Photos by Chris Hayden

Our previous cultural ‘night in’ was surrounded by the wonderful and clever work of Dublin born artist Pete Dunne.

Friday 3rd of October 2014

Sponsored by INCREATION & Hooper and Kind

‘I came over here with nothing and still have most of it left’

This work by Pete Dunne gives us insight into the world of the Irish emigrants to England. The artist brings into focus the rooted mindful concentration of the musician at a west of Ireland pub session, their pose, a heavy seated weight embodying a sense of place… feet firm on the floor, instrument an extension of the musician, the lament can exist in the tune or the song, so they can exist in the here and now – in and of the land and the landscape.

We emigrants in contrast are unseated, ungrounded, we can have no song, no lament, because there is nothing to contain it, we are always turning back, eyes to the left, faces to the west, bodies twisted as our feet make a feeble attempt to take root in the land we have adopted to survive – but the tune carries on the wind, a constant remembering calling us back home…

We becoming more Irish even than the Irish at home, a human heritage centre of all that is precious and left behind, a museum to the past keeping us tiptoeing around the present…

More about Pete:

Self taught Dublin born, arrived in London in the sweltering summer of ’76 and hitched to India the following year on the day that Elvis died. Returned in ’86 to co-found the psychedelic folk thrash outfit The 7 Kevins and played on the underground squat scene where we became the Mutoid Waste Company’s house band, playing at the legendary warehouse partys of the late 80s.