Kiera O'Toole - Romantic Ireland is Dead and Gone

Romantic Ireland is Dead and Gone
Kiera O'Toole



"Romantic Ireland is Dead and Gone" - a series of framed drawings in ink and charcoal - deals with migration and cultural identity, particularly in relation to Ireland. The exhibition discusses these issues in a couple of different ways - through the personal and emotional experiences of migration, and what it means to leave one's country behind for another; and through a cultural and historical critique of the country itself, what it was and what it now is, and how much of it's identity has been left behind thanks to economic change. While initially it might seem as though these are two separate subjects, they actually come together to mean much of the same thing, with a general feeling of loss, of displacement, or of distance, be it through the actual physical removal of a person from their country, or the removal of a group of people from a culture that once was. Ireland is gone, Ireland is being left behind.

The images themselves depict thin, dark figures against stark white backgrounds, sometimes in groups, sometimes alone, but always with a look of solitude about them. My initial impression was of an abstracted figure, designed not to depict any thing in particular, but rather an emotion. More interesting was my mother's impression of them being human figures, whittled down by famine, a reference to Ireland's dark history. They are, actually, bluebottle jellyfish - a creature Kiera describes as alien in the Irish imagination, but representative of the migrant experience, as they are never certain what space they occupy. While they find themselves washed onto Australian shores, they essentially remain an animal with no real sense of belonging to any one place.

"Romantic Ireland is Dead and Gone" is on at the Gosford Regional Gallery now, and runs until the 5th of December 2007.

review by Fiona Doyle