On Friday October 11th next, Ennistymon is turning back the clock to 1984 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of a year-long visual arts project.
This project —appropriately named Ennistymon ’84— was the brainchild of Marian Fitzgibbon, the Mid-West regional Arts officer based in Limerick. It was devised to revitalise a rural Irish town through the medium of the visual arts. Ennistymon was chosen because it had retained the character typical of a small Irish town, and was well known for the many 19th and early 20th century shop fronts it still had.
The Ennistymon community rose to the challenge of becoming the location for this national pilot community arts project. A local action group, with the professional assistance of Mid-West arts, organised over 100 events: workshops, exhibitions, murals, lectures, readings, and so on, during “the year of the ARTS”, culminating in an Arts Festival in August.
Throughout the long hot summer of 84, the Ennistymon community began to see things in a different light and colour, perhaps even began to appreciate their environs more through the medium of the public murals that were painted by school children, the sculpture garden installed in Deerpark, or the sculpture playground that was built by local lads in Ardnaculla, to name but a few of the stand-out events completed under the professional supervision of artists.
Forty years on, some members of the original action group are revisiting the events of the year, and are inviting artists, organisers, and individuals involved at the time to join them for a celebration to mark the year.
Events start in the Courthouse gallery at 2pm with an informal gathering to reflect on the achievements of the project and share some memories through memorabilia: posters, photos, and publications from that year.
It will be followed by a guided walk through the town, led by artist and musician Brendan P Lynch. As a resident of Ennistymon and authority on its vernacular architecture, his talk will focus on the craftsmanship and detail to be found in the many fine examples of 19th century shop fronts. His tour will focus on the premises that also formed the spaces for the core exhibition of Ennistymon ’84, when artists engaged with shop owners to respond creatively to the individual shopfronts. A tour with Brendan would not be complete without a few musical interludes along the way.
Ennistymon has undergone many changes over the intervening years, but with this look back to events of 1984, it is hoped there will be renewed interest in the project, and by drawing awareness to its legacy, will begin a new dialogue about the place of the visual arts in a small rural Irish town.
The adage, “the town of the shopfronts” is still relevant, and so too are the challenges to that. There are now many more artists in the town and environs than there ever were. It is appropriate that they are aware of the vision and impact of that singular year in the life of the town, in the lives of those involved, as a cornerstone of the visual perception they have. Friday October 11th promises to be a celebration of what that means for each individual.