Galway Independent
Wednesday, 19 September 2007
Over 100 artists donate work to new cancer centre
Written by Marie Madden
Over 100 artists have donated works to Inis Aoibhinn, the new cancer support centre at University Hospital Galway.
Bernadette Madden, Vicki Crowley, John Behan and Galway photographer Joe O Shaughnessy are among the group that contributed to the Inis Aoibhinn art collection.
The collection was co-ordinated by Galway�s Kenny Gallery, who contacted the artists involved and asked them to donate their work.
According to Conor Kenny, the overall effect of the collection is �calming and therapeutic� and the response from the contributors was overwhelmingly positive.
�We wrote a letter to about 100 artists�and it happened instantly,� he said. More than 60 contributions were framed at a discount rate by Martin and John Maloney and writer and philosopher John O'Donohue paid tribute to the instigators of the project for putting together something that was "not an attendant luxury but an inner necessity" for people experiencing serious illness.
"When you are ill, you need the most refined, dextrous presence,� Mr O'Donohue said. �Just as all the rational structures have to be left when people are diagnosed with an illness, which leaves them on new ground, so artists also try to move outside the quotidian, daily round.�
�A piece of art meets you in a way that nothing else meets you,� Mr O'Donohue continued, adding that art �speaks the language� that the souls of those dealing with illness had to �learn to be acquainted with�.