Carrie Lynam

My research focuses on the handcrafted textile banners made by the Artists’ Campaign to Repeal the Eighth Amendment to examine what the handmade offers protest in contemporary Ireland. Now in the care of the National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks, what can be learned from an examination of the production methods, typology and the activation in the public sphere of these banners to critically understand the relationship between Craft and Protest in Ireland.

Textiles in the form of banners function on multiple levels; they have a historically constructed duty within a civic framework as a strategy of communication that articulates allegiance to a group or cause during a procession or protest. Within the banners structure is an encoded narrative of collective history and one of personal history, that of the makers. The banners derive cultural value from how they are made, not just why.

My research will examine the construction of Craft in Ireland from the 1960s' to present and how it has been disseminated and consumed nationally by analysing government policy, education and aspects of mass media to greater understand what values have been tethered to the reading of craft in contemporary Ireland. How does this formation of values influence our impression of craft when seen in the visible performance of dissent?

Ultimately asking the question, can craft be activated as a driver of progressive change in Ireland?