ARRAY COLLECTIVE
Winners of Turner Prize 2021
Turner Prize 2021
Herbert Art Gallery & Museum
29 September 2021 - 12 January 2022
Array are a collective of artists and activists rooted in Belfast. They create collaborative actions in response to social issues - for example, around language, gender and reproductive rights -affecting themselves, their communities and allies. Array reclaim and question traditional identities associated with Northern Ireland in playful ways that merge performance, protest, ancient mythology, photography, installation and video.
The Druithaib’s Ball, a new work for Turner Prize 2021, has been realised twice over. In Belfast it was a wake for the centenary of Ireland’s partition in the Black Box (grassroots venue), and was attended by semi-mythological druids along with a community of artists and activists wearing hand-made costumes.
At the Herbert, the event has been transformed into an immersive installation. An imagined síbín (a ‘pub without permission’) hosts a film created from the Belfast event, and a TV showing Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive. A large canopy styled from banners provides a floating roof. The síbín is approached through a circle of flag poles, that references ancient Irish ceremonial sites and contemporary structures, and is illuminated by a dusk-to-dawn light.
Array invite us into a place of contradictions where trauma, dark humour, frustration and release coexist. It is a place to gather outside the sectarian divides that have dominated the collective memory of the North of Ireland for the last hundred years.
Find out more about items displayed within the síbín here (Dislaimer: contains mature themes and strong language).
‘The Druthaib’s Ball’
Array have also intervened in the Herbert’s collections, inserting an etching of ‘The Druithaib’s Ball’, into Gallery 4.
The Druthaib’s Ball, 24th July 2021, August 2021, Artist’s Proof, Copper plate etching
Bígí linn ag An Druthaib’s Ball --
ceiliúradh don saol agus don marbh;
tórramh ar son an cothrom céad bliain
de chríochdheighilt na hÉireann.
Tugann an eitseáil na daoine, na
cultacha, na bratacha agus na
heachtraí ón bhfíorshaol, ón óiche sin i
mBéal Feirste, le chéile mar aon
nóiméad.
Priontáladh an píosa i Seacourt Print
Workshop le tachaíocht theicniúil agus
mhorálta ó Penny Brewill. Buíochas le
Anna Liesching, Léiritheoir; Emma
Drury; Johanna Leech; Gillian O’Neil,
Coimeádaí Páipéir, Músaem Uladh;
Martin Roberts agus Ali Wells.
Join us at The Druthaib’s Ball – a
celebration of life and death; a wake
for 100 years of Ireland’s partition. The
etching brings together the people,
costumes, banners and real events,
from this night in Belfast, into one
moment.
Printed in Seacourt Print Workshop
with technical and moral support from
Penny Brewill. Thanks to Anna
Liesching, Curator; Emma Drury;
Johanna Leech; Gillian O’Neill, Paper
Conservator, Ulster Museum; Martin
Roberts and Ali Wells.
The Sky Gives Way
The Sky Gives Way Méabh Meir and Emma Brennan The winter solstice, seen as a time of rebirth and renewal as signified by the return of light will be performed as a song and action response by Irish artists Méabh Meir and Emma Brennan as a programmed event as part of Array Collectives 2021 Turner Prize winning exhibition The Druthaibs Ball.
Character Highlights
Bán Bídh
Their first stride connects the North to the South.
Their second stride reaches the sea, then halted.
Bán Bídh’s body contorts and shifts
as the strain of the journey across the counties
has exhausted this majestic creature.
Its body, that nourished the land,
is now soured and tough.
Their hide worn and cracked,
their cries quelled,
and their tears dried.
They have given everything, and
now rejected by the people they cared for.
What is next for this creature?
Older than time,
born from the land it loves, its back now turned on it.
Array member in costume: Thomas Wells @myspecialistsubject
Mary Na Gig Shee
This stole was worn by the Mary Na Gig Shee in her shrine at The Druithaib's Ball in Belfast. It features an image of a woman fornicating with a goat from the 'Topographia Hibernica', one of the earliest books written about the Irish, which depicted them as savages in need of civilising.
The Morrigan
The Morrigan appears on the horizon, Mother and Hag. Time passes with much contemplation. She has been interfered with, lied to, shackled, incarcerated and shamed. She refuses to keen however, her wailing in the night is a myth perpetuated to maintain control. She shapeshifts to survive, to pass on her story.
Her story is another most misunderstood. A story most walked by everyday but refused to acknowledge. A story people lived right beside but refused to challenge, as she does not wail or scream like a bean sí. Not the church, not the state will challenge her any longer. The body soars roaring in defiance. She will be shamed no longer. The Morrigan will have shape-shifted once again by the time she reaches the banks of the Thames; Innocence to abundance then pain and fury as hope crystallises like a shard into fulfilment.
Always ready to remind us that the flip side of her animal instinct is her beastly rage and bathos. Her shapeshifting has had its toll on her jacket; crow feathers, pansexual spine spikes, the marks of pregnancy.
The sibin has offered her the solace to take off her weighty coat and all of its responsibilities.
The Happy Sad Sack
Behold the evolution of Array members clo'S Druaitbh's ball carachter The HSS. What began as an installation called they shouldnt go together but they do has now evolded into a meloncholhy dancer, a joyus overthinker, sometimes dragging, sometimes bouncing its sacks of sad about with it as it nagivates life.
Druthaib’s Ball, Film Stills
