“Catharsis of Collapse” by PIGSY (Sept 2nd - Oct 2nd Kenmare Butter Market)
With Opening Speech by Poet Tim Buckley
I was honoured to have Poet Tim Buckley open my “Catharsis” Art Exhibition in Kenmare Butter Market on Thursday 2nd of Sept. To stand beside Tim at the top of thegallery and to hear him speak so passionately about my work was very moving for me. I can’t thank Tim enough.
Here are the words, Tim spoke on the night:
Tim Buckley’s Opening Speech at PIGSY Art Exhibition
First of all I just want to thank Mirka for inviting me to attend this wonderful facility. What an addition to Kenmare! Which probably has the greatest concentration of galleries per head of population in the country and that says an awful lot about the town and its people, many who have long understood the importance of art not only as a means of decoration but as a way of inspiring and also subliminally granting them permission to dive in and surf their own internal emotions and questions and turn them to something positive.
Poet Tim Buckley in full flow giving his opening speech at PIGSY’s “Catharsis of Collapse” in Kenmare Butter Market
My grandmother Madge Clifford from Firies, Co Kerry would certainly be smiling down on me this evening, She was personal secretary to Ernie O’Malley during his revolutionary years. Latterly he became one of the great champions of Irish Modernism at a time when it was needed, promoting such artists as Evie Hone, Mainie Jellett along with other well-known figures such as Jack B. Yeats and Louis le Brocquy. He lived for a period with Georgia O’Keefe, the photographer George Strand and Ansel Adams in Taos New Mexico.
He once said “my soul lies with the arts, in them lies happiness”. His personal collection was sold recently for 5.5 million so while he enjoyed the art his children reaped other awards.
Picasso’s words resonate when we look at the works around when said “the purpose of art is to wash the daily dust off our souls”. PIGSY’s art gifts us all the colour, the vibrancy, the light as well as the shade to understand and finds a language to translate our moods, our questions into something untutored ancient and tribal. It combines a child like quality of playing without borders while at the same time inventing the artists own unique language to translate all the ambiguity of feelings.
While Paul Henry painted the landscapes and skies of Connemara, PIGSY lifts the lid of his own skull to paint the landscapes of our mind in all its convoluted brilliance and mystery.
Another Picasso quote comes to mind “art is not the application of a canon of beauty. But what instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon, when we love a woman we don’t start measuring her limbs”.
The art here today shows a new modernism, not one of mimicry but of a confidence to explore the vast dominions and landscapes of the mind and to go where we should all attempt to go on a wild adventure without a map or preconditions.
Let me return to the title of the exhibition and that Greek word Catharsis meaning the process of releasing. and thereby providing relief from strong or repressed emotions if COVID has taught us anything is that we could all do with a dose of Catharsis.
I hope this wonderful exhibition will provide this impetus within us all and make us realise we need art in our lives as its medicine is very powerful. So invest in it, it will pay you back and make your heart sing.
Poet Tim Buckley with artist PIGSY at the opening of “Catharsis of Collapse” in Kenmare Butter Market in September 2021
“Catharsis of Collapse” is now open until Oct 2nd 2021
Kenmare Butter Market
Kerry, Ireland