Decade of Centenaries and NIVAL: UCD Symposium

The UCD Symposium on Art and Reality: The Role of Visual Culture in the post-independent state will take place this Friday in the UCD Humanities Institute.

UCD Symposium Background

This symposium examines the role of visual culture in constructing and critiquing the state and national identity in the aftermath of political independence. The foundation of the Irish Free State was marred by partition, Civil War and division over sociopolitical goals. Other newly independent European nations in the post 1918 period experienced similar dissonance and chaos, often following the great hopes aroused by independence. What role did visual art and design play in imagining and building a unitary nation within such disharmonious circumstances? How did artists and designers critique the new state? Speakers will discuss the role of art and design in constructing and critiquing the new state and national identity in the early years of the Irish Free State and in other ‘new’, revived and remade European states in the post 1918 period.

Line Up

9.15-9.30 Welcome
Chair Kathryn Milligan, IRC Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Art History and Cultural Policy, UCD
9:30 Eimear O’Connor, Seán Keating and the Art of Nation Building
10:00 Síghle Bhreathnach-Lynch, Expressions of Nationhood in Bronze and Stone: Albert Power RHA
10:30 Fionna Barber, The Vibrant Studio: Margaret Clarke’s performative femininities and 1920s painting
11:00-11:30 Tea and coffee
Chair Lisa Godson, Visual Culture, National College of Art and Design
11:30 Elaine Sisson, Irish Modernity in Fancy Dress – The Costume Balls of the 1920s
12:00 Hilary O’Kelly, Dress in Our Boys in the Independence Period, c.1910-40
12:30 Q&A
1:00-2:00 Lunch
Chair Pat Cooke, School of Art History and Cultural Policy, UCD
2:00 Orla Fitzpatrick, The National Museum of Ireland and the Metropolitan School of Art
2:30 William Shortall, The Chicago World’s Fair 1933
3:00 Stephen O’Neill, The Visual Culture of Partition in the North of Ireland
3:30-4:00 Tea and coffee
Chair Sorcha O’Brien, Kingston University/National College of Art and Design
4:00 Angela Griffith, James Crompton Walker’s ‘Irish Life and Landscape’
4:30 Conor Linnie, ‘The Klaxon’
5:00 Q&A and Concluding remarks