Reasons to be Cheerful: Cork artist Noël O’Callaghan on her new exhibition and musical past 

Noël O’Callaghan currently has work showing at the Lavit, but her previous outlets includes a stint in a Turkish-Irish speed folk band

Noël O’Callaghan comes from an artistic family in Cork. 

Noël O’Callaghan has always worked across a range of media, in music, theatre and the visual arts. The breadth of her interests is reflected in Reasons to be Cheerful, the title of her solo exhibition of landscape and portrait paintings at the Lavit Gallery in Cork.

Reasons to be Cheerful (Part 3) was the title of one of Ian Dury and the Blockheads’ best-known singles, which reached No 3 in 1979. “But I was also thinking of one of my favourite Samuel Beckett plays,” says O’Callaghan. “In Happy Days, the main character, Winnie, is buried up to her waist in sand at the start, and up to her neck at the end. But she still finds ways to be cheerful, like putting on her lipstick, and singing. It’s simultaneously noble and pathetic.”