Lecture Two - 'Forgetting To Remember: Making Folk Memory Projects in Limerick and Louth' Tracy Fahy

Our Second lecture takes place on Monday, March 31st at 7pm in T1.16. 

Tracy Fahey from Limerick School of Art and Design will speak on her work with Memory project and it promises to be a really interesting insight into memory projects within fine art practice.

Forgetting to Remember: Making Folk Memory Projects in Limerick and Louth

The talk focuses specifically on two projects currently under way through Tracy Fahey’s fine art collective Gothicise, an open, collaborative, multidisciplinary network that investigates sites and stories that are concerned with otherness, the uncanny and sometimes the downright strange (www.gothicise.weebly.com)

In this talk she will analyse Remembering Wildgoose Lodge, a Louth-based project investigating individual, family and community memories of a traumatic historical event, and the different modes of investigation and enquiry guided by this work. There is also a presentation of a second project now in its genesis that relates directly to Limerick’s folklore and culture. Titled Waking St. Munchin, this project deals with the alleged city-curse of Limerick and is being carried out in conjunction with Open House Limerick, Dr. Niamh Nic Gabhann from the MA in Festive Arts programme in UL and postgraduate researcher in folklore and fine art, Marian Sheehan.  Audience participation and contributions are warmly welcomed!

The analysis of both of these projects deals with the role of memory projects within fine art practice, and in particular the different methodologies employed in social engagement and community negotiation. It also looks at the wider value of folk memory in constituting community identity and culture.

Tracy Fahey (bio)

Tracy Fahey is Head of Department in Fine Art and Head of Centre of Postgraduate Studies in Limerick School of Art and Design. She has previously worked as Head of Department of Humanities, IT Carlow and Head of Faculty of Design, Griffith College Dublin. She currently sits on the Board of the Hunt Museum (2012) and the Limerick Printmakers (2012). 

Her main area of research is the Gothic, specifically Irish Gothic and the Gothic nature of domestic space.  She has delivered papers on the Gothic at conferences in University of Aarhus, Denmark, University of Stirling, University of Cardiff, University of Northampton, Trinity and All Saints College, Leeds.  In the last year she has given papers at the Studies in Gothic Fiction conference in San Diego, the International Gothic Association conference in University of Guildford and the Art and Geography conference in NUIG.   She is a founder member of the Gothic Association of New Zealand and Australia (2013) and the Irish Network for Gothic Scholars (2013).   In 2013 she both established the LSAD research centre ACADEmy (Art, Curatorial, Applied Design & Education research centre) and together with Prof.Donna Lee Brien (Central Queensland University, Australia)  founded CAIRN, the Creative Australasian Irish Research Network (2013).  Her short stories have been published in several anthologies; Impossible Spaces (2013), Hauntings (2014), Girl at the End of the World (2014) and Darkest Minds (2014).  Currently she is working with Dr. Maria Beville of Mary Immaculate College on the organisation of a Limerick conference, Locating the Gothic (forthcoming, October 2014)

In 2010 she founded the Limerick-based collaborative gothic art practice, Gothicise,(www.gothicise.weebly.com) who have produced ghostwalk/ghosttalk (2010), The Double Life of Catherine Street (2011) and A Haunting (2011) and are currently working on two memory projects, Remembering Wildgoose Lodge (2013 - present) and Waking St. Munchin (2014).