Wexford's open window

When Wexford Arts Centre opened 35 years ago, it was the first institution of its kind in Ireland, nurturing local talent and bringing work from around the world to the town. ARMINTA WALLACEcelebrates with some of those who have made the centre buzz

'RAINY DAYS, November nights, slippery streets, sad broken sailors, pointless conversations and long grey afternoons." Set in Wexford in the 1960s, Billy Roche's novel, Tumbling Down, paints a picture of the town which, in its grimmer moments, can be grim indeed. But the Wexford of Tumbling Down is also a place of discussion and debate, of song and story, of characters and – above all – of change.

Such was the Wexford which gave birth, in 1974, to Ireland’s first arts centre; and Roche is one of a stready stream of first-class writers, among them John Banville, Colm Tóibín, Eoin Colfer and Peter Murphy, who have also emerged from the town’s artistic crucible.

This year the centre has reached the ripe old age of 35, and on a fine evening in May, as the arts community from Wexford and beyond gathers to celebrate the occasion, a buzz of conversation rises in the beautiful Pillar Room of Cornmarket House.

Light streams through the 18th-century stone windows on to the wooden floors and white walls, causing the current visual art exhibition – a two-person show of large paintings in muted, heathery tones by Angela Fewer and small white sculptures by Michael Moore – to pulsate and glow. It’s an absolutely contemporary scene, which might be taking place in any town or city in Ireland – or, for that matter, in London or New York.

In the 1970s, however, few towns in Ireland had reached that stage of evolution where they were ready to set up an arts centre. In this respect, Wexford was way ahead of its time. In the upstairs gallery of Cornmarket House, a retrospective exhibition, Celebrating the Past With a Vision for the Future, takes note of the many and varied activities which resulted: a film society; a camera club; a theatre company; a dance company; a Christmas craft fair; the Wexford Artists' Book Exhibition; a children's festival; debates, poetry readings and TS Eliot's Murder in the Cathedralin Selskar Abbey; a pioneering programme of community arts development.

Down in the Pillar Room, old friends cluster in animated groups. Many of those who have supported the centre over the years are present, including former directors Aileen le Brocquy and Patrick Sutton, and the Mayor of Wexford, Ted Howlin, decked out in his chains of office. Casting a somewhat cooler eye on the proceedings is writer and local historian Nicky Furlong.

“There was no buzz here 30 years ago,” he observes wryly. “You might get 12 at a gathering like this, if you were lucky. I would have to say that the arts centre is an offshoot of the Wexford Opera Festival, which I’ve always considered to be as good as a university in the town, because it raised the bar on culture. With the enormous amount of extra events in its ancillary programme, there was an irreversible thrust forward. The festival has been responsible for an enormous amount of social good.”

THE WEXFORD-BORNdirector of the Arts Council, Mary Cloake, has come to perform the official opening of the retrospective exhibition. Having come of age in the 1970s, when Ireland was somewhat under-provided in the arts department, she recalls Wexford's arts centre as a beacon of hope.

“The milieu it created was a place where it was all right to be alternative,” she says. “And it ensured that Wexford was a much ‘cooler’ place than, say, New Ross or Enniscorthy.”

Three aspects of the centre’s ongoing achievement have, she adds, stuck with her over the years. The first was its staunch commitment to contemporary dance, not exactly a major art form in rural Ireland, even now.

“It’s based around the body, and in Ireland we have very unusual relationships with our bodies,” Cloake says.

Second was the centre’s promotion of community arts, also quite a rare priority in the Ireland of the 1970s and 1980s. Thirdly, Cloake recalls one event which, she insists, changed her life.

“In 1987 I shuffled in through the door and up the stairs to the theatre to see a new play. It was by Billy Roche, who was a very cool guy at the time – he was a rock star – and it was the experience of a group of lads from the town, rendered at the highest level of artistic experience. It was ourselves, reflected and honoured.”

It’s this combination of the familiar and the unfamiliar, of community engagement and offbeat perspective, which made Wexford Arts Centre work. So says Mairéad Furlong, who has lived in the town for many years and whose own abiding passion for the visual arts was nurtured in childhood at the National Gallery in Dublin.

