It is just a few days to Christmas 2023, and I am writing this short blog in a spirit of some remorse – remorse for so neglecting this slot for such a long time. We have, of course, been busy during the past year and we all in turn, having avoided Covid 19 throughout the height of the pandemic,  succumbed to it in the course of the past 12 months. Hopefully, that’s history now  and we can all look back on our exhibition, Na Cailleacha … with reference to Paula Rego, at the Dock in Leitrim  with great fondness for all the great support we got and especially the seemingly unbounded can-do attitude of all the staff there, which, then, still included Sarah Searson. We want to wish Sarah every success in what she does next. Her kindness and thoughtfulness to us went far beyond the level of assistance you normally get from a curator, and her staff continued it. Thanks Everyone. We really enjoyed our time at the Dock and were delighted to find that our exhibition there was listed among the top exhibitions of the year in The Examiner, with Rachel Parry’s wonderful Kelp Cailleach attracting special mention.
 
Right now Na Cailleacha is sharing a slot at the lovely Grilse Gallery in Killorglin, Co. Kerry with the artist and printmaker Geraldine O’Reilly and the poet, Mary O’Donnell. Rachel Parry had previously shown there and spoke highly of it but we were, nevertheless, amazed at the big audience that greeted us in Grilse on a Saturday in November. Having met Lucy and Robert Carter  and spent a bit of time enjoying the atmosphere and meeting that audience we came away with a new confidence that art is flourishing around the country, and not just in Arts Council funded spaces. We would like to take this opportunity to wish this very young but very committed gallery every success in the future.

Individually the Cailleachs have been busy too. Patricia Hurl’s IMMA exhibition travelled to the Wexford County Council Buildings to coincide with the Wexford Opera Festival  and a month later it earned her the prestigious Irish Tatler Woman Artist of the Year Award for 2023. Patricia followed that by inviting all the rest of us to join her when she featured in RTE’s first show in its current season of The Works. Those who had not been converted to her work before were delighted by the obvious rapport between herself and John Kelly on the night. Therry Rudin and her international colleagues launched the 10th Homeland Film Festival in Homeland at Damer House, Roscrea and Barcelona in October and November in which they featured, among other things, the film Ithaca, with images and script by Cailleach Barbara Freeman and music and voiceover by fellow Cailleach, Carole Nelson. Helen Comerford and Gerda Teljeur  showed work , some of which had been shown in our show in The Dock in  the exhibition, Women and War, curated by Catherine Marshall, at the National Opera House in Wexford during the Opera Festival there. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we are busy working on our big project for 2024, details of which will be announced in our next blog.

While it’s not easy to get together as a group, given how scattered we are around the island of Ireland and the difficulty of accommodating eight women in one space, we did manage a hectic but rewarding working week-end at the end of October at Barbara’s house in Belfast. Thanks, Barbara, for that, we had a great time.

Helen had a critical success with her solo show at the Taylor Galleries, and Patricia is busy getting ready for her exhibition at IMMA in February and we are all making work for the Na Cailleacha exhibition at The Dock in Carrick-on-Shannon which will open in April. Meanwhile we are refining plans to present a public collaboration with Art Nomads as part of Age & Opportunity’s Bealtaine Festival.

In May of 2022 we commissioned Andrew Macklin, the London based actor and mentor in cultural practices to review and evaluate our activities to date, in consultation with each member of the group, with some of the curators we worked with and with audiences in Garter Lane in Waterford. We now eagerly await his report, which we will use to inform future development.​

We would like to thank all the people we worked with in 2022, the Director and staff at Garter Lane, the team at ArtLinks and Wexford Arts Office, the Director and staff at Wexford Arts Centre, Sinead Keogh and the Kilkenny Arts Festival, the team at Dublin City Gallery the Hugh Lane and all the people who facilitated or attended the many workshops and panel group events that we were invited to participate in.


A Happy, Healthy and Creative Christmas and New Year to Everyone.

