Sunday Independent (Ireland)

Brendan and Chara: modest geniuses of Cork

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There is a chance the streets of Ireland will be as empty this Wednesday evening as they were during Storm Emma. The whole country will be inside watching Brendan O’Connor’s Cutting Edge which, happily, returns to RTE 1 at 9.35pm.

Merrion Private (I know, I know, it sounds like a posh wing in a hospital!) at Heritage House on St Stephen’s Green was far from empty last Tuesday night as Brendan launched artist, and fellow Corkonian, Chara Nagle’s latest exhibition Haystacks, which runs until March 21. Brendan noted that: “Of course, you talk to Chara and she will tell you she is just a simple straightfo­rward artist who just creates work that makes people smile.

“Modesty is of course another hallmark of Cork people,” he smiled.

“We are largely modest geniuses.”

Brendan also told a packed Merrion Private (attendees included Dr Peter Boylan and his wife Jane, RTE’s David Murphy and his wife Martina Devlin) that “when I think of Chara Nagle, I think about sex. I think specifical­ly about her Moments paintings, those Celtic Tiger Irish people sitting around half naked.

“I was looking back on it, and it struck me that some of it wouldn’t be allowed now in this new era. Because it wasn’t black and white. It was ambiguous. Was she celebratin­g her subjects or sending them up?

“And it summed up the ambiguity many of us felt about these times. And of course that’s the Cork person in her. Us Cork people are all about the ambiguity. We are a people who can hold in our minds at one time both a massive superiorit­y complex and a massive inferiorit­y complex.”

 ?? Photo: Brian McEvoy ?? Artist Chara Nagle and the Sunday Independen­t’s Brendan O’Connor at the launch of Nagle’s ‘Haystacks’ exhibition at Merrion Private, Heritage House, St Stephen’s Green, Dublin.
Photo: Brian McEvoy Artist Chara Nagle and the Sunday Independen­t’s Brendan O’Connor at the launch of Nagle’s ‘Haystacks’ exhibition at Merrion Private, Heritage House, St Stephen’s Green, Dublin.

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