There is no monument to the labouring lives of those shown in a new exhibition, writes FRANK MILLARLondon Editor
IN THESE recessionary times, you might hardly think to find entertainment in an art exhibition depicting the hard, often harrowing experience of an earlier generation of male Irish immigrants forced to leave their homeland in search of work in a strange and often hostile place.
Yet if you should find yourself at a loose end in London over the next few weeks, you could certainly spend a stimulating hour or two visiting the PM Gallery in Ealing.
The gallery is currently hosting the premiere of a new exhibition featuring the work of artists Bernard Canavan, Daniel Carmody, John Duffin, Dermot Holland and curator Brian Whelan, depicting the London-Irish experience in the 1950s and 1960s.
My first surprise was to see The Quiet Men billed as “the first major contemporary London-Irish art exhibition” to explore this subject. As Whelan explains: “Irish music, literature, poetry and dance are celebrated all over the world. However, when asked to name an artist, many will have difficulty as very few have been celebrated outside Ireland. Perhaps because a people that experienced famine, war, economic hardship and mass immigration carried only their portable culture with them in their heads, hearts and suitcases.
“Poems and songs have few requirements short of a good memory or the ability to carry a tune, whereas painting, sculpture and architecture are less portable and need peace, prosperity and time in order to flourish.”
The second surprise was to learn it has taken Whelan eight years to put this powerful work together – courtesy of the local council – in face of a curious lack of interest on the part of Irish businesses and official and other funds.
Having viewed the paintings – and a brilliant supplementary exhibition of photographs from the Paddy Fahey Collection at Brent Archive – it occurred to me that The Quiet Men might almost serve as a sort of travelling roadshow for the Ireland Fund’s Forgotten Irish campaign.
For they are here, those forgotten, pushed to the margins of society, sometimes slipping below the radar altogether – the theme of their journey presented in the songs, toasts, prayers of the immigrants, their lives full of stories and great humour as well as tragedy.
At a packed opening night broadcaster, Fergal Keane told Whelan the paintings prompted in him an “overwhelming sense of loneliness”. That loneliness, fear, apprehension and uncertainty is powerfully presented, for example, in the faces of those queuing to leave the boat train in Holyhead in Bernard Canavan’s Disembarkation .
It isn’t all angst and hardship, however. There is relief – if attended by some melancholia too – in the depiction of community life as experienced in the cafes and launderettes, as well, of course, as in the pub.
The subject of Whelan’s Fine Girl You Are is surrounded by musicians and looks jolly, while underlining the point that probably the only woman in the bar was the singer.
This is unapologetically an exhibition about the male experience.
There are elements of nurture and family in Fahey’s beautiful portrayal of the lives of the London-Irish in the years following the second World War, the sense of community and its spirit, and the role and influence of the church in peoples’ lives in what he also reminds us was the era of the ballrooms of romance.
There is no romance, it must be said, in Whelan’s tribute to those who helped build Britain. Paddy in the Smoke shows a fairly evil-looking St Patrick with angels clutching on to coffins, it is not immediately clear whether the holy man is sucking the bodies in or spewing them out. In fact, Whelan explains, the bodies are sitting on unfinished slabs of motorway.
In what he describes as a sort of “spaghetti junction” moment, the artist says it occurred to him “there is no memorial to those, say, who built the Hammersmith flyover”, to those in that time, like his own father and uncles, whose hard lives and hard work also spelt a prematurely early death.
The Quiet Men is showing until April 18th. For further information contact Michael Barrett or Kirsten Canning on 0208295 2424, e-mail mb@thepressoffice.uk.com