Barry Flanagan, the sculptor, who has died aged 68, began his career as a minimalist working in folded cloth, but later became Britain's best-known and most controversial modernist, internationally renowned for his colossal bronze figures of leaping hares.

after far too long a break from megalith hunting i decided to pop up to near the border to try and find C chulainn's stone. this is one ive wanted to see since i was a kid and first learned there was an actual stone that is associated with the ould Setanta. for those of you not…

Explore javacolleen's 29617 photos on Flickr!

Many of us bear Irish last names or surnames as we say in Ireland. But have you ever wondered about the meaning of some popular Irish last names?

THE IRISH SKY GARDEN CRATER Photograph by Liss Ard Estate Located at the Liss Ard Estate Gardens in Cork County, Ireland; the James Turrell Irish Sky Garden Crater is an amazin…

Irish sculptor Kevin Francis Gray works primarily with bronze and marble to create idealized figures draped with fabric in the style of Neoclassical or Baroque figurative sculptures. Though, unlike gods or royalty that one might expect to see rendered in such incredible detail, Gray instead creates anonymous depictions of regular individuals he encounters near his studio in London, often people struggling with addiction or other difficult, real-world issues. From an essay about Gray’s work by Rachel Wilf: The resulting works portray these subjects—often with personal histories marred by contemporary demons such as addiction—with dignity and importance, yet they also express a somber, contemplative quality emphasized by the artist’s consistent shrouding of his subject’s faces. More

Anthony Maggio is an AI/Digital artist, husband, and lover of all things beautiful, and asthetic! "I hope you all feel the emotion I put into my works

The Bottle Throwers Edition of 25 Archival Pigment Print Image size: 40 cm h x 60 cm w Paper size: 50 cm h 70 cm w €1100 unframed All work by Fergus Bourke

– Ceramic Figurines : Imaginative and captivating figurines and the occasional sculpture, posted at irregular intervals . Latest entry HERE Egyptiam bust _ Altes Museum---Berlin,Germany Three Kings figurines ( forrestinavintage-etsy ) Art Deco Royal Dux Figurine Lady In A Tub - Emilio Cassarotto figurine, Italy Nazca Pottery Figure Nick Mackman Bruce Lafountain - Native Woman Paige Bradley bronze sculpture Garden Mother by mudmonkey ( deviantart ) Alex Johanson - France Natalia at Happydolls, Flickr Elizabeth Rollins Scott - 'Guardian Angel I' UK L'Eté et l'Automne Art Deco bust figurine Janus-figure with Rabbit (back), Mosaic, 15' Katherine Gullo Ceramics Bronze-Sculpture of

Recent bog body discoveries from Ireland, including the latest bog body from Cul na Mona, Co. Laois as well as Old Croghan man and Clonycavan man bog bodies.

The sculpture of the ancient Celts between 700 BCE and 400 CE is nothing if not varied as artists across Europe developed their own ideas and borrowed what interested them from neighbouring cultures...

Artist Sir John Lavery Belfast, 20 March 1856 – 10 January 1941

America’s best pics and videos is fun of your life. Images, GIFs and videos featured seven ti...

