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Speeches

Remarks at the Opening of a Galway Art Exhibition at the Galerie du Faouëdic

Lorient, Brittany, 2nd August 2014

Ambassador Montgomery,

Aotrou Maer an Oriant,

Mayor of Galway,

Messieurs le Président et le Directeur du Festival Interceltique,

Itronezed hag Aotrounez,

Mignoned Breizh hag Iwerzhon,

Ur blijadur vras eo bout ganeoc’h en Oriant, e Breizh.

Go raibh maith agaibh as ucht bhur gcuid flaithiúlachta agus bhur fíorchaoin fáilte.

Sabina and I are delighted to be here on this 44th Emvod ar Gelted, this great annual celebration of the vibrant musical traditions passed on to us, constantly reworked and reworn, by the peoples from the Western fringes of Europe. It is a particular pleasure, and an honour, to attend this edition of the Festival, which fetes Ireland as its “Nation of Honour.”

It is also of personal significance that the Festival Interceltique, the Galerie du Faouëdic, and my old friend James Harrold of Galway City Council have come together to exhibit a selection of works of art emanating from the place I call home, Galway / Gaillimh – a place that has never ceased to inform and inspire my outlook on the world. So today I am delighted to see Galway being brought home to the people of Lorient, and to the many visitors to this Festival, through the creations of some of our talented artists. Some of these artists were original founders of Art Space and they are joined by a new generation of Art Space activists. Art Space was part of “L’Imaginaire irlandais” in France, which was a French-Irish collaboration when I was Minister for Culture in the 1990s.

I want to thank all of those who contributed to the exhibition we are opening today. I believe that we can all look forward to walking the streets of Galway in a few moments, here in Lorient, thanks to Jane Talbot’s compelling photographs.

In our globalised and fluid world, place-making remains an important dimension of artistic practice. A sense of place, of home, of neighbourhood, is, I believe, critical to our living together, and the arts have distinctive powers to explore, mark, expand and transform that sense of community.

Jane Talbot’s photographs; Brian Bourke’s magnificent paintings; the engravings, prints and paintings produced by the five artists who form the Akin Collective, those of the artists represented in the “Galway Dream of Stone” exhibition, as well as the live performances of Galway’s legendary street theatre company, Macnas, represent as many artistic creations that invite us to explore and reflect on that sense of place and community.

All of these works of art, each in its unique and original way, challenge our imagination. They invite new encounters. They trump our notions of belonging and estrangement. They point to discrepancies as well as affinities, uncanny correspondences, between Ireland and Brittany. They bring new forms and images to the abundant ties that exist between Galway and Lorient – ties that were formalised a long time ago, in 1975, when the twinning between Lorient and Galway was established.

Although the two cities have distinct histories, the inhabitants of Galway and Lorient have been able to draw on the commonalities they discern in their respective pasts to build a warm community of twinning, rich with friendships and mutual curiosity: both cities are sea ports; both have a history of trade with distant places – trade with Spain and France for Galway, association with the French East India Company for Lorient; both bear the mark, too, of the interventions of the central power as well as the contribution of the people from their hinterland – Breton speaking for Lorient, and Irish speaking in the case of Galway. In the contemporary period, finally, both municipalities chose to give centrality to the arts and to culture, and the two cities are now internationally renowned for their respective summer festivals.

When I became Mayor of Galway in 1981, it gave me great pleasure to contribute to fostering and strengthening the links between Galway and Lorient. I shared a vision with the people I met here, and with whom I established enduring friendships, including the then Mayor of Lorient, Mr. Jean-Yves Le Drian. I feel confident to say that I hold in common with many in Lorient the conviction that culture, because it is shared, because it is a building block of participatory citizenship, constitutes the bedrock of our public world.

Therefore it is greatly encouraging to find, here in the Galerie du Faouëdic, in this Festival Interceltique, and in so many community initiatives across Brittany, a recognition of the quality of depth, the intensity of vision, the loyalty to the infinite possibilities of human imagination, and the powerful invitation to share, that the practice of the arts can yield.

It is in such spaces of free cultural practice, of generous inter-cultural exchange – exchange of ideas, of skills, of tunes – that utopias can best flourish. And so my wish is that we continue to nurture artistic practices based on non-utilitarian versions of human activity, practices that will not lend themselves to commodification and reification, but will enable us, rather, to envisage new possibilities, to invent new legends for our thriving Celtic culture – and will embolden us to defend the integrity and freedom of that which can be imagined but which has not yet managed to be.

Trugarez evit ho tegemer.

Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.