​Na Cailleacha is partying this week to celebrate our second birthday. So much has happened
since we first introduced ourselves to one another in Ballinglen in September 2020, that we
are having trouble believing the calendar.
And where has the time taken us? I think I can safely speak for all of the group in saying that
it has been an overwhelmingly positive experience. Sure, we’ve had some minor irritations
and fall outs, mainly due to Covid, and the poor communication, unreliable memories and
health issues that go with ageing but what we discovered was that we really loved being
together from time to time, to discuss, make and show work. We didn’t make it easy for
ourselves with members spread out all over the country, from Allihies in West Cork to
Belfast, with two in County Tipperary, two in Wexford/Carlow, one in Kilkenny and one in
Dublin, so we had to depend on zoom/and social media for much of our contact and that, as
regular Zoom users know, is fraught with challenges for digitally and aurally challenged
older people. In spite of those issues we look forward to our regular Zoom meetings which
are a breeding ground for new ideas. Of course the minute we hit on an idea that appeals to
us all, we clamour for a communal space where we can discuss it all more freely, sketch out
ideas and generally get down to practicals.

​Since our last blog, Carole and her Trio launched a new album, Night Vision, and some of
the rest of us got to enjoy her return to public jazz sessions after all the frustrations of
lockdown, Barbara’s short film Na Cailleacha - Seven Voices won The Best Women
Empowerment Film of The New Wave Short Film Festival in Munich and will now be shown
as part of their forthcoming film festival.  Therry and Patricia have just won the Turkish
Film Festival Award of the Best Creative Short Film for ‘The moon is set in motion ......
Patricia is busy preparing for her show in IMMA in the New Year, Helen for a show in the
Taylor Galleries in October, and Therry is about to launch another season of Homeland, the
film festival that she curates every year along with film curators in Barcelona. This year’s
festival, Through Light and Shade will open at Black Mills, Church Street, Roscrea on Friday
23 rd of September, under the auspices of Damer House.

​The wonderful Sinead Keogh invited us to participate in Matriarch during the Kilkenny Arts
Festival and it was tantalising to be missing two members of the group there due to illness
and to have to repeat that again for the launch of Bones in the Attic at Dublin City Gallery
the Hugh Lane. To be included, by curator Victoria Evans in Bones in the Attic was a special
moment for us since it allowed us to see our work alongside the generation of great women
who came directly after us from the Gallery’s collection (Dorothy Cross, Kathy Prendergast,
Alice Maher) and more especially to be there with a younger generation again, one imbued
with all the passion and commitment that we had and some new issues too, and to realise
that the overall need for visibility is as crucial for them as it was for us.
We have always said that we would lobby for studio provision for artists’ in care settings.
We now see clearly the value of having more collective spaces where groups can be
accommodated and supported to work without having to pay exorbitantly for the privilege
or to have to make marathon journeys across the country to work together. Making work is
important but without a community to share it with it’s hard to keep up the impetus.
Community is what gives us energy to keep doing what we do in spite of isolation, ageing
and loss, and to really get a buzz from it.

We were not surprised that Therry’s documentary film, Dawn to Dusk, took on a life of its own after showing in Ireland. It was shortlisted for best documentary prize at the 2021 Toronto Women Short Film Festival November 2021 and shortlisted again for the Toronto Film Festival Magazine. It was shown at the Hackney Short Film Offline Festival (October 2021)  and is under consideration for the Washington Film Award Festival, January 2022, for best documentary and best original score. She managed all of this effortlessly while at the same time curating the annual Homeland Film Festival in Ireland and Spain. Helen had a very successful solo show during the Kilkenny Arts Festival, and Carole and her group are back to playing real gigs in public spaces and winning public art commissions (Carole insert details) and Patricia’s work is showing as part of the collection exhibition, The Narrow Gate of the-Here-and-Now at IMMA. Gerda and Carole brought drawing and music together to present a dramatic new collaborative drawing incorporating layers of drawings by each of the individual Cailleachs and Barbara, having completed her short film about ageing and the group has begun to work on a new film, this time in collaboration with Carole. Catherine’s seven year curation of the Engagement Project involving fourteen studio artists from KCAT and Twelve guest artists came to an end with the final exhibition, in Callan, in July and curated the visual arts programme for the Cashel Arts Festival in September.

