RITA DUFFY - MID-TERM REPORT Denise Ferran assesses the art ...

Rita Duffy began her second level
education at St Dominic's High
RITA DUFFY - MID-TERM REPORT
School on the Falls Road, Belfast in
1970; an eleven-year-old who crossed
town to go to school daily, in a city
exploding with 'The Troubles'.
Immediately she demonstrated a natural
drawing ability, evident in the top art
examination grades she achieved which
usually lead to a BA at Belfast College
of Art and Design. Nevertheless, she was disillusioned by stu
dent life and 'almost left to do something else because [she]
fought so hard to get in there'.' College attention, she felt,
turned its back on the city, which lay bombed and bleeding out
side, while inside the cloistered walls lecturers adumbrated the
conceptual difference between two squares of yellow.
Subsequently, Belfast, the city of her birth, became the catalyst
for works she developed during her MA course at the University
of Ulster in 1984. The emerging artist then began to take 'on
the issues and start making visual art that meant something to
[her]'.2 An early exhibition in 1989, entitled Issues, brought
together a group show of four women artists who were MA stu
dents together - Rita Duffy, Marie Barrett, Alice Maher and
Denise Ferran assesses
the art of a Belfast painter
whose work is a response to
her troubled homeland
Louise Walsh.' Rita Duffy's work drew
from her private world, her life as a
mother, wife and artist; the juggling of
roles, of images and imagining. Her mar
riage to architect John Kelly meant
moving house only a few doors from her
parents, the world of her childhood
widened. This afforded in the artist a
rare sense of historical continuity.
Issues focused on the way each of the
four artists confronted individual problems in 'one's develop
ment and personal situation'.4 In her four self-portraits Rita
Duffy 'sees herself as chameleon, as seductress, housewife and
mother juggling roles in her daily routine with the tempo of daily
living, increasing, after the birth of the developing baby in her
womb.5 The multiplicity of roles she was performing needed
many arms in order to feed her baby herself while continuing
with the domestic chores of ironing, cooking and cleaning. The
seductress and lover is hinted at in the black lacy bra, black silk
stockings, high-heels or fluffy mules. Her role as lover has been
subsumed in that of wife and mother. There is a hint of roman
tic evenings past with two champagne glasses, empty on the
tray. The exhibition was assembled for touring to venues
1. Rita DUFFY (b. 1959): Emerging from the Shamrock. 1991. Oil on canvas, 1840 x 2760 cm. (Private collection). In this self-portrait Rita Duffy sees herself as a modern
Irish woman emerging from her country which has been steeped in 'ideas of republicanism and the macho-heroes of nationalism.'
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IRISH ARTS REVIEW
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RITA DUFFY - MID-TERM REPORT
2. Rita DuTFn-': The Legacy of t/ie Borvie. 1989. Oil on gesso board, 920 x 1220 cmi.
(Collectioni of the University of Ulster). The Battle of the Boyne, 1690, was the decisive
baittle of the Williamiite war betweeni jamies 11, th-e Cathiolic Kinig of Englanid anid William
of Orange, whio, when victorioLIS, becamie William 111, the Protestant Kinig of Eniglanid.
throughout Northern Ireland but, because the subject matter
was felt by many local authorities to be contentious, the exhibi
tion received little exposure.
The next major works Duffy showed were in a solo exhibition
at the Arts Council Gallery in Belfast. Ten paintings were
selected for inclusion in an exhibition entitled On the Balcony of
the Nation which toured for two years in the United States.
When the exhibition was shown in Alabama, James Nelson art
critic of the Birminghiam News and Director of the Alabama
School of Fine Art, wrote on the 28 April 1991: 'Rita Duffy
defines the character of her subjects through caricature.
