something like 90,000 views in 48 hours, which then meant that Prime Time took up the story, and I had an interview with them that got around a quarter of a million views. Then it got onto BBC, the Financial Times, and Sky News, which was great, because initially, I was finding it difficult to get the word out.

Then in December 2025, after two years of campaigning, the Arts Council made a statement that they’re going to start including comedy in their existing schemes. I’m also aware that they have advertised for a panel of comedians to review applications. Culture Ireland has just announced that they’re looking for panellists, to review upcoming applications to include comedy in their funding.

It’s phenomenal. It feels like a totally different climate to when I started this campaign. A lot of comedians I know who have emigrated are saying that they might actually move home now. I can’t wait to hear about the first recipient of comedy funding, whoever it may be. I hope I get a ticket to their show!

TP: Your debut stand-up show for Scene+Heard in February, titled ‘Me, Myself, and Ireland’, focuses a lot on this issue. Can you walk us through your process in creating this performance?

AMcC: I love Scene+Heard. The festival promotes new work and is a springboard for getting into other festivals around the country, or even to international festivals. I had applied because I felt like this was a good, happy, inspiring, and uplifting story, and given the climate of the world right now, we kind of need those.

It was a huge challenge for me because, even though I’ve been doing comedy for six or seven years, this was my longest show yet. It just kind of made sense to me that my first show would be a biographical standup of how I tried to get the Arts Council to recognise comedy.

I think the first draft I made just wasn’t enjoyable to sit through, and thankfully, I had the awareness of realising that I’m very close to the issue, and it was too cathartic. So I scrapped the first draft, and then asked myself: “What do I want the audience members to take away from this?”

I realised that what I’m effectively doing is creating a playbook for an art form to be recognised within the funding structures of Ireland. So, if someone in the musical theatre space wanted to know how to do that for themselves, they should come to this show. It would be like a tutorial for them.

My comedy is very particular to an Irish audience, so I don’t do well when I travel over to the UK. I remember I once made a joke during a set in the UK that their country had become more dog friendly because they now have a new King Charles. The audience completely turned against me! So, I do better at Irish gigs than I do in the UK.

I’m very good at observational comedy, in terms of Irish culture, so a lot of ‘Me, Myself, and Ireland’ was sticking to that voice. It was something I was very, very proud of. There’s also a couple of visual jokes in there as well. I was very nervous because I felt a lot like the Australian break-dancer, Ray Gun, at the 2024 Olympics. She had loads of qualifications in dance, but unfortunately, when she performed, the reaction wasn’t positive from the public. And now breakdancing is no longer considered a sport within the Olympics after that performance. The stakes were just as high for me, as someone who was campaigning for comedy to be recognised as an art form! But the performance was so well received. A member of government attended the show in an individual capacity, and members of The Arts Council staff came to the show as individuals too and really enjoyed it. That was my goal. I wanted anybody who came to the show to feel uplifted. It was a good news story. But it was even more fulfilling when people enjoyed it.

I’m very excited to be touring the show. I’ve already spoken to venues in Clonmel, Sligo, Bray, and Dublin and I’m talking to somebody in Kilkenny currently. I think it’s a really uplifting show and it’ll probably tour for one or two years. But I’m taking a step back from the crusade – I just want to be an artist and a comedian now. But I’m really happy with the results, that comedians now feel like they’re being supported.

TP: Lastly, are there any other projects you’re working on? What’s next for you?

AMcC: I’m doing a radio and podcasting course at the moment – I love radio. I was presenting a show with Mary Claire Fitzpatrick for six months last year, and it was something I really enjoyed doing. I think in terms of comedy, it’ll really help – one hand feeding the other and so on. And then I have a wedding coming up in September, so I have enough on my plate at the moment!

Ailish McCarthy is a comedian and one of the campaigners for the recognition of comedy in the Arts Act.

@thesleepycomedian

Thomas Pool is the Content and Production Editor of The Visual Artists’ News Sheet and the Commissioning Editor of the miniVAN.

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WRITER AND COMEDIAN JACK DOLAN INTERVIEWS COMEDIAN ROGER O’SULLIVAN ABOUT HIS ACT AND HIS ‘DARK NOSTALGIA’ 8-BIT VIDEOS.

Jack Dolan: What got you into comedy?

Roger O’Sullivan: I think it was watching stuff like The Panel on Irish television when I was growing up. There was a period of time in the early 2000s when comedy was actually quite good in Ireland, when great stuff was on TV from some of the top comedians – Dylan Moran, Tommy Tiernan, and Dara O’Briain. This was during some very formative years for me.

JD: You started posting the 8-bit style stuff online, mimicking video game cutaway scenes. What brought you to this as a concept to mine for comedy?

ROS: I’ve always been really into video games and that specific aesthetic of point-and-click adventure games of the 90s. Sometimes what’s interesting is that they look rubbish, but they were operating within the budgetary means that they had. So, I felt like if it was something I’m just doing in my bedroom, it will look rubbish, but the original products looked bad as well, so it’s actually quite easy to hit that same tone. I think a lot of social media is nostalgia bait, so I wanted to generate a kind of dark nostalgia for shit things.

JD: It’s interesting that you brought up this dark nostalgia idea. When you were initially posting those videos online, do you think it allowed you to talk and give characters more scope than you would have in a traditional ‘talking head’ video?

ROS: I think that there was definitely an opportunity there, as the format launders clichés and tropes through a more interesting lens. It gives you license to state that this is a character in a video game, so they’re stock by nature – the graphics don’t have to be very well realised. You can really ham it up and do things to make yourself look more stiff than you really are, or play around with the frame rate on the video when you’re editing, to make it even more hokey. There’s been times when I’ve had the perfect take and audio, but I’ve edited it to make it look worse.

JD: Your current show, ‘Fekken’, named for the fighting game Tekken, is quite PS1 imagery heavy. What was your desired outcome, in bringing the PlayStation visuals and these videos into the show? How did it facilitate the stand up?

ROS: In hindsight, it was very lucky how it all came together in the final product of the show, which was about my relationship with my dad and growing up in Ireland in the 90s. In Ireland at that time, you didn’t have the American High School clichés of the jocks or the nerds or whatever. Everyone was into the PS1, and PlayStations were in practically every household, so it’s a big part of my nostalgia for that time, and gives the show its aesthetic. I wanted the ending of the show to be a Tekken-style fight between me and my dad; that’s the big finale. At the same time, I was making these 8-bit videos on Instagram, so I knew that the audience that I was building there would also probably relate to a lot of the stuff that I was putting in the show.

JD: How’s the tour going so far?

ROS: The tour’s going well! I’ve never toured before so I’m learning lots about touring. Initially I had a more limited amount of dates, with a very small initial run most of them sold out, so I was asked like ‘do you want to do a tour extension? Do you want to do more dates?’ So I went for it, and I learned the limits of myself in a good way. I had to figure out how much of my audience translates into ticket sales – not to be too mercenary about it. I think the big thing is even when they don’t sell out, it’s more than I’ve ever sold in that place. Because I’ve never been able to sell tickets before.

