In Focus: Irish Arts Abroad

From Capel Street to Koganecho

Suzanne Mooney

VAI Member, Tokyo

BACK IN THE eighties, once a year on Christmas Day, my father would make a very expensive phone call to Perth, Australia. He would speak to his brother, and they would talk about everything and nothing, sharing all of the trivial details of everyday life and talking about none of the big issues of the world. As a child, this was what I knew of Irish emigrants; that they leave, and decades can pass before they return. That mothers will cry for absent children, even those who are fully grown, while simultaneously feeling the paradox of pride in their successes and happiness, and at their having escaped the hardships of working-class Ireland. That migrants can hold deep anxiety about returning to their country of birth, even just to visit. I now live in Japan, which is not quite as far as Australia, and I am well connected to home by technology, but at times, one can really feel the distance.

I graduated from IADT in 2002, and then NCAD in 2005. I began travelling to shoot works for my MA, first to the west of Ireland and then to Iceland. I was looking for remote, timeless landscapes. Later, I began travelling regularly for residencies and exhibitions, and in 2007 was selected for the International Artist Studio Program Korea (IASK) in Changdong, Seoul, run by the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Korea. I had never considered moving to Asia before this experience, but found that there were aspects that suited my professional and personal life. In 2009, I had a studio space in the Market Studios off Capel Street in Dublin, with several exhibitions and projects lined up, but the financial crisis was beginning to hurt, so I dropped everything and moved to Japan.

I never experienced culture shock in Japan, but I did have an identity crisis for the first time in my life. However, as I bat-

tled through by doctoral degree, writing in English but defending in Japanese, I found my feet and started to shape my arts career abroad. Connecting with a community through my university, Tama Art University, was important. I also spent six years as a long-term artist-in-residence in Koganecho, Yokohama, subsidised by the local government. The Tokyo art world can be very disjointed, but Koganecho is a melting pot of creatives, which felt like the Dublin art community I had left behind.

I gave up my studio in 2021, finding it difficult to travel there often, after I took on a full-time job at Tama Art University, but I have since found a new rhythm and approach to my practice. I am currently pursuing practice-based research with national funding, in addition to teaching graduate classes and running a special graduate project with artists from abroad. I am creating a new body of work for Nakanojo Biennale, which will open in October.

However, while I am putting down strong roots here in Japan, in recent years I have felt my connection to the Irish art world lessening. Due to pandemic travel restrictions, I have only been back to Ireland once in the last five years. Annual long-distance phonecalls are now an antiquated idea; new generations enjoy the luxury of Facetime and Zoom calls, while artists have fully embraced the online global community. I am excited to share my work in Ireland, and to engage with the work of others there, too. The physical distance is an obstacle, but I hope this article will be one small step towards reconnecting with home.

Suzanne Mooney is a visual artist and Associate Professor at Tama Art University, Tokyo. suzannemooney.com

Suzanne Mooney, Clear Morning II, Wuxi 2019, inkjet print on Hahnemühle photo rag, 1500mmx1000mm ; image courtesy of the artist.

The Meandering Road

Arno Kramer

VAI Member, The Netherlands

Arno Kramer, In Time 2020, charcoal and pencil, 152 x 280 cm; photograph by Peter Cox, image courtesy of the artist.

“And there was nothing between us there / That might not still be happily ever after.”

– Seamus Heaney, Seeing Things (1991)

THE ROAD, WHICH lead us from Rosslare to Ballingskelligs in County Kerry, was meandering up the hill. I had no idea where we were because it was dark – there were no streetlights at all. Eventually we arrived at the nice and cozy cottage and unpacked our bags. When I went out the next day, I could not believe my eyes as I looked out over the sea towards the small islands opposite the coast – it was a miracle to be there. That feeling lasted for the month we were invited to stay in Cill Rialaig in 1995. Another miracle was that we had only one day of rain.

