Book Tickets
| Date: 1 Thu 1 Aug 2024 |
| Date: 2 Thu 12 Sep 2024 |
| Time: 19:00 |
"In the smoke of a little sugar". “Leigheas an tSiúcra”(?) and a cut finger might be held in the smoke of a little sugar/ sprinkled on a lighted coal (NFC 0122: 157.)
Joyce says that the soul of Ireland is trapped in a net; it is also collected there. To create ourselves we must reach into that fishing net, that lacework, that woven basket. Do our fingers catch in the gaps?
Owing a great debt to the scholarship of Martín Mac Con Iomaire, Bríd Mahon, Kevin Danaher, Jennie Moran and the thousands of voices woven into the Dúchas Schools collection, this exhibition explores and reimagines the patchwork history of cooking culture in Ireland. It does so in the hopes of easing a painful cultural memory of famine, fasting, hunger strikes, institutionalization and food insecurity, which today manifests in the prevalence of disordered eating and Ireland’s disregard for the nutritional needs of those in our care.
Drawing on the aforementioned scholarship, persevering folklore, medieval Irish literature, traditional craft methods (patchworking, Irish lace), as well as the artist's love of cooking with her friends, the work develops a joyful visual language for Irish cooking.
My guiding light for this work is Ursula K. Le Guin’s “Carrier bag theory of fiction”. In it she argues that the first human tool was likely not a spear or weapon, but a net or bag. The significance of this first object being a collective rather than destructive force, she argues, should be reflected in our art. Knowing the level of destruction to people and culture caused by orchestrated famine, in Ireland historically and now as it happens in Gaza, I believe in the significance of reconstructing our food culture in a way which contradicts the individualistic and destructive philosophy of colonization. I believe a culture made of scraps is under an obligation to make itself anew using methods which do not reflect its occupation. If the art of colonization is line and boundary, our art must be holding, gathering, sharing. Tá orainn na scraps a nasc le cheile.
Chomh bán le bainne /Chomh milis le mil / Chomh dearg le fuil.
(NFC, 0023 : 190)
