Fort Dunree art exhibit explores how Ireland and Newfoundland are bound by history

A new art exhibition, ‘Parallel Lands,’ brings together new works by Newfoundland artists Michael Flaherty, Susan Furneaux, and Kym Greeley, curated by Philippa Jones, as part of the international partnership between Inishowen’s Artlink and CRUX (Newfoundland, Canada).

The four-week-long exhibition will take place at Fort Dunree from Sunday, January 25 until Sunday, February 22, from 10am until 4pm every day.

The artists’ work reflects a deep dialogue with the land and sea, revealing how Ireland and Newfoundland, divided by the Atlantic, are bound by parallel histories of settlement, loss, resilience, and belonging.

During their residencies with Artlink, the artists immersed themselves, gathering objects, stories, friendships, inspiration and materials from Donegal.

Initially drawn to Ireland to reconnect with their ancestors, their resulting artwork investigates ‘home’, not as a fixed territory but as a shifting, relational space defined by kinship, memory, and placemaking.

During his residency, Michael Flaherty responded to the rhythms of the Atlantic, constructing a loom that wove with the incoming and outgoing tide. Building upon this artistic collaboration with the elements, Flaherty has gathered pottery shards and re-cast these discarded fragments of past lives in ceramic.

Drawing on Ireland and Newfoundland’s rich fibre craft, Flaherty learnt crochet, a familiar domestic craft associated with comfort. Tenderly embedding the shards within the crochet as a vessel of repair, the blankets both hold and expose what cannot be made whole again.

Susan Furneaux has worked with foraged fibres, threads and adornments to create small vessels and baby boots, objects resonant with memory and mourning. These works honour the 354 men from Newfoundland who perished in the 1917 sinking of the Laurentic off the Donegal coast. Through delicate handwork, Furneaux memorialises both personal and collective grief, grounding loss in the material intimacy of fibres gathered from Newfoundland and Ireland.

Kym Greeley turns to the architecture and folklore of abandoned Irish homes, sculpting seabricks and talismanic objects inspired by the concealed charms she found hidden in derelict chimneys: bottles, shoes, knots, and nails, to ward off evil. Her ceramic knots, inspired by nautical folktales, once believed to release or hold the wind, are here permanently fixed, reflecting our lack of control in an era of climate catastrophe.

Wallpaper motifs of bracken fern, a symbol of rewilding and traditionally burnt to bring the rains, extend her exploration of domestic fragility and nature’s reclamation. When the home is abandoned and the house collapses, leaving only protective talismans and the nails that once held it together, we are reminded that neither structural strength nor superstition can prevent time’s passage.

Yet these gestures of protection and homemaking endure, resonating beyond their moment and place to form the culture, traditions, and familial bonds that transcend the Atlantic, country boundaries and generations.

Martha McCulloch, project coordinator at Artlink, noted the relevance of the opening date: “The exhibition opens on January 25th, a date of deep significance marking the anniversary of the sinking of the HMS Laurentic. It is an honour to acknowledge this moment through art, remembrance, and a shared past.”

Don O’Neil, a Newfoundland native, now living in Inishowen and organiser of the Laurentic Forum, emphasised the value of the work on display: “This is an exceptional exhibition that deserves to be seen. It offers a powerful opportunity to reflect, remember and connect with an important part of our shared history that still resonates today.”