NEWS

Gate Lodge at Merlin Park c1933

My Grandmother Catherine (Kate) Furey (nee Kelly) died on 26th April 1933. She was 27 years old and had six children, my father being the fourth child and aged 3 at the time of her death.

Her death certificate states ‘Late of Gate Lodge, Merlin Park, Galway’ . My father, Paddy, told me that his father (Pat Furey) worked for Mr Waithman in the marble quarry in Merlin Park and the Gate Lodge was opposite the Merlin Bar.

The painting unites the family behind the gates of the Merlin Park estate, near to the imagined Gate Lodge.

During the late ’60’s my family moved to Glenina Heights and my sister and I would take our younger siblings to the castle at Merlin Park Woods where we would climb the spiral staircase and walk around outside on top of the castle walls.

uachtarARTS Group Show – Inspired by Harry Clarke

A Connemara Girl (after Augustus Nicholas Burke and Harry Clarke)

The iconic painting A Connemara Girl and the stained glass work of Harry Clarke are the inspiration for my work for the uachtarARTS Exhibition for Clifden Arts Week, 2024.

A Connemara Girl: Detail from the National Gallery Label:

“Showing a young woman in traditional Connemara attire, this painting might be said to evoke rather than illustrate Augustus Burke’s beloved west of Ireland. While the artist has relied on authentic detail, particularly in the girl’s costume and the terrain, he has made no attempt to disguise the contrived nature of the composition. The central position of the figure, her head and shoulders framed by a heavy shawl, calls to mind devotional Christian imagery.”

The Christian imagery reference prompted me to re-imagine the Connemara Girl in the style of a Harry Clarke stained glass window. I had worked with Harry Clarke’s imagery before during the Curacha Exhibition celebrating Áras Éanna in 2021. It is a pleasure to again study Harry Clarke’s techniques and imagery.

Another detail that interested me is that Augustus Nicholas Burke was a Galway artist.

The National Gallery label states:

It (the Connemara Girl) was probably painted before the artist’s reluctant emigration, prompted by his brother’s murder alongside the Chief Secretary in the Phoenix Park in 1882.

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Last year my currach depicting St Gobnait, based on images from the Harry Clarke window in the Honan Chapel in Cork, was exhibited as part of the Curacha Exhibition celebrating 21 years of Áras Éanna, Inis Oírr. The currach then spent time in Galway Cathedral and overall was seen by thousands of visitors. Since then it has visited the Church in Oughterard which has a Harry Clarke window and now in 2022 it will feature as part of Culture Night Celebrations in the Saint Gobnait’s Church, Bhaile Mhúirne, County Cork. We are delighted to bring the currach to Baile Mhúirne as this is the where Saint Gobnait founded her monastery after, as legend has it, an angel appeared to her and told her she would find the site of her resurrection where she saw nine white deer grazing, which she finally did in Baile Mhúirne.

The Currach and a hand printed and coloured Lino print depicting the saint, will be on display in the St Gobnait’s Church from 6 to 9.30pm on Culture Night, 23rd September 2022. There will be a short talk on the project at 7:15pm.

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Galway Arts Festival Exhibition 2022

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In this exhibition which takes place during the Clifden Arts Festival 2021, words and images derived from sketch books, newspaper reports, historical documents, poetry and song, are combined with printmaking and painting processes to produce mixed-media works. The hand-coloured lino prints and paintings on board are based on images drawn by my grandfather, Patrick Furey, in the late 1970’s/1980‘s.  His drawings, created towards the end of his life, reflect his experiences and interests. The imagined landscapes deal with the idea of violence in a peaceful setting and how the landscape we inhabit today may have been the setting for violent acts at another time.  The collage works are part of an ongoing series combining images and words with fragments of historical documents. The title of the exhibition “Side by Side,” are words taken from a newspaper article from 1920 which details an incident when my grandfather and his brother Michael were taken from their home at night during a raid by Auxiliary Forces. The exhibition aims to remember, celebrate and imagine through a new focus on existing and original visual and textual materials. 

OPEN DAILY 11am-5pm

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Earlier this summer I was invited to participate in the Curacha Exhibition – 21 currachs painted by 21 artists in celebration of the 21st Birthday of Áras Éanna, Europe’s most westerly Art Centre based on the smallest of the Aran Islands, Inis Oírr.

While researching artists who had visited Aran and Inis Oírr in particular, I learned that Harry Clarke had spent six summers on the island, honeymooned there with his wife, the artist Margaret Crilly, and that he felt a strong attachment to the landscape and people of Inis Oírr. He visited the island with Sean Keating whose painting ‘Thinking out Gobnet’  depicts Harry Clarke sitting among church ruins on the island. A theory is that he was inspired by the story of St Gobnait and her association with Inis Oírr, as around this time he submitted designs for a stained glass window depicting St Gobnait for the Honan Chapel in Cork.

My work for the project takes Harry Clarke’s stained glass image of St Gobnait and places it on the currach, returning her to the island which inspired the work. The saint is the patron saint of beekeeping and the original image shows her surrounded by bees and warding off the plague which seems relevant today. The currach also depicts marine images which were a favourite motif in Harry Clarke’s work.

CUIMHNÍ will open in Oughterard Courthouse on Friday 16th July 2021 and continue to Sunday 25th July 2021.

The exhibition features work by Leah Beggs and Kathleen Furey and can be viewed online at https://www.ocap.ie/cuimhni