I’ve been thinking again lately about the visibility and invisibility of Irish art and Irish visual artists abroad – that is outside Ireland, or thar lear as the lexicon in my mind prefers to consider it.
Thar lear is a phrase in Irish/as gaeilge that acknowledges in a vague yet specific way the island nature of this place: that anywhere not here is over there, somewhere across the water, past our shores. Lear is an old Irish word for sea. Thar means beyond or over, and it’s a word that is as much physical gesture and psychological concept as it is geographical. Thar lear can mean beyond as in extra, above and beyond, or passed as in past or beyond death…