CAG.3228 Gary Coyle, Lost in a Ceo, 2022, video and vinyl wallpaper in collaboration with David Smith (Atelier Projects). Commissioned by Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) and supported by An Chomhairle Ealaíon / Arts Council of Ireland. Purchased, 2023. © the artist.  

WORK OF THE WEEK 

Sometimes it’s good to be lost, and if you find yourself seated with Lost in a Ceo (2022) by Gary Coyle, then even better! 

Combining drawing, photography, cultural iconography, and moving imagery, Coyle’s short film is a personal, and at times autobiographical, meditation on the idea of ‘The West’ and Irish identity. 

With his astute observations and wry humour, the artist begins his ‘visual voyage’ on a ceo (mist or fog) bound Blasket Island and considers the legacy of seanchaí Máiréad ‘Peig’ Sayers (1873-1958), whose birthday will be marked later this week (29 March).  

Of course, generations of people in Ireland – including the artist – have a school-based experience of Peig’s eponymous book, and through his film Coyle addresses these mixed feelings in an act of reclamation and admiration.  

Commissioned by the Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI), the film installation itself is surrounded by a vinyl wallpaper print of the artist’s digital drawing depicting the rocks around the Blasket Islands, though filtered through the lens of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Western European visual representations of Orientalism.  

Coyle’s film conjures an array of images and musings, ending on shamrock painted streets in North American suburbia, in his attempt to grapple with – and tease out – the concept of ‘Irishness’.  

Gary Coyle (b.1965) embraces various media in his practice, including drawing, photography, and spoken word/performance. He has exhibited widely, both in Ireland and internationally, and is a member of both Aosdána and the Royal Hibernian Academy.   

Lost in a Ceo (2022) by Gary Coyle is featured in A MATTER OF TIME until 3 June. 

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