The Joyous Wake and Burial of Patrick Ireland

In 1972, in response to the tragic events of Bloody Sunday in Derry, Ireland, when 26 unarmed civil rights protesters were shot and 14 killed by members of the British Parachute Regiment, Irish/American artist, novelist, theorist and critic, Brian O’Doherty, undertook to sign his artworks Patrick Ireland, ‘until such time as the British military presence is removed from Northern Ireland and all citizens are granted their civil rights.’

As these conditions have now been fulfilled, after 36 years of making art as Patrick Ireland, O’Doherty joyfully reclaimed his birth name – a gesture to celebrate the restoration of peace in Northern Ireland – with the symbolic burial of his alter ego (an effigy with a ‘death mask’ placed in a simple wooden coffin).

On the windy evening of Tuesday 20 May 2008 in the grounds of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Art historian and museum director, Michael Rush, a former Jesuit priest, conducted this happiest of funerals. At the graveside, friends of the artist read five poems in English, French, Spanish, German and Irish. The event concluded with Alannah O’Kelly performing an extraordinary, bone-chilling ‘keening’ – a traditional Irish mourning wail.

In his last moments Patrick Ireland, dressed in white and with his face covered with a white stocking (as he was in the 1972 performance) held the hands of his wife, historian and novelist Barbara Novak and senior curator, Christina Kennedy. He concluded his life by pulling the mask off his face and throwing it exuberantly into the grave, along with a handful of dirt. ‘We are burying hate’, said the artist, ‘it’s not often you get the chance to do that’. The evening concluded with a lively dinner and loving speeches to both the buried and re-born artists in the chapel of the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

Patrick Ireland (1972-2008) is dead. Long live Brian O’Doherty.A longer report on the burial of Patrick Ireland will be included in the September issue of frieze