Devastating exaggerations give precise meaning to the pernicious
nature of generational poverty, she shows us that if something
goes on long enough, it becomes the norm. Small worlds, narrow
minds, insular attitudes, bigotry and poverty create a sad and vio
lent state of affairs.'6 In these works she moved out from her
domestic world into the destructive world outside her studio win
dow, the 'Troubles' which had haunted Belfast since Rita Duffy
had turned twelve years of age. The anger in these works spilled
out into large charcoal drawings like Eleventh Night in The Jubilee
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IRIS1-1 ARTS REVIEW
3. Rita DUFFY: Eleventh Night in The Jtbilee. 1989. Charcoal on paper,
920 x 1220 cm. (Private collection). Jubilee, the name of the maternity unit at
the City Hospital, Belfast, is adjacent to Sandy Row, a loyalist area where
bonifires are lit on the night before the Twelfth of July.
(Fig. 3) Here three women are drawn together in their common
confinement, marooned inside the hospital maternity ward, with
the sectarian violence raging outside. Becoming a mother focuses
Duffy's attention on the violent disrupted society in which her
young son will grow up, a society which she can try to change. If
she fails to do so, she must continuously protect hi, in it. She
looks at the three-hundred year history that divides her city in
The Legacy of the Boyne (Fig. 2); bodies flow in a river which is an
extension of the Orangeman's sash, as he brandishes his cutlass.
Thatched cottages glow as beacons in bloodied landscape. Inbred
hatred is never ending, tolerance is swept away in its tide. The
Marley Funeral is set in Ardoyne, a poor Catholic area in North
Belfast, close to the equally poor Protestant Shankill. Larry
Marley's funeral procession was delayed for several days by the
RUC and the British Army, while protracted negotiations ensued
to suppress Republican burial honours. He had been shot dead by
Loyalists at Easter 1987, but Duffy did not complete her work
Lintil two years later. Amidst the turmoil described in the paint
ing, Rita Duffy was teaching Food Science in a local secondary
school. Her self-portrait, which is included in the foreground,

I -.
4. Rita DUFFY: MOthler IreLhid. 1989. Oil on gesso, 920 x 1220 cii. (Private
collection). Rita Duffy depicts Mother Irelanid, inot in the traditional imilage of the
pillaged cotuntry seeking freedomii from the conqtiering oppressor, bLut as a harassed
miiother conitrolled by the power of the Catholic chtircih.
shows her with a book in one hand and a saucepan in the other,
highlighting the incongruity of the artist teaching unfamiliar sub
ject matter to uninterested girls, while a life-and-death struggle
unfolded in their neighbourhood. The black road with its central
white line becomes the division between the ordered, helmeted
and uniformed security forces on the left and the disorganised
angry mob on the right. A priest blesses the body while one of the
crowd tugs at the rosary beads entwined in Marley's hands, which
are stiff in death.
At that time two oil paintings of a similar large scale - Mother
Ireland (Fig. 4) and Mother Ulster (Fig. 5), both painted in 1989,
were shown in A New Tradition - Irishi Art of the Eighties at the
Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin in 1990. Mother Ireland, dressed
in sombre black with a hint of clerical robes, her eyes raised to
heaven, clutches four struggling young toddlers, each presum
ably representing a province of Ireland. In the background the
spired church and mitred bishop emphasise Duffy's recurrent
criticism of the Catholic Church and its control of family life.
The lurid pink of the babies' skin contrasts grimly with the black
of the clerical costume. Humorously, an iron creates a hat above
RITA DUFFY - MID-TERm REPORT
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IRIS H ARTS REVIEW
5. Rita Dully: Mother Ulster. 1989. Oil oll gesso, 920 x 1220 cm. (Private
collectiol). In this work Ritai D6ffy depicts the grim existenlce of the imiother
who raises her children in a loyalist, British environment.
her heavy unsmiling face. Mother Ulster is equally foreboding
and grim, with the statutory two children, a boy and a girl, play
ing at her feet. She brooks no nonsense in her floral patterned
pinny, against a backgound of terrace houses and a lone drum
mer. Her soured expression and steel grey hair offer no relief.
Every inch of her 'says no'.
In Comfortable Woman (Fig. 6) a middle-class woman sits at her
dressing-table. An eerie light is reflected in the pinks and blacks
of the bedroom and in the brass bed a tiny figure is glimpsed.
