About this episode
Please Support Our Show: Join us on SubstackLove KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution (via Substack) helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together.With your paid subscription, you'll be invited to our next mythically inspired online writing retreat on June 25!Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is MedicineOUR STORYAs part of our Myth Workers and Culture Makers series, the artist Rónán Ó Raghallaigh takes us on a tour of the landscape and storyscape of his native County Kildare and neighboring County Wicklow. This area was home to Fionn mac Cumhaill (AKA Finn McCool) and his legendary band of warriors, the Fianna.OUR GUESTRónán Ó Raghallaigh is an artist and researcher who received an MFA from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin in 2021. He has exhibited his work in solo and group exhibitions in Ireland and internationally.Working through painting and performance, Rónán’s practice engages with pre-Christian Ireland as a means for contemporary postcolonial action. He visits sacred sites and researches their archaeology, history and folklore, providing a spring for new work. Paintings are made in the studio, while performances on site are filmed or live. He is re-learning the Irish language, and uses it during performances, for work-titles and in written texts interwoven with English and his vernacular dialect.Rónán’s work is a constant act of remembering and cultivating alternative ways of being in response to colonialism, Christianity and industry. Storytelling and ritual become a practice for befriending our environment, considering identity and encouraging healing.Find Rónán on Instagram: @ronan.o.raghallaigh and at ronanoraghallaigh.comOUR CONVERSATIONRónán’s approaching to creative visionary art work includes accessing the consciousness through channeling and trance work. It’s a form of DIY spirituality and decolonization work.Logainmneacha: Irish placenamesThe power of well-visited sacred sites where others are also engaging with spiritual work, and also being with folks who are simply out enjoying a beautiful dayThe research and revival of imbas forosnai and other druidic practices to access inspirationThe power of naming. In 1972 Brian O'Doherty staged a performance called Name Change, in which he changed his name to “Patrick Ireland” in protest of Bloody Sunday in Derry.
