Irish artist, Maria Simonds-Gooding, has a particular connection and affinity to the OPW-managed Blasket Islands. In this exhibition, she captures timeless histories of the heritage of Ireland as found in its ancient landscape. For more than sixty years, Maria has engaged with and responded to the Irish landscape in a variety of artistic media, including ink, paint, plaster and aluminum. She was also a formative influence on Micheál O’Gaoithín, the Blasket’s great visual artist and poet.

Artistic Islands expands outward from Ireland to the Caribbean’s Leeward Islands–where a far-flung global diaspora comes into focus. From the 1630’s, Irish people were sent to the Caribbean arriving as indentured servants mixing with enslaved persons of African descent, merging cultures to form a resilient society. Worlds collided in these sun-drenched islands where much of their tradition expressing the breadth and impact of their creative genius remains. This brilliance shines in the artistic achievement of Antiguan polymath Frank Walter, who saw himself, among others, as an Irish peer.

Walter used art to create his own universe–an aesthetically pleasing environment manifest through painting, sculpture, music and the arts. Imbued with a high intellect and deep knowledge of history and culture, Walter fought to protect the heritage of his tiny island nation. He painted abstract paintings, using the intricate patterns of seeds used in Antiguan seedwork – one of the earliest artforms unique to his island nation, dating back to the earliest arrival of enslaved persons from Africa. Funded by the legacy of Frank Walter, seedwork survives to this day thanks to a group of Antiguan women whose work will be portrayed along with Walter’s paintings to express the timelessness of these art forms.