Memory of a Free Festival

Wexford Arts Centre, in partnership with Ormston House, is pleased to present Memory of a Free Festival. The exhibition will run in the lower and upper galleries from Saturday, 8 August, to Saturday, 3rd October, 2026.

Memory of a Free Festival is a touring exhibition and events programme taking place between March 2026 and March 2027. Conceived by Ormston House, the project responds to the Carnsore Point anti-nuclear festivals that took place in Wexford between 1978 and 1981. Organised by a coalition of groups, the festivals were attended by thousands of people. These legions were unified by their shared opposition to what would have been the first nuclear power plant to be built in Ireland. In addition to musical entertainment and lectures, the free festivals also included workshops and exhibitions. 

Featuring works by Orla Barry, Brian Duggan, and Alanna O’Kelly the exhibition also includes photos by Derek Speirs and original archival material produced by the Irish Anti-Nuclear Movement. The tour launched with a one-day event at Project Arts Centre on 21 March 2026, including contributions from individuals who were involved in organising or performing at the Carnsore festivals.

The first exhibition of Memory of a Free Festival ran in Ormston House from April to June of this year.  Following the Wexford iteration, the exhibition will tour to Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre from 23 January to 17 March, 2027.

Artist’s biographies:

Orla Barry is an artist and shepherd who lived in Brussels for sixteen years but now lives and works on the south coast of rural Wexford. Barry writes, makes video and sound installations, and creates performances. Her work focuses on language, both written and spoken, as well as its visual deconstruction and displacement, via frequently associative techniques. She explores means of communication and on how the complexity of human relationships is able to find a place for itself within this. Fiction, autoethnography, and oral history are blended to reflect on the culture of disconnection from the natural environment, the boundaries of art, and the rural every day.

Brian Duggan trained as a sculptor and now works in video and installation projects. His work seeks to investigate the physical limitations of the immediate environment on the individual. Stress and pressure, ideas of control and where we stand, how we are tied and what binds us, are all continuous references within his artistic practice. Duggan has long concerned himself with questions and difficulties within labour and leisure, history and tradition, politics and popular entertainment. His installations and film work are grounded in material history. A certain theatricality is implemented and, from time to time, results in humorous work that simultaneously makes statements about art, the overlooked individual, and society.

Alanna O’Kelly attended the National College of Art and Design and the Slade School of Art, London. Her practice incorporates sculpture, performance, slide installation and film. Influenced by feminist politics, O’Kelly explores ideas of the psychic conflicts of our shared history and the continuity of tradition. O’Kelly went to Greenham Common in 1983 to take part in ‘Sounds Around the Base’ that had 30,000 to 50,000 women surrounding the 9-mile perimeter fence of the military base. Her work has featured in major group and solo exhibitions since the 1980s and she represented Ireland at the Sao Paulo Biennale in 1996.

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There will be a closing event for the Wexford iteration of Memory of a Free Festival on Saturday, 3 October. Further details to be announced. 

This touring project is organised by Ormston House with funding from the Arts Council of Ireland through the Touring of Work Scheme.

Wexford Arts Centre is supported by the Arts Council and Wexford County Council. Gallery hours are Tuesday to Friday from 10am to 5pm and Saturday from 10am to 4pm.

Images:
Memory of a Free Festival, Ormston House, 2026. Photography: Jed Niezgoda.
Left to right: work by Alanna O’Kelly, Archival Material, Brian Duggan, Derek Speirs, and Orla Barry.