The War between Friends

The War between Friends

BRENDA MOORE-MCCANN REVIEWS EOIN MAC LOCHLAINN’S RECENT SOLO EXHIBITION AT OLIVIER CORNET GALLERY IN DUBLIN.

THE GREAT FREDERIC Bartlett, the father of cognitive psychology, wrote in his influential book, Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology (Cambridge University Press, 1932), that memory is a process of reconstruction and that this reconstruction is, in important ways, a social act. Eoin Mac Lochlainn’s artistic output has been just that for many decades, producing powerful paintings that reflect the Irish experience of war, emigration, homelessness, climate change and the recent pandemic. His realistic paintings are sensitive to the human condition and the experience of individuals enduring such events, not only in Ireland but beyond its shores. They are powerful statements that act as witness to the here and now.

For example, Mac Lochlainn’s series ‘Caoineadh/Elegies’ (2003) depicts 52 damaged faces, based on US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s list of ‘the most wanted men in Iraq’. Irish experience of the historical recurrence of emigration, on the other hand, is poignantly recorded in a series called ‘Didean/Home’ (2013-14), depicting empty fireplaces, divided families, loneliness and loss. More recently, Mac Lochlainn turned his attention to the devastating effects of manmade climate change on humanity in ‘The End of Autumn/ Deireadh Fomhair’ series (2018), while the trauma of the Covid-19 pandemic was represented by the prevailing phenomenon of the partial view we had of each other in ‘Covid Eyes’, a solo show at Olivier Cornet Gallery in October 2020.

Mac Lochlainn’s latest series, ‘Cogadh na gCarad/The War between Friends’ (2023) was recently presented at Olivier Cornet Gallery (7 March – 2 April). This body of work powerfully and movingly depicts in black and white charcoal washes, the faces of the 1400 people who lost their lives in the Irish Civil War (1922-23). Inspired by his reading of historian Diarmaid Ferriter’s book on the Civil War, Between Two Hells: The Irish Civil War (Profile Books, 2021), Mac Lochlainn decided to make the series – as he had previously done for the 52 men in Iraq – imagining the faces of the 1400 people killed on both sides of, arguably, the worst kind of war. He subsequently invited Ferriter to open the exhibition on 7 March.

Entering the gallery, we are confronted with a selection of ghostly faces, placed in a grid formation on the gallery wall. They are young and old, mostly male, with some women and three children; they emerge from the darkness, eyes closed. Some have clear evidence of injury. Deliberately, there is no indication of which side the person was on; they are all human beings caught up in the horror of brother against brother, friend against friend. They are not portraits of those who died; rather, the artist evokes the presence of people who had dreams and ambitions, like us all, but whose lives were cut short. Struck by the idea that the Civil War was perceived as a small-scale

affair, with only 1400 people killed, Mac Lochlainn’s gives each presence the dignity of not just being a number, but a mother’s son, a brother or sister.

The faces were made with ground charcoal and water. When dried, the artist worked to discover each face on the page. Their presentation in a grid allows no hierarchy of one over the other – each is equal in death. The logic of the grid also implies that each individual square could be extended laterally and horizontally. So, although this exhibition commemorates the Irish Civil War, its rationale could be applied to any war. As Mac Lochlainn remarks: “War is a failure of empathy, a failure of humanity.”

The exhibition also continued beyond the gallery in the Garden of Remembrance, a short distance away. There, a video projection of the work, best viewed from the entrance to the Hugh Lane Gallery opposite, brought the exhibition into public view in a place that has commemorated since 1966 “all those who gave their lives for Irish freedom.” The projection was on view between 7pm and 8pm on the opening night and was shown again on 14 and 21 March. The video, made by Mac Lochlainn and filmmaker Don Rorke, projected some of the 1400 faces on the back wall of the garden. One ghostlike face merged into another, slowly in a sequence, interspersed by quicker, sharper turnovers. Back in the gallery, an 18-minute video of faces was accompanied by lamentation, found in the sean-nós singing of Fearghas Mac Lochlainn and keening by Sarah Ghriallais. One of these videos (an edition of three) recently entered the collection of the OPW.

As war continues to rage in Ukraine and elsewhere, this important exhibition deserves wide public attention for what it says about war and humanity. As Bartlett observed, the past is continually being re-made. In the hands of accomplished artists like Mac Lochlainn, the past is remembered in the interests of the present, in all its complexity and pathos.

Brenda Moore-McCann is an author, art historian, medical doctor, and critic, based between Dublin and Tuscany.

Eoin Mac Lochlainn, Cogadh na gCarad no.11 2023, charcoal and wash on Fabriano paper, 35 x 27 cm; photograph by Eoin Mac Lochlainn, courtesy of the artist and Olivier Cornet Gallery.

Eoin Mac Lochlainn, ‘Cogadh na gCarad / the War between Friends’, video projection in the Garden of Remembrance, Parnell Square, Dublin, March 2023; photograph by Eoin Mac Lochlainn, courtesy of the artist and Olivier Cornet Gallery.