From childhood to adulthood she has remained cocooned from
the violence erupting in the darkness beyond her bedroom win
dow. Those caught up in the unrelenting tragedy cannot turn
away, nor escape. The influence of Otto Dix's Portrait of the writer
Sylvia Von Harden (1926) is evident in this work.
Rita Duffy paints these images informed by the community in
which she lives and works. For three years she worked as an offi
cial artist in the community and used her former primary school,
St Malachy's in the Markets area, as a studio. During these years
she painted large murals with young people, forging a bond in
the divided communities, raising esteem and adding joyful

RITA DUFFY - MID-TERM REPORT
6. Rita DUFFY: Comfortable Woman. 1989. Oil on gesso, 120 x 90 cm. (Private collection). The middle-class
woman has been cocooned from the violence (seen through her bedroom window on the right) from childhood,
as indicated by the little figure in the bed in the background, to adulthood.
imagery to dreary environments. This commitment, although
artistically rewarding, took her away from her easel painting.
Nevertheless she has continued to work on themes of interpre
tation in the community and recently completed a project in the
Royal Victoria Hospital for Sick Children. In a more cloistered
environment she was artist-in-residence for three months in
1993 at the Ulster Museum.
In 1991 she participated in the large exhibition In a State held
in Kilmainham Prison's East Wing in Dublin. She exhibited a
large triptych Emerging from the Shamrock (Fig. 1). The central
panel is a self-portrait of the artist with bridal veil, gold satin
underwear and black high heels, emerging from a background
shamrock. She walks along the catwalk which is strewn with
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IRISH ARTS REVIEW
white Easter lilies, carrying two zinc
buckets. Becapped, uniformed officers
view upwards, disapprovingly. Rita Duffy
recalls that this image came from Margo
Harkin's film Mother Ireland, which was
in part inspired by early footage of a Rose
of Tralee contest. The young contestants
marched through a cardboard shamrock
and Duffy lampooned this as Irish wom
anhood taking a step into the twenty
first century. Her triptych expresses
disillusionment 'with ideals of republi
canism and the macho-heroes of nation
alism'.7 The panel on the right symbolises
government, with memories of hunger
strikers interwoven with authoritative
figures from Irish history. The panel on
the left is dominated by a priest and
bishop, while a zinc bath overturns, emp
tying out its four babies, alluding to the
control of the church exercised by the
church through family planning. There
were four children in the Duffy family,
three girls and a boy; the colouring and
features of the children in the painting
resemble the Duffy children.
In 1995 Rita Duffy embarked on a
series of paintings entitled Palimpsest,
commissioned for an exhibition which
opened at the Foyle Arts Centre in
Derry. One of these works, Journey
(Fig.7), is symbolically set inside a car;
enclosed with a background of religion
and with the Virgin Mary as model,
Duffy travels onwards, playing her own
tune. Her red dress glows like a beacon
in the monochrome surroundings. This
painting examines her relationship with
her father who filled her imagination
with memories of his past, which is also
the past history of Belfast. The Palimpsest
series is a mature body of work, enriched by the trappings of
Duffy's childhood which she is attempting to place in context
against a background of sinister elements, gathering outside.
Frieze 1995 (Fig. 8) is a panorama of childhood recollections
gleaned from the happy years spent growing up in South Belfast.
It is a rich, colourful world in front of, or behind, her childhood
home in a street of terraced houses. Unlike her contemporary
Belfast artist, John Kindness, Duffy locates herself at the emo
tional centre of her childhood memories. The role of detached
observer does not suit Duffy's persona as it has evolved over the
last decade, intensely engaged, sharply distilled.
Duffy's world is subjective, she is mostly centre stage, grap
pling to resolve the multiplicity and complexity of influences

stored from childhood and gleaned from
her extensive art education. These
images are woven together in a
Panathenic Frieze of life, pattern and
colour, which shows a little girl with her
two sisters encased in their private
world. The classical struggle of good
over evil, beauty over ugliness persists,
not in a Herculean epic but in the
unique life of one girl who describes her
childhood in painting and drawing.