JD: When you incorporate the 8-bit videos into your show, they build a tension throughout. Do you think embracing this stylised approach made it easier to address more serious topics, or do you think it’s something you could have dealt with purely through standup?

ROS: I think the video element made it easier for the audience, because the aesthetic is really grounded in that time. It’s very easy to talk about these things yet feel removed from them, whereas I think it helps people launch themselves back into that world. I think a lot of the show is quite positive about certain things back then, and it’s good to appreciate what your childhood was like. I do think that having those visual elements helps bring people along, more than just text or pure standup.

JD: When you started off doing standup, did you see yourself embracing this visual aspect during live performance?

ROS: When I started, I was quite puritanical with stand up. I didn’t foresee the visual aspects crossing over, but I was very slow to do social media because it doesn’t come naturally to me. If I didn’t do standup, I probably wouldn’t even have social media, which I use as a promotional tool. I think, over the years, seeing other comedians doing exciting things using AV elements in their shows, made me realise that you can actually make amazing things in these shortform spaces. Ultimately, I think what drives a lot of people to do stand up, myself included, is the need for instant feedback. As easy as it is to be cynical about social media platforms, I think they are actually a great way to truly be a micro-budget filmmaker, find your audience, and figure out your style. The great thing about Instagram is you can be seen by people immediately and you can get quite a big following.

JD: After winning ‘Best Newcomer’ at the Comedians’ Choice Awards Edinburgh 2025, you’ve been working on a new show, what can you tell us about it?

ROS: A lot of the new show is still about Ireland, a bit about missing Ireland or not living there anymore. I have this idea on how to start it visually – it’s almost a dawn and still dark, and throughout the course of the hour the sun slowly starts to rise, and you see more and more bits of the landscape, and towards the end of the show you have this realisation that the different bits of the landscape are actually all of these things I’ve talked about in the show. But the problem is I can’t make that yet because I don’t yet know what I’m going to talk about in the show.

Roger O’Sullivan is a comedian, his show ‘Fekken’ is currently on tour.

@rogerocomedy

Jack Dolan is a writer and comedian.

@goodenoughgang

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WRITER AND COMEDIAN LAUREN O’NEILL INTERVIEWS COMEDIAN, ACTOR, AND WRITER MARIA CUNNINGHAM ABOUT HER ACT, PARTICULARLY HER STYLE OF ‘CLOWNING’.

Lauren O’Neill: How did you become interested in comedy through the style of clowning?

Maria Cunningham: I studied acting in the Gaiety School. In first and second year, we did a week of clowning with Raymond Keane. I had never thought about pursuing clowning before that. I went in wanting to be an actor, and came out wanting to be an actor, clown, and a writer. I think ‘clown’ will always influence my acting. It’s opened up a whole new set of tools to play with regarding acting.

Clowning is this artform based in connection, honesty and failure. It plays with the most fundamental and base level parts of being a human. There’s loads of improvisation and connection with the audience. It’s less like a performance and more like a conversation between the clown and the audience.

In terms of work, there’s more control with clowning, because I make my own work. A lot of acting is auditioning and asking for permission to act, hoping that someone will give you a role – unless you write your own play or make your own film, which is something I love doing. But clowning is something you can just get up and do, whether at an open mic or a fundraiser cabaret night.

LON: How do the aesthetic demands of clowning influence your creative process  differently to stand up?

MC: For me, the very first thing that happens in the process of creating a comedic character is collecting things. I’ll be in a charity shop and I’ll find an object that I like or a piece of clothing that interests me. I’ll get it, not knowing what I’ll use it for. I have this collection of things and the next step is thinking about what I would find enjoyable and exciting. If I want to crowd surf, how am I going to make that happen? What character can I create to help Maria crowd surf? It’s a really fun way of creating work because you’re just following an impulse to facilitate a sensation that you wish to feel. 

I’ll watch a really good stand-up show and think “this is magic.” I have no idea how this is working because I don’t really write structured jokes. The way my brain works is visual comedy. At home, instead of writing jokes, I’m doing freaky movements in my mirror.  

Sometimes I include props and costumes that have the potential for failure, if they fall off or break or move in a weird way – that influences the comedy more. For a clown, failure is a gift. When something doesn’t work the way you want it to work, that’s the real magic. Making my own props and costumes is an important step because it allows me to slow down, sit still, and meditate. The more elaborate the costume, the more potential there is for mishaps, which is what I love.

LON: Does the scripting of shows influence costuming, or do the jokes stem from the visual identity of the characters?

MC: The words tend to come last for me. I wasn’t confident in secondary school English class. Structured writing was never something I was good at. Clowning appeals to me because it feels more natural for me to create a visual or physical joke. A stand-up comedian might write down a joke and ask “is that funny?” It’s the words and the structure of it that might be funny. I’ll try something on in the mirror and I’ll wonder whether that’s funny or not. I’ll start with the visual concept. Maybe the way it moves influences the movement of my body, and, having a background in dance and circus acrobatics when I was younger, I’m confident in experimenting with my physicality and my movement. The costume will always inform the physicality and the physicality will always inform the costume.

LON: The performances often incorporate adult or suggestive themes. What draws you to explore this, particularly through costume design?

MC: I like to make work that deals with taboo themes because, as a woman, growing up in Ireland, I’ve learnt that shame is a very useful tool for an oppressor. I don’t want to sound too intense here, but shame and secrecy are really useful to silence people. As a performer, you have an incredible opportunity to take a theme or subject and put it into the spotlight.

For example, by putting our show ‘Porno’, a clown show about the communication around sex, into the spotlight, we’re trying to release some of that shame. Especially with comedy, you can amplify the scenario and make it absurd. You can have the big boobs and the big vagina and everything is kind of over the top, so it allows people to laugh while we’re still discussing those kinds of themes. That’s why the absurd visual aspects are helpful because they create a little bit of distance between people and reality and that makes the subject less scary.

From a technical point, if you’re thinking about making people laugh, it’s about tension and release. Tension is created in a room when you present a taboo subject. People are holding their breath, then when something ridiculous or unexpected happens, that tension is released and people laugh. That’s why it’s called comic relief, because it’s actual relief.

LON: How does audience interaction come into play during your act?

MC: The audience members will generally help Clown Maria to try to achieve something. We might fail miserably, which can be very funny, or we might succeed and the audience gets to enjoy the triumph. But there will always be a want for the character and a journey they’re trying to go on.

‘Porno’was created by me and my clown partner, Saorla Rodger – we have a clowning duo called Lipstink. The bulk of the show was improvised within a structure we had built. We wanted to focus on the fact that in Ireland, we grow up with very little sexual education in schools, and Irish people are typically not very confident at having those discussions. The concept was that we were Ireland’s top live sex stars and were on the last night of our nationwide tour. We go to attempt our big move and we have an accident, causing us to have concussion. We’ve forgotten how to have sex. There’s Giorgio and Amanda, they’re naked and they’re ready, but they don’t know what the steps are. So, we ask the audience to teach us how to have sex. It was so beautiful and hilarious to hear what people said. We wanted to play with how the words we use can be mixed up. People using innuendos made it funny and so easy to misconstrue the words and fully act out what they were saying, but without the understanding of what it actually meant, which created hilarious scenarios.