Michael Collins (1996) Can you see me? Easter 1916 marks one hundred years since the uprising in Ireland that led, via a very torturous route, to the creation of an independent Irish state. It also marked the start of the disintegration of the British Empire. Nationalism and modern weapons would make the great European empires untenable, although it would be a while before most people realised this. My own connection to these events is to have been an uncredited (and unpaid) extra in Neil Jordan's 1996 film Michael Collins. Twenty years ago I stood with four thousand other people to cheer Liam Neeson as Michael Collins, the late Alan Rickman as Eamon De Valera and Julia Roberts as Kitty Kiernan as they arrived at a replica of Dublin Castle and gave a victory speech in front of the ruins of a fake GPO. It was almost like being there. Michael Collins is a film that managed to annoy just about everyone, crediting British forces with atrocities they didn't commit and omitting ones they really did, whilst sanitising the very messy business of the Civil War that followed semi-independence. Still, if it had been a Mel Gibson movie it would have been a lot worse. During my time living in the Emerald Isle I also got to march behind The Plough and the Stars, which was the flag that James Connolly's Citizen's Militia flew over the GPO in 1916, and which the Irish TUC brings out every year for its May Day march. I also lived in the former house of Joe Murphy, the Republican Mayor of Cork who died on hunger strike, which must look good on my police file. I also got a chance to visit some of the other places around and about associated with the bloody struggle for Irish freedom. Here are my top five. 1. The General Post Office, O'Connell Street, Dublin It all started at Easter 1916. Or was that when it all ended? W.B. Yeats wrote that "a terrible beauty is born", but a few years earlier though he'd written "Romantic Ireland's dead and gone. It's with O'Leary in the grave". Yeats jumped the gun by three years, but in essence he was right. The last stand at the GPO, in it's magnificent futility, represented the old tradition of previous failed uprisings. It was the moonlight charge of half-pike's that was a traditional subject of republican myth and song recreated with modern weaponry. The real Michael Collins was there. But as he was led away into captivity he was not thinking about romantic poetry but of the futility of defending a vulnerable fixed position. On the prison ship that took him away he was already making plans for a very different kind of war next time. There was fighting elsewhere in the city in 1916 including trench warfare in St Stephens Green, a spot well worth a vist, where the park warden still fed the ducks during lulls in the fighting. The GPO building has been rebuilt and is still a post office. The only hint of its role in the fighting one hundred years ago is the magnificent statue of the dying mythological hero Cuchulainn in the window, a wonderful symbol of courage and sacrifice. O'Connell Street itself has changed in the last century. In 1916 it would have been dominated by a pillar with a statue of Nelson on top, the twin of the one in Trafalgar Square. That was removed in 1966, as IRA's contribution to the fiftieth anniversary celebrations, with a rather nifty bit of dynamiting that left the rest of the street untouched. Just to prove who the real professionals were in this regard, when the Irish Army came to blow up the remaining stump they took out every window on the street in the process. The pillar was replaced first with a piece of modern art known to the Irish as "the floozy in the jacuzzi" and then by the Spire of Dublin, which was considered to be rather more in line with the new look of the street. 2. Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin The battle at the GPO ended with the Republican prisoners being led from the building through jeering crowds. That was not the start of the uprising, but what happened next was. They were taken across the city to Kilmainham Gaol, and for fifteen of them it would be a one way trip. The gaol was closed in the 1920s and is now a museum. It doesn't appear in many tourist guides to Dublin, but it's worth a visit. As well as being able to see where the Easter rebels were imprisoned, and where those fifteen were shot. You can also see the Asgard, the yacht that Eskine Childers used to bring the guns over for the uprising. Childers had made himself a British hero by writing a story about a different boat, the Dulcibella, which his square jawed hero uses to thwart a German invasion in his 1903 novel The Riddle of the Sands. Eleven years later it was from Germany that the Asgard brought the weapons. Another former British hero who died in 1916, and who is often forgotten, is Roger Casement. He was hung for treason at the Pentonville Prison, three months after the executions in Dublin, for his part in trying to secure more German rifles. Casement had been instrumental in exposing the abuses in the Belgian Congo, and was the inspiration for the hero of Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Lord Roxton in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. Another gaol associated with the War of Independence is Cork. Here Countess Markievicz, the first woman to be elected to the House of Commons, and others were interred. However the museum there focuses on the less famous inmates who passed through. It is worth seeing if only to remind us that for ever person locked up for being Irish and a rebel, a hundred were imprisoned for being Irish and poor. 3. Kilmichael Ambush site, County Cork The events of 1916 were the spark that lit the fires of which broke out in rebellion in 1919. The war started with attacks on isolated Royal Irish Constabulary barracks. Once these had been abandoned the authorities were blind as to what was happening in most of the country. The film has Michael Collins leading these attacks. In reality he certainly helped organise them, but volunteers in County Tipperary carried out the first attack on their own initiative. Soon though roving guerrilla bands controlled most of the Irish countryside. The most effective leader of these units was Tom Barry from County Kerry. An unlikely rebel, he was the son of an RIC constable, and Easter 1916 saw him fighting the Turks with the British Army in Iraq. When he did eventually