Seán Kissane – författare

Derek Jarman was a very English rebel, a maverick and radical artist whose unique and distinctive voice was honed protesting against the strictures of life in post-war Britain. In an innovative practice that roamed freely across all varieties of media, Jarman refused to live and die quietly. He defined bohemian London life in the 1960s, exploded into queer punk in the 70s and with unbounded creative rage, ingenuity and sheer personal charm, he triumphed over an atmosphere of fear and ignorance in the age of AIDS to produce timeless, eloquent works of art which resonate still more strongly today. This major new publication offers a definitive overview of Derek Jarman’s life and work. It covers all aspects of his oeuvre, from his features to his Super-8 films, his painting, design for theatre, poetry, gardening, memoir and political activism. Protest! contains excerpts from Jarman’s own writings, short interviews with friends and collaborators and newly commissioned texts from a wide range of contributors including John Maybury, Peter Tatchell, Philip Hoare, Sir Norman Rosenthal and Olivia Laing. Generously illustrated with previously unseen images drawn from Jarman’s personal archive and unseen works from all stages of his career, this book brings the reader fresh and surprising insights into the world of this much-loved artist.

"A strange and exotic presence in Irish art," "standing alone" and "very un-Irish" were some of the epithets used to describe Patrick Hennessy (1915–80), one of Ireland’s most successful realist painters in the postwar period. Hennessy was educated at Dundee College of Art and in 1937 won a scholarship to Paris where he worked for a time under Fernand Léger. He fused the Surrealist subjectivity he learned there with realism to create works unlike anything being made at the time, including portraits, landscapes, equine studies and still-lifes that found a steady market in Ireland, the UK and the USA. But he painted male nudes and portraits of handsome men that puzzled critics who branded him "something of an outsider." At a time when people were persecuted for their sexual orientation, he made works containing narratives of homosexual life that align him with the queer-art movement that emerged in the 1970s. This publication sheds light on this critically neglected artist and reflects on what his work might mean to an audience today.