Collection: Memento Civitatem

Goes on sale Wednesday the 27th of September.

The National Gallery of Ireland Shop presents a handpicked selection of 5 silk scarves made in collaboration with artists Alice Maher and Jamie Murphy from their work Memento Civitatem. Each scarf is produced in a limited edition of 100 pieces and comes in a specially designed gift box.

Memento Civitatem is the first artists’ book to be commissioned by the National Gallery of Ireland, and has been specially designed for its display at the Gallery. Maher and Murphy were invited to create an artists’ book in response to the Gallery’s archives of artists who lived through the social and political developments commemorated by Ireland’s Decade of Centenaries.

Originating from Maher’s research into the art, lives and ideals of six Irish artists – Grace Gifford, Sarah Cecilia Harrison, Aloysius O’Kelly, William Orpen, Sarah Purser and Jack B. Yeats – Memento Civitatem explores our contemporary relationship to culture, citizenship, imagination and activism. Inspired by the Tarot card, a medium open to diverse and contradictory readings, the book presents twenty-one iconic image cards alongside words and phrases that are open to interpretation. Through the hand-set typography and an intuitive approach to image-making, Memento Civitatem is an ode to some of the artistic practices and the letterpress production processes of the period.

Memento Civitatem was commissioned on the occasion of the exhibition Roller Skates & Ruins (curated by Marie Lynch, Andrea Lydon and Donal Maguire at the ESB Centre for the Study of Irish Art).