Lost Moments
An exhibition of Paintings and Prints

The artist Lorraine Whelan has described this exhibition of paintings and prints as an archive of memory. It is based on snapshots of people and places from her past and the exhibition’s title reflects the fact that these are depictions of lost moments which now only exist in memory. Many of the people featured are now absent from the artist’s life. Some of them have died, while others now live oceans away on other continents. The work also features other kinds of lost things: a lost home, lost youth, a lost country.

The exhibition also explores the idea of inherited memories and the stories that are passed down to us through time. Among the paintings is one based on a photograph of the artist’s grandfather as a young man in his Irish Army uniform and reflects stories she heard about his early years and his involvement in the struggle for Irish independence in the 1920s.

The exhibition’s theme of memory and remembrance resonates with Patrick Pearse’s own fascination with the past. When describing St. Enda’s to an audience in New York in 1914, he said he lived in a place ‘very full of heroic memories’. While Pearse was referring to the park’s association with the revolutionary Robert Emmet, today the house and grounds are primarily dedicated to the remembrance of the lives of Patrick and William Pearse, their family and students.