There is washing on the line, bacon and
eggs frying on the pan, a dancer, singer
in the band and a menacing cowgirl. She
creates recession, views into rooms, the
backyard with its bin marked No. 6, the
row of red brick terrace houses on the
skyline. These individual roles she
selects and treats individually as Cowboy
Girl (Fig. 9) and Dancing (Fig. 12). She
is in the spotlight again, and at her feet
are memorabilia from past years. The
name 'Cowboy Girl' implies ambiguity of
sexual roles, the bewilderment of
puberty when toys are cast aside. The
background she treats like wallpaper
sprigged with shamrock sprays. The soft
tonalities of this work are in marked
contrast to the lurid reds of Dancing.
Two Women combines the tonality of
Cowboy Girl, with a dash of red in the
skirt of the girl on the left. These are
perturbing images of two women, one a
self-portrait of the artist standing
cradling her baby while her companion,
in this deserted olain. sits on a dustbin
in jeans holding a cupid on a fork. Her
shield is a dustbin lid, a reference to the women in the national
ist areas of Belfast and Derry, who, like a classical Greek chorus,
banged their dustbin lids in unison to warn of the approaching
British Army. This modern day Britannia has only the domestic
implements of bin and fork to defend her territory. Around her
feet seven little communicants walk in prayer - a reference, per
haps, to the innocence and purity of childhood. Devotion is
painted in the rich red ochres and siennas of an Egyptian wall
painting. One sister walks along with her feet solidly on the
ground while the younger girl, with hands clasped in prayer, lev
itates beside her. A girl walks with an angel to her left and
within her coat is a small image of a kneeling family of six. A
stoic air hovers over the two women. Suffering is seen in the
face of the woman on the left as she gazes into the distance. Is it
the welfare of her child that she fears for and feels she must
defend? Bearing children often dissipates women's creativity and
accommodating motherhood with creative work can be difficult.
RITA DUFFY - MID-TERM REPORT
7. Rita DUFFY: Jounley. 1995. Oil on wax paper, 116 x 122 cm. (Private collection). In this work Rita Duffy
recalls her childhood memories when she travelled in the car with her father and he pointed out the Belfast of
his boyhood.
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IRISH ARTS REVIEW
There is a combination of freedom of paint handling and
images of the countryside in the Aughamore Series (Fig. 11).
Duffy captures visits out of the city to her grandmother's farm,
chasing the white chicken in the farmyard then recording it
hung in preparation for the dinner table. References to some of
Marc Chagall's work are perceived in these painted experiences.
Many inhabitants of our Irish cities have relatives who live on
farms and summers were times to visit. Long days were spent
bringing turf from the bog, helping harvest the hay or carrying
water from the well and those lyrically-painted landscapes
become backdrops for her narratives.
Duffy combines in her work references to the universal strug
gle of women seeking emancipation, although she concentrates
on issues which relate to her own experiences of growing up as a
Catholic girl in Northern Ireland. She examines in paint and
comes to terms with her situation 'as a woman, a mother and an
artist within Northern Ireland'.' She explores imagery from 'the

156
I R ISH A R TS R EV\IE W

1ii
- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ \
9. Rita DUFFY: Cowboy Girl. 1996. 0i1 on gesso canvas, 122 x 122 cm. (Collection of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland). In this work Rita Duffy is examining the role
models of her childhood with elements of sexual ambiguities which emerging adolescents must resolve.
8. (Opposite). Rita DUFFY: Friez.e. 1995. Oil on wax paper, cotton thread and Japanese paper, 116 x 600 cm. (Private collection). 'This work in particular describes an
internal space, inside my own head where the dreams and half memories that constitute my childhood are explored.'
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IR I SH A RT S R E vIE W

10. Rita DUFFY: Emerging 1, 2, 3, 1996. Oil on gesso board, 11. Rita DUFFY: Augharnore Series. 1996. Oil and wax paper on board, 30 x 30 cm. (Private collection).