My first experience with Ireland was so wonderful and intense that I’ve come back nearly every year since then to work and to exhibit my drawings. Being there, sitting and working in different places, has been so important to my development as an artist. In the beginning, I was so impressed by the landscape in County Kerry and County Mayo – the places where I have worked the most – but this magnificent landscape could not find a place in my work; it was too overwhelming.

Because of my interest in Irish poetry, every time I travelled back to The Netherlands, my suitcase would be full of Irish poetry publications. Besides making drawings, I also write poetry, and in 2017 Salmon Poetry published my poetry collection, Morningrustle

As I became more established, my contact with Irish museums and galleries grew.

I was surprised by how many curators paid attention to my work, when I did succeed in making appointments. Most curious to me was how quickly after my first trip to Ireland I was invited to showed my work in the Green On Red Gallery, with whom I have been involved ever since. I have since had solo shows in The Model, Limerick City Gallery of Art, Galway Arts Centre, Mermaid Arts Centre, and Ballina Arts Centre. My work has also been shown in group exhibitions in Crawford Art Gallery, Kevin Kavanagh Gallery and more. After my solo exhibition last summer at Limerick

City Gallery of Art, ‘In Time’ (titled after Seamus Heaney’s last poem), I was lucky enough to have the Arts Council of Ireland purchase a huge drawing of mine for their collection.

Because of my background and interest in teaching, I have given lectures and tutorials in nearly every art school in Ireland. Beside that, I was asked to curate some exhibitions and one of the most challenging was the travelling show, ‘Into Irish Drawing’ in 2009, with works from more than 20 Irish artists. The exhibition toured to Paris, Portadown and Holland as well.

I discovered that most of the Irish artists are not only focused on drawing, but also on making paintings, sculpture or videos. This was in contrast with what I had previously found in 2005 with ‘Into Contemporary Dutch Drawing’, when I presented the work of Dutch artists. In Holland, you see more and more artists just focusing on works on paper and some of them, like myself, are often working on huge sizes.

It is not easy to explain what Ireland –its literature, landscape, and my travels –means to me. Shaking hands with the King of Tory Island, walking around on Inis Oírr, standing at ‘the end of the world’ in Malin Head; finding great art as well, from James Dickson Innes to Alice Maher, Nick Miller, Dorothy Cross, Ronnie Hughes, Anita Groener, Brian Fay, Gerda Teljeur, Niamh O’Malley, Eoin McHugh and many others. All of these encounters in Ireland have been very special to me.

Arno Kramer is a visual artist, curator and poet who works in The Netherlands and in Ireland.

arno-kramer.nl

Untitled (Bodies)

Kira O’Reilly VAI Member, Helsinki

I GRADUATED IN 1998 from Time Based, a dynamic, experimental department within Fine Arts, at what was then University of Wales Institute, Cardiff. To this day, I continue to work with ephemeral and experimental media – including performance, installation and sculpture, biotechnical practices and writing – often in relation to speculation around the body and how that intersects with the social, private and intimate. My practice has meandered across live art, dance and visual art contexts, and interfaces of art, science and technology, sometimes in recognised art venues, other times in non-art spaces, where site itself becomes a generative dimension of the process. The monograph, Kira O’Reilly: Untitled (Bodies), edited by Harriet Curtis and Martin Hargreaves, provides an expansive visual and discursive retrospective of my work from 1998 to 2017.

In 1986, when I was a 19-year-old young adult, I left Ireland for the UK. From the late ‘90s, my artistic practice benefited from flourishing contexts for live art, both in the UK and Europe. The Live Art Development Agency in London, and its former creative director Lois Keidan in particular, was a vital force in highlighting how marginal art forms might receive support, be curated, and most importantly, be experienced by viewers.

With the impact of austerity politics, surviving the harsh economic climate of London became impossible. I moved to Helsinki in 2016 for a short-term teaching contract at University of the Arts. Working in Finland was a complete contrast, with an opportunity to run a pilot for an MA programme in ecology and contemporary performance.

