Mapping Stories | Scéalmhapáil Group Exhibition

The Linenhall Arts Centre and Visual Artists Ireland (VAI): ‘Mapping Stories | Scéalmhapáil' - featuring Thomas Brawn; Ann Conmy; Joanna Hopkins; Louise Hynes; Davinia Johnson; Anthony D Kelly; Katherine (Kate) Kelly; Jo Killalea; Sharon Ní Chuilibín and Martina O’Connor. Curated by Marianne O’Kane Boal.

About the Exhibition:

Mapping Stories | Scéalmhapáil' is a group exhibition at the Linenhall Arts Centre to mark the culmination of the Bolay Programme 2024. It features ten Mayo-based artists who have been mentored by curator Marianne O'Kane Boal over a three month period in preparation for this exhibition. The exhibition includes a diverse range of art forms; drawing, painting, sculpture, print, photography, film, audio and collage.

The stories that are mapped by the artists in the exhibition include personal and collective narratives that inform the work process, theme and finished artworks. The artist is viewed as a storyteller documenting the stories of others in Kate Kelly's colourful 'Stance' painting series where the artist invites us into dialogue on the changing social climate for women. Folk storytelling is conducted through tapestry and textiles in Ann Conmy's work where she examines bewilderment as an acknowledged limit to understanding in her performative photographs of the self. Masks are made, assumed and rejected in the home and beyond in an evolving process of self-reflection. In his digital collages, Anthony D. Kelly employs the lexicon of wonder as a means of articulating stories and scenes that are beyond our current understanding but provide means of subjective introspection. Joanna Hopkins explores how folklore and oral histories can influence our understanding of events and places. Her work is created directly from and within nature, where the Irish landscape, the seasons and devotional rituals are reflected metaphorically and physically in the self. Sharon Ní Chuilibín is also concerned with place and her work ties storytelling to performance using language, voice and song to create a sense of ritual and ceremony. Her drawings and collages create a visual map of her investigations.

Thomas Brawn is interested in the memory dimension of a story and how a personal narrative can differ from another person's account of the same event. Through psychotherapy and guided reflection, Brawn has revisited key moments of trauma and loss and these are creatively processed through drawing, printmaking and sound. Davinia Johnson also focuses on the personal internal narrative that influences her paintings, in terms of structure, process and resolution. Through echoing patterns found in nature to integrating pattern geometrically, she ensures an exploratory process links her paintings. Martina O'Connor is preoccupied with a personal narrative of grief and rewriting loss through imagining conversations and documenting shared narratives in her painting and sculpture. She examines memory, absence and transformation. ‘Through these works, I map the story of loss not as an end, but as an enduring presence, shaping who we become’. The personal experiential space of the coast is storied by Louise Hynes in her drawings and painting where she responds intuitively to her surroundings documenting human interaction in the landscape. The creation of a bridge between local and global stories/events is conducted in the semi-abstract paintings of Jo Killalea where contemporary issues such as migration and war are examined. She incorporates the universal symbol of the cross, to reflect on traditions of laying out the dead and marking burial grounds, throughout the world.

These narratives within the exhibition are personal and collective, documenting self and other. They have an importance within County Mayo but equally contain a wider significance. Such multivalent approaches to mapping stories create a rich and nuanced series of works that reflect the shared discussion and reflection that was conducted in the preparation phase for the exhibition.

About the Bolay Programme 2024:

The Linenhall Arts Centre in Castlebar has supported a number of visual artists this year in a substantial artist engagement programme, under the Bolay Programme. The programme ran from November 2024 to March 2025 and included a Curator and Artist Networking Event; a Curatorial Mentorship Scheme; and, a group exhibition in the Linenhall opening on Friday 28th February at 5pm. The curator Marianne O’Kane Boal led the mentorship programme with the ten selected individual artists.

“Working with this group of artists and curating the exhibition has been a pleasure. It has been rewarding to individually mentor each of the ten artists and to explore a range of approaches and working methods. It has been important to have a common goal of the exhibition to prepare for and this has ensured that there is a collective purpose for the group but equally a place for each individual artist to reflect on their work and the theme. The Bolay programme delivered by the Linenhall Arts Centre in association with Visual Artists Ireland is an invaluable support to Mayo artists and it has been a joy to be part of”. Marianne O’Kane Boal, Curator.

According to Visual Artists Ireland (VAI), the national representative organisation for visual artists; “VAI is delighted to partner with the Linenhall Arts Centre on the Bolay programme which this year brings a programme of artist cafes and curatorial mentoring to visual artists nationally culminating with the exhibition at the Linenhall Arts Centre for the participating Mayo artists”.