Onsight 24/25: Silent Objects/Spoken Lives

Poets Geraldine Mitchell, Martina Evans and Sean Borodale have been selected for commissions as part of Onsight 24/25: Silent Objects/Spoken Lives.

The project is a joint initiative by Mayo County Council Arts Service, the National Museum of Ireland and Poetry Ireland.

The commissioned poets will engage with artefacts in the Irish Folklife Collection at the National Museum of Ireland, Turlough Park, Castlebar. The experience of visiting a museum is often guided by the use of language. The cataloguing and description of objects informs the exhibition panels and labels and these convey in turn, aspects about the objects on view. Through the use of poetry, the poets will explore how features of an artefact’s character and context can be revealed which are sometimes lost when they go on display.

The project seeks to explore also how the use of language can elevate the experience of the visually impaired visitor. This can be through the use of Alt (or alternative) Text, short lines of text which describe artefacts. The work of the poets will also seek to draw out the tactile qualities of the objects on display, qualities often at a remove from the visitor experience.

Mayo County Council Arts Service and the National Museum of Ireland are excited to welcome the commissioned poets to the Museum to explore and research the collections, engage with the local community, and create works for display in the National Museum at Turlough Park.

Onsight is a long running initiative between Mayo County Council Arts Service and the National Museum of Ireland. It commissions artists across a range of mediums to create site specific artworks and instalments inspired by or reflecting on the National Folklife Collection.

The 2024/2025 programme is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Poetry Ireland and Mayo Artsquad.

About the poets

Geraldine Mitchell

Dublin-born poet and writer Geraldine Mitchell is the author of five collections of poetry, her most recent being Naming Love (Arlen House, 2024). She lives on the Mayo coast, not far from Louisburgh. Geraldine won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 2008 and her poetry is widely published and anthologised. She has also written two novels for young readers and Deeds Not Words (Town House 1997), the biography of Muriel Gahan (1897-1995), who was a champion of rural women and the traditional crafts in Ireland.

Speaking on the project Geraldine says:

"I see this project as a richly imaginative way of introducing the often hidden, or little known, gems of the National Museum’s Country Life Collection to a wider public, in particular to people with visual or other sensory impairments. The challenge and opportunity, through words, to give priority to senses other than the visual - touch, taste, hearing, smell - in conveying the essence and beauty of made objects, is exciting.”

Martina Evans

Martina Evans was born in Cork and lives in London. She is the author of 13 books of poetry and prose. Her latest narrative poem, The Coming Thing (Carcanet 2023) is shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry. She is poetry critic for The Irish Times and a Fellow of Royal Society of Literature.

Speaking on the project, Martina says:

"I feel extremely privileged to be chosen for this commission which allows me the time and opportunity to engage fully with the rich array of artefacts in the Country Life museum. I hope to transfer the stored magic of these objects into living poems which will enhance the readers vicarious experience of the past, releasing a dynamic sense of the lives of the people who worked with them.”

Sean Borodale

Sean Borodale works as a writer, poet and artist. He has four collections of poetry published with Jonathan Cape. His debut, Bee Journal, was shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize and Costa Book Awards and he was selected as one of twenty UK Poetry Book Society Next Generation Poets. 'Mighty Beast', a documentary poem for BBC Radio 3 about cattle markets, won the Radio Academy Gold Award for Best Feature or Documentary. He has been Northern Arts Fellow at the Wordsworth Trust, Oscar Wilde Visiting Fellow at Trinity College Dublin and inaugural Writer-in-Residence at Portiuncula University Hospital. He lives in Sligo.

Speaking on the project Sean says:

"I look forward to meeting some of the artefacts in the Country Life collection, to searching for signs of their making, use and between-times, to listen in for what resonated around them in the fleeting time of their people, when they had company. I’m excited to have this opportunity now to add to the texture of the museum’s interpretation, and to being for a while a part of the life of the museum.”