A Book
As a book the project is published in an accessible and easily understood manner. Its literary form, once more, lends a certain authority to the words within.
Communion as a publication is a key object – one that ties its various forms together, and provides an entryway into this part of my practice. Moreover, the act of writing its introduction allows me to reflect upon the work and consider how it shall evolve.
Typeface: Seanchló (Galechló)
Introductory Text:
Communion (2023) is an archival project examining Irish identity at the beginning of the new millennium. Its participants have been asked to recall making their First Holy Communion; a key rite of passage in traditional Irish life and a lens through which the project’s enquiry is focused. Presented in book form, these collected interviews shed light upon the country’s conservative past; its increasingly globalised future; and the frenzied Celtic Tigerism of the transitionary period in question.
That the domestic is inherently political should be of little revelation to many who spend the holiday season furiously debating around kitchen tables. The academic David Llyod points out that religious, nationalistic, and political beliefs are often disseminated via domestic artefacts (1). Browsing a souvenir shop in any major city, or indeed the Vatican’s very own, reveals the myriad forms through which this truth is enacted. Considered in this light, the Communion portrait played such a role in Irish households for most of the 20th-century. A photo-object created through Catholic ritual that further enacted Catholic power in the home. The activation of this item in the domestic sphere demarcating lines of belief tied to conservative social values. For a gay Irish emigrant visiting home in the 1980s; this idealised portrait of a younger Catholic self would have been fraught with symbolism. Its proud display, perhaps, indicating lack of acceptance towards the returnee’s identity.
Times have changed however, and with them the symbolic potency of the Communion portrait has waned. Such a shift can be seen in the photographs (or often photographs of photographs) submitted for this publication. The majority of participants provided whatever image was easily accessible, and many had to do some (much appreciated) digging to find any image at all. Most of these photographs bear little resemblance to the professionally taken portraits that once adorned living room walls. This absence of official portraiture revealing the decline in value that Irish families place on such mementos, and by extension the dwindling importance given to religious rituals as milestone markers in life.
As to who we are now and where we are headed? That is a question far beyond the remit of this book; and one with which many countries grapple in the face of globalisation. First Holy Communion, as ostentatious pageantry, lended itself perfectly to a time of rapid economic growth and crass expenditure. Looking past the pomp and procession, the importance of such ritual to community-building comes into focus. Many participants mourn the loss of this social aspect and the positive bonds it built. Others, however, remain hopeful in the face of the country’s progressive trajectory. Freed from its conservative past, they see a clean slate to use in creating new kinds of ritual; perhaps rooted in acceptance and solidarity over dogma.
(1) Llyod, D. (1999) ‘The Recovery of Kitsch’ in
Ireland After History. Cork: Cork University Press.
Layout and typographic explorations: