An exhibition of artworks by Laura Fitzgerald Artist-in-Residence with the Waterford Healing Arts Trust

26th June - 13th August 2009 in the WHAT Centre for Arts & Health and Waterford Regional Hospital

17th - 31st August 2009

Index Gallery, Central Library, Lady Lane, Waterford

Once UpOn A Time

Supported by Pfizer

introductionThe Waterford Healing Arts Trust has been running an Artist in Residence programme since its first artist Aifric Gray came to Waterford Regional Hospital in 1994. Visual Artists are given a studio space for a period of six months during which time they create a new body of work for exhibition in the hospital. The acute hospital is an immense resource for developing a body of artistic work and the residency programme enables artists to creatively respond to the hospital culture.

Laura is the first artist to use the studio space in the newly developed WHAT Centre for Arts and Health. Since January 2009, she has created a body of work on the theme of memory. She has expanded beyond her previous work of dealing with personal memories and into a more collective and collaborative approach. Laura has succeeded in bringing a visual experience to Waterford Regional Hospital which allows the viewer to become an active participant in creating a piece of art.

Acute hospitals can be challenging places for artists to navigate. People are often busy and distracted. Yet Laura’s simple approach of collecting memories through one-to-one encounters could be adapted to a range of hospital settings such as staff tea rooms and patient bedsides. Laura created 150 individual drawings through this process that are on view as part of this exhibition. The drawings lead into an installation of hexagonal pillars which is informed by the artist’s interest in quantum physics. Old maps of various parts of Ireland on which are drawn elements of the collected memories wrap around the pillars. The Memory House which Laura created as a site for collecting memories is also a central feature in the exhibition.

Viewed as one piece, Once Upon a Time depicts a collective experience of what it is to be human...births, deaths, marriage, stolen moments and childhood memories. It reminds us of the importance of archiving our individual experiences as a means of celebrating our individual and collective identity.

Mary Grehan and Claire MeaneyWaterford Healing Arts Trust

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invitation

You are cordially invited to the launch of

Once UpOn A TimeAn exhibition of artworks by Laura Fitzgerald on the theme of memory

on Thursday, 25th June 2009 at 5.30pm

in the WHAT Centre for Arts & Health, Waterford Regional Hospital.

The exhibition will be launched by local historian and broadcaster

Julian Walton

Laura Fitzgerald will give a talk about the exhibition on Friday, 26th June at 1pm in the WHAT Centre for Arts & Health

R.S.V.p. 051-842664 or WHAT@hse.ie

This exhibition is on view in the WHAT Centre for Arts & Health and Waterford Regional Hospital until Thursday, 13th August 2009. It will tour to the Index Gallery, Central Library, Lady Lane, Waterford from the 17th - 31st August

AcknowledgmentsThe Waterford Healing Arts Trust and the artist would like to thank the following for their help and support:

The WRH management team

The WRH Technical Services team

Age Related Day Unit, WRH

The Outpatients Dept., WRH

The Ambulance Service, WRH

The Lab, WRH

pfizer

Julian Walton

paul Brent

Staff & patients of St. patricks Hospital

Squashy couch Youth café

Rehab care, Waterford

Waterford Befriending

Waterford Arts Forum

index Gallery

And everyone who shared a memory with the artist

Waterford Healing Arts Trust,Waterford Regional Hospital,Dunmore Road, Waterford

Tel: +353 51 842664E-mail: WHAT@hse.ieWeb: www.waterfordhealingarts.com

I have always been interested in memory and drawing from a very early age. When I was a child, one of my pursuits was to make pen drawings of imagined farms and homesteads. I grew up in Kerry and had a very idyllic childhood. My parents’ home schooled myself and my two sisters for seven years until the age of sixteen. My world was dramatically changed when my parents’ marriage broke down and our family home was sold. I realised that life would no longer be the same as before. I spent several years in college coming to terms with this change. The early childhood drawings turned to drawings that plans our family never completed and dreams that were never realised. Through this work, I realised how important memory is to my practice as an artist and how each of us has unique memories in relation to certain times in our lives.

Having worked through my personal history through my art making, I wanted to progress on from this by inviting other people to share their experiences and inspire me with new images and stories.

My residency with the Waterford Healing Arts Trust is based on the idea of a collective gathering of memories from staff and patients of Waterford Regional Hospital. Since January 2009, I placed myself in various areas of the hospital and asked staff, patients and visitors to spare ten minutes of their time to relate a vivid memory from their lives. I drew this memory while they spoke. I later posted a copy of a memory drawing to each contributor. It is with increasing respect that I see how wonderfully receptive each individual is to welcoming an artist into their space and participating in the project.

Working in a hospital environment has also awakened me to the challenges of ‘real world’ scenarios unknown to my previous relationship with galleries. Work produced now needs to be “washable and safe,” words seldom spoken in art circles. With the help and guidance of Mary Grehan and Claire Meaney, I have consulted, negotiated and communicated with many departments within the hospital to bring about this exhibition.

One of the interesting aspects of a hospital environment is that although it is one community, it is in fact on closer examination, sub-divided into smaller communities. Each has its own distinct culture. As artist-in-residence, it is important that I don’t hide away in my studio but integrate myself into the hospital community. In May, I installed a cardboard Memory House I created for one day. People visited me in this house and shared their memories. I thus became another sub-community within the larger realm of the hospital.

One could say that I am merely a type of side street portraiture merchant persuading a person to sit and spend some time. However in the hubbub of hospital life where people are undergoing treatment or visiting a sick relative, this project creates a space to escape back into a former aspect of our lives and have that moment visually recorded. The exercise can momentarily take us away from the anxieties of the hospital experience and into a place forgotten.

I am very grateful to both Mary Grehan and Claire Meaney at WHAT for an experience I will think of for many years to come. I hope the memories I have collected and drawn will resonate with future viewers in the same way my memories of my time here will always be close to my heart.

Laura Fitzgerald May 2009

An exhibition of artworks by Laura Fitzgerald

Artist-in-Residence with the Waterford Healing Arts Trust

26th June - 13th August 2009 in the WHAT Centre for Arts & Health and Waterford Regional Hospital 17th - 31st August 2009Index Gallery, Central Library, Lady Lane, Waterford

Once UpOn A Time

Once UpOn A Time

Supported by Pfizer