CREATING CONVERSATIONS

of each individual participant.

The resulting work includes paintings, drawings, sculpture and poetry dealing with a variety of subject matter from the deeply personal to the observational and political. Some of the larger pieces were created by groups of artists working together.

The exhibition co-incided with the launch of a first publication by the artist and writer Thomas Martin of CUMAS, New Ross which was published at the Arts Department.

It was officially opened by Cllr. Paddy Kavanagh, chairman of Wexford County Council who congratulated the artists on their ‘amazing’ work and wished them success in the future.

Sinéad O’Reilly, Head of Local Arts and Arts Participation in the Arts Council of Ireland attended the launch and said the Arts Council is delighted to have been in a position to offer funding to this programme for the past 15 years, in parthership with the HSE and the centres.

‘From the Arts Council perspective, good arts and health practice is characterised by a clear artistic vision, goals and outcomes and that is very evidence here today.

She congratulated the curator Dominic Thorpe and the artists Kathleen Delaney, Declan Kennedy and Sylvia Cullen who conduct the workshops.

‘ The arts are far more than an ‘add-on’ to the important medical and technical stuff that is also required in our lives. The creative arts have a central role in a person’s journey towards health and integration.’

‘ This is not an activity about ‘passing time’. This is valuing time passed, taking time and creating times, creating conversations’.

‘ The work and words on the walls are far more than marks on paper or canvas. They are conversations.It’s the new detail in the same landscapes you’ve been looking at for years; the compositions that you frame on your journeys to treatment; the colours of previous journeys and memories that you fondly recreate.’

‘As you find these new ways of seeing, others will see you differently too. Seeing you for what you can do now. Remembering who you have become, not what became of you,’ said Sinéad.

During the launch, there were readings by the writer John Doyle and by Thomas Martin.

The exhibition will run until May 19 and will be open daily during office hours.