The Irish Passport

Anyone interested in the local fairy traditions amassed by Co. Clare storyteller Eddie Lenihan, can find a whole collection in his “Meeting the Other Crowd”, available here or wherever get your books.

You can listen to Eddie’s insights into Irish supernatural tradition in our episode, “Away with the Fairies”. 

Do you see that mist?

It was rolling into shot as I took the photo. It’s the first hint of the arrival of Hurricane Ophelia.

These pictures were taken on Howth Hill in Dublin in the hours before the hurricane — what was left of it after it crossed the Atlantic — hit Ireland. It was the worst storm in generations.

Luckily I had an amazing model to work with. Aoife Mullan grew up locally in Howth. She’s an artist and a graphic designer. I was delighted when she agreed to do the shoot because I knew she would bring terrific style to the photos. (The shoot was for the tote bag we are selling to fund our podcast. You can buy one here. Gwan ;))

It was an added bonus that the autumn ferns turned out to be exactly the same beautiful shade as her hair.

We started off in a valley of silver birches I’ve known as a magical place since I was a child, and always wanted to capture.

As we moved up the hill, the mysterious mist started to roll in. Howth is the hill on the north arm of Dublin bag. It’s the peninsula ringed with dramatic cliffs that you can glimpse from your aeroplane when you fly into Dublin airport. Usually, it has sweeping panoramas of Dublin, and that’s what I had hoped to capture.

But this mist was even better.

I was very keen to get some shots of Aoife with the traditional stone walls that criss-cross the hill, because we had mentioned that kind of landscape in our famine episode.

At a certain point, horse-riders appeared out of the mist.

It was a magical shoot where everything just seemed to click. And it was perfectly on theme to do just ahead of our episode on abortion in Ireland. Aoife Mullan has been involved with the campaign through Artists Repeal the 8th.

Hopefully today’s #March4Choice #ARCMarch17 is the last ✊#RepealNotReplace (printed this linocut a lil while ago that’s why it’s v crude) pic.twitter.com/dYMbMHfnki

— aoife (@aamullan) September 30, 2017

I asked her to share a few insights about her work as an artist and graphic designer:

Q. Tell us about your work

A. I studied Fine Art Painting in NCAD. I see my work as an extension of painting, as I don’t really paint in a traditional sense. I make sculptures, installations and photographic work and they really are like expanded paintings. Aesthetically they mostly consist of blocks of colours that play with vibrancy and light. I also make illustrations which make heavy use of collage and I have recently begun using traditional printing techniques.

Q. What are you inspired by?

A. I’m interested in and influenced by a broad range of things; objects and furniture by Memphis Milano, a group from the 80’s led by designer Ettore Sottsass. They made amazing use of laminates, plastics and vivid blocks of colour. I’m really into sci-fi; films like Day of Triffids, Brazil, Silent Running, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and in particular the set design from Logans Run. I like Polish poster art from the 50’s to the 70’s. A lot of the type was hand drawn and the colours were incredibly bold.

Q. What is Dublin like as a place to be an artist or designer?

A. So many of Dublin’s art studios have had to shut down or move due to rent hikes and developers. Places like the Joinery, Moxie and Broadstone Studios have all had to close. Broadstone was a place where over 30 established artists had studios. Some of these artists had represented Ireland in the Venice Biennales, and they were suddenly left with no place to work. So that’s really an indication of the precarity of the situation for artists in Dublin at the moment.

Q. What project are you excited about at the moment?

A. Right now I’m working on a series of illustrations, depicting women and their dogs. I saw a photograph of Countess Markievicz and her cocker spaniel Poppet lying on a wall and I’ve been looking out for things along those lines since. My process is photomontage, collage, a bit of drawing and then tweaking and reworking the images in photoshop and illustrator.

Q. What exhibitions and events are you excited about?

A. Recently I saw an exhibition on printed Irish record sleeves from the 50’s to the present day in the National Print Museum, and I am going to go see Witch and Lezzie, a show by Breda Lynch in the RHA which is on til 5th of November. I’m really looking forward to an upcoming exhibition in Frame Dublin this week of work by sign painter Vanessa Power. I’m looking forward to the Feminist Film Festival which is on the 16-18th of November.

I’m planning a trip up to Belfast to see two exhibitions soon. The first is Video Encounters: Inside the Story in Golden Thread Gallery. It consists of two video works, one by Rachel Maclean and one by Bedwyr Williams. Bedwyr Williams has a weird sense of humour in his work that I like. I also want to see Phlox in the Naughton Gallery which has work by illustrator Laura Callaghan. The exhibition deals with sexism within the illustration industry and platforms work exploring identity, sexuality and race.

You can check out Aoife Mullan’s work at her website here.

Naomi