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‘Tigh Donal Rua’ Restored

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on December 11, 2013 – 1:13 pm
Filed under art, Art, Artists, Exhibition, Public Art Work

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‘Tigh Donal Rua’ or ‘Red Donal’s House’ is an installation by Irish artist Caoimhghin Ó Fraithile that was commissioned by Ciarán Walsh in 2006. It involved the reconstruction of a 19th century stone cottage in a remote valley west of Dingle town, in the southwest of Ireland. Since 2006 the roof of the installation had deteriorated and it was replaced in October 2013.

The house is thought to have been occupied by Donal Rua and his family and is very typical of the thatched ‘long house’ lived in by tenant farmers and shepherds in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It is located on the side of a hill at the back of a glacial valley that forms part of the Brandon mountain range in West Kerry, an area steeped in archaeology and contemporary Gaelic culture.

By 2006 the cottage had been abandoned for over a century. The roof was long gone but the dry-stone walls were reasonably well preserved. Working with a group of local farmers, stonemasons and craftsmen the walls were restored, the interior excavated and the hearth stone exposed, along with clay pipes and other bits of crockery that were left behind when the house was abandoned.

‘Tigh Donal Rua’ was installed over a couple of months and was part of a series on installations that Ó Fraithile built in West Kerry, each one dealing with themes of locality and commemoration incorporated into traditional dwellings as reliquaries of tradition and folk memory.

He went on to develop similarly themed installations in the States and Japan.

 

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www.curator.ie invites you to meet the Irish Headhunters

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on April 27, 2012 – 9:44 am
Filed under Art, Exhibition, Heritage

 

 

Ciarán Walsh, www.curator.ie, launches the 'Irish Headhunter Project,' May 2012, the most important photographic archive to come into the public domain in Ireland in a long time. In association with Trinity College Dublin, The Blasket Centre, Ionad an Bhlascaoid Mhóir, Justin Carville, Ciarán Rooney and Séamas Mac Philib, The National Museum of Ireland - Country Life. Supported by the Office of Public Works and the Heritage Council.

 

Ciarán Walsh, www.curator.ie, launches the 'Irish Headhunter Project,' May 2012, the most important photographic archive to come into the public domain in Ireland in a long time. In association with Trinity College Dublin, The Blasket Centre, Ionad an Bhlascaoid Mhóir, Justin Carville, Ciarán Rooney and Séamas Mac Philib, The National Museum of Ireland - Country Life. Supported by the Office of Public Works and the Heritage Council.

 

 

Exhibition Dates 2012 /13

 

Ionad An Bhlascaoid Mhóir
3 May, 2012 – 23 June, 2012

 

Ionad Ealaíne Áras Éanna, Inis Oirr,

1 July, 2012 – 28 July 2012

 

Coláiste Ó Direáin, Inis Mór, Oileáin Árann

18 – 25 August, 2012 | National Heritage Week 2012.

 

Oireachtas na Gaeilge, An Galf Chúrsa, Eanach Mheáin
1 -25 September  2012 

(opening 19.30 Friday 31 August 2012. An Galf Chursa, Eanach Mheáin).

 

Áras Uí Ghrámhnaigh, Ráth Chairn, Baile Átha Buí, Co. na Mí.

05 – 31 October 2012

 

OPW Headquarters, Trim, Co Meath.

26 November  – 14 December 2012

 

Árd Mhúsaem na hÉireann, Saol na Tuaithe, Castlebar

National Musuem, of Ireland, Country Life, Castlebar

January 2012 – May 2013

 

 

2013

 

The Haddon Library, Cambridge University (September).

 

 

 

Catalogue | Catalóg

 

Fiagaí na gCeann Gaelach: Na hAlbaim Ghrianghraf le Charles R. Browne

The Irish Headhunter: The Photographic Albums of Charles R. Browne

by

Ciarán Walsh | www.curator.ie & Dáithí De Mórdha

 

Ciarán Walsh, www.curator.ie, launches the 'Irish Headhunter Project,' May 2012, the most important photographic archive to come into the public domain in Ireland in a long time. In association with Trinity College Dublin, The Blasket Centre, Ionad an Bhlascaoid Mhóir, Justin Carville, Ciarán Rooney and Séamas Mac Philib, The National Museum of Ireland - Country Life. Supported by the Office of Public Works and the Heritage Council.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is this the most important photographic archive in Ireland? www.curator.ie launches the ‘Irish Headhunter Project,’ May 2012.

Comments Off on Is this the most important photographic archive in Ireland? www.curator.ie launches the ‘Irish Headhunter Project,’ May 2012.
Posted by Ciaran Walsh on April 25, 2012 – 10:51 am
Filed under Art, Exhibition, Heritage

Ciarán Walsh, www.curator.ie, launches the 'Irish Headhunter Project,' May 2012, the most important photographic archive to come into the public domain in Ireland in a long time. Co-curator Dáithí de Mórdha. In association with Trinity College Dublin, The Blasket Centre, Ionad an Bhlascaoid Mhóir, Justin Carville, Ciarán Rooney and Séamas Mac Philib, The National Museum of Ireland - Country Life. Supported by the Office of Public Works and the Heritage Council.