Na Cailleacha are still determined to embody the importance of play, imagination and creativity irrespective of age and circumstances and still determined to show, through our practices, that we will not live down to cultural expectations about loss of creativity or commitment in older people. We have far more ambitious goals which will take us to Waterford, Kenmare, Roscrea and other venues in 2022.

We would like to thank everyone who worked with us in 2021, especially Catherine Bowe, Tara Byrne, Nuala Clarke, Una Forde, Katriona Gillespie, Grainne Humphreys, Frida Kahlo of the Guerrilla Girls, Jean Kearney, Dr. Rose Ann Kenny, Eimear King, Medb Lambert, Cormac Larkin, Olivia O’Leary, Suzannah Mullaney-O’Reilly, Nigel Reape, Aoife O’Toole, Helena Tobin, Austin Vaughan, Grace Wells, Elizabeth Whyte. Happy Christmas to all of you.

The images here are from a Na Cailleacha funded Wexford Arts project with Wexford Loretto girls. Inspired by Na Cailleacha's Guerilla Girl homage poster -The Advantages of Being a Cailleach Artist- the girls designed their own versions of the advantages of being young women. ​

​​It has been far too long since this blog post, was updated. Although only one of us got Covid 19, from which she has happily recovered, or at least she has not reduced her commitment to making art, but avoidance strategies are energy sapping and we all found it difficult not to have been able to meet in person. Like everyone else, too, we find it hard to be enthusiastic in front of a screen all the time. But we have been extremely busy – finishing off all the work we began last September in Ballinglen, and dreaming up new schemes for a busy line up of exhibitions, panel discussions and a big project for 2022/3.

So this blog will be devoted to giving an outline of our immediate plans for this Summer and Autumn. Therry’s documentary Dawn to Dusk will be screened nationally (May 26 and May 30) by Bealtaine, followed, on the first occasion, by a discussion with film-curator, Grainne Humphreys and artist, Aideen Barry. It will also be screened at the Nenagh Arts Centre (see Nenagh Arts Centre for dates) and as part of our exhibition The Age of Reason/Unreason at the South Tipperary Arts Centre, Clonmel. We chose this title to evoke thoughts about those delicate balances between reason and instinct/emotion in creativity, between youth (the age of reason,) and age (often seen as second childhood), reason versus play and the threat of loss of reason. Is it possible that if we were to think differently about memory loss and senility, we might find it more productive and less frightening?
More details here:
​https://bealtaine.ie/bealtaine-event/na-cailleacha-exhibition-and-symposium/

The Clonmel show opens on May 7th, although it will have to be virtual for the first few days. To coincide with the exhibition, STAC is hosting a virtual symposium, with the same title on May 29th at which members of Na Cailleacha will be joined by Professor Rose Ann Kenny, School of Gerontology, Trinity College, Dublin, poet and writer, Grace Wells and theatre director Medb Lambert. In June, the exhibition, with some additions, will travel to Ballinglen in County Mayo, and thence to Wexford Arts Centre (August), where we hope to work with local artists Caoimhe Dunne and Aileen Lambert.

We are planning a second residency at Ballinglen in June (June 18 – July 2) to explore themes of identity, self-image and visibility through making life-sized, alter-ego dolls, and a series of layered drawings on acetate. Through the Mayo County Arts Office we will be holding a trans-Atlantic discussion with the Guerilla Girls and a community workshop on doll-making.

