Hughie O’Donoghue: ‘I don’t make art that people put on their wall’

Learning from the lessons of history is at the heart of Hughie O’Donoghue’s work, writes Alan O’Riordan

A centrepiece of the visual arts element for this year’s Galway Arts Festival is One Hundred Years and Four Quarters by the painter Hughie O’Donoghue. The exhibition will fill the Festival Gallery with 20 paintings and a large piece of sculpture.

The show is part of the official 1916 centenary programme, but, as befits O’Donoghue, English born and of Irish descent, a wider view of the year and history in general, and how we remember it, is what has driven the artist.