Dark Shadows Exhibition



The work of Kieran Tuohy has to be seen to be believed. Perhaps it is the fact that his large sculptures are carved from single pieces of bog-wood,  or that the natural cracks in the petrified timber are as vital to the pieces as Kieran's own hand, or that the striking gleam of bog-wood is just so hard to photograph. Whatever the reason, everyone who visits the Dark Shadows Exhibition comes away ineffably changed.

The impact of Dark Shadows is even more incredible given the fact that the Famine, or as many people now call it The Great Hunger, is not new to us. It is one of the nation's most defining events, a cataclysm drummed into us at school and reinforced by having Irish communities around the world. It is not for love of travel alone that the Irish Diaspora is proportionately one of the largest in the world. So to mount an exhibition which solely focuses on The Great Hunger would seem a risky venture. That is, until you are confronted with the sculptures themselves.

On one of many days spent sitting among the pieces, handling tears, frightened children and a stream of "How could this have happened?", I realised just what it was that made the exhibition so moving. This was not the past dragged up to satisfy some urge to depict a trendy topic but a living, breathing, dying hoard of starved and brutalised people. I thought of this while sitting alone in the exhibition space and the hair raised on the back of my neck. They are actually here, I thought to myself. All the people who died so needlessly are here in this room, with me. It was the first time that all the facts and figures became real. I didn't care about the hows and whys, or even who had done what. All I could think about were my sister's two little girls and what it would be like if they didn't have enough to eat and there was nothing that I could do about it. The black, unblinking figures of the starving, stared at me and all I could do was stare back, helpless. And that is why the work of Kieran Tuohy has to be seen to be believed.

By Elizabeth Carter

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