Celtic culture celebration

Guided tours of a special exhibition that will be of interest to all lovers of the Celtic tradition, in the Riverbank Arts Centre in Newbridge, will take place on Thursday 6 April, in advance of a showing for the following week.



An Leabhar Mòr - The Great Book of Gaelic - is an international celebration of contemporary Celtic culture, in the form of a 21st century Book of Kells that brings together the work of more than 200 visual artists, poets and calligraphers from Scotland and Ireland.

The exhibit has generated an international touring exhibition of 100 artworks, a book publication, a website (www.leabharmor.net), a TV documentary, a series of BBC radio programmes, a music CD, a schools pack and an events programme.

Some 100 poems were nominated for the project by great poets and writers such as Seamus Heaney and Hamish Henderson, and each poem represents such topics as comedy, tragedy, love, death and even the mundane. The project involved a hundred visual artists, fifty from each country, working in collaboration with a small team of calligraphers in response to the poems.

Fifty of the resulting pieces will be on display between 7-15 April. Also, we will be providing tours of the exhibit, for one afternoon only, on Thursday 6 April for all who are interested. Something for all the family.

The final outcome, following the exhibition tour, will be a visual anthology in one bound volume that will become a permanent visitor attraction.

Sinead Redmond.