Six artists from the North and six from the South East explore the concept of "Fear", in a timely exhibition that has just opened in Waterford.
The cross-Border exhibition will continue at the Garter Lane arts centre until July 30th and will move to the Proposition Gallery in Belfast from September 10th-30th.
The idea of examining whether the fears of people living in the North differ from people in the South East came from a member of Waterford Corporation's arts and heritage team.
Lurgan-born Kevin O'Hanlon had abundant personal experience of the menace constantly endured by some isolated minority communities in Northern Ireland. So much so that he left the North a year ago and says he will not return.
For this exhibition, he invited a group of artists from the North and a group from Waterford to create new work in response to the word "Fear".
Belfast artist Russell Hart simply shows a hand-cast aluminium knuckleduster, laid on a blood-red circle on top of a plinth. Jim McKevitt covered a child's miniature car with an A-Z street map of Belfast. Red circles on the map indicate areas that have been sites of paramilitary "punishment" beatings.
Roisin Lewis shows pieces which contain jumbles of almost illegible script. Her catalogue note explains: "My fear is one of (mis)interpretation. I want to leave my mark yet say as little as possible. The words are not my own but merely random transcriptions of radio broadcasts . . ."
Waterford artist Ann O'Regan displays sombre mixed media works.
She writes: "Fear is not just a single response to a dangerous situation, it is the underlying factor that limits or defines our existence. All life knows longing, all lives are contained."
The artists demonstrate that, as Cervantes wrote: "Fear has many eyes and can see things underground" Don Quixote.