I found a community with Helsinki-based Bioart Society, who produce projects in “art and natural sciences with an emphasis on biology, ecology and life sciences”. My introduction to the society was in 2013 when I participated in ‘Field_ Notes’, a week-long art and science field laboratory in which five groups work in the sub-Arctic environment of Sápmi (Sámi traditional lands in northern Finland) to develop, test and evaluate specific interdisciplinary approaches to a theme. I have since made several projects with the Bioart Society, and co-edited its decade-marking publication, Art As We Don’t Know It (Alto University, 2020), that surveys art and science practice and it’s evolving futures.

I have been immensely fortunate to receive support from The Finnish Cultural Foundation, Taike. I am also an alumnus of Saari, a generously resourced two-month residency opportunity in rural south west Finland, funded by Kone Foundation, a significant funder of arts and research.

The biggest challenge I experience is getting my work shown here in Finland, where curatorial relations are not particularly developed. It is widely recognised that artists who are not Finnish and who have not emerged via the Finnish arts education system are explicitly disadvantaged. There is also enormous and proactive will for this to change.

Whilst I do not have a defined professional profile and presence in Ireland, I find myself increasingly hopeful this will change. As my parents age, I return to Ireland more frequently. Visits to North Kerry, where my artistic journey began, never fail to inspire creative projects. I have several works I wish to develop, pending interest and funding, including a work in my family home in Listowel.

In August I will present work at Live Art Ireland’s Convergence Festival in County Tipperary. I will also give a workshop in the Burren at the invitation of Áine Phillips, performance artist and head of sculp- ture at Burren College of Art. Áine did the enormously hard work of editing the ground breaking publication, Performance Art in Ireland: A History (Intellect Books, 2015), which I was grateful to be included in. She has been tremendously generous in offering advice on how to bring my work to Ireland, as have Dublin-based artist Karen Donnellan and Helsinki-based Irish artist Suzanne Mooney.

Kira O’Reilly is an Irish artist currently based in Helsinki. kiraoreilly.com

Kira O’Reilly, I came to the sea and I was scared, my heart is broken, 2016, performance; photograph by Panos Kokkinias, courtesy of the artist.

Kira O’Reilly and Jennifer Willet, Refolding (Laboratory Architectures), 2010; photograph by Hugo Glendinning, courtesy of the artists.

Appetite for Visual Culture

John Kindness VAI Member, London

BEING FROM BELFAST and having had a British state school education, perhaps I shouldn’t consider myself to be ‘living abroad’ in London. When I lived in Belfast and was starting to exhibit in other countries, people sometimes asked me if I thought of myself as a British artist or an Irish artist. My answer was ‘yes’. I can quite easily think of myself as one, the other, or both and in the early days of struggling to build a career, pragmatism trumped patriotism. I was very happy when both the British Council and the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs were funding a touring show. It seemed like the perfect arena for cross border co-operation; thin on the ground in the 1980s.

London has always nourished my insatiable appetite for visual culture. My older brother lived here in the 1960s and it became my learning ground on summer holiday visits. Before I ever crossed the threshold of an art school, I was devouring the collections of Tate, National Gallery and British Museum. Much as I loved Belfast’s Ulster Museum, it was just a trailer for these treasures of empire. Yes, I’m afraid that the really great art collections are generally in centres of former political or commercial domination, but it is those collections that have always attracted me to the city.

When I moved here 20 years ago, it was still reasonably easy to find a studio if you didn’t mind working in the grittier parts of the city, but now that grittiness is fashionable (as long as it is close to good coffee), that has changed. There are some good not-for-profit studio providers, but waiting lists are long and most of the studios are non-residential. If anyone reading this is thinking of moving to London, the best advice I can give is: look for places with bad coffee, where people don’t paint their houses with Farrow & Ball colours. Get a bike and look at industrial zones with bad transport connections. That’s fine when you are young of course; most artists have had that rite of passage.

