Irish artist Lorraine Tuck’s newly commissioned work ‘Unusual Gestures’ opened at Roscommon Arts Centre on Friday of last week.
This intensely moving and emotionally powerful photographic exhibition tells the story of a family living with autism spectrum disorder (ASD ) and intellectual disability and is curated and produced by Photo Museum Ireland.
Tuck is the mother of four children, two boys and two girls. The boys have autism spectrum disorder, which in the case of the youngest, is coupled with severe intellectual disability. Unusual Gestures provides insights into the far-reaching implications that neurodiversity and disability present for families.
It explores the impacts - some subtle, some fundamental - on parental and sibling relationships, and charts the challenges and joys of everyday family life. The exhibition succeeds in capturing how everyone, neurotypical as well as neurodiverse, forms the centre of their own separate and singular world, while at the same time it celebrates how we are all inescapably inter-connected to the human family tree.
A further series of works in the exhibition focuses on the artist’s uncle Owen. Born in 1972 in Connemara, Owen has Down’s Syndrome and is gender fluid. At times, Owen chooses to live as a woman called ‘Pink’. Owen/Pink has collaborated with Tuck to produce a series of portraits exploring their fluid gender identity with joyful and refreshing honesty. At its heart, this exhibition is about love more than autism or disability.
Transcending a documentary or issue-based record, Tuck’s work is a beautiful and clear-eyed call for acceptance and inclusion. Lorraine is a photographer from Co. Galway and studied photography at Sallynoggin College, Dublin and graduated with a BA (Hons ) Documentary Photography from the University of Wales, Newport College. Since graduation, she has spent much of her time making work that has been influenced by the landscape of Connemara, exploring the un-consecrated children’s burial grounds in ‘Cillín/Children in Limbo’, and the Connemara railway line, published in book form as ‘The Whistle Blowing’ (2015 ).
She was commissioned by The Arts Council/Photo Museum Ireland to develop Unusual Gestures. This major solo exhibition toured to Galway International Arts Festival, Photo Museum Ireland and will be presented in Regional Cultural Centre Letterkenny and Belfast Exposed Gallery (2024-25 ).
Her work is in numerous private and public collections, including The Arts Council, Office of Public Works, and University of Galway. Founded in 1978, Photo Museum Ireland has established a reputation as one of Ireland’s leading cultural institutions. Located in an award-winning building in Dublin’s cultural quarter, the Museum is Ireland’s national centre for contemporary photography.
Photo Museum Ireland is a charitable organisation whose primary goal is to promote the practice and appreciation of photography as an art form in Ireland.
‘Unusual Gestures’ runs at Roscommon Arts Centre until March 29.
