Hungary for enlargement and spreading the word

IRELAND was once described by WB Yeats as "the Hungary of the West". A century on, sculptor Maria Lugossy also believes there are many similarities between the two countries.

"You were oppressed by Britain," she says. "We were oppressed by a succession of countries: Turkey, Austria and, most recently, the Soviet Union. Your people went all over the world, so did ours. You kept your own culture; so, too, did we."

Although she was born in 1950 and has borne witness to her country's many upheavals, it is difficult to imagine Maria Lugossy having ever been oppressed by anything. Since graduating from the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest in 1975, she has created a prodigious quantity of work, exhibited internationally and won numerous awards for her sculpture in Britain, Germany, France, Japan and America.

Yet, she sees a clear distinction between the work she produced before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the subsequent liberation of Hungary.

"Before 1989, there was a very rich underground movement, in philosophy, art and literature. These values came to the surface after the changes. The control disappeared. But before that, there were three classifications for artists: prohibited, tolerated and supported. I was tolerated. I never knew why."

Since Hungary s liberation, however, Lugossy believes her work has grown darker. It is as if, no longer merely tolerated, but supported by the state, she has been granted the freedom to examine the turbulent events of her country's recent history. She also seems burdened with a responsibility to commemorate them.

Indeed, some of her most recent work includes a series of large public sculptures that honour the victims of World War II, the Holocaust and the failed 1956 Hungarian revolution.

Lugossy's work in the Enlargement exhibition at Cork Vision Centre takes Liberation as its title, but the sculptures, in glass, bronze and limestone, are as monumental and sombre as headstones. They include works from her History Book series and magnificent pieces, such as Corpus and Punishment, that bear mute yet furious witness to human suffering. "These are the people who interest me," she says. "Not the politicians, but the millions of nameless, faceless beings in history."

Lugossy's work at the Vision Centre is accompanied by that of her countryman, Jozsef Gaal. Gaal is a painter, sculptor, writer and critic, born in 1960, whose current work is preoccupied with mythology and draws much of its inspiration from Yeats' writings on the subject.

Gaal's work at the Vision Centre consists of busts and paintings under the heading Existing in Dream. The artist himself speaks little English, but Katalin Nagy, the exhibition's curator, explains that the works were made in response to the Vision Centre space, which Gaal visited last May. Gaal s sculptural heads are made of wood, leather and iron, while the paintings are large acrylics with titles like Janus and Split Moon, that refer to Yeats' preoccupation with masks. "There is this idea in Jozsef's work," says Nagy, "of wandering between this world and the next, the conscious and the unconscious. The idea of doubleness is central to the series. In Yeats' philosophy, the mask sometimes shows as much as it conceals."

Lugossy and Gaal are two of Hungary's most gifted and distinguished visual artists; their compelling exhibition runs February 1- 26.

It is complemented by a performance by Hungarian musicians, the Auer String Quartet, at the Vision Centre on February 9, and showings of the Hungarian films The Sketches, Kontroll and Sleepwalkers, at the Triskel Arts Centre on February 17, 22 and 23, respectively.

IF Yeats continues to inspire the work of visual artists as far away as Hungary, it is also safe to say that his influence is still very much in evidence at home. Certainly, he would have approved wholeheartedly of An Leabhar Mór, and were he around, he would surely have been up to his elbows in its creation. In his absence, Theo Dorgan and Malcolm McLean have made an admirable fist of the venture, an initiative of the Gaelic Arts Agency that brings together the work of more than 200 visual artists and calligraphers from Ireland and Scotland.

Each of the works in An Leabhair Mór consists of a poem in Gaelic, and sometimes in translation, rendered by a calligrapher and illustrated by a visual artist. The poems date from the 7th century to the 21st. They indude include Aithbe Damsa Bes Mara (The Lament of the Old Woman of Beare), translated by Donncha O hÁodha and illustrated by Bernadette Cotter; and An Bonnán Buí (The Yellow Bittern) by Cathal Buí Mac Giolla Ghunna, translated by Thomas McDonagh and illustrated by Eileen Ferguson.

The work of many contemporary Irish and Scots Gaelic language poets, such as Fearghas MacFionnlaigh, Nuala Ní Dhómhnaill and Cathal Ó Searchaigh, is also included.

An Leabhar Mór has also generated a publication, a website, a TV documentary, a series of BBC radio programmes, a music CD, a schools' pack, an events programme and a touring exhibition of 100 artworks that will be shown reside at the Glucksman gallery, at UCC, from February to until April.

The project will continue to tour Ireland, Europe and America until at least 2010. It is then intended that the individual works will be bound in a single volume that will become a permanent visitor attraction, possibly at the new Scottish Parliament Building.

Among the events the Glucksman gallery will run in association with An Leabhair Mór are a reading by poets Liam Ó Muirthile and Louis de Paor, with music by John Spillane, on February 27, and a schools programme that will run for the duration of the show.