Having lived in the Republic for ten years, I still have very good friends and strong connections there. In Belfast I still see my ‘short trouser friends’; people from the street I grew up in. But there is an element of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ if you don’t show up for a few years. I particularly feel a lack of connection with younger artists in Ireland. The late Nicola Gordon Bowe used to bring me in to NCAD in Dublin every so often to give a talk to students and we always made it a rule that all departments and disciplines were welcome. Although the recent embargoes on travel have put a dent in those relationships, I will be in Dublin in November of this year showing at the RHA and hopefully talking to anyone that wants to listen.

I still get invited to propose or submit ideas for shows and commissions in other countries. When I was young, I just said ‘yes’ to everything (very good training when you are young), but now I do a bit more research and if there isn’t a fair remuneration and a good level of creative freedom, I have to say ‘no’. One of the best reasons for taking on a commission is having the opportunity to work with a medium or on a scale beyond your normal means, but it has to be something you really want to do and not the execution of a committee mandate.

John Kindness is an artist working a range of media including sculpture and painting.

John Kindness, Scylla & Charybdis, 2012, engraved/scumbled toilet seat and lid, each 45 x 37 cm; image courtesy of the artist.

Irish Arts in California

Contemporary Irish Arts Center Los Angeles Los Angeles

Francis Fay, A Knight of Mirrors, 2022, Live Performance; photograph by Matthew Nevin, courtesy the artist and CIACLA.

CONTEMPORARY IRISH ARTS Center Los Angeles (CIACLA) is a non-profit arts organisation that supports and promotes contemporary Irish art and culture in Los Angeles County, California. The journey of CIACLA began in 2011 when myself and Ciara Scanlan of MART Gallery & Studios, Dublin, started curating exhibitions and events in Los Angeles. With my experience in the film and television industry in LA since 2005, and Ciara’s co-founding of MART in 2007, we embarked on a mission to produce annual exhibitions in the city. We started with a group exhibition, titled ‘Invite or Reject’, which included artists such as Sofie Loscher, James L Hayes, Ella Burke and Nicky Teegan, as part of the government’s Imagine Ireland initiative in 2011, supported by Culture Ireland.

Over the next few years, we curated annual exhibitions promoting Irish and American artists while collaborating with LA galleries such as Hive, LACE, C4, CB1, DAC, and Arena 1. In 2018, we created a pop-up gallery on Hollywood Boulevard as part of Ireland Week, all while building a strong community of artists, creatives, Irish immigrants, and audiences eager to connect with contemporary Irish culture.

In 2019, following eight years of successful exhibitions and events, Ciara and I, along with Director of Development Jennifer Minniti-Shippey, founded CIACLA as a California-based non-profit 501(c)(3) arts organisation with a goal to promote contemporary Irish culture. With the help of Jenn McGuirk and a fantastic team of volunteers and cultural advisors, we put together an exciting multidisciplinary programme of summer events at a pop-up gallery in Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, including exhibitions by MASER and Amanda Coogan, theatrical productions by Lords of Strut and InHouse Theatre, a music event by Eímear Noone, a contemporary dance performance and residency with Luke Murphy, and the first year of CIACLA’s Irish Film Showcase which is now in its fourth year and growing.

Since its inception, CIACLA has been a bridge between the Irish and LA art scenes, providing a platform for artists from

both regions to exchange ideas and exhibit their work. CIACLA’s ongoing programme includes a range of activities such as exhibitions, residencies, talks, workshops, and screenings. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, CIACLA thrived online, providing artists with a platform to engage with our audience. In 2022, we returned to in-person programming, partnering with local venues to support the growth and flourishing of theatre, music, literature, and visual arts, which included the inaugural ‘Irish Contemporaries’ exhibition, held at Building Bridges Arts Exchange in November 2022, with the second instalment happening this July. This year CIACLA will continue to produce multiple exhibitions, live performances, professional development Culture Chats, screenings and monthly Creative Network events.

CIACLA’s connection to the region is a crucial part of its identity. As an organisation that aims to foster dialogue, CIACLA recognises the importance of engaging with the local community. In addition, our partnerships with local organisations provide further opportunities for collaboration and outreach. The organisation’s connection to Ireland remains a vital aspect of its mission and continues to foster relations with Irish artists and organisations. These collaborations have included residencies for Irish artists, exhibitions featuring Irish artists, and partnerships with Irish cultural institutions.

