Although fundamentally a musician, Wickham’s practice is eclectic and includes disciplines of music, film, animation, painting, drawing and printmaking. Like the different voices in a choir, he feels the need for these broad range of disciplines to articulate ideas.
Tempest (Fifty Nights in a Dublin Hotel) is a solo exhibition of Steve Wickham’s paintings and features excerpts from his Dublin diary written on the walls of the Toradh Gallery in the Courthouse in Kells, Co. Meath.
He explains:
“The exhibition began as a visual diary during my stay in ‘REZz’ in Temple Bar during the rehearsals and performances of Deirdre Kinahan’s play ‘Tempesta’. I was the musician for the run of the play and played a supporting role as Papa Rosen. I’m used to staying in hotels, however this time I was taken aback when the concierge said to me ‘Sir, I see you are with us for fifty nights.’ And so, it began, my reacquaintance with Dublin after thirty years away. It was interesting to see what had changed and what remained. It was complicated and I’m still processing this.
Painting helped me through the journey as I negotiated my past. In many ways the act of painting is that of memory capture and diary keeping.
Deirdre’s play ‘Tempesta’ is a meditation on war. Early in the play’s run the war started in Gaza and the war in Ukraine was now going on for several years. I started to read ‘Boys in Zinc’ by Svetlana Alexievich, a fantastic book that captures the futility of war, and together, all this fed into the visual.
The claustrophobic hotel room meant I had to keep the work small. I used acrylic which dried quickly and was less messy and smelly than oil (which I love). The diary rapidly filled – scenes from the play, characters in the play, and the streets of Temple bar. I really connected with my home town. This area was my haunt when I was a young student musician. Growing up in Dublin, I was an urbanite, both working and playing in the city. I now live in a quite rural part of Sligo and I don’t usually meet any people during the course of the day.
I made that decision to move to the west after recording two albums in Connemara with the Waterboys, ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ and ‘Room to Roam’. Peat fires, the fiddle music sessions, lively conversations amidst the roar of the Atlantic Ocean was all a heady aphrodisiac.
All our children were reared in Sligo and it is undoubtedly my home. However, Dublin is somehow embedded deep within me. This extended stay in temple bar brought this connectedness back to me. This downtown area was very familiar. This is where I learned to play violin and studied music in the College of Music Chatham Row in the 60s and 70’s. It’s also the place where I worked after leaving school. It’s where I played gigs with a multitude of early bands. Where we went drinking and carousing.
It was a profound experience to witness the changes in the city from the perspective of a life lived out in the west of Ireland. Dublin seems to have become a ‘Dublin Experience’ theme park with troupes of excited tourists seeking out the vibrations of a thriving modern island culture. Also, the heart-breaking poverty (there was always heart-breaking poverty) manifesting itself these days through open use of hard drugs on streets among the homeless. These are landscapes of a sort. Small Landscapes of the heart.” Steve Wickham
Presented by Meath County Council Arts Office, ‘Tempest (Fifty Nights in a Dublin Hotel)’ will be on display at Toradh Gallery 2, Kells Courthouse and Tourism Cultural Hub from November 11th 2024 – January 31st, 2025.
Exhibition Details
Kells Courthouse Tourism and Cultural Hub, Headfort Place, Kells, Co Meath, A82 RY62
046-9097000
https://www.meath.ie/council/council-services/arts/toradh-galleries
Opening Hours:
Mon- Fri: 9:00am – 5:00pm (closed for lunch 1:30-2:00pm)
Saturday: 9:00am – 4:00pm (closed for lunch 1:30-2:00pm)
Entry Free
Further information can be obtained by contacting the Arts Office at artsoffice@meathcoco.ie or 046 9097000.
