An exhibition by visual artists Sean Lynch & Michael Holly with Roscommon-based ephemera collector Liam Byrne

The ethos of the visual arts programme at Roscommon Arts Centre during this curatorial residency has been developed with a view to expanding the scope for participation in the arts centre’s activities while also initiating relationships with the local population, interest groups and specific communities. This exhibition consists of a film by Sean Lynch and Michael Holly that will be presented alongside items of local historical and geographical interest from the ephemera collection of local history enthusiast, Liam Byrne. Collecting stories plays a huge role in Sean Lynch’s art practice while Liam is the collector of the objects, relics and ephemera that document these stories.

The exhibition begins in the pages of poet and mystic Ella Young’s book The Wonder-Smith and His Son, where the main character An Gubbaun Soar roams aimlessly through a stoney landscape. Suddenly, out of the sky, a bag of tools fell to the ground. He instantly became a master stonemason, and travelled to the nearest town, where he carved, upon a window the Kingcat of Keshcorran, “with insinuating grace and with infinite cunning, losing itself at the last in loops, and twists, and foliations and intricacies that spread and returned and established themselves in a mysterious, magical, spell-knotted forest of emblems.”

Sean Lynch came across the story when researching the carvings of James O’Shea in Oxford of 1859.  Having been rebutted by Oxford authorities for his attempting monkey carvings on the new museum building, O’Shea carved a group of feline-like creatures onto a window at the museum. While the precise details are now lost, one could speculate that O’Shea remembered the story of the Gubbaun, an old folk tale told amongst stonecarvers, and asserted to bring forth evil monstrous cats to the facade of the museum? Liam’s collection features images from Roscommon history that might find a kinship with The Kingcat, while Michael Holly’s video of summer solstice activity around megalithic sites in the region reveal the belief systems around land and history.

In the gallery space, Liam presents a collection of material, underneath glass cases he salvaged from a Museum refurbishment some years back. One presentaion details the medieval sculpture of the Roscommon Abbey alongside early geological studies of the region and more recent magnetic gradiometry imagery, placed amongst other tangential material such as a piece of the Berlin Wall now in Roscommon.  Another case sees county council annual agricultural reports mingle with a fossil Liam found in a carpark in Offaly and an illustration of the Cross of Cong.

Sean Lynch will represent Ireland at The Venice Biennale in 2015.