LON: Are there any upcoming shows you’re developing?

MC: My next performance will be in ‘The Hoes of Tralee’ run by The Wild Geeze. I’m currently further developing ‘Porno’ with Saorla and a new play ‘Dole Bots’into full length shows. I always post updates of shows that I’m making or performing in on my Instagram page.

Maria Cunningham is a comedian, actor, writer and clown.

@maria._.cunningham

@lipstink_comedy

Lauren O’Neill is a writer and comedian.

@alexmillercomedy

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THOMAS POOL INTERVIEWS CHAIRPERSON MARY LOU O’KENNEDY ABOUT THE ROS TAPESTRY – A MONUMENTAL PROJECT 27 YEARS IN THE MAKING CHRONICLING THE MEDIEVAL HISTORY OF NEW ROSS AND THE SOUTHEAST OF IRELAND.

Thomas Pool: What can you tell us about your background? What drew you to the Ros Tapestry project?

Mary Lou O’Kennedy: I’m a resident of New Ross, County Wexford, where the tapestries originated. I have a personal background in community development work, and in my career, previously, I would have worked professionally in the area of community development and local development. I had become very involved in community projects in the town, including the development of St Michael’s Theatre. I was asked in 2020 to Chair the board of New Ross Needlecraft Ltd which is the management board of the Ros Tapestry. That’s what drew me to the Ros Tapestry project initially. I think it’s an amazing project, which is reflecting the history and heritage of the area, along with it being just an incredible artistic piece, with the beauty of the cartoons that were painted, on which the tapestry is built, and showcasing the wonderful craft of crewel embroidery.

So it’s an amazing combination of the history, the artistic and the craftsmanship of the area. It just seems to attract people;  it draws them in. It has a very inspiring and kind of magical aspect when you see all those things come together; it’s hard to even really explain the experience until you go and see them for yourself. So, I thought it was really worth being part of the project. In my role as Chair, I try to protect the tapestry and ensure the creation of an exhibition in the town for all visitors, whether they’re into art or history, and the general public, to see and enjoy .

TP: Do you do any of the stitching yourself?

MLOK: No, I don’t actually, but what I did do during the summer was help secure a small grant from Creative Ireland and the local county council to reach out to the community, to encourage more people to learn the craft. And we included members of new communities from the area and people who were  starting their lives in the locality. So we had participants from all over, from Nigeria, and Bangladesh,  as well as the local community. I did attend those classes and started to learn how to do the embroidery; this gave me an entirely new level of appreciation for the craft because it comes from our heritage. To learn the craft gives you a whole new appreciation of the skill that it takes to create the images in the tapestry.

The stitchers who work on the tapestry refer to it more as ‘needle painting’ than stitching, because it requires the stitcher to pick the correct shade of wool, and to use particular stitches in a particular direction, to reflect the movement in the tapestry. The stitches can be used to create a 3D effect and to give different types of textures to the picture that they’re embroidering.

It’s a real eye opener when you learn how to embroider and see the intricacy of the workmanship that goes into it. I wouldn’t call myself an embroiderer, but I’m learning. As I learn, I just really appreciate the tremendous work of the over 180 stitchers who have given their time as volunteers and have worked on the  15 tapestry panels since around 1998. Their workmanship was learned overtime, and most of them are from the Kilkenny-Wexford-Waterford-Carlow area. They’re mostly amazingly talented women, with a couple of men volunteering over the years, but mostly women, who brought their talents and passion to this project.

TP: Traditionally, needlework (including embroidery, knitting, and crochet) has not featured heavily in the art historical canon. How do you view the place of needlework in Irish cultural history?

MLOK: In my opinion, needlework has played a part of our cultural heritage throughout history. We recently marked Bridgid’s Day for instance. Bridgid’s embroidery box is part of an exhibition of her belongings in Glastonbury. The tradition in our cultural history goes back to early-Christian Ireland. Crewel embroidery, the method we use for the Ros Tapestry, has origins that are unable to be fully traced back through history; I don’t think there’s a consensus on its origins. Crewel work was used in the medieval Bayeux Tapestry, the direct inspiration for the Ros Tapestry, which reflected the story of the Norman conquest of England.

My view is that much of the work of women, and their role in art practice, is poorly reflected in our cultural history. Any woman from any country in the world can probably talk of needlework. Whether it’s knitting or embroidery or crochet or weaving, the art of needlework is almost universal across all cultures and heritage. However, it’s probably underestimated and underappreciated. One part of our project, to build upon the legacy of the Ros Tapestry and to carry on the tradition of crewel embroidery into the future, is to open a school of needlework. We’re conducting a feasibility study on the basis of trying to build a future generation for this craft.

TP: New Ross has recently seen renewed focus as the setting for Claire Keegan’s novel, Small Things Like These (Grove Press, 2021), and the film adaptation of the same name, starring Cillian Murphy. How do you view the Ros Tapestry within local and national history?

MLOK: I think New Ross is a very interesting place. It’s almost like a gateway into much of Ireland’s history. The Ros Tapestry reflects the story of the arrival of the Normans in Ireland, their landing at the Hook peninsula, their coming to Ross, then onto Kilkenny and Dublin. So many events from our medieval past take place in Ross and the surrounding area. The Claire Keegan novel tells a different story about a different era in our history, but the tapestry reflects the importance and significance Ross held during the middle ages.

Another project we are working on concurrently is the Threads of Friendship tapestry, to tell the story of our more recent past, and New Ross’s connection with President John F. Kennedy. It’s like a microcosm of Ireland, all the things that have happened in this area and the connections around the world it has formed and the stories it tells. I think that story is quite extraordinary.

TP: As Chairperson, could you walk us through the history of the project and how it came to be?

MLOK: The project was the vision of Reverend Paul Mooney. He was the new rector of Saint Mary’s Church in New Ross, which was originally built by William Marshall and his wife Isabel, New Ross’s original Norman lords. He wanted to tell the story of that history. He had seen the Bayeux Tapestry and wanted to replicate it in New Ross. He met with some local artists, and he eventually settled on Ann Bernstorff, who designed the original cartoons for the stitchers to work from. She painted the original 15 panels detailing the local history, starting with the Celts, right through the Norman conquest of Ireland.

Paul worked with Ann and her daughter, Alexis, who was the main instructor of the original embroiderers along with Mairin Dunne. They put out appeals to various women’s groups to get involved. The first panel they finished was the one about the Hook Lighthouse. And that has continued over the past 27 years. The final panel is just about complete, with a few details being finalised. That final piece will be launched this year. We have a book about the history of the project and the women who helped create it called A Tale Told in Thread, which is really about the community spirit, the comradery, the social aspect, and the sense of wellbeing that people got through this work.

The project has been funded over the years by different patrons, and a lot of people who contributed financially as well. Each panel has been sponsored by a patron, and we also received funding and support from Wexford County Council, but mostly we’ve been supported by private sponsors.

