Between 1845 and 1853, around 1.8 million people fleeing An Gorta Mór (the Great Hunger) arrived in Liverpool through Clarence Dock. Many of them stayed. This year, Liverpool Irish Festival (15–25 October) starts from that history and asks a simple but political question: what does it mean to arrive, to stay and to be seen?
The theme, I Am Here, is a declaration of presence. Visual artists will recognise it. Making something, showing it and putting your name to it is already a way of saying “I am here.”
At Bluecoat Display Centre, In the Window: Adam Frew and Maureen Lynch (1–31 October, free) pairs County Derry porcelain with Dún Laoghaire silver. Two makers working in two materials, from two corners of the island, share one window on School Lane. Together they show contemporary Irish craft as a living practice rather than a heritage display.
At Victoria Gallery and Museum, The St Brigid’s Arms (from 2 October for six months, free) opens a fictional Irish pub created by and for women of Irish heritage. The Irish pub is one of the most familiar, and most commercialised, images of Irishness abroad. Here, women reclaim the space as one they built for themselves, in the gallery now and digitally in the future. Tours with Q&As run on 20 and 22 October at 11am.
Public sculpture is part of the Festival too. On Sunday 25 October, the An Gorta Mór vigil walks from Clarence Dock to St Luke’s Bombed Out Church for the annual memorial at 1pm. St Luke’s is home to Eamonn O’Doherty’s Great Hunger Commemoration memorial, a work with siblings in Dublin (and across the world) and one well worth a closer look.
Anyone whose practice involves bearing witness, or helping others represent themselves, should also see Testimony (Saturday 7 November, The Bluecoat, free). Aoife Kelleher’s documentary centres survivors of the Magdalene Laundries and Mother and Baby Homes. It screens with Fréa’s Renewing Roots programme and is followed by a conversation.
For practitioners, the Festival’s Cultural Connectedness Exchange Network (#CCEN) holds its annual practice day at Victoria Gallery and Museum on Thursday 15 October. It is free, but booking is essential. It brings together Irish and Northern Irish artists and the commissioners and organisations who work with them.
Why does this matter to Liverpool’s visual arts community?
Irish creativity is part of this city’s fabric, not a guest in it. Many Liverpool families, including many multi-heritage families, carry Irishness alongside other identities. I Am Here invites artists and audiences to notice who is visible in our galleries and public spaces, who isn’t, and what changes when people represent themselves on their own terms.
Full programme: liverpoolirishfestival.com/events
