Peter Costello
Conflicting Visions in a Turbulent Age 1900-1916
by Dr Éimear O’Connor and others
(Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, €10.00)
Though small compared with the galleries in Dublin and Belfast, the Crawford Gallery in Cork often mounts very interesting exhibitions. Their current show, curated by Dr. Éimear O’Connor, the leading authority on the work of Seán Keating, is one of these.
A central feature of the show are items relating to the emergence of religious art in Ireland in this period before the Rising, when in reaction to critics such as Robert Elliot who deplored the dependence of Irish Catholic churches on art and stained glass imported from Germany, some advanced priests commissioned art for their churches from Irish artists. The outstanding example are the commissions of Fr Gerald O’Donovan at Loughrea cathedral. But in this show the emphasis is placed on the equally remarkable Honan Chapel at UCC.
Attempts
Dr O’Connor attempts to touch upon many aspects of an Ireland that was surpassingly vital, not merely in the political and social moves towards revolution, but in many other ways, for example the Cork International Exhibition of 1902-03, much less well known that its later Dublin counterpart, which presented an image to the world of a new, industrialised Ireland.
Another is the Irish Co-operative movement, which is alluded to through George Russell and others; but which seems not to have attracted the eye of any artist to the dairies and the cottage haggards.
Besides religion, women artists too are well represented as is the art of the Great War. A section of the show is devoted to 1916 and after, but this is far less interesting than the art and visions of the prelude.
Selective
show
Some visitors might feel there are not enough items on display; but item fatigue is all too often an outcome of curatorial ambition. This is a selective show, which tries to find and show unseal or little seen items by lesser known artists.
The items by C.R.W. Nevinson will introduce to some an extraordinary talent. His powerful image ‘Banking at 4,000 Feet’ brings immediately to mind Yeats’ poem An Irish Airman Foresees his Death, an elegy for Robert Gregory, Lady Gregory’s son, whose own symbolic landscape of Coole is on display. It is this connectivity of the items that makes this show fascinating. But a warning: to get the most out of it would best to buy and read the catalogue before going around it.
One interesting presentation includes digitalised items in what is called “The People’s Exhibition” where an appeal to the general public in Cork procured a range of treasured and preserved items from the period. One would have liked to see this as a show into its own right on larger scale.
A myriad of aspects of the period are presented, with naturally an emphasis on Cork, which gives the show a texture of local achievement often absent in national shows.
(Conflicting Visions is on show at the Crawford Art Gallery, Emmett Place, Cork until August 20, 2016; Tel:(021) 480 5042.)