Renowned London-based Irish artist Bernard Canavan has announced his first-ever exhibition in Dublin.

Born in 1944, he spent the first four years of his life in Saint Patrick’s, at Temple Hill, a ‘mother and baby home’ in Blackrock, Co. Dublin.

He was rescued, he says, by a charitable middle-aged couple, Mary and Paddy Canavan, from Edgeworthstown, Co. Longford, where he spent the next eleven years.

His birthmother’s name was Helen Power, his father’s Tom Lockhart.  He never met either.

“My birth certificate is a tissue of fictions,” Bernard says, “because my mother was trying to hide the shame that she had borne a child out of wedlock.”

That Catholic Church’s strong grip on the Irish state created attitudes towards sexuality that were hostile, condemnatory and antagonistic to women’s freedom.

In more recent years, Bernard has focused his work on his formative years, a period during which – as he puts it – his presence exemplified and signified sin.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Bernard Canavan (@canavanart)

“These paintings in Theocracy are extraordinarily powerful” - Hot Press. 

“Bernard’s unflinching depictions of clerics reveal the sinister and sometimes violent aspects of the way in which the hierarchy and the Religious Orders treated women and children in Ireland. And they reveal the extent to which the State had handed over authority, in so many respects, to those same representatives of one religion.”

Read the full interview with Bernard Canvan here. 

Like so many of his generation, Bernard boarded the boat to Holyhead in 1959. He has lived a fascinating life - from being employed in a sawmill as a labourer, to working on underground magazines like OZ, Peach News and International Times (IT), and gaining a scholarship to Ruskin College in Oxford.

Painting was his deepest obsession, and he subsequently spent decades painting, from memory, narratives and images from his own experience as an Irish exile in London.

In 2018 the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, recognised Bernard for his cultural endeavours, presenting him with the Presidential Distinguished Service Award for the Irish Abroad.

"Theocracy is a powerful, must-see exhibition for anyone who is determined to challenge the patriarchy that dominated public life in Ireland for so long," Hot Press editor Niall Stokes said, "and still sees religious institutions exerting control over vital aspects of education and health in Ireland – including in the proposed new National Maternity Hospital on the grounds of St. Vincent's Hospital."

Bernard Canavan’s exhibition Theocracy takes place at  The United Arts Club, Dublin 2 and is open to the public Friday, 10 November.