join the IRA he ended up in command of the West Cork Brigade, and on 28 November 1920 they fought one of the most significant, and controversial, battles of the war. The British authorities had tried to regain control of the countryside using units of Auxiliaries made up of veterans of the Great War. These 'Black and Tans' ended up being responsible for most of the war crimes committed by British troops. Barry decided to do something about this. His unit of 36 men ambushed a Black and Tan patrol of 18 soldiers near their base in Macroom. The IRA lost three dead, whilst all but one of the Auxiliaries died, several after trying to surrender, or pretending to surrender, with others allegedly being dispatched after being wounded. Whatever the exact circumstances, most Irish thought they deserved what they got. The loss of a decent sized force of veteran soldiers was deeply shocking to the authorities and Cork and the surrounding areas were placed under martial law, and a fair part of the City burnt in retaliation. The Irish being the Irish there is a song about the battle. A (very) slightly fictionalised version also appears in Ken Loach's film The Wind That Shakes The Barley. There is a memorial by the side of the road at the scene of the ambush, whilst Cork Museum has a detailed map and plan of the battle, as well as some memorabilia. The spot itself is pleasant enough, but more the sort of place you pass through after fishing in Macroom, or on the way to Gougane Barra. West Cork though is wonderful, and as well as the Irish it is now home to a population of formerly English Travellers, who relocated to Ireland after their own ambush at the Battle of the Beanfield. 4. Michael Collin's Cork, County Cork Meanwhile in Dublin, and other cities, a different kind of war was being fought, one were the victims were usually killed in their beds. As director of Intelligence for the IRA, Collins was responsible for the creation of a special execution squad that killed British spies and informers, shooting no less than twenty MI5 officers in one night exactly a week before the Kilmichael Ambush. Despite Neil Jordan's film, Michael Collins' legacy in Ireland is still mixed. On the one hand is the revolutionary urban guerrilla leader who won the War of Independence, and on the other he's the man who signed the Treaty and settled for a divided Free State, rather than a whole independent one. He's the founder of the unarmed police force that replaced the hated Royal Irish Constabulary, but a person who, unlike the heroes of 1916, killed his enemies in their beds rather than in pitched battle. Michael Collins armoured car, Curragh The controversy stems from one simple fact, unlike almost every other Irish revolutionary, he was successful. A Michael Collins tour of Ireland would start in Dublin. It would include the Stag's Head pub in Dublin where he used to drink, which was round the corner from his intelligence office at no. 3 Crow Street. It would take in the Imperial Hotel in Cork where he spent his last night, but it would end at the obscure village of Béal na Bláth in his native County Cork. Here he died after a confused ambush by anti-Treaty forces. His convoy included an armoured car, but its machine gun had jammed. Collins was the only fatality in the battle. The film plays fast and lose with the facts of this, but you can't get over the poignancy of the version of She Moved Through The Fair by Sinead O'Connor and The Chieftains that Jordan commissioned for the movie. Béal na Bláth is not the sort of place that usually gets mentioned in tourist guides. There is a small monument there to the Big Fella, but little else. In his home town of Clonakilty though there is now the Michael Collins Centre, where you can learn some more about his life.There is also more about Collins in the barracks that bears his name in the City of Cork, whilst the armoured car that failed to save him is at the main Irish Army Museum at Curragh. Collins himself lies in the Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin, where there is a visitors centre and memorial to other Republicans. The cemetery is also home to another legacy of Ireland's past, one that isn't remembered as well as Easter 1916, but which has also had its own film made about it. This is the site of the mass grave of the 'fallen women' of the Magdalene laundries. 5. The Falls and Shankill Roads, Belfast So when did Ireland's struggle for independence finally end? That is a difficult question. One answer is 1921, when the British Empire threw in the towel and the Free State was formed. Another answer is 1923 when the Free Staters won the civil war, or 1932 when the bulk of the anti-Treaty people gave up the gun and adopted democratic politics. Another answer is that it never did. Twenty years ago a walk down the two main streets of West Belfast would have endorsed that view. Soldiers in armoured Land Rovers, helicopters, fortified pubs, paramilitary murals and the occasional gun or bomb attack, or bus being petrol bombed, were the sights in offer to the rare tourist. It was like walking round a slow motion civil war. You can still experience some of that side of Belfast, especially if you can find a black taxi driver Women for Peace, Belfast 1976 victorpatterson.photoshelter.com prepared to give you an unofficial tour. Brits are certainly tolerated, unless (like me) they ask to view the Official IRA graveyard. However for the most part that Ireland has gone thanks to events of another Easter weekend, but this one only eighteen years ago. The Good Friday Agreement is a good place to end the chain of events that started at Easter 1916. Tony Blair, David Trimble and Gerry Adams certainly deserve the praise they received for the agreement, but this was a peace created from the bottom as much as one imposed from the top. Countless community groups and peace campaigners of both communities had worked for twenty years to end the fighting. Unlike the rebels of Easter 1916, the heroes of the War of Independence and the fighters of The Troubles, these people have no memorials to their name, no museums about them and are not remembered in film or song or mural. But that Ireland today, north and south of the border, is at peace with both itself and it's former imperial master across the Irish Sea is thanks more to them than to the people with guns. Lets remember that this weekend.

