Mairead Mc Clean

21 August – 21 September 2007

Mairéad McClean’s exhibition bell(a)exchange, highlights the important role of communication systems and technologies in the lives of diasporic communities.

A photograph of Teresa O’Connor, the artist’s grandmother, taken in a Montreal photographer’s studio circa 1913, prompted McClean to search for information about her deceased relative’s life at that time. Why did she go to Canada and why did she return to Ireland after 5 years? To find out more McClean planned a trip across the North Atlantic, via freight ship, to follow the same route taken by her grandmother almost a century earlier. On the day before she left, letters written from Canada by Teresa and Ellie, (her sister) were found in an elderly neighbour’s house. These gave McClean some of the clues she was looking for.

Gallery