30 x 90 cm. (Private collection). 'It's like the darkness Visits to her grandmother's farm in Aughamore allowed Rita Duffy to escape Belfast city streets and
between your jacket and your heart, warm and secretive
and memory-filled.'
enjoy the sounds and sights of an Irish farmyard of the 1960s.
1 58
IRISH ARTS REVIEW

12. (Opposite). Rita DUFFY: Dancing. 1995. Oil on wax paper, 1 16 x 122 cm. (Private collection) . Learning to dance reels, jigs and hornpipes, wearing a full-skirted
costume and lace collar, was part of an Irish childhood but the statues strewn at her dancing feet replace the customary medals sought and won.
1 59
IRISH ARTS REVIEW

RiTA DUFFY -MID-TERM REPORT
13. Rita DUFFY: Caress. 1996. Charcoal on paper, 122 x 150 cm. (Private collection). 'My drawings seek out the cracks in history, throwing light across the shadowed
spaces within race-memory itself, illuminating my own fears, yet suspending them, transfinite.'
dreams and half memories9 from her childhood and forms them
into a rich tapestry. Her earlier objective work on the plight of
working-class women in Belfast, evident, for example, in her
painting Women of Gallagher's Factory (1986), has been replaced
by images based on her experiences. The maturing of her work
chronicles her own struggle for personal identity, living in a
Northern Ireland which is divided by sectarian hatred and the
polarised identity of being British or Irish.
She is also maturing as a woman in Emerging 1 to 3, 1995 (Fig.
10). She springs liberated out of a fur-trimmed jacket but
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IRISH ARTS REVIEW
modestly covers her nakedness with both arms in the manner of
a Botticelli Venus. In Emerging 3 she sinks into the fur collar,
her raised arms and enclosed head forming a seductive phallic
shape. The allusion to quattrocento frescoes is maintained in
the scumbling and rubbing of paint into the gesso, giving it an
aged rendering. Duffy's interest in fourteenth century Italian
painting was reinforced last summer on a visit to the Louvre,
when she encountered a panel depicting the patron saint of pris
oners. She had earlier come to know the work of Artemesia
Gentileschi, an Italian Baroque woman painter, which gave her
A4'

hope that women could achieve success and serious recognition
as artists.
In an exhibition organised by the Northern Centre for
Contemporary Art in Sunderland, Duffy was represented by a
new work Holy Ground (1994). This work, in oil on wax paper,
represented a change of medium, giving a different surface tex
ture. Again autobiographical, she kneels with her Stranmillis
terrace home in the background. Removed from her surround
ings, her left hand raised in a blessing, she appears to plant a
seed in stoney ground. The ghost of a rat springs up, leaving its
droppings, while the dark shapes of corner boys look on.
In her recent work she is still examining questions of national
ity; she finds comfort 'in her own shoes','0 in whatever fits her
and allows her feel comfortable. Interestingly she names the
large triptych done in charcoal on paper, Awakening Triptych (1)
1996. It deals with Rita Duffy's relationship with her mother and
with the intense experiences of puberty. Duffy is central to each
panel, dressed in her St Dominic's school uniform, with her
mother beside her caring for her in all three panels. Diminutive
statues of St Dominic, armed with a lily, the Church or a bible,
remonstrate with her independent attitudes.
The artist looks outward and examines her responses to the
July 1996 Drumcree stand-off in Drumcree Lily (1996). Here, an
image of an orange lily unfolds, its waxy petals presided over by a
diminutive Orangeman, with drawn sword. The ambivalence of
the image derives from Duffy's desire to re-appropriate the nat
ural beauty of the lily, to somehow free it from political or sec
tarian connotations. Caress (Fig. 13), an image of Duffy cradling
and kissing a crocodile, plays with the idea of 'dissembling'.
There is a strong suggestion that judicious courting of an adver
sary pays dividends - an oblique political comment.
In Pulsing Rose she examines the Plantation of Ulster, the
tight-budded rose flourishing from roots embedded in the
buried crown, close by two tied sacks, their contents undis
closed. She continues this theme of colonisation and depicts
the presence of occupation and fortification in Speirbhean. She
rises as a dancer, but her outspread skirt is pegged to the
ground with army and police sentry boxes. Their ominous look
out slits bring a hidden presence into her work, a theme devel
oped in The Dark, a powerful black and white image in which
the space inside the poet's head is transposed into the warm,
velvety darkness of the canvas.
