Silent World

Speech by Michael D Higgins, on the opening of an Exhibition of New Paintings by Adrian Tarpey, The Kenny Gallery, 6th April 2001

"It's a very great pleasure to be here this evening, to be asked indeed to open this extraordinary exhibition of Adrian Tarpey's work. I saw his work, I think, in an exhibition in the Eyre Square Centre, once remembering seeing to extraordinary pieces that struck me immediately as very intense and very fine in many ways. And I'm speaking to his parents, I had often thought since about how is he getting on, and I needn't have worried because if you look at the very beautiful accompanying poster that's with this poster catalogue introduction to his work which Kennys have produced, and I pay tribute to them for the work that they have done in that, it is a beautiful piece of work.

But in that you have two pieces written, one by Margaret Parry and the other by Kevin Whelan and if one wanted an assurance of a sensitive intelligence that respected how skill can be developed one need just read Margaret Parry's very fine piece and equally Kevin Whelan's sensitive, very sensitive and very truthful, and those of us who fiddled with art at times know that if it's truthful it has to be risky.

Contemplation on creativity and what it means. I think that there are so many people here who are interested for other reasons, and are interested in the nature of the autis artist as it might be put, that the work is very important for that reason. I think that firstly what strikes one immediately, what's very important about it in this gallery, in relation to art in general, is that it is a kind of art that deserves a bit of work put into it for a number of reasons. For a start, I have often opened exhibitions, and have been at many, where you can as it were consider when you hear whose exhibition you are opening you can consider in advance what influences they were under. Looked at negatively it's what baggage that their carrying to the task in hand, looked at bin-evidently it's a what great use they have made of what would be called influences and maybe excitingly how they have taken influences and have gone passed them be it in terms of light or technique or form or whatever.

The interesting thing about the special kind of art that this is, is that it is profound as has been written, elsewhere is that it is profoundly original. It is the outcome of an extraordinary concentration from within a persons world, on a particular scene or setting or on the task of making a picture. That makes it, as has been written elsewhere, that makes it original in a way that all other work is not because it's carrying nothing else. If that is the case then, it raises the question which Kevin Whelan poses in his speech from where are these impulses coming, and I've often thought about that because there is an argument even in relation to poetry that's very interesting in some of the classical considerations of where poetic inspiration comes from. Some people wrote originally, that it was a distillation of things to the point of which what may, or could be, better expressed where there is no redundancy left at all - you have stripped everything down. But that actually raises a problem because it means that it is taken from what is there. It doesn't answer the question that if imagination is infinite and experience is fine nor does it answer the question between the essence of the person and the existence of where you are at a contemporary time or in one space, if it just doesn't answer the question.

So what is going on in a person's head at the moment of creation in this extraordinary concentration that produces work like that. I think that we all at the moment of creativity looked at as a distillation there's something else and that is that, there is another writer Lagalo Boras, writing about this, speaks about something that is able to engage a world that is out of this world and it is in this sense of transcendence that were a person is not dragged back by anything be it in relation to form, by in relation to experience that something wonderful occurs.

This work here, this exhibition is going to be controversial for another reason as well in that I think it engages about the artist in a way that that is very trusting.