 © The Board of Trinity College Dublin

 

www.curator.iepresents the ‘Irish Headhunter Project,’ an exhibition by Ciarán Walsh and Dáithí de Mórdha

 

in association with

Trinity College Dublin, The Royal Irish Academy, Ionad an Bhlascaoid Mhóir / The Blasket Centre,  Mairéad Ní Ghallchóir (Áras Éanna, Inis Oírr, Árann), Jane Maxwell (TCD), Tim Keefe (TCD), Justin Carville (IADT Dún Laoghaire), Ciarán Rooney (FILMBANK Colour Management) and Séamas Mac Philib, The National Museum of Ireland – Country Life.

Funded by the Office of Public Works (OPW) and The Heritage Council.

 

 

Ciarán Walsh, www.curator.ie, launches the 'Irish Headhunter Project,' May 2012, the most important photographic archive to come into the public domain in Ireland in a long time. In association with Trinity College Dublin, The Blasket Centre, Ionad an Bhlascaoid Mhóir, Justin Carville, Ciarán Rooney and Séamas Mac Philib, The National Museum of Ireland - Country Life. Supported by the Office of Public Works and the Heritage Council.

 

 

Introducing

Charles R. Browne, the Irish ‘Headhunter’

 

How did one explain the presence of a primitive (white) race living in the back yard of the United Kingdom – at the height of the British Empire? Scientists based in Trinity College Dublin attempted to do just that by documenting the physical characteristics and habits of  communities in the remotest parts of Ireland. Starting in Aran in 1891, they moved along the west coast and finished up in Carna in 1900. The whole thing was recorded by Charles R. Browne and his associates on a new generation of portable cameras using plates and rolled film, the latest in photographic technology at the time. They took more than photos however, they were the Irish ‘headhunters.’

Alive or dead the head of the Irish native was at the centre of all of their research, cranial capacity (brain size) and physiognomy being regarded as the key to unlocking the mystery of the origins of the Irish race. Specimens – the skulls of dead islanders – were collected and lodged in the Museum of Comparative Anatomy in TCD. Live heads were also taken … with a camera. These anthropometric portraits were contextualised with photographs of “the occupations, modes of transport, and habitations of the people, also several of the antiquities of the district, and a set of views showing surface of land and nature of coastline, etc.”

‘Charles R. Browne The Irish Headhunter’ exhibition will present in exhibition, for the first time ever, the photographs collected by Charles R. Browne. These are held in the Research Collection and Manuscripts Library of Trinity College Dublin. They have been scanned and reproduced especially for this exhibition and it is the first time most of them will have been seen in public.

This is probably the most important photographic archive to come into the public domain. It is supported by written reports – ethnographies – that are held in the Royal Irish Academy. Browne’s archive is singular in terms of its depiction of life on the west coast of Ireland in the 1890s. The anthropological inquiry – and the headhunting – that motivated it is one of the best kept secrets in Ireland.

Information: Ciarán Walsh +353(0)872370846.

 

 

Ciarán Walsh, www.curator.ie,Philip Lavelle, 1894, a photograph from the Irish Headhunter Exhibition, curated by Ciaran Walsh." The Irish Headhunter project is an exhibition of photographs collected by Charles R. Browne between 1891 and 1900. They are held in the Research Collections and Manuscripts library in Trinity College Dublin.It is presented in association with Trinity College Dublin, The Blasket Centre, Ionad an Bhlascaoid Mhóir, Justin Carville, Ciarán Rooney and Séamas Mac Philib, The National Museum of Ireland - Country Life. Supported by the Office of Public Works and the Heritage Council.

meet the Irish Headhunters

 

The photographs are reproduced with the permission of the Board of Trinity College Dublin.

The Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy are published with the permission of the Royal Irish Academy ©RIA.

 

The ‘Headhunter’ project has been made possible with financial support of  the

Office of Public Works (OPW) and

The Heritage Council (Education and Outreach Grants 2012).

 

Ciarán Walsh, www.curator.ie, launches the 'Irish Headhunter Project,' May 2012, the most important photographic archive to come into the public domain in Ireland in a long time. In association with Trinity College Dublin, The Blasket Centre, Ionad an Bhlascaoid Mhóir, Justin Carville, Ciarán Rooney and Séamas Mac Philib, The National Museum of Ireland - Country Life. Supported by the Office of Public Works and the Heritage Council.


 

 

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Blogging resumes on Ballymaclinton: An Irish giant, 24 stolen skulls, one colonial legacies project and a slave owner named Berkeley.



Is the TCD statement on the stolen skulls of Inishbofin a missed opportunity?



Inishbofin Islanders demand repatriation of remains held in TCD



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