The exhibition will run in glór from 22nd September to 5th October, with the official launch taking place at 1pm on Tuesday 29th September. All welcome.
Cé Mise is an exhibition of 30 portraits of older members of the community of County Clare. The exhibition consists of 30 drawn portraits of residents of St. Joseph’s Hospital, Ennis and service users of Clarecastle Day Centre, Clarecastle,.
The artist is multi-disciplinary artist Rachel Macmanus, who worked in partnership with Clare Age Friendly Programme, The Rural & Development Department of Clare County Council. Rachel also worked closely with the activity team at St Josephs’ hospital, and Mary Maloney, Manager of Clarecastle Day Centre and her team, who coordinated her visits to the respective centres and liaised with the portrait subjects and their families. Without the support and guidance from these two teams this project would not have been possible.
The exhibition will run in glór from 22nd September to 5th October, with the official launch taking place at 1pm on Tuesday 29th September. All welcome.
“This project was a year in the making. I had worked in St Joseph’s hospital before on a portrait project in 2019, called No Ordinary People. I wanted to do something similar, meet more people, and spend more time with each person and have conversations with them as I drew.
On this project I have heard so many stories, studied faces, witnessed acts of care and kindness and lots of laughs too. You see the life people have lived in their bodies- like this man’s forearms in his rolled up shirt, still with muscle and brawn from years of farming. Or the hands of the lady I drew recently, a tiny, slight little thing, with knuckled, bony, curled in hands, from years of washing the clothes, farming and rearing 9 children.
The stories I’ve been told have been humorous, sad, sarcastic, and sometimes regretful. Hard hard work and tough lives. Also memories of going to dances in Dublin as a young trainee and getting lifts home from a squad car out on patrol. Or going into town on a pony and cart to get the shopping as a child. This is the last generation who have not grown up with technology. I noticed how content they are just to sit, listening to music or looking out at the weather. No need for constant stimulation, or scrolling on a phones like their younger counterparts.
This body of work is not perfect, it’s rough, not always perfectly finished, and there are mistakes and finger marks and smudges on each portrait. I left them like that deliberately as perfection was not my goal with this work. I love drawing as it’s a record of what the artist sees, and then how they record it visually. It’s not an exact likeness, more like a rendering of a person on a particular day. portraits are no longer a necessity, as we can take a photograph to see what someone looks like. Portraits are a human exchange- an interaction between the subject and the artist. It’s a gesture of trust from the subject and a responsibility to produce a result of some merit by the artist.
Thanks again to Clare Age Friendly Programme, The Rural & Development Department of Clare County Council for their support and partnership, to glór for their support of my work, and most of all to the residents and staff of St Joseph’s Hospital and the service users and staff of Clarecastle Day Centre, Clarecastle.” Rachel Macmanus
