Artist goes against grain to create powerful work

Arts Week with Judy Murphy

“I’m not going to do very large sculptures anymore,” declares artist Ana Maria Pachecho. “It’s not because of my age,” the youthful 79-year-old adds swiftly. “It’s because the material is so expensive.” Ana Maria’s powerful installation, Remember, is a cornerstone of the visual arts programme at this year’ s Arts Festival. Comprising 20 human figures, it is indeed a largescale piece, one that was created especially for Galway.

It’s part of a bigger show that includes older work from Brazilian-born Ana Maria, some of it dating from the late 1970s, shortly after she moved to London on a scholarship to the Slade School of Fine Art.

Alongside her eerily realistic wooden sculptures of humans in a range of different situations, there’ s also a series of new, much smaller picture-style pieces, entitled Be Aware.

It consists of seven wooden panels, each featuring groups of figures that have been carved in relief and then painted. The panels have religious undertones, as in the Seven Deadly Sins, but for Ana Maria, whose paternal family were staunchly Catholic, her work is more about the human condition than any type of sinning.

Certain themes recur in her art but she doesn’t ever want to tell viewers what they should feel – each person will bring their own story and that’s how it should be, she stresses.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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