Paper short abstract:

The field of Irish Studies has focused on representations of the West of Ireland as signifying a romanticised Irishness. My research complicates this by looking at Visual Art production in the West of Ireland in the bilingual context of community arts festivals in the rural Connemara Gaeltacht.

Paper long abstract:

An established body of literature in the field of Irish Studies has focused on images of the West of Ireland in a postcolonial context, with scholars such as Catherine Nash, Luke Gibbons and Yvonne Scott producing compelling arguments around the significance of images of the West in the fields of visual arts and literature. However the discourse surrounding these images in the visual and academic language of the mainstream Irish art world has largely focused on representations of the West as signifying an idealised and romanticised Irishness. My research extends the scope of this discourse, using ethnographic methodologies to examine Visual Art production in the West of Ireland in the light of specific local cultural contexts, in this case the bilingual context of community based arts festivals in the rural Connemara Gaeltacht (* The term"Gaeltacht" refers to an area where Irish is in use as a community language). Specifically, in my project, I will be looking at the activities of a multidisciplinary community arts festival in the Coisfharraige coastal area, Féile Pléaráca (2003-2013) in order to bring to the fore complex roles played by image-making activities within a nuanced Gaeltacht context. In doing so I draw on literature from the fields of Irish Studies, Place-based Art Studies and Festival Studies to argue that tensions around language loss and identity on both a regional and national level have strongly influenced the production of visual art in the Gaeltacht area.