You won’t be able to find it on Google Maps and there are no signposts to follow to its location, but a unique art installation in the west of Ireland will be in place throughout this summer and beyond.
Images of the sean-nós dancer Cóilín Sheáin Dharach Seoige and Bridget Aylward, the so-called Queen of Alaska who made a fortune in gold mining, have been carved into a Connemara bog by Séan Ó Flaithearta, a visual artist, as part of a project to mark Galway 2020’s European Capital of Culture.
Ríonach Ní Néill, who commissioned the installations with Joe Lee, a film-maker, said that she hoped that people would head out to Ros Muc to discover them when Covid-19 restrictions are lifted.
The Turas Chonamara project aims to trace the “interplay between Gaeltacht culture, weather and landscape”.
Ní Néill and Lee collaborated with the local community in Ros Muc to find suitable locations for the carvings that Ó Flaithearta worked on over the past two years.
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The image of Aylward, or Bríd Ní Mhainnín, aims to celebrate the contribution made by her after she emigrated across the Atlantic. Born in 1865 in Ros Muc, she worked initially as a maid in the United States, and then made her way to the Yukon where she made her fortune in gold mining. Having earned the moniker of Queen of Alaska, she returned in her later years to Ros Muc, an area of Connemara still suffering from severe poverty as it had been when she left. She died in 1958, leaving her money to a foundation for the education of local children.
Seoige didn’t take up the sean-nós style until he was in his fifties, and became one of the finest exponents of the Connemara style when he was in his sixties and seventies. He is credited with inspiring a new generation of sean-nós dancers when the style was waning in the 1980s.
Ó Flaithearta’s portraits of the two, named Portráidí Criathraigh, look different each day depending on the weather and the light, Ní Néill said.
“This is the opposite of Instagram, in that one has to slow down, take time and look,” Ní Néill said.
“They are down a bog road which can’t be driven too, and it is quite a meditative experience to see them. Ros Muc is quite small, so they won’t be that difficult to find.”
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The project has also commissioned three semi-transparent landscape photos by Paul Kinsella, which will be installed at three historical locations in Ros Muc, including the terminus for the train from Galway to the village which was never finished.
“The train was meant to run to Ros Muc from Maam Cross, but it was built to Clifden only,” Ní Néill said. “We are hoping it will give a chance for people to discover Ros Muc through the eyes of the local community.”
Ó Flaithearta, from the Aran Islands, has his studio on the largest island of Inis Mór. A graduate of the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, he also studied in Belgium and the US, and his work is in public and private collections. He has exhibited in Ireland and abroad and has also produced stage design work for the Taibhdhearc and Abbey theatres, and created the set design for the Galway 2020 production of Óró which was staged in Carraroe last autumn.
