Peter Costello
One of the art creations in the Roots exhibition. Currently visitors can enjoy two exhibitions related by the materials used at the Coach House Gallery, adjacent to the always interesting Chester Beatty Library and Gallery, in the extensive grounds of Dublin Castle.
These are entitled respectively Roots: A dialogue in textile and poetry and Beyond Chaos: Textile Journey Collective.
The first show mounted by “Contemporary Textile Art “ is by element 15 collective draws its inspiration directly from the always moving and startlingly evocative poems of Jane Clarke, including her most recent collection A Change of Air (Bloodaxe Books, £10.99 / €13.25), which critic Jane Taylor remarked “deals with contemporary and historic rural life in Ireland, in particular its crafts and traditions.”
And it is this aspect which the artists responded to in a series of very individual yet evocative images of a now vanished Ireland. Their work informs reactions to poems, but these are themselves very effective and affecting.
Those woven items we take for granted in everyday life will provide their emerging artist with creative ideas”
The second exhibition, curated by Sara Ross, also deploys the nature and texture of fabrics too by the Textile Collective, a union of all-island art practitioners with various access needs at all stages of their careers. Inevitably this show is more disparate, but it is it’s so very varied nature that makes for visitor interest, though it lacks the unity provided to Roots by Jane Clarke’s poetry.
Families with budding artists will find that the use of those woven items we take for granted in everyday life will provide their emerging artist with creative ideas too, to work with what is to hand to create something new and complex out of what is essentially simple and to hand (an echo here perhaps of the ancient myth of humanity’s own creation from clay).
Both exhibitions run until January 19, 2025 at The Kane Room, The Coach House Gallery, Dublin Castle, Dame Street, Dublin 2; 10.00 am to 4 pm; admission is free.