Colleen has created three pieces for the ROOTS exhibition, two are 3D installations and one is a wall based work. Working on these was a very emotional experience for her, triggering all sorts of memory and reflection.
‘Holding the Moment’ is an installation made with card, paper and stitched embellishment, the idea for which began to grow as Colleen absorbed the imagery in the poem ‘The Finest Specimen‘. She loved the intimate moments of family and neighbourhood history held in old letters ‘bound together with knotted string‘ as recalled in the poem. One powerful image is about how the poet’s father was ‘lonely for the fields‘ on his honeymoon. There are echoes of this in Colleen’s family as her father came from a small farm in Cavan. As the eldest son, he gave up his entitlement to the land in order to live a very different life – but he always had the Farmer’s Journal in the family home throughout his life.
Colleen’s own home holds treasured mementoes of her life over the last 35 years, including cards sent by family and friends, postcards of works by favourite artists, cards from far flung places that she has visited. In developing her piece, Colleen has used some of these with the addition of stitched embellishments – an essential element in connecting. The installation consists of nine wrapped bundles, the layers underneath as important as the visible page. The collaged pages were the most difficult and rewarding to work on, being pieces of an old address book she has had for 40 years. An everyday thing – but for Colleen it is a profound link to past phases of her life; in London, Bristol and Australia. Stitched cords echo the ‘knotted string’ from the poem and symbolise a holding and minding of memory and the people whose details have been recorded in that address book.
‘Refuge’, a wall based piece, is in response to Jane Clarke’s poem ‘Harness Room‘. The ‘room under the loft‘ is an unremarkable space replicated in countless rural dwellings around the country. Colleen read the poem as a love letter to that space, and to the peace that Jane Clarke’s father found there. The poet allows herself to be immersed in the room, exploring why she feels such affection for it, with its ‘slab stone floor, softened by layers of dirt and dust’. Jane’s use of words, turning lists of mundane objects into things of real beauty, the ‘love for the naming of things‘ showing that powerful connection.
‘Refuge’ pays homage to the beauty and power in unremarkable spaces that are so often dismissed and overlooked. Using soya milk and earth pigments on linen, the subdued tones and stillness of the room are captured.
Colleen’s third piece, ‘Gathering’ does not relate to one specific poem but is a reflection of some of the commentary on human life and living that Jane so beautifully explores across her work. …layers of a life lived, repair and renewal, bravery, tenderness, fragility of relationships, life not always going in a straight line…
The seven small pieces are formed from cotton, wool felt, paper, hand stitch and found objects. They are not always pristine and perfect which echoes the messiness of the human condition. In contrast they are beautifully presented for us to view.
Thank you to Colleen for sharing her work, to Jane Clarke for her collaboration and to her publisher, Bloodaxe Books, for permission to use her poems. Thanks also to the OPW for the opportunity to exhibit and Kildare County Council for funding through the Arts Act Grant.
To see these works up close and personal, visit the exhibition ROOTS, a dialogue in textile and poetry, in the Coach House Gallery, Dublin Castle. Open 7 days a week, 10 am – 5 pm, closed for lunch 1.15 – 1.45 pm. Some of Jane’s books are now available in the gift shop in Chester Beatty Library next to the Coach House.