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

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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 152 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 1 53 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
Page 1: Rita Duffy began her second level e
Page 5 and 6: stored from childhood and gleaned f
Page 7 and 8: 1ii - ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ \ 9. Rita DU
Page 9 and 10: 12. (Opposite). Rita DUFFY: Dancing
Page 11: hope that women could achieve succe

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

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