In these new works, as in previous bodies of work, Hughie O’Donoghue has drawn on his own experience and connections, people that he knew or knew of.
O’Donoghue has structured the content of these works into four distinct pathways, four quarters; he likens this to the four differing accounts of a murder in Kurosawa’s 1951 film Rashomon. In the film the murder of a Samurai is recounted by four characters; a bandit, the Samurai’s wife, his own ghost and a woodcutter. Their stories are mutually contradictory and self-serving.
A hundred years on from the events of the 1916 Easter rising the four characters O’Donoghue has evoked in these new works are the revolutionary, the soldier, the sailor and the peasant. Through their differing perspectives the events of 1916 are alluded to in an attempt to explore the subjective and fugitive nature of truth. This exhibition forms part of the official Ireland 2016 Centenary Programme.