It became quickly apparent to Rev Mooney that the project had become something much larger than his church could accommodate, and even greater than its original intention. Someone from the Heritage Council even remarked it could be considered one of Ireland’s greatest cultural legacies of the 21^st century.

TP: Stitchers have been working constantly since the early 2000s to complete the Ros Tapestry. With 14 of the 15 panels of the tapestry now completed, what are the plans for the finished work?

MLOK: The finalised panels have been housed in Kilkenny Castle for the past four years, since the pandemic, when we had to move them, as we weren’t able to accommodate social distancing. Currently in development is a new Norman Centre for New Ross, which is where the tapestry will be housed upon completion. This has taken longer than first anticipated, however, they’ve come back to New Ross in the meantime.

The idea is that we exhibit them until they move to their permanent home in the new Norman Centre; the anticipated opening is some time in 2027. That project is being promoted by Wexford County Council and Fáilte Ireland, because in 2027 there is a kind of European-wide celebration of William the Conqueror, who led the Norman invasion of England, and whose feats are reflected in the Bayeux Tapestry, to reflect the 1000-year anniversary of his birth. There will be events in Normandy, Ireland, England, and Sicily – everywhere the Normans conquered. So, the new centre will open as part of those celebrations, but until then, the Ros Tapestry will be housed in the exhibition space of the Dunbrody Famine Ship Experience centre in New Ross.

Mary Lou O’Kennedy is the Chairperson of New Ross Needlecraft Ltd.

rostapestry.ie

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THOMAS POOL INTERVIEWS STITCHER SUSAN SYNNOTT ABOUT THE ROS TAPESTRY – A MONUMENTAL PROJECT 27 YEARS IN THE MAKING CHRONICLING THE MEDIEVAL HISTORY OF NEW ROSS AND THE SOUTHEAST OF IRELAND.

Thomas Pool: What can you tell us about your background? What drew you to the Ros Tapestry project?

Susan Synnott: I have been interested in arts and crafts since my schooldays. I have been costume co-ordinator with New Ross Musical Society for about 20 years. I had an aunt who was a dressmaker, and I have been told that I have inherited her creativity! I suppose I grew up around this type of hobby. In college (where I studied Hotel Management) in the 1970s, I used to modify and make clothes for friends, including debs dresses and even wedding dresses. History, including the history of my town, has also been an interest of mine. My family have been in New Ross for generations and can be traced in the town back at least as far as the Battle of Ross in 1798.

I can credit Rosa Ronan and her late husband John for my interest in the Ros Tapestry. I had heard about the project when it started but wasn’t in a position to become involved with it. I went to see an exhibition of some of the completed panels in the town park in 2007 during the 800^th anniversary of the founding of New Ross by William Marshall and his wife Isabel. I was totally blown away by what I saw! I had no idea the panels were as big as they are – I thought they were just magnificent! I met Rosa and John there (I had known them for years before this) and they encouraged me to become a stitcher. It was a further two years, before I was in a position to become involved, but once I started in 2009, I never left it!

TP: Can you describe your specialist involvement in the Ros Tapestry project to date?

SS: I did a one-year embroidery course with Alexis Bernstorff, the then stitching co-ordinator of the project. Having served a probationary period of about six months, being taught the various crewel embroidery stitches by Alexis, I advanced to stitching on the main panels. As part of that course, I did a module in tour guiding with Ann Bernstorff, the creator of the cartoon images used in the making of the tapestries. I have always been interested in local history, so I loved doing the tours and telling the historical stories depicted in the panels. I worked part time as a tour guide with the tapestry during the summers of 2010 and 2011, when they were housed in Priory Court. At this time, the tapestry was staffed through the JFK Trust, where I worked as a chef in the Dunbrody Centre café.

In 2014, New Ross Needlecraft, who are guardians of the Ros Tapestry, were granted funding through Pobal for three full-time employees of their own. Pobal works on behalf of the government, and in conjunction with communities and local agencies, to support social inclusion and local and community development. I was one of the three appointed as a tour guide. I ended up doing accounts, marketing and basically anything needed to run the day-to-day business for the directors. I loved doing tours and found visitors were always delighted with the exhibition. As I was now employed by the company, I couldn’t stitch, as the stitchers are all volunteers. Unfortunately, the exhibition had to move to Kilkenny Castle during the Covid-19 pandemic and is about to reopen in New Ross. After the pandemic, I came back as a voluntary stitcher, and will continue there as long as I can.

TP: The intricate and delicate needlework, required for such an ambitious project, is very labour intensive. How do you and your fellow stitchers tackle such a large-scale, durational project?

SS: As we are all volunteers, we work when we can. At the moment, it is only one morning a week. At times in the past, we stitched more often, but since the Ros Tapestry panels we worked on are all finished – apart from the Ossory panel, which is being done by our Kilkenny stitchers – we are not in as much of a hurry. We work at our own pace, and it takes as long as it takes. It is very time-consuming; you would only stitch about a square inch an hour, so everything takes time. We enjoy each other’s company and have many enjoyable chats as we stitch. It is a very relaxing pastime where you can forget your worries as you get lost in the intricacy of the work you’re doing. If it takes years to stitch a panel, well so be it. Perfection cannot be rushed!!

TP: Traditionally, needlework (including embroidery, knitting, and crochet) has not featured heavily in the art historical canon. How do you view the place of needlework in Irish cultural history?

SS: All forms of art and craft have a place in some form or another in Irish cultural history. Art such as stained glass is well known in Irish culture – for example Harry Clarke’s world-renowned art is displayed in the National Museum. Needlecraft of many forms, such as knitting, embroidery, and lace-making, is a big part of our cultural history – from Aran knitwear and New Ross Lace, to Mountmellick Embroidery. Embroidery is possibly seen as a dying art, but it is an excellent way of telling a story. The Ros Tapestry tells in thread, the story of the arrival of the Normans in Ireland in the early-12^th century and the influence they had on the future of the country. Embroidery has long been known as a way of telling historical stories, most famously in the Bayeux Tapestry in France.

TP: New Ross has recently seen renewed focus as the setting for Claire Keegan’s novel, Small Things Like These (Grove Press, 2021), and the film adaptation of the same name, starring Cillian Murphy. How do you view the Ros Tapestry within local and national history?

SS: The Ros Tapestry, if marketed properly, could add to the tourist value of New Ross. The history of the founding of New Ross and the subsequent Norman influence on many parts of Ireland starts in South Wexford where the Normans first landed. The history depicted in the Ros Tapestry is the early part of our history. It shows events in places such as Hook Lighthouse, Tintern Abbey, Saint Mary’s church in New Ross, as well as links with Waterford, Kilkenny Castle, and many other Norman sites. Visitors can view this history told in thread at our exhibition and then explore the many places they learned about in the panels. New Ross is already known as the homeland of the family of President John F. Kennedy, and the family homestead is a popular visitor attraction.

