Chapter 1: What is the Wild Dublin art exhibition about?
Now, I want to tell you about Wild Dublin. It is a week-long exhibition running in Rathmines Library from today, 20th of April, curated by artist Fiona Phelan, bringing together her own work and paintings by her primary school students. It shines a light on the wildlife living all around us here in the capital, from parks and canals to hedgerows and the coast.
Our researcher, Michelle Brown, got a sneak preview.
My name's Fiona Phelan, I am an artist and an art teacher, teach after school. We decided as a group to put on an exhibition because the kids haven't exhibited before and it's very many years since I exhibited. We decided that we would approach the libraries, we approached Rathmines and they very kindly offered us a space. They suggested that I would do a wildlife theme
to connect with the city and with our surroundings. The kids have really done their own thing because they like to express themselves in their own way. They're all individual artists, they're fabulous and so today they're experiencing putting up an exhibition for the first time in the library which is fantastic. And can you describe for me what you have here?
Well, today I am showing a bumblebee. It's beautiful, it's everywhere. We have a puffin, which you will see on our coastline. We have our beautiful red squirrel, not grey. We have our stag, which you'll see in the Phoenix Park. We have kingfishers. I have our lovely little fox, which we see up and down our roads. I live in Tyrone, Europe, and we regularly see the foxes up and down the roads.
I have my mackerel, which he looks kind of exotic, but as I explain to people, I used to fish a lot as a child with my parents and we would be out in a boat and the whole bottom of the boat, I remember, used to be blue, green, yellow. And when they'd open their mouths, these reds, which terrified me. So I decided that I had to paint the mackerel because it's native to our waters.
And of course, our lovely seals, which we see off our coastline.
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Chapter 2: Who is Fiona Phelan and what inspired her exhibition?
Can you introduce me to some of your students here? So this is James.
Hi. Do you want to show me some of your paintings? Yeah. There's a picture of my auntie's dog. Oh wow. You're very good. His name is Monty. And then this is a snail. He has four eyes, so I call him Four-Eyed Fred. I think he's really happy and he's super joyful. And then I drew a picture of a ladybird on a leaf. Did you enjoy the process? Oh, I love it. Yeah, I love the process of drawing.
I think it's really relaxing and stuff.
Are you one of the parents? Yeah, I'm his mother, yeah. And what's your own name? Catherine Condon. And what's his name? James Scally. His work is really beautiful, isn't it? Oh yeah, we're very proud of him.
Yeah, it's very impressive. The whole class in particular has been amazing in terms of mindfulness. I feel like, you know, if they kind of turned it to, when they're teenagers, having this kind of meditative, creative experience instead of social media and phones would be amazing for them, you know, so yeah.
This is Anton. Hi Anton, what did you paint? I like drawing animals, painting animals, often doing things you wouldn't really see every day, such as an octopus drinking coffee and a pig in a top hat.
oh these are fabulous can you explain this frog uh so that's a red-eyed tree frog i liked that one because it's a watercolor and um yeah it just kind of stands out from the other ones too so the exhibition is going up today which is saturday i suppose officially from monday to next saturday so we'll take it down probably next saturday evening
An octopus drinking coffee and a pig wearing a top hat. Oh, my goodness. Anyway, thank you to James, Scally, Anton Rogers and Fiona Phelan. And if you're in the Rathmines area, why not pop in and have a look? Sounds fantastic, to be perfectly honest with you.
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