Debbie Godsell: 'People don’t realise that there were plenty of working class Protestants too'
Debbie Godsell's exhibition, Flail, opens at Uillinn, West Cork Arts Centre, in Skibbereen.
Debbie Godsell remembers sitting in St Mary’s Church in Passage West as a child, the altar festooned with fruit and vegetables and hydrangeas. Harvest Thanksgiving was a happy time, and the artist recalls being struck by the beauty of it.
Years later she discovered this tradition was particular to her Church of Ireland community. “I thought every church celebrated this way. I had no idea it was just us,” she explains.
This early dawning is integral to Godsell’s upcoming exhibition Flail – the third iteration of her ongoing exploration of Protestant identity in Ireland, accessed through this entry point of the Harvest.
“I didn’t touch this subject for a long time. I was nervous about exploring it. I grew up with a cultural reserve – as if I’d been told keep my head down. I knew what I was feeling was a thing. Eventually it bubbled up.”
The Harvest is a nice way to look at contested histories and identity formation, says Godsell.
“This exhibition gives voice to a minority group who have been very quiet. It looks into the grey, beyond the binary. Harvest time in Ireland is an annual event that has both divided and bound communities across all aspects of life for many centuries.” The tradition came quite late to Ireland according to the artist, another element of this island’s unique heritage.
“Probably because of various political happenings. It began earlier in England, in Cornwall in 1846, drawing upon the Saxon celebration of Lammas. Eventually, it arrived in Ireland in 1899. It was a way for the small Church of Ireland congregations to express how much they cherished the land.”
Flail is also a kind of offering. “It offers a counter narrative of Protestants in Ireland who were often thought of as coming from the ‘Big House,’ as being members of the Ascendancy, like Douglas Hyde or Lady Gregory. Many people don’t realise that there were plenty of working class and middle class Protestants too, people sent over as servants who sometimes became tenant farmers.” Post independence they nearly had to start again as a group, Godsell explains.
“They were no longer attached to empire but had lived in Ireland for generations. I am interested in how that difference has filtered down through time. There can be jibes about the landed gentry still; it is uncomfortable but people are happy to talk about it now. Perhaps because we are more secular, more liberal and globalised, we are willing to look at these residues or undercurrents of prejudice – even if it is an unconscious one.”
The first stage of engagement began when Debbie read Dr Deirdre Nuttall’s book .
Drawn in by Nuttall’s documentation of hitherto unrecorded protestant stories, Debbie decided to visually complement them. She asked the academic and writer to act as mentor and went about filling in the archival gaps by collecting images of Harvest Thanksgivings. A second stage followed with an exhibition in the Source Gallery late last year, and now comes its third instalment in Cork, opening at the Uillinn Arts Centre on Saturday 22 February at 2.00pm.
Godsell, a graduate of MTU College of Art and Design, feels her exhibition is a gentle and playful one; she stresses that her work is focuses on the church of Ireland as a cultural minority and not as a religious group, She has no interest in offending people of any faith or none.
“It is simply giving voice to another narrative. The short film Flail is possibly the most forceful part of the exhibition. I am beating sheafs of oats against a rock – almost an act of atonement. Other parts of the work on display are very natural and tactile. It spans digital work, sculpture, print, textiles – the culmination of work made possible by two Arts Council grants.”
Godsell’s gentle approach has invited full-hearted responses. “It has been wonderful to have people coming up to me to tell their stories.” One church in Clonakilty was kind enough to contribute kneelers to an exhibit.
“This particular exhibit is about the fragility of identity formation. During my research I discovered that Protestant and Catholic schools used different history books. It demonstrates the importance of reading all the books and learning about history from more than a single perspective. I have stacked these donated kneelers along with others I made myself.”
The opening of the exhibition also included the live performance premiere of Harvesting History, a hymn-based response to Debbie Godsell's Flail, written by Cristín Leach, composed by Susan Nares and sung by the West Cork Choral Singers under the musical directorship of Susan Nares.
“I am delighted that the choral singers are members of a diverse range of communities in West Cork. It fits perfectly.”
- Flail, by Debbie Godsell, runs at Uillinn, West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen, on from February 22 to April 5. See westcorkartscentre.com
