Aileen MacKeogh: Aileen MacKeogh, artist and head of the School of Creative Arts and the National Film School in the Dún Laoghaire Institute, has died in Dublin at the age of 52. Since she became head in 1997, the institute (DLIADT) has established itself as the leading centre for art, design and film and media education in Ireland and as a player on the international stage.
A Fulbright scholar and award-winning artist and teacher, MacKeogh always had major projects on the move, both personal and professional. A leader and a doer, she was considered by close friends to be dynamic, stimulating and always the best of fun.
Having already inspired a generation of artists in her role as lecturer in fine art at the National College of Art and Design in the 1980s, she went on to develop new career paths and opportunities for artists in the 1990s. As founding director and chief executive of Arthouse she was an integral part of the development of Temple Bar's cultural quarter and a pioneer of creative digital media in Ireland.
She inspired, and was executive producer of, two television series on art and artists, The Art Files and Profiles. At the same time she chaired symposiums, co-ordinated conferences and directed exhibitions. She was continually breaking new ground in art practice and education, while her boundless energy brought people along with her.
Aileen's powerful understanding of the potential of art education took its nourishment and direction from her own artistic being. She formed part of a remarkable group of artists, many of them women, who came to prominence in the 1980s.
Her sculptural work was preoccupied with giving form to her own deep love of the natural world. It was autobiographical in that it was rooted in her own private and very particular memories.
She was all too aware of the dangers of sentimentality for an artistic sensibility such as hers, and worked hard to find media that would authentically embody her sense of how transience is the underlying condition of the naturally beautiful.
She developed a sculptural pictoriality that in time became distinctively hers. Her materials were often neither made nor expected to last. The likelihood of their passing out of existence was precisely why she chose them.
She stopped working for two years when her baby Luke died tragically at home, but returned to work with one of her most memorable exhibitions, House, in 1991 in the Project Arts Centre.
Originally titled How It Feels to Cease to Be, she came to see how house and home are extensions of body and self, that houses weep when tragedies beset them and that homes need constant nurturing and care.
House reflected a personal journey, an intense time of loss, grief, tumultuous imagery, renewal and the birth of Olwen, her daughter. The colourful drawings, remarkable bronze and clay sculptures and intricate etchings were inspired by an enforced journey which brought regeneration and growth. At the time, she remembered Albert Camus's words: "In the midst of winter, i finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer."
She championed the establishment of the National Film School as a key centre of excellence at IADT. Through pioneering projects such as Fis, the film-making in primary schools project, she brought a vision of remarkable curricular innovation, demonstrating how digital media can enhance learning, self-confidence and self-expression at a young age, through digital storytelling and film-making.
She is survived by her husband, Tom Inglis, son Arron and daughter Olwen.
Aileen MacKeogh: born September 16th, 1952; died May 23rd, 2005