Roscommon artist’s exhibition explores themes of memory, displacement and trauma – What’s on

A new exhibition by Roscommon artist France Crowe opened at the Custom House Gallery, Westport last week.

‘Story Cloths: Gestures, Journeys and Genealogies’ explores themes of memory, displacement and trauma. “My chosen medium is tapestry weaving, drawing in thread,” explained the Fourmilehouse artist.

“My day-to-day art practice involves age old gestures of loom and shuttle, warp and weft, creating images that bear witness to the human journey at both personal and inter-personal levels. The images in the Story Cloths Exhibition reference the losses and traumas we encounter in our life journeys and the human suffering so present to-day resulting from geopolitical power struggles and the cultural and economic upheavals impacting on the poorest peoples, particularly women and children. Tapestry weaving provides me with a rich visual language and a conceptual framework to express my deepest concerns as an artist as I attempt to weave a web of insight and hope in our dark times,” explained the artist.

A former art teacher at Castlerea Community School, Frances is a graduate of Fine Art and Tapestry from NCAD with a track record as an educator and curator. She has worked with Roscommon Arts Office, Creative Ireland and the Arts Council of Ireland.

She has curated and exhibited nationally and internationally and has been selected by judging panels for exhibitions in Ireland, the UK, Canada, USA and China. She has completed several commissions for public and private collections. The artist was shortlisted for the 2024 Golden Fleece Award.

Opening the exhibition Dr. Ann O’Mahony noted that in her “latest exhibition grid structures (horizontal and vertical) of wool, linen, sisal, monofilament and steel create a complex multi-layered web and point of reference which name and reframe cultural and existential trauma and its impact at a societal, personal and interpersonal level. In gestures of remembrance and witness, the artist creates visceral and poignant images of our life journeys, as we voyage through the stormy seas of memory, life and loss, harsh perplexing realities our culture would prefer to sanitise and forget. The personal and the political are juxtaposed powerfully in images of absence and loss. Fractured narratives and shattered and uprooted lives are symbolized in warp and weft. Absent and shadowy figures signify the dark woods and liminal spaces we encounter in the cycles of birth and death, borderlands for which our culture has little guidance or maps to offer. This is the gift of the artist in her powerful woven images,” said Dr. Ann O’Mahony • This latest solo exhibition of Frances Crowe’s works will continue until July 21st at Custom House Studios