A Sense of Ireland: reflecting and refracting modernity in Irish culture

ABSTRACT

During February and March 1980, an ambitious six-week long, multi-disciplinary arts programme took over London. Launched at the height of “the Troubles”, A Sense of Ireland was a “diplomatic mission” to foster better relationships between Ireland and Britain. This essay critiques the catalogue that accompanied the festival as an important example of Irish design modernism that synthesised the aesthetics of the European and American avant-garde with a contemporary political and cultural critique.

KEYWORDS:

• Design
• Richard Eckersley
• Kilkenny Design Workshops
• the “Troubles”

Acknowledgements

With thanks to: Peter Evers, Peggy McConnell, Angela Rolfe, Andrew Woodcock.

Notes

1. Oliver, “Front Matter,” 4.

2. Bennett, “Exhibitions,” 163; RTE, “A Sense of Ireland Festival Opens in London.”

3. Linda King, “Interview with Angela Rolfe,” A Sense of Ireland Visual Arts Curator, Dublin, January 15, 2017.

4. Gloria Hunniford, “Interview with John Stephenson” (Ulster Television) https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-a-sense-of-ireland-1980-online. Accessed December 20, 2017).

5. Hollis, “Language unleashed.”

6. This essay developed from two papers: “A Sense of Ireland: Design and Identity at the Kilkenny Design Workshops”, given at Latitudes: Irish Studies in an International Context, the American Conference for Irish Studies/Canadian Association of Irish Studies conference at UCD (14 June 2014); and an invitation to speak at the symposium Remapping the Paradigm, at Trinity College, Dublin (27 May 2016). I wish to extend my thanks to Prof. Gerry Smyth, one of the conveners of the latter event, for the invitation to contribute to this volume.

7. Including King, “Particles of Meaning”; King, “Irish Design: History, Context and Possibilities, 1900–2011”; Godson and King, “Design and Material Culture”; King and Sisson “Visual Shrapnel.”

8. The three phases of modernism referred here are taken from Greenhalgh, “Introduction.”

9. King and Sisson, Ireland Design and Visual Culture.

10. Comment by Charles Haughey to the Dáil on the introduction of his Health (Family Planning) Act (1979).

11. See also Thorpe, Designing Ireland; Marchant and Addis, Kilkenny Design; King, “Vernacular.”

12. KDW was pioneering in its employment of women designers. This was highly unusual in Ireland and for the profession of graphic design more broadly.

13. Triggs, “Richard Eckersley.”

14. McConnell, “Interview.”

15. McConnell, “Panel Discussion.”

16. This can be traced back to the foundation of the State when German workers and engineers for Siemens were employed to work on Ardnacrusha (1925–1929). Subsequently Dutch graphic designers were enticed to Dublin from the Dutch national airline, KLM, to work on Aer Lingus advertising throughout the 1950s. Irish fashion of the same period was dominated Sybil Connolly who was Welsh, and in the 1960s by the Dane Ib Jorgenson.

17. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 244, 252. See also King, “(De)Constructing the Tourist’s Gaze.”

18. I am grateful to my colleague Peter Evers for sharing his knowledge on these points.

19. Tony O’Hanlon, “Remembering Richard.”

20. Hollis, “Language Unleashed.”

21. This was the text so richly mined by Shakespeare for his English history plays.

22. Miller, “Introduction,”163.

23. Oliver, A Sense of Ireland, 10.

24. Stephenson, “Introduction,” 11–13.

25. Oliver, A Sense of Ireland, 39.

26. This may be an oblique reference to Lynott’s ethnicity, as Coca Cola became symbolic of civil rights protests that took place at soda fountains in the US in the 1950s; or it may be a reference to Lynott’s use of class A drugs.

27. Oliver, “The Future of a Different Past,” 168.

28. Oliver, A Sense of Ireland, 176.

29. The most well-known of these is the Dutch designer Jan van Toorn.