Join us to celebrate the launch of a new series of prints, Ceithre Fhuinneog As Leabhar Bhaile an Mhóta/Four Windows from the Book of Ballymote, by the artist Shane Cullen in association with Stoney Road Press. These prints will be on view and launched by Luke Gibbons, academic and author of Joyce’s Ghosts: Ireland, Modernism and Memory, published by Edinburgh University Press. To mark the launch Gibbons presents a response titled, Ogham Truths: On Shane Cullen’s Windows.

The project Ceithhre Fhuinneog/Four Windows references one of Ireland’s most famous Gaelic manuscripts The Book of Ballymote, one of the most significant cultural artefacts associated with the West of Ireland. The original book comprises over five hundred pages and includes numerous old and middle Irish texts. In this unique set of prints Cullen interprets and animates its esoteric forms and markings to create four contemporary prints, drawing from an ancient lineage.

Shane Cullen has a special interest in language, the power of its visual depiction and what may be communicated via transcription. This interest drew him to that part of the manuscript that sets out a treatise and diagrams dealing with the Ogham alphabet and to the section known as the poet’s primer reflecting on the role and the profession of the poet. 

The four prints in this new box set reveal their origins, but they are compelling in their own right; specific strokes and glyphs recall the transition between Ogham and early Gaelic lettering; Cullen goes beyond his source, stripping back his own visual range and palette, bringing our attention back to essentials; circle, square, rectangle,  line, colour and  the form of ancient letters. He enlarges and intensifies, the result is a set of prints with both an abstract and contemporary character, that resonates in the present while echoing the past.