CIACLA’s commitment to promoting contemporary Irish art in Los Angeles has resulted in vibrant programmes and opportunities that reflects the diversity and creativity of Irish art today and continues to play a vital role in fostering dialogue and exchange between the two regions. The organisation’s connection to the region and to Ireland underscores the importance of cultural exchange and collaboration in today’s globalised art world.

Matthew Nevin is the Executive Director of CIACLA and Co-Director of MART Gallery & Studios, Dublin. ciacla.com

National and International Hub

Irish Arts Center New York City

THE NEW IRISH Arts Center (IAC) opened to the public in December 2021, with a brand-new home designed to support a contemporary, multidisciplinary arts and culture programme. Based in Hell’s Kitchen, New York City, IAC presents, develops, supports, and tours work from artists with careers spanning from emerging to established. It serves as a national and international hub for artists and audiences of all backgrounds who share a passion for contemporary Irish and Irish-American art.

The center’s new home, at 22,000 square feet, was built for flexibility and an expanded multidisciplinary scope, with substantially increased capability in the visual arts. In these important first seasons, IAC has sought to explore ways to enhance the role of the organisation in supporting Irish visual artists to develop a presence in New York. During the planning process, IMMA in Dublin helped IAC to develop a building-wide visual arts canvas from both a practical and technical standpoint, including four specific areas designed for the presentation of visual arts: the flexible theatre as installation space; the atrium, visually accessible from the first, second and mezzanine floors, as well as the street; the first floor; and building-wide interstitial spaces.

Alongside the physical capabilities of the new building, IAC’s curator-in-residence programme further expands relationships in the Irish and American visual arts ecosystems, to stay connected with practitioners in both spheres. The opening brief for curators includes a prompt to consider how the building creates interactions between the work and audiences; as the life of the building evolves, so too will the curatorial remit. With exhibitions spanning four to six months, a significant investment in time and resources in each exhibition further supports this expansion.

IAC’s first curator-in-residence, Miranda Driscoll (former director of Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh and Solas Nua in Washington, DC), curated both the opening exhibition and the first theatre installation. Miranda visited during the completion of the construction process, which helped inform the work selected for ‘The Space We Occupy’ (December 2021 to May 2022), featuring six artists: George Bolster, Ailbhe Ní Bhriain, Neil Carroll, Colin Crotty, Katie Holten and Fiona Kelly.

In June 2022, Maud Cotter’s solo show, ‘a consequence of ~’, included a largescale sculptural installation in the theatre and throughout the building. The show brought together works created by Cotter for exhibitions in Limerick City Gallery of Art (2019); The Dock (2019); and Hugh Lane Gallery (2021), courtesy of the domobaal gallery in London. As noted in Hyperallergic: “this body of sculpture evinces a sense of play and open-ended curiosity about nature’s material logic”; while ArtNet selected it as one of the top ten shows to see.

IAC’s current exhibition is curated by Moran Been-noon, a Dublin-based artist, curator, and co-founder of the Angelica Network – an Ireland-wide network

which amplifies the voices of artists who self-identify as women or minority genders, from underrepresented cultural or ethnic backgrounds. ‘If You Only Walk Long Enough’ continues until July and features the work of Leanne McDonagh, Ellie Berry, and Edy Fung, who each explore concepts around travel and returning.

As IAC looks ahead to the continued growth of the visual arts programme, we will further develop relationships, including those built for ‘The Space We Occupy’, which traveled to Solas Nua, and ‘a consequence of ~’, which traveled to MOCA Jacksonville. In its new home, IAC aspires to be a hub of activity, play and discovery for curators and artists, as well as New York audiences seeking cultural experiences that are innovative, collaborative, diverse, authentic, and emotionally and intellectually transporting.

