A group of six exhibitions gives a striking, intimate visual record of Donegal life over the past 100 years, writes Mary Phelan.
'There is a very clear distinction between something local and something parochial," according to Shaun Hannigan, director of the Letterkenny Arts Centre, commenting on the very conscious choice by this year's Earagail Arts Festival to depart from its tradition of bringing big international exhibitions to the county. "Donegal is as interesting as subject matter for a visual arts project as New York, Paris or London. Usually it is artists from outside that are drawn here to work, using the area as inspiration. This time we decided to turn our own gaze on local subject matter."
The result is Local Life - Re Presenting Donegal, the umbrella title given to six parallel exhibitions that, although commissioned for the festival, run through August. Focusing strongly on local themes and images, they represent a new maturity in the visual arts scene in the county, according to Hannigan. They are also a striking visual record of life in the north-west over the past 100 years.
Donegal certainly has a vibrant visual arts scene. Painters have long been drawn by the majestic variety of the landscape, and over the past decade, in particular, there has been a veritable influx of artists coming to live in the county, "the Bohemia of the bog", as the poet Cathal O'Searcaigh affectionately names them.
Often, however, the left bank seems not to know what the right bank is doing, and the world of galleries and exhibitions is generally the province of the blow-in. However, with the increasing visibility of local artists, this is changing.
Several of the exhibitions in this cluster span the much contested bridge between art and social history. SWILLY - Bus And Railway is a case in point. Focusing on the legacy of the celebrated railway line linking north-west Donegal with Derry, it combines memorabilia and documentation with newly commissioned work. Contemporary video, recent television, and vintage film footage are juxtaposed with 20-year-old black and white photographs by the Dutch photographer Jan Voster and brilliant full-colour images by Declan Doherty, a local press photographer.
An added element of authenticity, and indeed novelty, is provided by a looped audio recording of the voice of John Hannigan, a veteran of 60 years' service with the company, recalling the Owenocarrow viaduct disaster of 1925, and it is interesting to hear audio being used to conjure up a sense of place.
People And Place: Reimagined, showing at An Grianán Theatre, presents a visual history of the country, contrasting photographic reflections of Donegal from the end of the 19th century right through to the present. Curated by Marie Barrett, the exhibition has amassed a wealth of rare images from a wide range of sources, including the Lawrence, Welch and the Congested Districts Board collections.
Some of the work is by professional photographers, others that of the amateur. Again, there is much of interest to the social historian and to photography aficionados.
The image of the teeming pier at Downings from the Congested District Board collection is in stark contrast to Declan Doherty's contemporary reflection of Rathmullen, bereft of boats but replete with the summer exuberance of boys leaping into the water. Doherty's portrait of a freckle-faced boy is archetypal, while his capture of Daniel O'Donnell, eyes uplifted and waving his hand in a papal gesture, is whimsical and humorous. Other highlights include Rachel Giese's photographs from the 1980s and Patrick Sheridan's images of Buncrana in the 1920s.
The Donegal County Museum's Letterkenny Ones explicitly develops the art and social history theme. Curated by Caroline Carr, this exhibition also combines memorabilia, photography and audio-visuals. The film footage from the 1973 Letterkenny Folk Festival overlaid with a new voiceover by Sally Blake and showing positively juvenile looking Clannad members, as well as exotic performers from as far away as India, is extremely interesting. So too are the contrasting contemporary and vintage workplace photographs.
Although the combined impact of the three Letterkenny-based exhibitions, each relying heavily on photographic record, memorabilia, and audio-visual display - plus Richard Wayman's photographic portrait of daily life in Ardara, which finished yesterday - may be that of slight overkill, those running outside town at the Glebe Gallery in Churchill and An Gailearí in Falcarragh are quite different.
Derek Hill And Tory Island is the focus at the Glebe. It explores the work of the English artist, whose love affair with the island precipitated the engagement of islanders with the wonderful world of paint. The ground floor of the show focuses on Hill and James Dixon, the first of the islanders to begin painting, juxtaposing, for example, Hill's portrait of Dixon with Dixon's own work.
"It's nice to see their faces and their paintings as well," says Adrian Kelly, curator at the Glebe, who travelled the country and abroad to assemble the exhibition. "We borrowed from maybe 15 different sources for this exhibition, including a few very big collections - the Bank of Ireland, the Ulster Museum, the Office of Public Works. Then a lot of the Tory Island paintings came from local sources - Donegal County Council, for example." Acknowledging that the Tory Island artists have become a bit of a cause célèbre, Kelly emphasizes the significance of showing their work in the context of other artists who have had connections with the island. "I was keen to include pictures by other artists who went to Tory and painted the island. The interesting thing is that even though they are wonderful pictures they don't understand the island the way the islanders did. Even Derek, who was very close to Tory, didn't get it the way the islanders themselves do." One of the main aims of the exhibition, according to Kelly, is to be as inclusive as possible. Many of the paintings by Dixon, who died in the early 1970s, are rarely seen. Of great interest is the inclusion of two works by Sean and James Rogers, lesser-known island painters.
Another intention was to contextualise the evolution of painting on Tory, showing work from the late 1960s to the present. It is a pity that only three works by Antoin Meenan, the most stylistically dynamic of the Tory painters, are on display.
An Bhanais/The Wedding is an extraordinarily creative and interesting installation showing at An Gailearí in Falcarragh. Celebrating the wedding as ritual, it is an evocative and thought-provoking exhibition of 61 wedding dresses, all loaned by the local community.
An interesting chronicle of fashion trends over the past 50 years on one level, it also explores the theme in a far more profound way. Taffeta, lace, and voile, flounces, bows and ribbons combine to recreate an even more surreal sense of expectation than the one that usually surrounds the big day.
The hopes, desires and youthful anticipation of the brides are poignantly present in their disembodied finery. Somehow the young women are physically present in the dresses, and there is a naivety about them, especially the older ones, and also, implicitly, a sadness and a certain sense of disenchantment.
The exhibition is dramatically mounted, stage-managed even. For suspended from the ceiling, above the frothy innocence of white, swims a shoal of ties, bold, thrusting and somewhat inebriated, aloft and removed from all the fuss. The display culminates when a single blue tie reaches the penultimate dress - this time a vivid red contemporary one. Curated by Una Campbell, this exhibition in particular has been attracting a lot of attention, not least from locals, many of whom are entering the gallery for the first time. The comment book reflects this: "Mum's dress was lovely."
Overall Local Life - Re Presenting Donegal is ambitious and courageous, providing a visual record of life in the county over the past 100 years that is both interesting and stimulating.
All exhibitions run until August 30th, apart from Derek Hill And Tory Island which runs until August 28th
