Spotlight on Alumni | McGuinne

Róisín Kennedy: Why did you choose to go to UCD?

Niamh:  It was my first choice. UCD Arts all the way. Mainly because of Archaeology, because UCD did Celtic Archaeology which you could not study in Trinity. I had already decided that I wanted to go into conservation and very luckily, I had come across through a family connection that it even featured as a career. I’d gone into see Maighread McParland, (the Paper Conservator at the National Gallery), and she had advised me that I had could go down three routes. One was to do History of Art, two was to do Chemistry and three was to do Fine Art. I thought about Fine Art but thought it was too intimidating at the time. So I chose Archaeology and History of Art. I really liked the idea of that combination. Then in first year I did Italian. I lived in Dublin so that was a big reason for going to UCD. I grew up in Rathfarnham.

RK: And your father is an artist.

Niamh:  Yes he is a Graphic Designer and at the time he was head of Graphics in what was then Parnell Square, now TUD. He is an artist and my mum is a weaver. So there was a lot of support for that kind of career plus it was the 80s so you could what you wanted because there were so few jobs. You were not doing a degree to go and have some fancy career path. 

RK: What were your notable experiences at UCD?

Niamh:  I remember being really impressed by Nancy Dunn-Czak. I really admired her. She was so passionate about art history. She would be moved to tears in lectures. You had to really respect that. You would be like oh my god this woman is in tears over Rembrandt.  The other thing was the fun that was had in the Françoise Henry Reading Room. You really got to know your classmates through being in there. Also cramming for the slide tests in the Slide Library. I remember the trips that we had. We went to Durham in second year and in third year I was the auditor of the Visual Arts Society and we arranged a trip to Amsterdam. That was great fun, as well. Paula Murphy and Pat McKenna came with us. The Visual Arts Society got great support from Paula and Eileen (Kane) and the staff of Art History.  They would help and advise on trips. Pat was great.

RK: What did you do after you left UCD?

Niamh: I was very focused on conservation. I worked for a year in Marsh’s Library on a FÁS Course. I managed to get a job in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston when everyone was over on a J1. Then I went over to Newcastle and did my MA in Conservation of Fine Art in what was then Gateshead Tech. Now the course has been moved to the University of Northumbria. After that I did a few internships. One in Liverpool and then an 18 month one in Oxford before coming back to Ireland where I worked in Armagh County Museum. 

RK: Where was the one in Oxford?

Niamh: It was in the Bodleian Library. I had a lovely year and a half in the Bodleian where I was really interested in the Islamic manuscripts and non-paper-based collections like palm leaves and papyrus. It was amazing. It was a massive experience. Marks and Spencer’s paid for the internship. You spent time in each of the different departments. I spent time in the flat paper as opposed to the bindery department.

RK: When did you start working in the National Gallery?

Niamh: I came back to Ireland in 1993 and started in the NGI in 1995 as an assistant paper conservator. They had just opened a print and drawing gallery. Until then there had been no stand-alone prints and drawings gallery. So they had quite an ambitious programme. There were very few new staff in the gallery at that time due to the staff embargo. Adrian Le Harivel was the Print Curator at that time. Not long after Jane McAvock took over and then Anne Hodge.

RK: You moved rapidly up the ranks there.

Niamh:  (Laughs) When Maighread retired in 1999 I took over. Zoe Reid came and worked with me for a while.  We also had a big connection with the Sorbonne. Students would come over and spend three to six months working in the department on projects. They would have to learn a lot about Irish art because of the nature of our collections. There was a big IIC (International Institute for Conservation) congress in Trinity in 1998. The Gallery held the Deeper Picture exhibition to coincide with that conference. That was very memorable. After that there was a sculpture project for what is now KBC bank. There were a few refurbishments that conservation was involved in – the Beit refurbishment, the millennium wing, and then more recently the whole historic wing.

RK: You have been working on a long-term project with the Getty?