Rachael Gilkey is the Director of Pro- gramming and Education at the Irish Arts Center in New York. irishartscenter.org

[L-R]: Maud Cotter, a dappled world, (one – three) 2017, birch ply, paint, plastic mesh, thread, mild steel, prestia, sponge, pencil line; without stilling, 2017-18, Finnish birch ply; a breather of air, 2019, stainless steel, card, primer, jesmonite acrylic, polythene sheeting; photograph by Adam Reich, courtesy of the artist and domobaal.

Leanne McDonagh, Nature & Nurture 2020, Lambda c-type print mounted in liquid acrylic; photograph by Julia Gillard, courtesy of the artist and RTÉ.

Neil Carroll, Rupture 2018, emulsion paint, plaster, paper, burlap, tarpaulin, electrical tape, galva-band, lining paper, steel, wire mesh, wood; photograph by Julia Gillard, courtesy of the artist.

Edy Fung, Negotiating Laplace’s Demon [Detail], 2022, digital prints on matte paper; photograph by Julia Gillard, courtesy of the artist and Irish Arts Center.

Cultural Flagship

Centre Culturel Irlandais

Paris

IT GOES WITHOUT saying that the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris is one of a kind. When the new team first turned up on Rue des Irlandais a few months before inauguration in 2002, the eighteenth-century building was still covered in scaffolding! Now, nearly 21 years later, it has become a flagship of the Irish arts, not only within the Parisian cultural landscape, but as a veritable benchmark for Irish practitioners – an exhibition or artist residency here is considered a prestigious opportunity.

We have a myriad of connections with galleries and arts organisations throughout the island of Ireland, as well as county council arts offices. These are true partners and have allowed us to expand our residency programme exponentially over the last ten years. The artists in turn become ambassadors of the CCI on returning to Ireland and beyond. As the only Irish arts centre on the European continent, our mission and horizon is not just restricted to Paris or even France, but also involves creating connections further afield. CCI director, Nora Hickey M’Sichili, is currently President of FICEP – a forum that gathers 58 countries’ cultural institutes based in Paris, to exchange on best practices and programme festivals together. This regular contact with an international network allows the centre to develop bilateral or multi-lateral projects as well. The CCI works closely with the Embassy of Ireland in Paris and regularly teams up with French institutions, universities, publishers, festivals and cinemas to work on co-productions.

Since the renovation of the CCI over two decades ago, when the old refectory of the Irish College was transformed into a gallery, more than 60 temporary exhibitions have been mounted. Last year’s centenaries saw the opportunity to curate a group exhibition looking at themes in Ulysses (Shakespeare and Company, 1922) that are still of contemporary relevance in independent Ireland one hundred years on. We also showcased work by George Bolster and presented our first contemporary exhibition in the intimate Old Library –

Siobhan McDonald’s ‘The week the sun touched the earth’. Guggi’s respective was timed to mark the CCI’s twentieth birthday and we invited one of our first-ever visiting artists, Aideen Barry, to return with her spectacularly visual show, ‘oblivion / seachmalltacht’.

This year we mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement with an installation by Niamh McCann, and Irish-European relations with an exhibition by Dutch-Irish artist Anita Groener, which addresses fragility and migration. In September, Colin Martin’s CCI exhibition ‘Empathy Lab’ will explore spaces that blur boundaries between the real and the virtual, while Electronic Sheep’s installation, NOTIFICATIONS OFF, will plead for us to switch our devices to just that.

Every November, we open a major photographic exhibition, often of new work, to coincide with Paris Photo, the international art fair. The opening is always a diary highlight with hundreds of photographers, curators, collectors, publishers and art lovers coming to the CCI for a preview of the exhibition and to attend our after-party. For many years, we have been part of the official off-site Paris Photo and part of the Photo Saint Germain festival. This year, we are presenting photographer Kate Nolan’s ‘Lacuna 2016-2022’ which considers the physical and psychological impact of partition on young people of the Irish borderlands. Deirdre O’Mahony is collaborating with the CCI to create a Sustainable Experiment Feast investigating the question of the survival of small farms. Looking ahead, 2024 will be an exciting year with the Olympics coming to Paris and Team Ireland spending post-competition time at the CCI – a wonderful opportunity to mark the centenary of Jack B. Yeats winning a silver medal in the 1924 Games, and to highlight the connections between art and sport.

