Homeless make 'home' in museum

Homeless people have helped museum chiefs to create a unique exhibition on the concept of home, it emerged today.

The collaborative project between Focus Ireland clients and the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) features carefully-selected pieces of contemporary art from the gallery’s extensive collection.

’Hearth: Concepts of Home’ opens tomorrow and runs at the Kilmainham museum until April, 2007.

IMMA curator Helen O’Donoghue selected 16 exhibits in consultation with homeless people using the services of Focus Ireland.

She said the collaborative process was a positive way of engaging people with contemporary art and artists.

“I hope through this process we have succeeded to demystify the curatorial process through sharing and exchanging skills and knowledge.

“Projects such as this really can help towards opening out the meaning of public access into the resources of a museum in general and IMMA in particular.”

Dubliner Dave Gregory, who uses Focus Ireland services, helped pick the final pieces for the exhibition.

He said: “It was a great experience and I think it’s important to look at things like home and homelessness in different ways, such as through art, so people can express how they think and feel about things.

“It can provide a great outlet and it also shows everyone that people who are homeless have the same hopes and dreams as everyone else but have just gone through a bad time.”

Focus Ireland chief executive Declan Jones said his charity’s vision stated that everyone has a right to a place called home.

“This exhibition is a unique opportunity to explore this vision and to reflect on what home means in contemporary Ireland. We hope that through this exhibition the needs and concept of home are presented to the public in an innovative and unique way,” he said.

The works include ’houses of cards’ covered in a montage of property advertisements clipped from the Irish Times newspaper.

In another collaboration with IMMA, Focus Ireland is also organising a ‘Festival of Home’ in the building this month to help stimulate a debate on the meaning of housing and home in Irish society and the implications for Government policy.

The first day will feature an event called Show Home which will explore the understanding of home through art, drama, film and writing.