The Dunbrody famine ship is an example of the sad history of famine in Ireland from 1845 to1852. Claire Keegan’s novel is about our more recent past and the influence of the Catholic church on the Irish people. As you can see, local and national history can be experienced from Norman times right up to the present in our little town.

TP: The medieval inspiration for the tapestry is clear, with its style, design, and materials emulating artifacts like the Bayeux Tapestry. Do you feel that this medieval style limits the creativity of the stitchers? Or does it help to tell the story of New Ross and Wexford, where a more modern style may not?

SS: The style of embroidery as used in the Ros Tapestry is known as Crewel embroidery and in my estimation, it is a timeless style. It suits the style of the cartoons that we work from, which are medieval. The artist who drew our cartoons did tremendous historical research prior to painting them. She paints in what is known as naïve cartoon style, which gives it its medieval look. The telling of the story in embroidery is dependent on the cartoon on which the work is based.

The creativity of the stitchers is evident in our current work, known as Threads of Friendship. This body of work is made up of two large panels about the same size as the Ros Tapestry panels. They are individually known as Unity – which broadly tells of the links between Ireland and the European Union – and Coming Home, which shows the connection between Ireland and America, linking it with the story of the Dunbrody Famine Ship. The same crewel stitches are used, along with the same wool and linen fabric, but the end product looks completely different and far more modern. Again, it is the cartoon on which the panels are based that dictates how the end product will look. The artist who did these cartoons, Reiltin Murphy, is a calligraphy expert, and this is also reflected in the style of her cartoons.

TP: Stitchers have been working constantly since the early 2000s to complete the Ros Tapestry. With 14 of the 15 panels of the tapestry now completed, what are the plans for the finished work?

SS: The finished work will be displayed in a new Norman museum, which is to be housed in an old bank building on the quay in New Ross. Here, they will form a central part of the museum. This project is jointly being undertaken by Wexford County Council, the JFK Trust (which operates the Dunbrody Famine Experience and the Kennedy Homestead) and New Ross Needlecraft, with Failte Ireland also involved. It is expected that this museum will be opened in 2027. The 14 completed panels have been displayed in Kilkenny Castle, under the care of the OPW, for the last three or four years. They have now returned to New Ross, where they will be temporarily on display until their permanent home is completed. As I said earlier, the stitchers are currently working on our ‘Threads of Friendship’ panels, now that our work on the Ros Tapestry panels is completed. We are also stitching small sections from the main panels to sell as souvenirs of the Ros Tapestry.

Susan Synnott is a volunteer stitcher for the Ros Tapestry project.

rostapestry.ie

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THOMAS POOL INTERVIEWS STITCHER ROSA RONAN ABOUT THE ROS TAPESTRY – A MONUMENTAL PROJECT 27 YEARS IN THE MAKING CHRONICLING THE MEDIEVAL HISTORY OF NEW ROSS AND THE SOUTHEAST OF IRELAND.

Thomas Pool: What can you tell us about your background? What drew you to the Ros Tapestry project?

Rosa Ronan: I’m from New Ross, my family has been here for nine generations. I went to school in Holy Faith Convent, then after that I trained in hotel management for two years. Then I went to Wexford, then Germany, then to Cork for a year, and then I did three years at the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin. My mother got sick, and I had to come home to New Ross, to help her run her café. Then I met John Ronan, we married in 1965, and have two sons: David and Sean.

I wasn’t really interested in stitching, but when Reverend Paul Mooney of Saint Mary’s in New Ross saw the Bayeux Tapestries, he was inspired to create the Ros Tapestry project. Together with the local artist Ann Bernstorff and her daughter Alexis, they began the project in 1998. The Ros Tapestry is significantly different from the Bayeux, which inspired it, it’s been a massive community effort, with great comradery, and helping one another.

I ran into Alexis Bernstorff one day on the street, and she asked me if I would join the project, and I said, ‘yeah that sounds good.’ So for the next year, I learned to stitch. Ann Bernstorff put in a tremendous amount of work designing the art for the panels, she looked at what they wore back then, what they ate, what animals they had, everything about what life was like in medieval Ireland.

From the whole of 1998 to 2025, we had over 180 volunteers. Originally it was myself and 15 other women, but we have new people coming in to learn and participate.

We call what we do ‘painting with thread’, it’s crewel embroidery, but you have to constantly move with the design and the flow of the stitching. From when I first started I just fell in love with it, and I’ll do it to the end.

We’re doing two new tapestries now, about New Ross’s relationship with America and Europe called Threads of Friendship, which will keep us going for another good while.

TP: Can you describe your specialist involvement in the Ros Tapestry project to date? Where did you first learn these craft skills?

RR: We all have the skills we need for the project, but sometimes there are better stitchers than others, and you have to keep an eye on those who are enthusiastic but not as good because they don’t follow the artwork sometimes, and they’ll have to rip it and start over again. So I help watch over them.

I did patchwork for years, and did all sorts of things, but I can’t paint or draw. The only artistic thing I’ve done is the tapestry.

TP: The intricate and delicate needlework, required for such an ambitious project, is very labour intensive. How do you and your fellow stitchers tackle such a large-scale, durational project?

RR: I’ve been involved since nearly the beginning of the project, and we’ve fallen into the rhythm of it. We mostly work Tuesdays, some women come in for just a few hours, but I’m there all day. It’s very intricate work, and most of us have been there so long that we just know reflexively how to do it. It really is like painting with thread, and we just let the artwork guide us.

TP: New Ross has recently seen renewed focus as the setting for Claire Keegan’s novel, Small Things Like These (Grove Press, 2021), and the film adaptation of the same name, starring Cillian Murphy. How do you view the Ros Tapestry within local and national history?

RR: It’s such a tremendous project, I hope it’ll be seen as better than the Bayeux Tapestry, we had people from Bayeux came over, and they were gobsmacked!

When we started learning how to create the tapestry, we had to recreate the paintings Ann Bernstorff made, using a lightbox and acetate paper, then we rolled it very tightly onto a loom. We had to learn eight stitches, and eventually just by looking we know what type of stitches were needed where.

So it’s been a tremendous amount of work, and I think that The Ros Tapestry is very, very important for the town. Thousands of people went to see it last year in Kilkenny Castle, where it was on display. We’re hoping to move it into the new Norman Centre that’s set to open in New Ross in 2027.

TP: The medieval inspiration for the tapestry is clear, with its style, design, and materials emulating artifacts like the Bayeux Tapestry. Do you feel that this medieval style limits the creativity of the stitchers? Or does it help to tell the story of New Ross and Wexford, where a more modern style may not?

RR: I think the style is very important for the story, and Ann Bernstorff’s interpretation of the style is absolutely beautiful.

I enjoy working in that style. If I’m out in the woods now, and I see a nice fern or something, I’ll want to try and stitch it. It drives me mental sometimes! I’ll just try and do too much.

It bleeds into my every day, and it’s a technique I’ll never lose now.

TP: Stitchers have been working constantly since the early 1998 to complete the Ros Tapestry. With 14 of the 15 panels of the tapestry now completed, how do you hope the public will interact with the Tapestry?