Rosetta Beaugendre is the Head of Communications and Public Relations at CCI Paris. centreculturelirlandais.com

Oonagh Young, Reading Ulysses, February-June 2022, installation view; image courtesy of CCI Paris.

A Home for Irish Arts

Irish Cultural Centre London

Aiden Hickey, Sirens, 2022, oil/acrylic board, 24"x36"; image courtesy of Aidan Hickey and the Irish Cultural Centre Hammersmith.

THE IRISH CULTURAL Centre (ICC) is based in Hammersmith, London. It has been the home of Irish arts and culture in the UK for the last 28 years. The venue’s state-of-the-art building houses an impressive performance auditorium, modern bar lounge, Irish library, art gallery and multiple meeting spaces.

As a primarily cultural entertainment venue, the ICC’s extensive events programme includes concerts, screenings and exhibitions across all art forms, including music, film, theatre, literature and visual arts. It has hosted many notable guests, such as HRH King Charles III, Colm Tóibín, Edna O’Brien, Adrian Dunbar, Ardal O’Hanlon, Dame Sheila Hancock, Ralph McTell, Mary Coughlan, Martin Hayes, Tommy Prine, Fergal Keane and more. In addition, the centre offers formal courses in Irish Language, dance and Irish Traditional Folk Music, and maintains close links with Irish Film London and The Irish Literary Society, amongst other organisations.

The ICC is currently home to the exceptional exhibition, ‘Painting Ulysses’ by Aidan Hickey, which marks the 100th anniversary year of the publication of James Joyce’s masterpiece. The exhibition comprises 18 paintings, depicting each of the 18 episodes in the novel. As each episode was written in a different literary style, Hickey has designed each painting in a different visual style. In some ways ‘Painting Ulysses’ shares the same chequered history as James Joyce’s novel. Aidan Hickey began his odyssey in 2016 when he mentioned to fellow artist Tom Mathews that he was painting an episode from Ulysses. “I hope you are not intending to paint all 18 episodes” was Tom’s reply. Aidan pondered on this and decided ‘Why not?’. And so Aidan’s journey began.

The ICC also plays an active role within the wider community, aiming to promote Irish culture to the Irish diaspora in London and beyond. Celebrating equality, inclusion, and diversity, its programme aims to attract people of all ages, backgrounds,

interests, and diverse heritages. The centre prides itself on being an open, welcoming space for anybody who enjoys Irish arts and culture. It has been a registered charity since 2013.

The ICC has played an integral part in the local community and region in helping to celebrate and reflect on the history of the Irish in London, as well as adding to the vibrancy of the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in creating a warm and welcoming atmosphere that celebrates world literature, art, and music days.

In 2019, we held a celebration of female art in the centre with local and Irish artists to celebrate St Brigid’s Day and female creativity. The council deemed it so successful they added it to their dates of notable cultural events, alongside St Patrick’s Day. We are now currently helping our friends at Irish In Britain to complete a large heritage project on the life of the Irish diaspora in the UK with an immersive exhibition.

The UK, and London in particular, continues to be a beacon of Irish emigration, but we have also seen in the last four years since the impact of Brexit, a hunger from people with Irish Heritage to connect with their roots and history. The reality of maintaining this visibility and professional outreach to the wider community is now immensely important to people of inherited Irish descent, as there’s a pride for the nation and desire to be a part of this community. As a centre, we also have a responsibility to reflect a modern and changing Ireland. One that embraces the successes that the country has gained in all forms, as well as acknowledging the large strides in political affairs that the country has made in the last 25 years. For us, there’s work to do, in communicating with those who have left, the new parameters of home, but also discussing what hopes people still have for the future of the island.

William Foote is the Centre Director at The Irish Cultural Centre. irishculturalcentre.co.uk