Closing event: 'someone decides, hawk or dove'

Using Niamh McCann’s exhibition as a stepping-off point, the discussion will explore historic legacies to speculate on what language, story, and imagery might be missing from accepted colonial narrative(s) or obstructed by its in-built global systems of naming, ownership, political power-play, and cultural displacement.

This evening will act as a reflection on the many iterations of ‘someone decides, hawk or dove' which has been shown at the Rudolf-Scharpf-Galerie, Ludwigshafen, Germany (hosted by Wilhelm-Hack-Museum), at Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, StableArts, Washington DC (hosted by Solas Nua), and at The Battle of the Boyne Visitor Centre, Meath, Ireland.

'someone decides, hawk or dove' is a commissioned work by artist Niamh McCann as part of the programme for ART:2023, a Decade Of Centenaries supported by The Arts Council of Ireland/An Chomhairle Ealaíon and the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.

Event speakers

Julie Morrissy

Julie Morrissy is an Irish poet, academic, critic, and activist. From 2021-2022 she was the first Poet-in-Residence at the National Library of Ireland. In her role she created and hosted the Radical! Women and the Irish Revolution podcast series. Her pamphlet of the same title is a collection of poetry, photographs, maps, translation, and research notes showcasing her work from the residency. It was published in July 2022, and is digitised in the permanent collection of the National Library of Ireland along with her papers. A complete, collaborative Irish translation of the pamphlet titled Radacach! Mná agus Réabhlóid na hÉireann was published in 2023. From 2021-22, Morrissy was concurrently a National Endowment of the Humanities fellow at the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies (University of Notre Dame), where she wrote a poetry-play. From 2019-2021, she was the inaugural John Pollard Newman Fellow in Creativity at University College Dublin (UCD). She is currently a Law & Poetry Fellow at UCD Sutherland School of Law.

Stephen Sexton

Poet and teacher Stephen Sexton was born in 1988 in Dundonald, outside of Belfast, Northern Ireland. Sexton attended Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast for his creative writing degree. After graduating, he continued at Queen’s for his PhD in creative writing. Oils, his debut pamphlet, was published in 2014 by the Emma Press and won the Poetry Book Society's Winter Pamphlet Choice. In 2017, Sexton finished his PhD program and won the UK National Poetry Competition. The following year, he won an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors.

2019 saw the publication of Sexton’s first full-length, If All the World and Love Were Young (Penguin). A highly acclaimed collection, it won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the E. M. Forster Award, and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, and was shortlisted for both the Dylan Thomas Prize and the John Pollard Poetry Prize. It was also named a Book of the Year by the Sunday Times, New Statesman, and Telegraph. If All the World and Love Were Young addresses the death of Sexton’s mother in 2012 through the lens of the 1990 Super Nintendo game Super Mario World, taking its reader through each level of the game in an exploration of loss, memory, and the shape of reality.

His latest collection, Cheryl’s Destinies (Penguin, 2021)—a fantastical journey through real and imagined pasts—is shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection. A lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast, Sexton counts Anne Carson, Ciaran Carson, Sinéad Morrissey, and Sylvia Plath among his poetic influences. He currently lives in Derry.

Catriona Crowe

Catriona Crowe is former Head of Special Projects at the National Archives of Ireland. Reflecting on her 40 years of service she recalls

“When I started work in the 1970s, there was a pall of neglect and disappointment hanging over the institution, where bullet holes from 1922 were still visible in the walls, and sad boxes of burnt records awaited some technological miracle in the future which would allow them to be restored. Because of the “Great Calamity”, most people thought our history was gone and therefore it was pointless to invest in the place. My cohort of archivists was the first to be employed in decades. But as is so often the case, the accepted wisdom was untrue. The 19th century administrative archive of the state, from 1790 to 1922, remained intact due to bureaucratic inertia which kept it from being transferred to the Four Courts in time to be burned”.

Catriona regularly reviews for the Irish Times and presented the RTÉ documentaries Ireland before the Rising, and Life After the Rising. She is an Honorary President of the Irish Labour History Society, and a former President of the Women’s History Association of Ireland. She is in receipt of four honorary doctorates, from the University of Limerick, Maynooth University, Trinity College Dublin, and University College Dublin. She is a member of the Royal Irish Academy.

Catríona is a champion of public history in all its manifold forms; public history for her is about “engaging people of all ages and classes to reflect upon the past, to think about consequences for the present and, in some cases, to change public policy.”

Niamh McCann

Niamh McCann is a visual artist based in Dublin. Her work is a considered, individual voice in contemporary Irish art; effortlessly correlating strands of three-dimensional work, painting/drawing and installation. Unpredictable and frequently humorous, her approach often subverts, reimagines or playfully contests accepted narratives.

someone decides, hawk or dove is preceded by Hairline Crack [a dialogue] a solo exhibition in the Rudolf-Scharpf-Galerie, Wilhelm Hack Museum Germany and at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris. McCann is the inaugural recipient of the Norman Houston Commissioning Award 2022 from Solas Nua. The artist has previously received residency awards at Cemeti Arthouse, Indonesia; HIAP, International Artists' Residency, Cable Factory, Helsinki, URRA Artist Residency, Argentina, and of Perspective and EV+A exhibition awards. McCann’s work is represented in the collections of Irish Museum of Modern Art; The Arts Council of Ireland, Limerick City Gallery, Swansea City Council; The London Institute; Hiscox, London and Dublin City Gallery the Hugh Lane.