A chara, – It heartens me that art still has the capacity to arouse controversy (“Controverisal artwork prompts Athlone protests”, Home News, January 8th). It heartens me far less that political censorship remains a hazard around which Irish artists must manoeuvre.
I have little doubt that in 50 years’ time that Fine Gael’s motion at Athlone Town Council requesting the council-owned Luan gallery remove Shane Cullen’s work Fragmens sur les Institutions Républicaines IV, on the basis that it contains words transcribed from letters written by H-Block internees, will be little more than an amusing footnote in to the long history of political censorship of art and culture in Ireland. Until then, it is hardly amusing at all.
We cannot live in a society where our artists require the nihil obstat of our politicians – whatever their ideology – to comment upon our history and confront an active and intelligent citizenry with its past, present and future.
At any rate – and as The Irish Times pointed out when the Luan gallery was opened just over a month ago (“Athlone bucks the trend with new gallery launch”, Arts Ideas, November 30th, 2012) — Shane Cullen’s work is not a simple paean to Irish republicanism, but can be just as easily read as a criticism. It is one of the great benefits of living in a democracy, I imagine, that citizens have the opportunity to interpret art themselves without their politicians deciding for them how those works are to be interpreted. – Is mise,