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.

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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.

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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.

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

Ruth Medjber: I became interested in photography from a very young age. My father was a travelling sales representative for camera manufacturers in Ireland, and my mother worked in a filter making factory. They weren’t photographers but they both worked in camera related fields. Growing up in the early 90s, we were fairly broke, working-class people, so often the cheapest option was for my father to bring me with him on work trips around Ireland. So, I was put in the back of the van, where I’d play with blower brushes and litmus paper, and had access to all sorts of amazing gear from a very young age. And my father would placate me, when I grew bored, with little pink and blue plastic toy cameras. And along the way, we’d stop in John Gunn’s or the Galway Camera Shop – very iconic Irish camera stores. He’d pop me up onto the counter and whoever was there, like John Gunn, would process my film for me from my toy cameras as a three-year old – which is great because John Gunn still processes my film now as a 38-year old!

But that’s kind of how I got started, and photography just became this part of my life that has never gone away – an early obsession that became an absolute passion and a dedication. It became my be all and end all – my identity. It’s very hard now to separate anything I do from photography. I will always be taking photographs, and I’ve kind of shot myself in the foot, really, because I can never do anything else. You know, I’ve never had a choice about what I wanted to be. I was always going to be a photographer, one way or another, whether I was good at it or not. And for a while there, I wasn’t good at it, but I had to get good at it.

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

RM: I’ve always been a Nikon shooter. When I started, I used an SLR Nikon F55, which my dad chose for me. Once you’ve got one system on the go, you’re never really going to change because you start building up a collection of glass for those cameras. So, I’m a Nikon shooter to this day, which is great because I’m now an official ‘Nikon Creator’, which is a really nice deal where they give me free stuff – they’re lovely to me! It was a really organic, natural partnership to work with them.

When I’m touring with a band, and I’m shooting concerts, it’s quite different from when I’m shooting portraits at home. I use a three-lens system that I always have in my bag: 24-70mm, 12-24mm, and 70-200mm. Those are my three main lenses as a concert photographer that I use with my Z8 camera. I also use the same system on my D6 camera, because I’m a very reluctant mirrorless shooter. I still love to shoot with mirror, and I’m finding it very hard to transition. Of course, with the addition of video to my career these days, I’ve had to change things up a little bit –  again, very, very reluctantly.

I also have a plethora of other cameras that I won’t get rid of! For parties, for socialising, just for the craic, when I’ve clocked off my real job and I’m just me again, I’ll use the Instax range. Every type of Instax and Polaroid that exists, I own.

When I’m shooting in work, for shows and everything, I would use Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop at the same time for edits. The turnaround is just so quick; you literally finish the show at 11pm and you’re supposed to have the images turned around within an hour. So, I get straight back on the tour bus and import into Lightroom, and then I might have shot three to five thousand images a night. So, I just make my selections really quickly, do some basic exposure adjustments, and then move onto Photoshop for any larger edits.

The things I get to spend a little more time on – my personal work, like my upcoming show ‘Her, Allure’ at Photo Museum Ireland (15 to 19 October) – involve a completely different process. It’s lovely and slow and detailed and meticulous and laborious in a great way; I can really take my time and mull over each image. I’ve been editing that show while I’ve been on the road with Hozier during his North America tour. I’ve been editing on my days off in hotel rooms, setting up my sketches for how I want the exhibition layout to look, and getting a real grasp on the scale and size by putting up neon tape, signs and images. The house-keeping staff probably thought I was deranged! But I just really needed that space to visualise how people are going to see it in the gallery. So those are my two extremely different workflows.

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?

RM: AI doesn’t worry me in that respect. I’ve always felt, as a photographer, that people are more concerned about my practice and livelihood than I am. I remember when camera phones became ubiquitous everyone said “Oh no, you’re going to be replaced!” But I was fine. So, with AI they’re saying “Oh no, your days are numbered!” But I use AI in my practice at times; I’m not afraid of it. I know exactly what it can and can’t do. But I think with regard to originality, the authenticity in my work comes from my subject matter and keeping the truth there.