Niamh: It is the Getty Canvas Initiative. It is based on a painting in the Gallery by Juan Gris, called A Guitar, Glasses and a Bottle. It is a collage mixture of paper and painting that up to now nobody had been able to tackle due to resource issues. The idea of the Getty Initiative is to introduce mid-career conservatists to training so we will have people coming to the Gallery for workshops and for training in traditional lining techniques, mainly canvas but I’ll probably do some paper-based lining workshop.

RK: You are a practicing artist now. How did that happen?

Niamh:  When I had my children, I took a career break from the Gallery around 2003. I went back to the Gallery in 2009 and in between that I got back into print making which I had actually become most interested in at UCD. My BA dissertation was on Goya and Rembrandt with Nancy Dunn-Czak. So, I got back into print. When I went back to the National Gallery I had the option to go part-time which I did. I became a member of the Graphic Studio and worked on group shows. It was a really good place to learn more.

RK: You have been involved in curating?

Niamh:  As part of my Fine Art practice I was interested in hairiness. That led to the show in the Highlanes with you and Aoife Ruane and Orla Fitzpatrick. [Bristle. Hair and Hegemony]. How great that was! It was great fun. I really learnt a lot. When you are coming from one angle you don’t really appreciate what everybody else does. That was 2017. After that I got the confidence to go back to college, NCAD and my MFA. That was amazing. I graduated in 2020. I finished in the first thick of lockdown. It was a very interesting end to that because you’d gone from being in a college group to being on your own again. I think that is why I’ve joined two different collectives. That made me realise that was what I liked most. I realised that collaboration was what most interested me.

RK: Who did you join?

Niamh: One is Shelter Artists’ Collective with Geraldine O’Neill, Diana Copperwhite, Allyson Keehan and Sharon Murphy. We got together over lockdown on zooms, for chats. (Allyson is based in Scotland). We started making plans and as a result we will be showing next year in the National Gallery. That’s going to be exciting.

RK: You’ve had a fantastic career!

Niamh:  (Laughs) It’s not over yet! The other co-operative is with my friend Sarah Edmondson. She was on the MFA with me. We realised that we worked well together. So, we had a show in London and then one in Berlin. Now we have got a new name. We are called Midden, my suggestion completely influenced by archaeology. My daughter, Mary Martin, had just graduated from Brighton when we were looking to show in London. Her work fitted in very well so the three of us have worked together.

RK: So you are going to have a show in the Highlanes next year?

Niamh:  Yes, in August 2023.  It is going to be called Carapace. A carapace is a shell or a protective covering. It is my first one-person show and I’m really looking forward to it.

RK:  After that you have been awarded a residency in the Centre Culturel Irlandais?  

Niamh:  Yes, I will be spending a month there in September 2023. I will be looking at their archive and the old library.

RK: What is the relationship between your work and the study you engaged in at the School of Art History?

Niamh:  The history of materials and technique. That really helps you to understand what artists used and to be able to do a risk assessment, prior to doing any treatments. You need to know what you are dealing with and have an understanding of art history. It is very important for that and where artists were and what was available to them. Part of our course [that was really useful for me] in UCD was the techniques course in the Magnetic Observatory.

RK: That was so interesting. We don’t do that anymore.

Niamh:  That was one of the best things. Until you do that you don’t know what fresco is or how hard it is. We did it in second year and we also had a lecture on conservation with Mary McGrath and Maighread McParland in third year. They came in and talked to us about their work. We did fresco, oil painting, tempera, and watercolour. You had to come up with an image to copy.

RK: If you could offer one piece of advice to current students, what would it be?

Niamh: What you get out of it, you put in. Not necessarily just in the academic sense but in all of it, societies…. I remember doing the Friday market. I had a lovely time in UCD. You get out what you put in.

(Niamh’s work can be seen in Midden’s exhibition which opens at the Luan Gallery, Athlone on 1 October, 2022)