St Fintan’s NS among the winners in National Gallery art competition
A Westmeath school is among the winners in the National Gallery of Ireland’s Jack B Yeats Schools Competition.
St Fintan’s NS, Lismacaffrey, won the Leinster Primary School category for its artwork ‘Shining Light’ on our Memories of our Locality and its People. Eight winning schools will each receive a prize package worth €1000. The competition was supported by Key Capital.
To celebrate its landmark exhibition Jack B Yeats: Painting & Memory, the National Gallery of Ireland devised this art competition for primary and post-primary schools on the island of Ireland.
Championing the diverse communities of Ireland, it offered schools the opportunity to engage more deeply with the themes of place and memory in the work of iconic Irish artist Jack B Yeats.
The competition required the pupils to create a collaborative artwork inspired by memories of people in and history of their area. The pupils researched specific people and buildings using local publications and the internet. Pupils were also encourage to chat to older family members and neighbours.
In addition, the St Fintan's winning team also shared their own memories of living in or moving to the area. The title they chose for their entry is ‘Shining Light’ on our Memories of our Locality and its People.
Their artwork is multi-media. They created a telescope sculpture influenced by a local landlord, William E Wilson (1857-1908), who lived in a house called Daramona, where he built an observatory that held a Howard Grubb telescope that is now housed in Liverpool, Merseyside Museum.
Wilson also built ‘Streete Institute’ in 1856, where he gave talks about his findings on astrology to locals and organised projected light shows for children.
The words ‘Knowledge is Power’ are carved in stone above the entrance of ‘Streete Institute’ and this is what made Edward Wilson special for the children, that he always shared his knowledge and experience to the community.
The artwork submitted by the Lismacaffrey pupils embraces this sentiment as they undertook to replicate a slide show using a projector placed inside their telescope sculpture, projecting images of all their collaborative artwork that they have created, thus sharing knowledge through a light show like Wilson had done.
The other artwork the pupils created included pop-up drawings and paintings of local buildings (Coolamber Manor, Kildevin House, Streete Institute, Glebe House), a model of Streete Parish, a local circus scene and the footing of turf.
The pupils were fortunate to have parents Mel French and Gerard Leslie to guide and support them on their project journey.