Cork artist Brian Lalor on his retrospective in Skibbereen, and visiting Gaza in the 1960s

Lalor has worked as an artist, architect, archaeologist, educator, author and editor through the decades

Mon, 23 Sep, 2024 - 10:18

Marc O’Sullivan Vallig

Brian Lalor has distinguished himself as an architect, archaeologist, educator, author and editor, but it is arguably his work as an artist that has given him the greatest pleasure over the past sixty years.

His primary interest has been in printmaking, and his exhibition, Brian Lalor: Retrospective, currently running at Uillinn: the West Cork Arts Centre in Skibbereen, features a range of his distinctive copperplate etchings and woodcuts, as well as watercolours and drawings, and a number of ceramic pieces he produced with potter Jim Turner.

Lalor was born in Cork in 1941. He studied at the Crawford College of Art, at a time when it was still housed in the Crawford Art Gallery on Emmet Place.

“As an art college, the Crawford was staggering to a halt at that point,” he says. “There were three lecturers who had been there for a lifetime and were all due to retire. But, although I did ceramics and the like, I was actually there to study architecture, and that department was very vibrant, with young lecturers who were all working in practices around Cork."

He recalls a good experience overall. "The problem was that the Royal Institute of British Architects who validated the course didn't consider there were enough lecturers at the Crawford, so you could do only three years there, and then you’d have to go somewhere else to qualify. I went to London. It was the early 1960s, and I had a great time.”

Lalor worked in architecture for about five years. “The last year I was in Tel Aviv, in Israel,” he says. “I was an award winner in a major international architectural competition, and then I quit. It was one of those ‘quit while you're ahead’ moments. I had an opportunity to move into archaeology, and I had wanted to study archaeology rather than architecture originally.

"So I moved out of architecture into being the head of the architectural department of a very large excavation. I went from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and I spent five years there, making some serious discoveries. It was truly fascinating work. I was very lucky to have that opportunity.”

It was while working as an archaeologist that Lalor taught himself printmaking. He soon became absorbed in etching, “where you work on copper plates. You cover them with wax and put them in acid, and the acid etches the lines. It's the principal art form I do.”

Lalor visited Gaza often in those days. “It was then very, very poor. In fact, there's a picture of one of the refugee camps in my retrospective. The Gulf states put an awful lot of money into moving the population into high-rise apartments in Gaza, and these are the buildings that are now being destroyed.

“What’s happening is an absolute tragedy. The Hamas attack on Israel, in which more than a thousand people were murdered, has spurred Israel on to an act of revenge that will achieve nothing. They need to make peace now, today.”

Lalor returned to Ireland around 1973, settling with his family in Ballydehob. “We bought a derelict farmhouse for not a lot of money, as you could do at the time. That was when I started printmaking seriously. I worked there for ten years, and then we moved to Dublin, where I had a studio and I taught printmaking and published books.”

In 1977, Lalor collaborated with the poet Eileen Ní Chuilleanáin on a publication called Cork, a tribute to their native city that featured her poems and his drawings. The book has just been re-printed by the Gallery Press. To coincide with Lalor’s retrospective, Uillinn has also produced an illustrated book – Brian Lalor: Retrospective – that features an extensive interview with curator Vera Ryan.

Among Lalor’s other publications is Ink-Stained Hands, his history of printmaking in Ireland, whose title comes from a poem by Paul Muldoon about the artist Mary Farl Powers. “It's a perfect title for the subject,” says Lalor. “You're getting ink all over yourself, not just on your hands. It’s like children playing with mud.”

As an editor, Lalor’s crowning achievement was The Encyclopaedia of Ireland, with over 5,500 articles on all things Irish, produced by Gill & MacMillan in 2003. “It was then, and possibly still is, the largest single volume publication ever published in Ireland,” he says. “It has a million and a quarter words. At the launch, someone remarked that not only is it full of information, it makes a valuable weapon.

“I was chosen as the general editor because I had a very broad range of interests. For the five years I worked on the Encyclopedia, I was learning all the time. So, it was personally a very enriching experience. I managed to write notes on a range of major themes with more than 800 contributors, many of them senior academics, and I only fell out with two. That was an achievement in itself. At any rate, I didn't disgrace myself.”

The various institutions Lalor has taught at include UCD, and he has also lectured at the National Gallery and other places. "I enjoy teaching, but I've tried not to let it take over my life. I value my independence as a freelance artist and writer, and I've tried to stick with that.

“But you need the temperament of a gambler, really, to survive in the arts. You can have a very good exhibition, but then people think they’ve had enough of your work. You have these wonderful successes, and then nothing.”

Lalor returned to Ballydehob about 12 years ago. “I built a new studio, and now I work between here and Dublin, mostly. When the exhibition at Uillinn is over, I’m going to Hangzhou in China for two weeks. I’m going for a trade fair, a combination of art, craft and fashion, with people from Dublin and West Cork. It's not a place I’ve ever been, so I'm looking forward to the visual experience of whatever it has to offer. It’s a kind of escape from having to think about what I'm going to do next. Though something will pop up soon, I'm sure.”

Lalor’s retrospective at Uillinn has, of course, given him occasion to look back over his life’s work. Asked to comment on his myriad achievements, his response is typically modest. “So far, so good,” he chuckles.