That will bring us up to Autumn, when we will show a body of work at Damer House, Roscrea and we are in discussion with Garter Lane in Waterford and County Kerry’s pending new arts venue, the Kenmare Butter Market about events in their spaces. We hope to work with local artists and local communities throughout this process, and we are not forgetting our mission to promote the work of women artists, to agitate for housing with studio provision for artists, irrespective of gender, and general recognition of the importance of the arts and creativity for healthy ageing, indeed for healthy living for all age groups. For that reason, play will be a key concept in our work, no matter how serious our ambitions and themes, and we would also like to work across generations in pursuit of these goals.

​Hi Everyone,  the good news is that the Citizens’ Assembly began a debate on the retention/removal or amendment of Articles 41.2.1 and  41.2.2.of the Constitution which, in case anyone needs a reminder, state: “In particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved,” and “The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.” While the first meeting on this topic on Feb. 13th expressed general agreement that these clauses, which made it difficult for women to have a role and identity outside the home should be removed, there is as yet no agreement about what they should be replaced with. The state never provided for mothers to fulfil the role that if forced on them so can the articles simply be deleted?  It would send out a great message during Lockdown if we could dance on them.

We have begun a process of weekly presentations of work in progress to the rest of the group by Zoom and it is working very well. As Helen, who presented the last one, said she could air uncertainties in a safe space knowing that the responses she got would be thoughtful and supportive even if critical.

​Therry Rudin’s documentary film will be screened nationwide by Bealtaine in May and will be shown thereafter in our touring exhibition throughout 2021. We are now fine-tuning a small digital project to mark International Women’s Day on March 8th  which will take the form of a homage to the Guerilla Girls and finalising the print project and our exhibition plans for South Tipperary Arts Centre in Clonmel in May. To accompany the exhibition STAC and Na Cailleacha will present The Age of Reason and Unreason; a symposium on Creativity, Ageing, Feminism, and Collective Working, during the month of May 2021 at a date yet to be confirmed, and increasingly looking as if it will have to be a virtual event. Speakers will include Dr. Rose Ann Kenny, professor of medical gerontology at TCD and members of Na Cailleacha who will lead workshops on their practice.
 
With the help of the wonderful Una Forde at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation and the Mayo Arts Office we are planning a return residency in Ballycastle when we will  also present our touring exhibition at the BAF Museum and we are working on plans for a substantial project around the theme of ‘play’ which will involve making life size dolls.
 
We will announce the details of those programmes and also the dates for our exhibitions at Wexford Arts Centre and Damer House, Roscrea in our next blog.
Now it’s time to catch a bit of the spring sunshine that is beginning to re-energise everyone after the cold start to February.
 

Women, Witches and words
There are probably as many words for witches as there are for women and all subject to sexist readings. The association of ageing with witchiness is a common one and is usually pejorative, concerned with appearance rather than substance. Where the word implies agency it is too readily associated with vengeful behaviour, jealousy, even downright evil, rather than the benign wisdoms and healing knowledge that it carried in early societies.
I wonder, then, if anyone can throw light on how the noun ‘pregnancy’ has come to be associated with the verb ‘to fall’? I am attuned to the idea of ‘becoming’ or even ‘getting’ pregnant. ‘Becoming’ seems to me to be a neutral term in this context, stating a fact rather than a moral position; ‘getting’ is more ambiguous, you can get the measles (bad) or get lucky (good) and pregnancy could appropriately be discussed under both of those headings. But to ‘fall pregnant’ suggests an accident or a mistake at best, and a fall from grace at its more extreme position. I imagine someone using the term if pregnancy poses problems for them, but if a journalist uses it – I have noticed its use on the broadcast media quite a bit recently – is it intended as a critical judgment by the journalist on the person (female of course), and should children who result from such a fall, feel unwanted, unloved?
I do wonder though, if this is an age thing? Am I correct in thinking that the notion of falling pregnant has only recently gained currency and was not widely used when those of us who are over seventy were young? For years feminists have argued against misogynist language, such as ‘miscarriage’ to mean the accidental, early termination of a woman’s pregnancy,  as if the woman were somehow to blame for not having ‘carried’ the foetus properly, or ‘working women’ to denote women who work outside the home, while no one bothers to use the adjective for men who do the same. Those words have had a long shelf life already but wouldn’t it be good if we made sure the list doesn’t grow on our watch.
Let’s hope 2021 will be a better year for us and for the planet than 2020.