Welcome to another edition of “Picturing…” You don’t have to be an accomplished equestrian to see that horses are magnificent creatures—majestic, fierce, gentle, wise, often all at once. They are a staple throughout art history in general, as well as in fantasy illustration. Putting this collection together, it was tough to know when to stop […]

Very recently I made a journey to Ireland the reason for the trip was to meet with the sculptor Christy Keeney. It is a visit that has been intended for a long while but one that has been delayed and put off several times. The reason was to interview Christy for an article I am due to write about the exhibition that he will have with us here in May. This was to be my first visit to the North of Ireland, he doesn't live in the part that is linked with the UK, he is just across the border in the real Ireland, but it was strange to be visiting a place that has names that we are all familier with from the "troubles". I was interested to see this area that we have heard so much about, but I was really more interested to learn more about the artist I was to meet. We have shown his work for many years, Ever since a customer came into the gallery and asked did we have sculptures by Christy Keeney. "No, but I will contact her", I replied. The strange thing is that many people [like I did] think that Christy is female. I can assure you all that he is very much a male, plus one of the nicest artists that I have met. Although now I have known him for several years I didn't feel that I actually knew the man and with our exhibition in the near future and the promise of a five page article about him and his art I decided that it was time to try and learn a little more about the man and where the ideas behind his sculptures come from. Christy is a well collected artist, his work can be found in galleries in many parts of Europe but nobody seems to know much about the man himself. This isn't really surprising as he is one of those rare people who "listens" to others and speaks little of himself, his art speaks for him. He collected me from the airpot in the morning then we set off for his hometown 'Letterkenny' where we stopped to have breakfast in a traditional old Irish cafe. "Costa Coffee"! Just what is the world coming to? I wanted to see Ireland and what did I see? That's progress for you. Fortunately after our "Irish coffee's" we headed off for his home and a taste of his Ireland. His home and studio. The location was high up in the hills and the view was spectacular, within minutes I understood why this artist had left London to return to the place where he had grown up. It is beautiful and peaceful. I can imagine that the only distraction from his work is the stunning views from every window. I arrived with the early morning sun dazzling the windows and left with the same sun now more gentle but still lluminating the same rooms. From his home you can see the sun rise and set without leaving the spot you stand on. This unexpected beauty wasn't why I had travelled so far, I had to get inside the man. Something much harder than I had imagined. The reason for this is because Christy doesn't know himself where his art comes from. It is just him, it comes withought thought. I suppose for an artist to analyse too much about that would end up with them killing the source. He did urge me to question him but I was happy just to observe and absorb everything that he said and what I saw. I wanted to just take in a little of his world. With a little prompting he did tell me many stories. The most enjoyable of these was how he came to be an artist for Royalty, Prince Charles was once a model for him. Well, that's not exactly the whole story, that involved him being a "bit drunk" and a little outspoken, but as a result he ended up at Kensington Palace, getting Charles to stand on chairs, pulling funny faces while he snapped away with his camera. He showed me the photographs which few people will ever see, they are fantastic and show Prince charles as he has never been seen before. At ease, relaxed and obviously enjoying the event. They were also bloody good photographs and I am sure that to someone they are worth a fortune. But they will never be seen by the public as they are private, it was just a moment in time for them both. He told me that he was never really happy with the sculpture he created for the Prince, as he was trying to create something which he felt another person would be happy with, it wasn't being made just to please himself. I agree, Christy is much better creating his own sculptures that come from? He doesn't know where. They are made to please him, they also please many others. He spoke of the few people he admires and who have influenced his work, and this gave me a small understanding of where his creativty was born, but in reality it is from somwhere inside him, a place he doesn't question. I enjoyed my short visit to see him perhaps more than any I have had to meet an artist, I felt that I returned home with a friendship and I look forward to our next meeting. There is so much to tell about my short visit, too much to tell now, maybe I will manage to fit it into the article, I hope so. A little "footnote" to the visit. On my return to the airport in Derry Christy had to stop at the post office to send off a sculpture to France, He came out laughing, talking with a woman, getting back into his van he explained that she ran the post office, they were laughing because she had been telling him how she had just been robbed at gunpoint. "She told me, it goes with the job", he said. It was so strange to hear a story that fitted with all of the news that we have been told about the North, but it didn't fit with the beautiful places and the lovely people that I met. None nicer than Christy.

With the release of Black 47, a movie about the ‘Great Potato Famine’ of Ireland in the 19th century out in the next week, we take a timely but controversial look at how the famine wasn…

I find this a great prayer for this Lenten season. It is from Brendan the Navigator, the Irish saint who founded Christian communities throughout the British Isles. He was familiar with long journe…

These fascinating pictures captured over a decade show the secret lives of Irish travellers. Photographer Joseph Philippe Bevillard shares work from his ongoing

An eccentric garden of sculptures crafted in India decorate an Irish green space dedicated to Alan Turing.