Exhibition shines a light on women’s work

Revisited, an exhibition of new work by artist Mary Foudy O’Halloran opens this Friday, April 15, at the Courthouse Gallery, Kinvara.

For this show, Mary has revisited the everyday lives of rural Irish women in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s and reworked the ordinary objects and tools that they used in their hard, physical work.

Growing up in rural west Clare in the 1950s, Mary’s family home didn’t have electricity or running water – something that wasn’t unusual in rural Ireland back then. It was a time when all lives were heavy with labour, but women bore the biggest burden, she explains,

“In putting this exhibition together, I wanted to acknowledge the hard physical work of the generation of women who raised me. There was nothing particularly remarkable about their lives and the work they did, but they were a key part of building the economy we enjoy today.

“They not only had to keep the household going and carry out a considerable amount of work on the farm, but they did so while raising a large family of children and, in many cases, having up to one pregnancy a year. I wanted to acknowledge all of that and to elevate their work,” she expands.

The exhibition aims to be a conversation between the viewer, the artist and the unacknowledged, allowing these women to speak.

Mary, who now lives locally, is a member of the Kinvara Area Visual Arts group, KAVA. Her other recent solo exhibitions include Weighed at the Ballina Arts Centre and Endurance, in association with the Clare Arts Office, which also offered a contemporary exploration of the past by examining the ordinary and familiar and objects of loss. She works primarily in oil and mixed media, often incorporating ordinary household objects in her art.

Revisited, which is supported by Galway County Council runs at the Courthouse Gallery in Kinvara until Sunday, April 24. The opening hours are 11am-4pm daily and admission is free.