RR: I think they will appreciate it, they’ll have to, just because of the incredible work that’s been put into it. I think people need to come in and see it, there are people in New Ross who still say to me ‘I never knew that was there,’ so we need more people to come in and see it.

My husband John was one of the only male stitchers to work on it, and he worked with me on it for ten years, he did the Walls of Ross section while I worked on the Irish and Normans at the fair. That panel is called Exchange, and it is very special to me.

Rosa Ronan is a volunteer stitcher for the Ros Tapestry project.

rostapestry.ie

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Thomas Pool: What can you tell us about your background and your digital art practice?

Elaine Hoey: I returned to college in 2014, completing a BA and then an MFA in Fine Art Media in 2017. My decision to go back was driven by a desire to create art that I had never encountered before – to challenge myself through experimental mediums and unconventional art practices. My work explores themes surrounding biopolitics, including identity, nationalism, displacement, and more recently, the monstrous feminine, as a means to address themes of violence against women. As a new media artist, I work with Virtual Reality (VR), Artificial Intelligence (AI), live cyber performance, augmented reality, and generative art to explore how technology reshapes our relationship with ourselves and the nature of reality.

TP: As curator for the 2023 RDS Visual Arts Awards, what types of practice or subjects were you most interested in?

EH: It’s hard to single out any one artist, as each brought unique perspectives and strengths to the exhibition. The showcase featured an impressive range of artistic approaches, from highly conceptual work to immersive, interactive installations that engaged audiences on a sensory level. Alongside this diversity of media, themes of identity and the environment were prominently explored, reflecting the artists’ commitment to addressing both personal and global concerns. This blend of practices and thematic focus highlights the experimental energy defining emerging artists today. Exhibitions that emphasise this diversity are essential, offering audiences a chance to experience the broad spectrum of creativity that will define and secure the future of Irish art for generations to come.

TP: How do you view the legacy of the RDS Visual Art Awards? How has it impacted emerging practice in Ireland?

EH: Over the years, the RDS Visual Arts Awards has established itself as a vital platform that not only celebrates but also offers valuable opportunities to young artists at a pivotal stage in their careers. It provides visibility and recognition through both the longlisting process and annual exhibition. I think this type of award platform creates a bridge between academia and the professional art world, supporting artists as they transition from student to practitioner.

The RDS Visual Art Awards structure has been set up to really cultivate critical engagement and discourse around emerging arts in Ireland. Each art college in Ireland is visited by a prominent curator, and the judging panel includes respected artists, giving students the incredible opportunity to have their work seen by established figures in the art world at such an early stage in their careers. This exposure is invaluable, offering young artists an early platform for visibility and feedback. The awards offer emerging artists an entry point into Ireland’s art scene, giving them the opportunity to network and exhibit. Many recipients have gone on to gain residencies, gallery representation, and international exposure, proving the scope of the awards to support emerging artists.

TP: As an artist and NCAD lecturer, what advice would you give to art students in launching their artistic careers upon graduation?

EH: The art world can be challenging and requires time to find your place and develop your practice. It’s crucial to stay connected with the wider art community. Build relationships with other artists, curators, and mentors who inspire you. Attend exhibitions, join collective projects, and seek out spaces where your work can resonate and evolve. Collaboration can be just as vital as solo work – it offers fresh perspectives and often opens doors to unexpected opportunities.

Developing a sustainable practice is key, so find practical ways to support yourself. This might mean balancing art with other jobs initially, and that’s okay. Seek out residencies, grants, and creative opportunities that will help fund and expand your work. Lastly, be patient and stay persistent. An artistic career often takes years to find its stride, so allow yourself the space and time to grow, adapt, and refine your work.

TP: Are there any upcoming projects that you’re working on?

EH: I’m currently engaged in several projects. One is a new VR piece titled Bound and Unbound, which blends narrative, generative painting, 3D body-scans, and animation to tell the interior stories of three women. These personal narratives, expressed through spoken word, give voice to the often-unspoken emotions and reflections that shape a woman’s experience of her own body. The piece interweaves three themes – ‘The Displacement’, ‘The Shaming’, and ‘The Change’ – each exploring the body as a site of vulnerability and resilience, examining how societal pressures shape and, at times, distort women’s identities.

I’m also developing Cloaking, a collaborative art activism initiative, designed in partnership with Digital Hub Technologist and Trinity Researcher, Dr Dunja Skoko. This national project invites artists from various disciplines to experiment with image cloaking techniques that disrupt AI recognition and prevent online AI scraping. The initiative was inspired by critical discussions around AI and the arts, raised at the recent Beta Festival 2024 (betafestival.ie).

In addition, I’m working with artist John Conway on Colossus, an augmented reality project set within the Clondalkin community, which addresses complex themes of suicide and mental health. Recently, I also curated an augmented reality exhibition with NCAD Fine Art Media students, based in the Liberties area, which opened on 12 November and explores themes of identity, displacement, and community.

Elaine Hoey is an artist who mainly creates interactive based installations, appropriating contemporary digital art practices and aesthetics.

@hoeyelainegmail.com_

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Thomas Pool: What can you tell us about your background and art practice?

Aoife Dunne: I create immersive, multi-sensory installations that explore the relationship between physical and virtual spaces. My work draws from digital culture, surrealism, and the human experience, combining sculpture, video, sound, performance, and technology to challenge perceptions of reality. My research centres around the profound impact of technology on our perception of place and the dynamic interplay between physical and virtual realms, focusing on how these influences transform reality, identity, and community.

TP: As the 2016 winner of the RDS Visual Arts Awards, how did the competition shape your career trajectory? What do you look back on from that time?

AD: Winning the RDS Visual Arts Award in 2016 provided me with my first studio space to develop new work and significantly increased the visibility of my practice. My work, LIMITLESS, which won the award, was exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, Colorado, shortly after, marking a key moment in my career. The exposure from the award played a crucial role in establishing my presence, both in Ireland and internationally.

TP: How do you view the legacy of the RDS Visual Art Awards? How has it impacted emerging practice in Ireland?

AD: I think the RDS Visual Art Awards have had a huge impact on emerging Irish artists. They’ve created an important platform for new talent to be recognised and supported, which is especially vital right now, when it is so difficult to build and sustain a career as an artist.

TP: What advice would you give to art students in launching their artistic careers upon graduation?

AD: Don’t rush the process – take the time to experiment, learn and refine your practice.

TP: Are there any upcoming projects that you’re working on?

AD: DREAMSPHERE (2022) is currently showing at the Southbank Centre, London, as part of the outdoor programme ‘Winter Light’ (21 November 2024 – 2 February 2025), curated by Cedar Lewisohn, Curator of Site Design,and Mark Healy, Assistant Curator at the Southbank Centre. Consisting of a large-scale projection, this iteration of DREAMSPHERE is one part of a multi-sensorial, site-specific installation, originally commissioned by the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and installed in the IMMA Courtyard from 7 January to 28 February 2022. I’m also working on several exciting international projects at the moment, including my largest installations to date. While I can’t share full details just yet, more information will be available on my website soon.

