Seamus Nolan: Traveller Collection at the Hugh Lane

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22 June 2018 - 30 September 2018

Seamus Nolan: Traveller Collection at the Hugh Lane

22 June - 30 September 2018

In 2017, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane and Create, the national development agency for collaborative arts came together for the first time to commission a significant socially engaged artist’s project in Dublin. The call for submissions was made through CAPP, the EU Collaborative Arts Partnership Programme, a transnational partnership with Spain, Ireland, U.K., Hungary, Finland and Germany and co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. Following submissions from artists from all of the CAPP partners, Irish artist Seamus Nolan’s proposal was successful. One of Ireland’s foremost artists working in collaborative arts practice, Seamus Nolan’s project sees him investigating the idea of archive,
deconstructing ideas on ‘heritage’ and engaging with the Traveller communities in Ireland and Traveller activists and archivists. The Traveller Collection project focuses on issues of Traveller visibility within national and private cultural institutions. Locating representations of Travelling people and communities within local and national media, within folklore, fine and decorative arts collections, legislation and policy documents a picture begins to emerge of a people of difference, and this difference is in the fact that they are generally spoken about rather than speaking, painted rather than painting, represented rather than representing. As Anthony Candon, Keeper, National Museum of Ireland observed, ‘It can be argued, that just as Travellers were/are a marginalised group in Irish society, so also their representation among the Museum displays continued that marginalisation, if somewhat subliminally.’ Traveller Collection at The Hugh Lane is one small manifestation of the material and representation of Traveller culture and identity. The project engages
an ongoing collaborative process of enquiry with cultural practitioners, Traveller activists and collectors in an exploration of what a Traveller
collection or a Traveller specific museum might be and how it would be managed and maintained by Travellers. The idea to build a Traveller museum or collection is not new, but it is long overdue. The Hugh Lane at Pavee Point The Street Singer by Jerome Connor was loaned from the Gallery’s collection to Pavee Point on 21 June for the one day roundtable session as part of the CAPP Network’s Power and Practice international conference. This work from the city’s collection was selected as one of a number of works which points to the representation of shared traditions of Traveller culture within the museum. The situation of the work within one of the national Traveller organisations initiates an engagement of
equivalence between these organisations. In addition, this exhibition at the Hugh Lane includes paintings by Mick O’Dea from the Martin Folan collection at Pavee Point and archival
material that forms the Irish Travelling People: a Resource Collection borrowed from the Special Collections of Ulster University. This remarkable collection was originally created and built up by Aileen L’Amie at Ulster University. Displayed here in Gallery 10, the material will be scanned and the digitised fIles then becoming part of an online platform dedicated to Traveller culture TravellerCollection.ie, a website set up by Seamus Nolan as a database pointing to the location of various collections, and offering a repository where individuals and organisations can upload their own items. In addition, a series of fIlms on traveller culture chosen by the artist will be screened in Gallery 10. In tandem with this exhibition, a series of
handmade flowers made by the women of the Primary Health Care Traveller Project in Pavee Point are on view along with work made by Tinsmith James Collins. We are very pleased to have worked on this collaborative project with the artist Seamus Nolan and Ailbhe Murphy, Director of Create Ireland and the CAPP team. Our sincere thanks to them, to our lenders, Niall Burns and Ulster University Library, Martin Collins, Caoimhe McCabe and the staff and administration of Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre; to Rosaleen McDonagh, Derek Speirs, Micheal O hAodha, The Galway Traveller Movement, Sinead Ni Shuinear, and the Cork Traveller Women’s network for allowing their work to be presented; Eve Olney, Michael Collins, and Tracey Reilly; The exhibition was organised by Jessica O’Donnell, Head of Education and Community Outreach at the Hugh Lane.