I’m a portrait photographer; I photograph people – real people. When I started off, upon graduation from college, I tried every type of photography, including fashion photography. I was working with models, and it’s one of the only types of photography that I couldn’t get into, because I really felt the disconnect between me and the model. As I got older and more established, I realised that what I enjoyed most about photography was the act of representing a person’s character and unique personality. And that, to me, is what’s so crucial in my work. I don’t think that’s ever going to be replaced by AI.

TP: As a professional photographer, you’ve spent a considerable amount of time photographing concerts of famous musicians and bands such as St. Vincent, The Arctic Monkeys, Ed Sheeran, Billie Eilish, and Miley Cyrus, to name a few. Most recently, you’ve been on tour with Hozier photographing him and his concerts; what’s life like on the road with a famous musician and their entourage? How do you capture the excitement of the crowd and the musicians, while satisfying the press, the record labels, and social media platforms?

RM: Touring is amazing, but it’s also extremely difficult. It’s very, very hard. You’re catching me the day after I’ve just finished an 11-week tour and I’m sitting here and I’m very jetlagged, so I’ll give you a brutally real answer as to what touring is like.

It can be a very hard slog. It can be quite gruelling at times, but then it’s also this incredible adventure that you’re never going to experience in any other situation in your life. We’ve just done 11 weeks touring North America. We’ve been touring this show for 18 months now, across North America, South America, and Europe. We’re about to go to New Zealand and Australia. So, we’re covering a big chunk of the world. It is exciting. But then it’s also Groundhog Day because you’re going into venues, especially arenas, which all sort of look the same, no matter where you are in the world.

As the resident artist on tour, it’s my role to capture it, not only in a documentarian way, but also in an artistic way. Not only for social media and the record labels and the press, but also for the fans. I try to put myself in the shoes of 15-year old me, when I used to go to shows and line up at 6am to be the first kid at the barrier. I come from a place of being that fan, you know, and I still am. I want to see the show the way they see it and the way I used to see it. And that’s what’s really great about it. I detach from being the crew member and go back into being a fan. If you ever see me at a Hozier show, I lose my mind. I’m in it. I’m singing, I’m dancing. All the other crew members are laughing at me because they can all see me in the front row. I absolutely love it. And I have to love it, to get myself into that zone, you know?

The main thing is to give the fans something gorgeous to hang onto, whether they were there or not. I try to capture it for what it was: something special and intimate and curious and wonderful. Everything that Hozier tries to put out there, everything he’s tried to make with his show. That’s what I try to capture.

TP: Your Covid-era ‘Twilight Together’ series beautifully captured both the isolation and togetherness we collectively experienced during the pandemic. Your work exemplified the photographer’s role as both artist and documentarian. What does this duality look like, for you and your practice?

When I was creating ‘Twilight Together’, it was crucial for me to make sure I captured the reality of what was happening at the time, and to not not skim over anything. I felt it was a responsibility. When I realised the project was interesting to as many people as it was, when everyone started messaging me, wanting to be part of it, I knew it had potential to be something quite popular. It was then that I said, “Okay, I need to make sure that this is a fair representation of what’s going on.” The project became a book, and when I signed the book deal, I made sure that it wasn’t going to be a glossy, fluffy version of events, nor was it going to be, you know, overly dramatised either. I wanted to reach out to so many different members of the population, Irish people of all backgrounds and communities, and make sure that their experience was also represented. So, I looked at population statistics to see the different lives in Ireland, the demographics, cultures and communities. How many members are there of the traveller community? How many Black Irish people do we have? How many Muslim Irish people do we have? I wanted to make sure everyone had their fair share in this document.