Aoife Dunne is a digital installation artist who creates large-scale immersive environments that fuse sculpture, video, sound, performance, technology, and costume.

aoifedunne.com

@efadone

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Thomas Pool: What can you tell us about your background and your art practice?

Colin Martin: My practice has included printmaking, film installation and painting. I’ve been mostly making paintings recently, some of which are quite large scale. I’m also an educator and Head of School in the RHA, so I split my time between practice and education. My current work is very focused on technology and digital cultures. I’m also really interested in traditional genres of painting, in terms of things that have a kind of long history; I use them as a prism to look at future orientated cultures.

I’ve been practicing for almost 30 years now. I studied printmaking in TU Dublin. After graduating, I joined Black Church Print Studio, which was a really great support system, working around other artists in the studio. I returned midcareer to do a postgraduate qualification at NCAD to broaden the range of approaches in my work. I started working in film and video, working outside the gallery system, and installing works in non-gallery spaces, which really resonated with a film I made about the ideology behind architectural space. That led to my return to painting around 2014. My most recent show, ‘Empathy Lab’, premiered at CCI Paris in September 2023, and then travelled to the Highlanes Gallery in Drogheda in March 2024.

TP: As curator for the RDS Visual Arts Awards 2024, what curatorial themes were you most interested in this year?

CM: As a curator, I wanted to have passive authorship, and kind of listen to the grass grow. I see my curatorial role as someone who takes care and shepherds the process, from the judging to the final show, and really listens to the work that young and emerging artists are making. All that said, I definitely think there was some strong themes coming through in this year’s show. Of the ten artists, quite a few are interested in critical nostalgia, looking at heritage, family history, and meaning. Quite a few artists are interested in aspects of queerness, or are approaching genres through the prism of queerness. I think another prevalent theme was digital nativism – the artists are mostly of the generation that have grown up with the complexities of digital cultures, so there’s quite a few dealing with those themes.

In this year’s show there’s a lot of physical making, in terms of sculpture and painting, that have a kind of haptic intelligence, and then there are some very sophisticated audio-visual works as well. One thing that’s really important this year is how the RDS gives you a sightline of the work that’s been made in art colleges throughout the island. Sometimes it’s only 10 or 15 artists that make it into the show, but this year they’ve invested in making videos and interviews with all 120 artists who were longlisted, which are included in the show. I think it’s important that audiences see what the judges see, and the brilliant work being done by students and art educators across Ireland.

TP: How do you view the legacy of the RDS Visual Art Awards? How has it impacted emerging practice in Ireland?

CM: The RDS Visual Art Awards have a very storied history and a real legacy. Luminaries of the of the Irish art world, like James Hanley or Dorothy Cross, are all winners of the RDS Taylor Art Award. I think that Dara O’Leary, who was the director of the awards, had a really reflective process on how the awards were fitting with the types of work that artists were making. There was a real reconfiguration of the awards around ten years ago, which was reflective of the ambition of students throughout the country. Since then, it’s been the gold standard for students and something to really aim for.

Another thing the awards do is really combine the innovation and the criticality of the work that’s been made to give wider visibility and create opportunities for the exhibiting artists. The awards have shown real ambition to platform work on a high level that creates great opportunities for artists to work with curators. The team, led this year by Karen Phillips, is also generously resourced to produce quite a sophisticated show.

TP: As Head of the RHA School and NCAD lecturer, what advice would you give to art students in launching their artistic careers upon graduation?

CM: Having taught professional practice in NCAD and the RHA, the primary thing I always say is to focus on the work, and to always make sure you’re making the best, most challenging, interesting work you can. Apart from that, I would say build a network, always surround yourself with critically minded artists that you can trust and talk with, who will challenge you, just as you will challenge them. I think that’s vitally important. The other thing I’d say is to apply for funding and to try and participate as much as possible in the art world. Apply to become a member of Visual Artists Ireland; I think that’s one of the most important things in terms of building a network in the Irish visual arts sector.

TP: Are there any upcoming projects that you’re working on?

CM: I’m in a research period at the moment, having just completed a long body of work, the ‘Empathy Lab’ project that I mentioned earlier, which took about seven to eight years to complete. What I’m interested in researching at the moment is digital assets, and how environments are made digitally in a hyperreal way. More specifically, I’m developing a new project that will be called ‘Unreal Apocalypse’, focusing on people who work in the digital industry, the gaming industry, and the film industry, who create these hyperreal environments. I’m particularly interested in notions of apocalypse and apocalyptic scenes; these seem quite real and prevalent to us but is also elusive and speculative. I’m going to explore these ideas through the techniques of painting to explore our collective interest in illusions.

Colin Martin is an artist and lecturer based in Dublin. He is currently Head of the RHA School and lectures part time in the NCAD Media Department. He is a graduate of DIT and NCAD and works in the medium of painting and film.

@colinmartin81

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“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still” – Dorothea Lange

Thomas Pool: What can you tell us about yourself? How did you become interested in photography and what drives your practice?

David Stephenson: Both of my parents were artists. I was born into a house with bay windows, streaming seasonal light into the rooms, my father and my mother’s pictures adorning the walls, as well as my father’s library of art books and his collection of sculptures. It was like growing up in a gallery where my parents framed the world with paint and charcoal.

When I was three, my father died after a lengthy illness. Throughout my early life, there was a sense of hazy absence; it’s not a coincidence that I chose photography, with its ephemeral and ghostlike qualities. All photographs contain an absence.

I’ve always been drawn to portraiture that’s haunting, shrouded, like looking through a veil or condensation on a window. There was a sense of searching, something unanswered, in that early part of my life. When I take a photograph it feels like a search for evidence. There’s a lovely phrase by Susan Sontag that works like a mantra for me: “To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.” It’s such a perfect and elegiac description of the uniqueness of photography.

In my lecture at the National Gallery of Ireland, I spoke about a photo by Arthur Field, ‘The Man on the Bridge’, taken of my aunt walking up O’Connell Street with a boyfriend. Both of them looking very smart and in a hurry to go somewhere. In the photograph, one of her feet is frozen in mid-air and is about to take the next step into her day. For me, it is a simple but beautiful illustration about the power of photography. My aunt, in that split second, is walking out of her past through her present and into the inevitably of a future.

I started out as an assistant to a fashion photographer in my early 20s. It wasn’t for me, but I did learn about printing. I started seriously taking photographs in my early 30s – black and white images of Ireland in the 1990s. It was an interesting time in Ireland – a time of change and flux. At the opening of my first exhibition, ‘Hard Shoulders’, which had 40 black and white images, I made a speech, saying how it was an exciting introduction to how I see the world, but that I wanted to get closer, as close as one can get to photographing a single life. I have since done two photographic/film projects about individuals living on their own in rural Ireland.

I began doing work in Central America and Africa for aid agencies in the late nineties, which was a very moving experience. I witnessed some truly remarkable and sometimes harrowing human stories. I made some very strong portraits and met amazing people. But I did think ‘Why are they sending an Irish photographer halfway across the world? Why not a local photographer who knows this world so much better than I do?’ But it was a very exciting time to be a photographer in those incredible places and to witness our common humanity. What I do now is focus on a project, something that could take me two to four years to complete.

