Béaloideas
Mona O'Driscoll

Mona O’Driscoll
Béaloideas
1 to 19 October 2026

Join Mona in conversation in the Courtyard Gallery on:

Saturday 3 October at 12 noon
Thursday 8 October at 11.30am
Tuesday 13 October at 1.00pm
Free entry – no booking necessary

First presented on Sherkin Island, Béaloideas by Mona O’Driscoll is a multidisciplinary project exploring the relationship between place, memory, oral history and community. Developed over three years in collaboration with Sherkin island residents, the project documents 158 local landmarks, many of which exist beyond the boundaries of official cartography, preserving the stories, memories and place names associated with them.

The exhibition comprises four interconnected elements. At its centre is a large-scale map based on an 1845 map of Sherkin Island, overlaid with GPS coordinates marking 158 landmarks, including pathways, shortcuts, stiles, gates, gaps, wells and other locally significant sites. An interactive version of the map, accessible through the Sherkin Island website, allows visitors to explore these locations and hear the stories associated with them. A series of prints presents each of the mapped landmarks individually, while Dawn Mass, a video work, responds to a story of community celebration and shared memory.

Béaloideas is the Irish word for folklore or oral tradition, literally translated as ‘mouth education’. The title reflects the project’s central concern with the transmission of knowledge through spoken memory and lived experience. By recording local stories and place names, Mona creates a resource that is at once an archive, an educational tool and an artistic interpretation of the island’s living heritage.

Working with the islanders, Mona documented and geo-tagged each landmark using GPS coordinates, bringing together scientific precision and local knowledge. The resulting map records not only physical locations but an emotional and cultural geography of Sherkin Island. Behind each coordinate lies an oral history: stories and memories shared by residents that give meaning and voice to paths, landmarks and places that might otherwise remain undocumented.

Central to the project was the traditional practice of scóraíocht—a social gathering in a local home involving conversation, storytelling, games or music. During the project’s presentation on Sherkin Island, Mona invited islanders and visitors to participate in a scóraíocht as part of Culture Night 2026. These acts of gathering provided a space for memories to surface and stories to be shared, reinforcing the connection between place, community and oral tradition.

By bringing together historical cartography, digital mapping, contemporary image-making, video and recorded oral histories, Béaloideas considers how places are measured, remembered and inhabited. It invites visitors to explore Sherkin Island step by step, discovering the layers of knowledge and experience embedded within its landscape.

Listen to the oral history of each coordinate online on www.sherkinisland.ie

Dawn Mass

A film by Mona O’Driscoll

Videography by Giles Carey

The video work Dawn Mass originated in a story shared by islander Lizzie O’Connor, who recalled walking to Christmas morning Mass before electricity reached Sherkin Island. In the darkness, the route to the church was illuminated by the moving glow of storm lanterns carried by neighbours. On arriving at the church, the lanterns became one of its primary sources of light, illuminating simple decorations of holly and ivy and the nativity crib as the community gathered for Mass.

Mona O’Driscoll’s response to this recollection captures the visual beauty of the procession and the sense of wonder, devotion and communal belonging contained within her memory. Through the moving image, the lanterns become a metaphor for collective memory: individual points of light gathering to illuminate a shared experience. Dawn Mass evokes a way of life shaped by close community, faith, landscape and the rhythms of island life, translating one personal memory into a wider reflection on belonging and place.

Sherkin Island 6-inch map, surveyed in 1842, engraved and printed in 1845. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland. This works includes the original 1845 map with contemporary GPS grid references.

Béaloideas is supported by Creative Places: The West Cork Islands; Cork County Council; Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre and Sherkin Island Development Society.

Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre acknowledges the financial support of The Arts Council  / An Chomhairle Ealaíon in making these exhibitions possible.