I was quite meticulous about that because I grew up in Ireland in a mixed heritage family. My father’s from Africa, and he’s Muslim; my mother’s from Ireland, and she’s Catholic. I grew up with this duality in my own life, and I was never represented in art or media. And if my people were represented, it was always in a negative way. I didn’t want that to happen with this book. I reached out to different people and asked “What’s it been like for you?” I made sure to visit a Muslim family that I knew who were celebrating Eid on that day. And then I went and found a beautiful traveller family down in Cork. And they introduced me to all of their family members.

I made sure to hear people’s stories. So, the book not only features photographs of the families, but also the individuals. There are 150 different windows in the book, containing different scenarios, family situations, friendships, and so on. There are also 44 stories, and it’s in these stories that I tell people’s different versions of events. I think that’s kind of the documentarian side of me, that I just have to tell other people’s stories the way they’re told to me, as clearly as possible. It’s by my choice of topic and my style of work that it becomes art.

TP: You have an upcoming exhibition at Photo Museum Ireland, titled ‘Her, Allure’ (15 – 19 October 2024). What can you tell us about this new body of work and how it came to be?

‘Her, Allure’ was commissioned by Peugeot. I feel like artists in Ireland don’t talk about brand commissions enough; they’re a huge part of my existence. Peugeot came to me at the start of the year looking for a photographer who could conceptualise one word, and the word was ‘allure’. They were looking for a photographer who could just run away with the idea. They were very hands off and they gave me a lot of creative control.

Being an artist in Ireland in 2024 is quite hard because, unless you’re killing it on the international market and selling your prints or photographs for however much, it’s very hard to make a living. So, when chances like this come along to get fairly paid for my work, I will always consider them. I found them to be a decent group of people who respect what I do. They gave me the ability to hire people that I trusted for the project, so I was able to hire my friends who run a production company to do the video that goes alongside the project. We kept it very local, very Irish, and very artist driven.

When conceptualising the word ‘allure’, to me, I see it as the nomadic, carefree spirit that exists inside me, that makes me live the type of life that I do, which is very non-traditional. I love the life that I have, which is extremely free. I have no routine in my entire life. I’m not tied down. So, I thought of the ‘allure’ in me that, every so often, I just hear a little whisper on the wind going, “Come on, let’s go!” It’s just something in me that doesn’t like to settle down; I’m always going to be carried on to the next adventure, the next shoot.

I imagined ‘allure’ as personified by my friend MayKay, and I created this collection of photographs of her as this nomadic, fleeting spirit – a mythological siren, always calling you down the road. And there’s a bit of divilment in there as well, where she’s calling you and you know shouldn’t answer, but you will anyway. The images can be quite trippy at times, and people’s responses have been varied, to say the least. There are nine images in total, and I’ve tweaked them in places to pull the viewer in, to make them feel disconcerted and curious. We shot it over four days, which is incredibly quick to do a shoot like this. But due to time constraints with the Hozier tour, we had to do it in four days and pray for the weather – and we got the weather.

For ‘Her, Allure’, this is the first time I’ve ever photographed somebody who’s representing me. Which was a very strange thing to do. When I hired MayKay to play this character in the series, it wasn’t until about halfway through the editing process that I realised I had actually hired her to play myself. It’s something I’ve always thought about doing in my work, but I’ve never actually realised it, until I accidentally did it with this campaign.

I’m 38 years of age. I’m living this bananas lifestyle that is so different to any generation before me, especially as a woman. I’m privileged enough to do this because I made a decision a while back to remain child free in my life. So, I don’t have the traditional kind of ties of family life to anchor me to any particular point. What I saw, when editing the ‘allure’ shots, was my acceptance of the lifestyle that I’ve chosen. There was a lot of grown-up realisations when I was editing it. Hopefully people will get that sense of freedom when they see ‘allure’ for themselves and meet her in the gallery. It’s been absolutely amazing, having the freedom to go and do something completely different from what I’ve been doing for the last year and a half. Something so freeing and so open and so immensely broad as to capture ‘allure’.

