Artistic Limerick teenagers takeover Bank of Ireland Workbench with exhibition

A GROUP of teenage artists have staged an exhibition on Limerick's O’Connell Street featuring work created with one of Northern Ireland’s most groundbreaking artists. 

Transition year students in CBS Secondary School Sexton Street created the artwork that was displayed at the Workbench in Bank of Ireland during a workshop with artist Rita Duffy, which was hosted by the Hunt Museum. 

“It was a leap into the dark for (the students) but they handled it very well,” teacher Henry Long said.  “They loved it and it was great day. I’d advise it to anyone.

“Most of Rita’s work is a response to where she grew up, in the North during the troubles, so a lot of her work deals with the people around her and what was happening at the time.”

”The workshop for us involved going down to the Hunt Museum and looking at everything in the collection. Mainly, it was the boys response to what was there.”

“It could have been the colour, it could have been the shape, the light, the texture, anything of interest that they could imagine a story to.” 

Initially Ms Duffy created an exhibition called Alternative Truths which was on display at the Hunt last year, according to the museum’s education assistant Chelsea Canavan. 

“She worked with our collection directly and with the stories behind the collections. She developed her own pieces and small paintings, mostly drawings, recreating the history behind them,” Chelsea said.

“We had her work with this group of TY students who have no art background. They’d be interested in art but they wouldn’t be taking the art pathway. The students basically got to experience her process.

“She brought them in to our education wing and told them to go out and find an object that they were interested in or that they found the history of it interesting.

“Then they recreated it with their drawings. 

“Some of them are quite phenomenal, a lot of them we used in our promotional material as well,” added the Hunt education assistant.