“We were lucky enough to live just around the corner, and on rainy days my mother would chase us in there out of the way – so we knew where every painting was. But outside of Dublin, in those days, there were no art galleries whatsoever.

“When they first decided to show exhibitions here in Wexford, they looked for work at the very highest level. One of the first exhibitions they had was from the collection of Gordon Lambert. Then they had a show of paintings from great Irish houses. And Sotheby’s came over as well. But along with that, they had many good local artists. So they were always combining the two, which is very important. I mean, if you don’t have the community behind you, an arts centre won’t last.

“This was the first centre to be formed in Ireland and there was a big debate at the time about what kind of centre it was going to be. That all had to be very carefully thought out. Was it going to be very much the upper end of the market? Was it going to be a local institution? There was great care devoted to sorting out the mix. And it worked, because the community became involved.”

But it was never insular. Historically, Wexford has always been a part of Ireland where innovation came as much from outside – whether from Scandinavia, courtesy of the Vikings, or from neighbouring France – as from within. It’s appropriate, therefore, that the current chairwoman of the arts centre board, Karla Sanchez O’Connell, is Mexican.

“Moving from Mexico City to the countryside in Ireland was quite a shock,” she says. “I’m an art historian, and I was working in several museums both in Mexico and the US. I had a very active life in the museum world and in education.”

When she married an Irishman she needed to find an outlet for that energy on this side of the Atlantic, and Wexford, happily, fitted the bill. Does she have a highlight of her time at the arts centre? “Wow, I don’t know,” is the response. “It’s hard to say. But I think one of the things has been just seeing the difference that a painting, a concert, a play can have in someone’s life. I think that art is very much a way of getting to know the world through the eyes of somebody else. Through art, you learn to be patient and to listen to somebody else talking, giving opinions which may be completely different from yours. It’s a very interesting dialogue and, for me, to see that happening here in Wexford is fascinating.”

IN THE THEATREupstairs, the celebration has turned into a performance, with singing, dance, a short film and a reading from Tumbling Downby Billy Roche.

At a time when many arts organisations in Ireland are facing an uncertain future, Wexford Arts Centre – the mother of them all – is no different. Even as they celebrate the birthday party, several people recall painful times in the recent past when the centre’s entire organisation had to be unpicked and overhauled, and there has been much talk of adversity and difficult times to come. But, as Mary Cloake points out, it is one of the many roles of the arts centre in Irish towns to provide the consistency which guarantees that the arts become a genuine part of Irish life.

As she ushers Billy Roche on to the stage, the current director of the arts centre, Elizabeth Whyte, gets in a quick plug for the Cáca Milis cabaret, a late-night monthly date with music, comedy, poetry and whatever you’re having yourself, from local artists and special guests.

This month, Wexford Arts Centre’s programme ranges from performances by singer-songwriter Cathy Davey and comedian Colin Murphy to the Doodle-to-Do Club (a visual arts workshop for children aged three to seven) and appearances by musicians from the Congo and China alongside the Wexford metal band Orpheus. A genuine slice of Irish life, 21st-century style.

Cornmarket: Historic Centre

WEXFORD ARTS CENTRE is housed in one of the most distinctive buildings in the town, the solid granite block of Cornmarket House.

“The marketplace out there is the prehistoric marketplace of Loch Garman,” says Nicky Furlong. “To this day, if you want to go out there and sell beads or cameras or linen, you can do so without asking anybody. In the middle of the 1700s, the corporation decided to build a marketplace with facilities upstairs for all sorts of things - lectures, disputes, debates, everything that made an 18th-century winter tolerable. They built this and they left these windows as open archways so that the traders could come in and shelter from the elements. After a while, human nature being what it is, the traders inched out to get ahead of the other fellas, so eventually they were on the street. Then they built upwards.”

In time the trade fell away and the building, known as "the assembly rooms", was used for musical evenings, with Percy French - composer of, among other things, The Mountains of Mourne- appearing there on many occasions. It also served as a civil defence depot.

In the early part of the 20th century the building became the headquarters of Wexford Corporation and was known as the Town Hall. It opened as the Wexford Arts Centre in 1974.