Ruth Medjber is a professional artist and photographer. Her new exhibition ‘Her, Allure’ runs from 15 to 19 October 2024 at Photo Museum Ireland.

ruthlessimagery.com

@ruthlessimagery

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

The Belfast Shooter: I’m known as The Belfast Shooter, a name that I’ve given myself because I feel that it’s exactly what I’m doing. I go around and shoot in the streets of Belfast. I’m relatively new to this. I started my photography Instagram page six months ago. Photography is a whole new world to me.

I did media studies at university, so I have some background in photography. But after graduation, I fell into that nine-to-five life for the past seven years or so and didn’t have much of a chance to focus on anything creative. I wanted to use my page as a wee way to show Belfast as it is in 2024, and to experiment with photography.

When it comes to my drive, the reason I started photographing the different sides of Belfast was because I come from a nationalist area in West Belfast. I couldn’t get a house there, so had to move to a loyalist area in East Belfast. It was a culture shock because I went from seeing Irish murals, Irish flags, and other signifiers of Irish culture to the absolute opposite, where there are Union Jacks and loyalist murals everywhere. I just thought to myself, I want to create a project out of this. I’m going to show people what it’s like in Belfast in 2024. So that’s really what drove me to get started with it all.

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

TBS: For the first five months of this project, I’ve used my mobile phone. I used all the usual apps that you can download on the app store. The last two months, I have been using a simple camera, which is a Canon 550D. For editing my photographs, I use Adobe Lightroom.

In terms of selecting photos, I love to capture the political angle of what’s on the walls in Belfast. I also like to show that there’s life here as well, beyond the political, so I try and get more images of people in their everyday environments. I try to capture that, even though it may seem crazy in Belfast with everything on the walls – we just live on here, as if it’s completely normal. So, I try to select pictures based on what shows everyday life for people here.

TP: As AI technology grows more ubiquitous, including Apple’s new AI photo editor tool, how do you think photographers will convey authenticity and maintain trust with their audiences going forward? I’m thinking of a photograph you took that appeared to show a convicted ‘Shankill Butcher’ participating in an Orange Order parade – a scenario that, in a few years’ time, many could say is false and made by AI.

TBS: I hope that my style of photography can continue to be trusted. I’m capturing things happening in Belfast here and now. That particular photograph you’re referring to, people would know that it’s real. I captured in on the 12th of July on the Shankill Road. I can see how in a few years people could argue that it’s not real or that it’s AI, but I try to keep my practice true to the events as they happen in Belfast. I think AI has its benefits for photographers when editing their work. But I don’t have an issue with people thinking that I’ve made something up; I photograph Belfast as it is, and people who know Belfast understand that.

TP: The Irish nonfiction writer Mark O’Connell (author of Notes from an Apocalypse and A Thread of Violence) once wrote of the North: “I experience the North as a realm of deep cognitive dissonance… I’ll see the Union Jack flying from a lamppost, or pay for something using pounds rather than euros, and I’ll find myself wondering why everyone is just going around acting as if they were in Britain… If you didn’t know anything about the context, you could almost wind up thinking there was something vaguely whimsical going on, some gigantic and inscrutable performance-art piece that maybe had something to do with the fictionality of nationhood.” I wonder how you feel about this quote, and whether it reflects your approach to capturing everyday images of Belfast’s loyalist and republican communities, symbolism, and parades?

TBS: I think that quote is spot on; it’s brilliant. To be honest, Belfast is a very strange place. Like I said, I grew up in a fairly nationalist area, and it was such a culture shock, moving to a loyalist area, that I felt compelled to start this project. I was just so in shock seeing the ‘other side’, the loyalist murals and communities. I don’t mean that I disagree or disapprove of it all; it’s just so completely different to the community I grew up in.

