Dara McGrath: For Those That Tell No Tales

Crawford Art Gallery is pleased to announce For Those That Tell No Tales, a new exhibition by artist Dara McGrath.

Dara McGrath’s work explores transitional spaces, those in-between places where the landscape and the built environment often intersect, and where a dialogue—of absence rather than presence—is created. His practice is driven by overlooked human interruptions in urban, suburban and rural contexts.

For Those That Tell No Tales features over 60 works which focus on the Irish War of Independence: a defining moment in Ireland’s history. Between 1919 and 1921, approximately 1,400 people died in the struggle for an independent Irish republic. Cork city and county saw the bloodiest of the fighting—in total, 528 people (civilians, Irish Republican Army and British Forces)—lost their lives directly due to the conflict in Cork. 

Today—sadly and almost universally—we pass by unaware of the tragedies that took place at unmarked locations that are daily traversed. Beyond the recognised memorials and major landmarks there are many more sites within the landscape where people lost their lives. In Cork City, those “forgotten” lives lost  include the Norwegian sailor Carl Johansen whose life was ended by being shot in the back while returning to his ship in the Port of Cork docks; or Josephine Scannell who at 19 years old was shot dead by a stray bullet while sitting near a window in her house in the city centre.

McGrath’s photographs elevate these spaces as sites of memory for those individual lost lives. For the first time, through McGrath’s photography and accompanying texts, the full extent of the lives of the people and the places where they perished during the struggle for freedom in Ireland’s War of Independence are revealed.  McGrath’s acknowledgement of the place and circumstances of each individual’s death—which bore so heavily on their communities—still resonate, so powerfully, today.  

Launching initially online on Saturday, April 24, an interactive map will reveal a selection of works, while simultaneously, across selected billboards in Cork City, audiences wil also be able to encounter the work on the street. The full experience of the exhibition will await visitors with the reopening of Crawford Art Gallery (subject to COVID-19 regulations).

Dara McGrath’s recent exhibitions and projects include: 100 Views of Contemporary Ireland, PhotoIreland, Dublin (2020); This Poisoned Isle, ten site-specific locations throughout the UK with the University of Kent (2019); Project Cleansweep, Format Photo Festival, Derby, UK (2017); Outposts, The Glucksman Gallery (2017) Cork, Ireland; Birth of a Nation, Nim Gallery, Beijing (2016); New Irish Works, Paris Photo, Paris (2016); Edgelands, Photo Biennale, Museum of Photography, Thessalonika, Greece (2014); From the North to the East, Aabenraa Arts Festival, Aabenraa, Denmark (2013); Censored, Copenhagen Photo Festival, Copenhagen (2012) and Photo DC (2012). 

Crawford Art Gallery is a National Cultural Institution in Ireland and is dedicated to contemporary and historical Irish and international visual art. Home to a collection of national importance, it offers a vibrant and dynamic programme of temporary exhibitions that probe the future, contemplate the present, and reveal the past to create engaging conversations across the timelines.

Dara McGrath: For Those That Tell No Tales is based on research by Dr. Andy Bielenberg, (School of History, University College Cork) and Professor James Donnelly Junior (University of Wisconsin), who are currently engaged in an ongoing project to document all the fatalities of the Irish revolution in Cork between 1919 and 1923. The exhibition is kindly supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media under the Decade of Centenaries 2012-2023 initiative and Cork Public Museum.