Pearse medal

 I was at the lovely Pearse Museum again last year, specifically to see an art exhibition from the OPW Collection (which I blogged about here), but it is always nice to have a gander around the museum itself, which is dedicated to the Irish hero. The museum is situated in the boys' school that Patrick Pearse founded early last century at St Enda's Park (a gorgeous park to wander around). Seeing the image plaque again reminded me that I knew there was an error of some sort in the commemorative medal that I had at home, which had been given to me when my Mum died a few years ago.

When I got home I had a good look at the medal, which was commemorating Pearse having been born 100 years previously.

On the reverse side of the coin is an excerpt from the speech Pearse made at the graveside of O'Donovan Rossa in 1915, which is credited to being seminal to the Easter Uprising the following year. A member of the language police that I am, I spotted the spelling error on this commemorative medal. "Finian" is a boy's name, in his speech Pearse referred to the "Fenian" dead. Fenian refers to the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), the secret political organisation of the late 19th-early 20th century that was dedicated to the establishment of an independant Ireland. I wonder how many of these medals were made for the commemoration and if anyone else is a trainspotter?

Postcard 1916

Postcard 1916 was an exhibition of postcards, curated by artist Eileen Ferguson, which took place in The Old Post Office, Clones. Individual blank postcards were provided to interested artists to create small works in response to a specific word in The Proclamation or The Proclamation itself. The exhibition was a response to the 100th anniversary of the Easter Uprising.

The wall of postcards, though at first daunting in its diversity and jumbled nature, became intriguing for this very nature. The cards were all so different showing an incredible individuality of response to the same theme. 

There was also a great variey in the media used for expression: photography, print, collage, encaustic, paint, cloth

and any mixture of these materials.

Artists responded using the language of The Proclamation, or in their own words.

 Cards used naturalism, abstraction and symbolism...

I cannot comment on or show an image of every card in the display -

but one certainly gets an idea of the diversity in the exhibition.

The exhibition will be packed up and brought to France for further exhibition in La
Vielle Poste, Larroque in August of this year.

My own response (in situ below right) was a response to the word "children". I created a collage using ripped paper, an image of children collecting wood from the rubble of Sackville St (now O'Connell St, Dublin)  on a background of excerpts from my paternal grandfather's Witness Statement of his "military" activities leading to the foundation of the state.

 The postcard my husband, James Hayes, submitted (in situ, above centre left) is a lino print of the anniversary dates collaged onto a background of writing excerpted from The Proclamation.

There were so many interesting responses, it is impossible to showcase them all. The curator of the exhibition, Eileen Ferguson, was delighted with the response -- receiving postcards not just from Ireland, she also received cards from Canada and Germany. Ferguson also spoke of the range of work received and interest from both amateur and established artists, as well as enthusiastic responses from children and young people who had participated in some workshops.