But to go back to the quote, I think that’s often people’s perception of Belfast. When visitors and tourists come to Belfast, most people stay in the city centre or explore the Titanic Quarter in East Belfast and other tourist attractions. These attractions are mostly in loyalist neighbourhoods, so you’ll only see Union Jacks and British culture. But it’s a very small portion of the city. Where I grew up, you’d never see the Union Jack, you’d never be exposed to any sort of Britishness or think there was any on the island of Ireland.

I see Belfast as a big open air, walkable gallery. What I love most about this city is all the class art everywhere, not just political stuff. Belfast is small, so you can literally walk down one street which is full of UVF or UDA murals and Union Jacks, then turn the corner and you’ll see Tiocfaidh Ár Lá graffiti, Irish flags, and everything else Irish. That’s what Belfast is. And whether you agree or you disagree, it doesn’t matter because this is Belfast – a cultural hotspot with plenty of history, and it’s just a good wee fun place.

TP: Your work exemplifies the photographer’s role as both artist and documentarian. What does this duality look like, for you and your practice?

TBS: I’m not the best of writers, and since I started my page to document Belfast, I thought photography was the best way to do that. It’s very important to me to represent the city accurately. I’ve seen Belfast misrepresented in art and media for years. People travel from across the world to tell our story for us, so I think it’s really important for someone from Belfast to capture it as it really is. I also give information about the areas with my posts, so people aren’t just getting information from Wikipedia. It’s how I capture these images that elevate them above just pure documentary.

TP: Are there any upcoming projects you’re working on? What’s next for you?

TBS: This past year has been mostly me learning and making connections, as well as mistakes, and learning from those mistakes. I’ve been really blessed to pick up a substantial following on social media, which has really opened a lot of doors for me. At the minute, I’m currently working on some photobooks as well as working with artists in Belfast’s hip-hop scene, which is really cool. So, I’m focusing a lot on the hip-hop scene here, as well as continuing to document Belfast and put my social media images into photobooks. I’ve been speaking with a couple of studio spaces to create an exhibition of my work next year, but in the meantime, I’m learning, making mistakes, and just seeing where this takes me.

The Belfast Shooter is a photographer whose work captures the everyday life in Belfast’s communities.

@thebelfastshooter

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Thomas Pool: As a sculptor, what draws you to wood as a medium?

Tina O’Connell: It’s probably the smell of it! My dad was a very talented self-taught carpenter, building his own currachs in the 1970s and his own fishing boat in the 80s, that he used to fish during the 90s. He then started his own business making stairs, up until he retired. So being in his workshop and around wood just felt right. I had worked on some projects with him over the years, so wasn’t scared to use the machinery, but he also taught me how to be safe in my approach, when working in the workshop.

TP: How has your practice evolved over the years?

TOC: My journey into art began quite spontaneously. About 12 years ago, instead of our usual wine night, a friend and I decided to paint. We ended up using old slates from her house renovation. That night sparked something in me, and I started painting on slates and canvases, mostly doing commercial work and commissions, selling at markets and through my website.

I really wanted to develop my own art practice, so I went on to do Fetac Level 5 and 6 courses in Ennistymon Art School. I was encouraged to work on a theme each year; looking back now, I realise my themes were autobiographical. I got my portfolio together and decided I was getting my degree. I chose to enter directly into second year of the BA in Sculpture and Combined Media at LSAD, as this seemed like the course with the most freedom to explore all materials.

Even though the course was a challenge and involved learning digital media programmes, I loved the capability to tell stories through stop motion, sound and video. Throughout college, I continued to make work that related to my own life, as I feel that I can only make good art about something I know. I have been using sculptural carving as a medium to tell stories that are autobiographical.

TP: How and where do you source the raw materials for your pieces?