Our greeting to all our friends, to mark Nollag na mBan, is to compile some of the wise words and thoughts of women who have given leadership over the years, finishing with Mary Robinson’s great invitation when she was inaugurated as first woman President of Ireland in 1991.
We think these statements are worth living by and we will post new ones throughout the month. ​

​We are falling behind with our blog and it’s entirely my fault. I have been pulled in many different directions recently. But I have been thinking about it as we all struggle to keep going in a lockdown, some alone, limited to brief visits from a designated person, trying to support loved ones who are ill, trying to remain efficient in the supermarket when the goalposts have changed so much, most of all trying to make work collectively and apart without access to libraries, galleries and in parts of the country where the broadband connections make connectedness itself difficult. That’s probably why when I walked past the wonderful railings at Kevin Street Garda Station today and paused, as I frequently do, to read the quotations from Irish writers (inspiring, even if only a few women in a sea of men) that I was so taken with Samuel Beckett’s sardonic comment in Krapp’s Last Tape: “{P}erhaps my best years are gone… but I wouldn’t want them back. Not with the fire in me now.”
Of course Beckett had Na Cailleacha in mind, sixty odd years ago, or at least he intuited that we were coming because those lines sum up exactly where we find ourselves and the new energies that collaboration has given to us.

​But no matter how much Joe Biden and Kamala Harris bring in the way of healing and re-unification to a divided society, they will need help from every corner of the known world to restore decency and a true sense of equality.
 
That is why it’s good that Patricia has resumed her work about listening. Extremists sometimes become extreme in their views because they have failed to find anyone to talk to them about the issues that drive them wild. Art can either deal with issues like that or take us out of that mindset altogether. Gerda, Barbara, Helen and Carole, each in very different ways, re-state the values of the long view of existence, showing time and perseverance as valuable elements in the story of us and our planet, exploring sounds and forms that have been there since the beginning, like the sound of water thrashing around in the sea hole at Downpatrick Head.  Maria is continuing with her oak gall inks and oak instruments and we are moving our collective print portfolio along despite the challenge of not being able to work together or visit the print studios. As some of you know, Therry has been working with co-curators in Barcelona on their annual Homeland programme of short films, and has now, in conjunction with Nenagh Arts Centre launched this year’s  Homeland, Part 1, Ireland. (https://watch.eventive.org/nenagharts/play/5f9aa83aef33c0030f7c133)
If you would like to connect to the launch of the Festival on 12 November at 7.30 (Spanish Time) please use the following Zoom link, http://borderline.cagebcn.com Passcode 058132 and Meeting ID 936 0337 7516
 
We are delighted to congratulate Helen on winning a bursary from the Arts Council this year and are wondering if a perception that she is one of the oldest artists to receive one is actually true? Do beliefs about ageism in the granting of funds to older artists stand up to scrutiny, and what about gender bias? We intend to do a bit of research into this and would be delighted to hear from any of you who feel that you have something to say here. One of the issues that came up during the American election process and, indeed, in responses to the lockdown at home, has been an emphasis on the word ‘entitlement’; entitlement to go where we like, irrespective of the danger it might put others in, entitlement to carry guns, entitlement not to wear masks and so on, entitlement to bursaries.... That is something we certainly mean to explore over the coming months. We will keep you posted. In the meantime, we have just booked ourselves in for a return visit to Ballinglen for 2021 (Covid permitting) where we are planning work around a single issue programme.
 
Thanks, as always,  to Anouk, for keeping us up to date on Instagram, despite isolation and broadband problems. Stay safe until the next blog and please think about those who are enduring domestic violence during this lockdown.