Na Cailleacha… with reference to Paula Rego The exhibition Na Cailleacha… with reference to Paula Rego, presents a body of work referencing the artist Paula Rego, who died in 2022 and whose long career embodied many of the experiences and practices that we have dedicated ourselves to working on as a collective of older women. In making work related to her, Na Cailleacha want to honour a ground-breaking feminist artist and to think afresh about the many issues relating to life and art practice that women of our generation feel we share with her. We too, were exposed to some of the same fairy tales and myths, or had reason to think about war, childhood vulnerability, constricting and abusive religious and social institutions as well as the healing powers of music, dance and drawing. Like her, Na Cailleacha, see the studio as the place where fears are faced, activism is centred, fun can be found and a new order can be discovered. Na Cailleacha is a collective of older women, originally 8 in number; visual artists Helen Comerford who sadly died in March of this year, Barbara Freeman, Patricia Hurl, Rachel Parry Therry Rudin, and Gerda Teljeur, art historian/curator Catherine Marshall, and composer Carole Nelson, who came together in 2020 calling ourselves, Na Cailleacha, from the Irish word ‘cailleach’ meaning a witch or a divine hag. The Collective explores what it means to be women who are getting older and arguably becoming invisible and what strategies we devise to overcome the challenges of sustaining creativity and art practice as we age. Since 2020 we have held four exhibitions around Ireland, participated in the Bones in the Attic exhibition at the Hugh Lane Gallery, staged The School of Hibernia, a re-creation of Raphael’s famous School of Athens but with a cast of leading Irish women and conducted symposia all of which explore issues around creativity, visibility, isolation, health and collective practice from an older feminist perspective. Na Cailleacha are committed to raising awareness and promoting public discussion about these issues, in keeping with Gloria Steinem’s assertion that ‘Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age’. Na Cailleacha are the subject of a prize winning documentary, Dawn to Dusk, by Therry Rudin. Our work is included in the collections of Dublin City Council, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, the Office of Public Works, the University of Limerick and Mayo, Tipperary and Wexford County collections. Catherine Marshall, Curator. July 2024