1. John Farrell, interview with Rita Duffy,
Artists' Stories, Artists' Newsletter, A.N.
Publications, Sunderland, 1996
2. ibid.
3. Denise Ferran, Issues, exhibition catalogue,
Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Belfast,
1989
4. Artists' Newsletter (as note 1).
5. Ferran (as note 3).
6. James Nelson, Birmingham News,
28 April 1991.
7. In A State, exhibition catalogue, p.31, Project
Arts Centre Ltd., Dublin, 1991.
RiTA DUFFY - MID-TERM REPORT
8. Rita Duffy, interview, art beyond conflict,
exhibition catalogue, Crescent Arts Centre,
Belfast 1995.
9. ibid.
10. Interview with Rita Duffy and the author,
Belfast, January 1997
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY.
A New Tradition, Irish Art of The Eighties, exhibi
tion catalogue, The Douglas Hyde Gallery,
Dublin, 1990.
In A State, exhibition catalogue, Project Arts
Centre Ltd., Dublin, 1991.
1 61
IRISH ARTS REVIEW
Irish myth informs the source of her work Woodkem and she
becomes one of these war goddesses in disguise. She springs onto
the back of a pig, elusive, barefooted and nimble, living in the
woods, able to dive back into hiding when danger comes. Being
an artist in a divided society demands resourcefulness in main
taining honesty of expression as in Danse Furieuse . She becomes
the bullfighter attracting the attack of the bull. In Armadillo she
resorts to sexual persuasion by provocatively stroking the hard
back of the animal in an attempt to win. She is examining her
attitudes to male supremacy and chauvinism in the uneasy man
ner of Paula Rego.
In her more recent work she experiments with materials, with
gesso and beeswax-covered MDF boards. Her imagery remains
rooted in her environment but she is able to take a more objec
tive view, to look beyond the screaming mobs to the underlying
power. She examines the walls of division, euphemistically
called the Peace Line. Each year these dividing lines are
increased and strengthened and have now become architectural
features with town planning considerations and embellishments.
In the fifteen panels of The Peace Line, Duffy perceives these
walls as archaeological drawings, the natural run of streets inter
rupted, and in the names of the streets, such as Percy or
Bombay, past and present history merging.
Some of her recent works retain family elements; she contin
ues to explore her relationship with her mother, now a grand
mother as well, in the little Aran jacket she knitted for her
grandson. Duffy the daughter pays homage to the craft of her
mother, their talents a common heritage. There is a feeling that
she has moved on, that her childhood memories are letting go.
She sees in her mother's china tea-cup the necessity of keeping
up appearances, yet she paints little pink pigs on the table and in
the teacup. This humorous illusion to the stigma of 'having pigs
in the kitchen' contrasts with the lacy bras hanging as Dada
objects on the wall. Her Shoe-piece, exquisitely drawn images of
the artist's shoes worn over a lifetime, reinforce the sense of
journeying, the often easy comfort, the artist now feels with her
work. There is a continuing self assuredness in her art. Images
are bolder and simpler. She knows now what she intends to say
and has developed the means to express it.
DENISE FERRAN is Education Officer at the Ulster Museum, and a practising
artist. She is also author of W J Leech (Merrill Robertson 1996), reviewed in this
issue.
Hilary Robinson, Palimpsest, exhibition catalogue,
The Orchard Gallery, Derry, 1995.
Poetic Land - Political Territory, Contemporary Art
from Ireland, exhibition catalogue, Northern
Centre for Contemporary Art, Sunderland,
1995.
Art beyond Conflict, exhibition catalogue,
Crescent Arts Centre, 1996.
Crossing boundaries: Belfast, contemporary art from
Northern Ireland, exhibition catalogue, San
Francisco State University, 1996.
Artists' Stories, Artists' Newsletter, A.N. Publication
Sunderland, 1996.