Myths never reach us intact. The Irish stories that have come down to us have already had several lives, they have been told, copied, translated, forgotten in places, then taken up again and reorganised. They continue to change each time someone reads them, tells them or tries to understand what they might still have to say.

​

This exhibition was born from this idea. To create these paintings, I asked people to share with me what mythology represented for them today, the place it held in their lives and the way they recognised themselves, or did not, in certain stories. Their answers fed into my work, my choices of figures, symbols, sometimes simply a colour, an expression or an atmosphere.

​

It was important, however, that these paintings did not close the stories around one particular interpretation. The testimonies are a starting point. I tried to leave enough room in each work for the viewer to bring their own understanding of the myth, their memories, their expectations and the questions they ask themselves today, whether personal or connected to social and political issues. We do not all ask the same thing of stories, and we do not ask the same things of them at different moments in our lives either.

​

To continue this reflection, I chose to place around the works some of the testimonies that were shared with me. They are all real and tell of a singular relationship with mythology. I was very moved by the trust with which these people agreed to share something that could sometimes be intimate, difficult to explain, or deeply connected to their sense of belonging.

I like that art can become a space for exchange, listening and respect, a place where different interpretations can meet without one needing to erase the others. These stories were transformed long before us, and they will continue to be. This exhibition is an invitation to enter into this transmission, to make the stories our own, to discuss them and to ask ourselves what they have become for us, today.