The School of Hibernia (after Raphael)
Friday 1 to Monday 11 November 2024
James O’Driscoll Gallery

This project by the art collective Na Cailleacha, is part of their ongoing aim to increase visibility for women artists and to challenge patriarchy. They have taken a key work of European Renaissance art history, Raphael’s School of Athens (Vatican Museum 1509–1511), and recreated it to reflect a more inclusive world view.

Raphael’s original fresco drew together the dominant influences on academia deriving from Ancient Greece and led by such male figures as Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Euclid and Archimedes. Na Cailleacha’s full-scale re-enactment of Raphael’s School of Athens with an all-women cast is set in Trinity College Dublin. This image features forty-one contemporary Irish women from a variety of age profiles and backgrounds, all leaders in their fields, who have contributed to human knowledge. Together they draw on traditions and learning from other continents, abilities and social backgrounds, including history, the arts, sciences, medicine, engineering, the law, economics, social activism and sport, that both subvert and expand on the earlier traditions.

The School of Hibernia (after Raphael) was created at The Museum Building (1854–7), Trinity College Dublin on 9 March 2024. This great architectural monument to education was designed by Thomas Deane and Benjamin Woodward. No setting could be more appropriate, with its architectural references to the original painting and the wider references to academic history that the building and Trinity College embody.

Na Cailleacha is a collective of six visual artists: Helen Comerford, Barbara Freeman, Patricia Hurl, Rachel Parry, Therry Rudin, Gerda Teljeur; one jazz musician Carole Nelson and curator/writer Catherine Marshall who have come together to explore being female, older creatives.

The figures of Artemis and Minerva in the background are the work of Helen Comerford, sculptor, painter and member of Na Cailleacha, who died very suddenly earlier this year. Thanks to David Lambert and Medb Lambert for their inclusion in this exhibition.

A documentary film of the project is in preparation by Therry Rudin of Na Cailleacha and will be released later this year, while a print of the event (limited to an edition of 10) is also available.

The image was created by Ros Kavanagh (www.roskavanagh.com)

For a full list of participants please see the key to the image devised by Cormac Larkin https://nacailleacha.weebly.com/key-to-school-of-hibernia.html

WCAC acknowledges the financial support of Arts Council Ireland and Cork County Council in making these exhibitions possible.