CORK.- Crawford Art Gallery, Cork is presenting the exhibition, Conflicting Visions in a Turbulent Age 1900-1916 from June 3 – August 20, curated by Dr Éimear O’Connor HRHA in collaboration with the gallery.
Conflicting Visions in a Turbulent Age 1900-1916 is an exciting exhibition featuring several themes that influenced the era, some local to Cork and others more nationally or internationally focused. Highlights include a portrait by John Butler Yeats – which has never been publically displayed, three portraits by Dermod O’Brien that have not been seen in public in over one hundred years, personal material belonging to Terence MacSwiney, a new sculpture by Rowan Gillespie, an exquisite woodcut by Lady Gregory, and a bible with a poignant connection to the same Lady Gregory.
The exhibition features paintings, drawings, posters, film and artefacts pertaining to, for example, the Cork International 1902-3, the First World War, the connection between Sir Hugh Lane and the Abbey Theatre, and the Easter Rising, along with evidence of the then contemporary artistic engagement with New York, and with Parisian Modernism. There is the crash and bang of war in a series of films, and yet, in a quiet section of the gallery, there is artwork from the Honan Chapel, University College Cork, consecrated in November 1916.
Personalities emerge in various ways: George Russell, May Guinness, Sir Horace Plunkett, John Butler Yeats, Beatrice Gubbins, and Robert Gregory, to name but a few. Present-day artwork by Robert Ballagh, Orla de Brí, Margaret Irwin West, Margaret Corcoran and Mick O’Dea embody the recent artistic response to 1916 and the centenary of commemoration in general, while another piece, painted in 1966, represents the then response to an official call to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising. The show also includes The People’s Exhibition, a digitized display containing images of historical items belonging to the people of Cork and, with permission from the owners, some of that material is included within the exhibition itself. Within the exhibition there are many complex, complicated, and conflicting visions that combine towards synthesis, and yet disrupt preconceived perceptions.
The exhibition also includes a public gathering entitled ‘A Heart That is Free’: Terence MacSwiney in Context (Friday, 17 June). Featuring excerpts from MacSwiney’s 1914 play, The Revolutionist, this engaging and accessible event is free to the public and is an exciting way to celebrate the writer’s cultural legacy.
