Paul McAree

b. 1972, Ireland

West is an installation of paintings looking at the reconstruction and recycling of Irish history and its cultural representations. The installation refers to post-independence Ireland’s attempt to create an art that captured the soul of Ireland, where the west of Ireland became the most significant theme in nationalist aspirations. This vision of the west was harnessed by the State, and artists like Paul Henry and Jack B Yeats created a new Irish iconography in the form of the heroic peasant and landscape.

The work positions the nationalistic struggle for cultural identity (via representations of sea, mountains and certain historical political images) within a more global framework. The sea paintings are based upon Henry’s Launching the Curragh, while the mountains are based on typical representations of the west of Ireland by Henry, Jack B Yeats and Seán Keating.

The role of the photograph/source image is reduced to that of a source and catalyst for a broader discussion on painting. Historical images are sieved, and through repeated painting individual meanings become diffused into a collective interpretation.The paintings acknowledge that the construction of meaning is social, institutional and contestable in its positioning of Irish culture in relation to western art. The aim here is to discover not what each painting may refer to, but how their juxtaposition may constitute meaning.

(Text: imagine limerick catalogue, 2004)