TP: What equipment do you use? What do your editing and selection processes look like?

DS: I use a hybrid, mirrorless camera, a Canon R5. I have four really good, really sharp lenses. I flip between photographic and film projects. With film I like to work with an editor, but with photography I edit myself. I’m very meticulous and careful. I keep going back to an image again and again until I know every detail. It’s not just the selection of images, but the search for a narrative in a series of images. 

With my image that won the Portrait Prize, there were details I didn’t notice until I looked at the image while editing. There can be nice discoveries during this process. The taking of a photograph is an act that takes a fraction of a second, faster than the blink of an eye, especially with street photography, although it is preceded by a lifetime of looking. Editing is the next stage in the making of an image or a body of work – its where a visual signature appears, like the alchemy of a darkroom.

TP: As AI technology grows more ubiquitous, including Apple’s new AI photo editor tool, how do you think photographers will convey authenticity and originality to their audiences going forward?

DS: During the era of Stalinist propaganda, there’s a photograph taken in a gulag. It looks like the depth of winter, snow everywhere, and it was doctored to make all the prisoners smile. Martin Parr came across the original and put the two images side by side; the contrast is stark. In the real picture, the facial expressions look haunted, no smiles – the doctoring of the image is seamless. False narratives have always been part of photography. I have no problem with people using AI to help with their workflow. AI is still quite unsophisticated, but that will change sooner or later. I imagine I’ll be able, for instance, to ask for a set of Robert Frank-like photographs taken in the late ‘50s in the American Midwest and possibly get a series of pictures that have some resemblance to his work. Why anyone would want to do that I have no idea. For me, the art of photography is in extracting moments from and engaging with the endless ‘human flow’, to make a quote from ‘time’s relentless melt.’ 

TP: Your photograph Ann and Ollie, Main Street, Wexford, 2023, won last year’s Zurich Portrait Prize (now the AIB Portrait Prize). When I saw the piece in the National Gallery, I felt it conveyed the loneliness we all felt during the pandemic, specifically the elderly and their losses. Can you discuss the intentionality and process behind this photograph, and what winning the Portrait Prize has meant for you?

DS: It wasn’t really about their age, or the lockdowns, which had ended by then. It was more the tableau that I saw, with Ann’s red jacket. I like photographing through windows, which is why I love the work of Saul Leiter. There was condensation on the window, so Ollie’s face was ghostlike. I shot four frames; the last frame is when Annie had that expression on her face. I didn’t look at the image for a few days, and I didn’t notice certain details until I started to edit.

This is what I love about the uniqueness of photography. If you think about it this way: Ann and Ollie are just getting on with their day, they’ve come into the cafe for a tea break and entered unknowingly into my imagined and brief tableaux. They are divided by the wooden window frame only from the street, where I am with my camera. Inside the café, there’s no divide, as they are sitting across from each other. Roland Barthes talks about the punctum of a photograph – that unexpected detail that invites us away from how we are conditioned to see a photograph. For me it was the crumpled napkin on Ollie’s plate; it indicated to me that their break was coming to an end. Ann and Ollie were finishing up and leaving behind an empty table and moving into the inevitability of their future. That’s what a photo contains for me – this powerful information, an ephemeral happening, a temporary stage and the certainty of a kind of absence as well.

Winning the Zurich Portrait Prize was a very poignant moment for me. On the night of the ceremony, there was a personal sense of a circle being completed. It was held in the cavernous Shaw Room of the National Gallery, a place of sanctuary for me as a teenager. I ended my school career by sailing past my school on the number 7 bus and spent my days wandering the vast musty rooms of the gallery, where I began my real education, enthralled by the visual storytelling of Yeats, Jellett, and Goya. In my acceptance speech, I told this story and thought of the legacy of my parents and their lives as artists.

TP: Your photographs capture and elevate everyday life. How do you view the photographer’s role as both artist and documentarian? What does this duality look like, for you and your practice?

DS: For me, it’s not a duality – it’s the same thing, and the art arises out of the documenting. For instance, my exhibition ‘Slant’, about the life and death of political posters. During the 2002 general election, I was listening to the Joe Duffy show, and people were complaining about being injured by falling election posters, one man having to get stitches in his head. The idea of the posters – with their repetitive and glib political slogans and the leering, scrubbed faces of the politicians – misbehaving, intrigued me; such a rigid language falling apart. So, I spent three years following the election posters hanging from lampposts, discarded on the side of the road, ending up as accidental montages of words, teeth, eyes, ties, clean shirts in recycling plants. On one occasion I found half a poster, the grinning white teeth of a politician, with the words, ‘At your service’ tied around a bale of plastic rubbish. So that’s how documentary and art come together for me by allowing an idea to unfold by simply following it. ‘Slant’ became a successful and well-reviewed exhibition at Photo Museum Ireland in 2004.

I come across projects it seems by accident, but I think I’m just looking for an invitation that says, this is worth a closer look. I made a film and photographic project about a man called Raymond Ovens, a Protestant farmer living on the border. Driving past his house one day when he was working in his yard, something compelled me to turn the car around and say hello. I knew within 15 minutes of meeting him that I wanted to make a film about him. There was something about the sparseness and individuality of his life that really appealed to me. It ended up winning a lot of film and photography awards. This was another instance of the art emerging out of documenting. I don’t like to explain my work away too much. I like ideas to emerge out of an image and what’s in front of me; it’s about being completely present in the act of looking. So rather than having a fixed idea and concept, and then going out to look for images to fit the idea, I like a narrative to emerge out of returning again and again to the same situation or subject and arrive at a body of work.

TP: What’s next for you? Are you working on any projects that you’d like to share with us?

DS: After winning the Portrait Prize, the National Gallery of Ireland has commissioned me to create a portrait. I don’t know who it is yet, but I hope to make an honest and truthful portrait. Portraiture, for me, is the most exciting part of my practice – real portraiture, that contains human truths, both personal and universal. There’s a look, staring back at us through thousands of years of portraiture, a human echo that I try to see when I make a portrait.

I’m also working on a film/photographic project, centred around Main Street in Bray, but taking in the other parts of the town as well. I want to capture that universality of a main street – people passing through, waiting at bus stops, sitting down for coffee, going to shops. My photograph of Anne and Ollie came out of this project as well. I want it to be a lyrical, non-narrative homage to the place I live with random bits of recorded conversation.

Next year at the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith, London, I have an exhibition of images I’ve taken over the last 30 years. I’m also giving a talk about my practice and a screening of some of my films.

I’m also working on an auto fiction photographic/film project about the mystery and mutability of memory using old family photographs, real life portraits and the upturned roots of trees. This is a collaboration with the poet Mark Granier.

David Stephenson is a photographer and filmmaker. His photograph, Anne and Ollie, Mainstreet, Wexford, 2023, won the Zurich Portrait Prize 2023.

@david_stephenson_photography

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