TOC: Well, a lot of begging and trading paintings with people! I live in The Burren with very few trees, other than forestry pine, so Raymond, a tree surgeon I know, got me a few nice pieces of wood. He put me in contact with a man named Joe, who had a forestry and donated some of the larger pieces that I used in my degree show. Some other locals also donated pieces, which I am very grateful for. The pieces in the show were a mix of oak, cypress and beech. Going forward, I plan to get the funds to buy a trailer load of cypress.

TP: You have written previously about how your work explores issues surrounding mental health and motherhood. Could you tell us a bit more about that?

TOC: For me, my mental health is strongly linked in with my experience of being a mother. As a young mother, I felt pressure, from myself and society, to always look like I was coping, regardless of sleepless nights and constantly battling with my weight. My children’s father mostly worked away from home, so I was effectively a single mother Monday to Friday. I began to suffer with my mental health; antidepressants helped in a lot of ways, but I felt they suppressed my creativity a little. I found that sea swimming throughout the winter helped, and going on long hikes, finding time for my brain to switch off from the demands of the everyday and just being with my thoughts. I am very much aware now of the signs of my mental health going into decline, and the first thing I try to do is go for a swim. Other times, I get a pen and paper and start writing all my thoughts down so that they aren’t just swimming around in my brain – this really helps. Sometimes I find humour in those writings, which lifts my head from that darkness.

TP: Your recent graduate exhibition at Limerick City Gallery of Art featured a lot of carvings depicting family and domestic life. Could you tell us about your intentionality for these pieces?

TOC: My exhibition was deeply personal, with each carving capturing the complexities of family and domestic life. The first carving I did, Feach Orm (See Me), was carved at time when I was feeling very low and full of self-doubt. My daughter had just left to go back to university in New Zealand, and I was feeling immense loss. I used to plait her hair, so I decided to go with the shape of the wood and carved two French plaits with a face, using images of my daughter for reference. I was new to the chainsaw and in the process of working on this piece, I had made a deep cut in the neck that was unfixable. I thought about the French plaits and the nice clothes we wore going to mass. Outwardly, we looked like a perfect family, but times were tough with little money. So, although Feach Orm initially was about my daughter, it became even more relevant to my own upbringing and the masks we were taught to wear outwardly to the world. My sculpture, When you were big and I was small, borrowed the title of my friend Katie Theasby’s song that she wrote about her dad. In this case, the teenager is 6ft tall, carved from cypress wood, wearing her GAA gear with her headphones attached to her mobile phone. The mother is smaller at 4ft, made to feel small by not being listened to. Really, the intention of all the pieces is that they tell a story – one that I hope mothers and families can relate to, with humour found amongst the dramas of everyday life.

TP: Are there any upcoming projects you’d like to share with us?

TOC: I just finished a one-month residency with The RHA and Áras Éanna in Inis Oírr, where I was inspired to make work relating to my grandfather and father. I used stone to carve objects and shared stories of my grandad; it was a wonderful experience. Some of the islanders knew my father from his fishing days, and the golden goose was finding the currach that my father first built, sitting on the beach in Inis Oírr.

I am very excited to be exhibiting in Limerick City Gallery of Art in September, where I will show work from my degree show. LCGA were strong supporters of Irish sculptor Janet Mullarney and have some of her work in their permanent collection. It will be a privilege to exhibit in a space where this incredible woman exhibited.

In October, I am heading to Austria for two weeks. I won the LSAD-TUS Global Travel Award, so will be doing a one-week course in concrete sculpture and a one-week course in chainsaw carving. I am really excited to develop my chainsaw carving skills, as up to now, I have only been using the chainsaw for blocking out, then refining with the angle grinder and Dremel. The concrete sculpture will give me an alternative for creating large-scale projects, which I would love to explore in the future. I am also going back to LSAD to do an MA in Fine Arts part-time. I am itching to get back to carving wood, so if anyone wants to donate wood to North Clare, where no trees grow, I will gladly take it!

Tina O’Connell is an artist and sculptor living in The Burren.

tinaoconnellartist.com

@tinaoconnell_artist

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