Baby Zero, is a child of our times: Caught between the fundamentalism of the East and the commercialism of the West. In a far-off land, everytime the regime changes they turn the year back to zero, as if to begin history again. Each girl in this family is born in the year zero, a time of turmoil. They are scattered across the globe, refugees in Ireland and the U.S. - but when one returns home she finds herself imprisioned.
FOR ALL UPCOMING EVENTS SEE SIDEBAR UNDER PAGES ON THIS SITE
New review of Baby Zero and interview with author on laurahird.com
Reading of Baby Zero by Emer Martin
Reviews of Baby Zero
What a incendiary, thought-provoking novel this is. It examines how women and children are crushed between the twin oppressions of eastern fundamentalism and western consumerism. And it also, like a bleak but
spiritual and haunting ballad, moves us and makes us care. - Irvine Welsh
“In a world awash with the sort of low-grade, formulaic fiction that publishers think women want, Emer Martin is a beacon of hope…. If there is any justice in the world her latest novel, Baby Zero, will see her break through to the major league of literary writers and cement her reputation as one of the most exciting voices to emerge from this country in the last decade…. A prophetic and deeply moving work.”Books Ireland, Feb 2007
“A masterpiece” - Kevin Williamson.
“Raven-haired writer Emer Martin is giving a lunchtime reading from her fabulous new novel, Baby Zero. Emer Martin is a brilliant writer, very much the real deal. She tells me that every single Irish review of her new book has made passing reference to Cecelia Ahern. Weird, given that Emer is to chick-lit what Shane MacGowan is to sobriety.” - Olaf Tyaransen, Evening Herald. Read the rest of this entry »
ART 250 IN AID OF CILL RIALAIG
6th-24th June 2009, Habitat building, 6 Suffolk Street, Dublin 2
Opening hours 10am-6pm, late night Thursday
donated artworks at 250 Euro each. Including works from Emer Martin, Nell McCafferty, Gavin Friday, Eamonn Dunphy, Bono, Cecilia Ahern, Liam O Maonlai, Adam Clayton, Diarmuid Gavin, Jim Harkin, Tommy Tiernan.
The identity of your chosen artist will be revealed at the end of the weeks event. Only 4 Artworks per purchaser.
I’ll post my piece at the end of the week! Will get the Origin staff drunk and try to see which names to bag for 250!
THE OLD SCHOOLHOUSE ART GROUP
Invite you to the opening of their
SUMMER EXHIBITION 2009
To be opened by The Hon. Desmond Guinness
Saturday 20th June 2.30pm
Castletown House, Celbridge, Co Kildare
Three new Paintings by Emer Martin
Saturday 20th June to Sunday 28th June
10am-5pm (Closed Mondays)
Sunday market, tours around historic house,
extensive grounds for walks, gourmet café/restaurant
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2009 EXHIBITION AT ORIGIN GALLERY OH RIDER OF THE WHITE HORSE,
This is my new work for the new solo show at the Origin Gallery. 83 Harcourt St, Dublin 2.
OPENING ON THURSDAY FEBRUARY 26TH. 6pm-8pm.
Victoria Mary Clarke will be opening it.
Seamus O Cathan, former head of UCD’s wonderful dept of folklore will put it all in context.
Irvine Welsh will be saying a few words. Should be a good night.
Sean O’Conaill, the storyteller of Cill Rialaig, Co. Kerry inspired all these paintings. If it weren’t for my stay down in Cill Rialaig in the cottage beside his little cottage this whole body of work would not exist. He was the keeper of the sacred stories of the people. If we lose our stories we lose our soul. We become gentrified. Sean O’Connaill’s stories are the stories of our people – the Irish. In an increasingly gentrified world even if we can no longer speak our own native language we can still hear the stories. They are our last link to the first of our people. They make us unique. This year I went back to Cill Rialaig to explore Sean O Connaill’s stories further. This time I was painting in oil and acrylic which is a new departure for me. Here are the cottages at the end of the earth.
This is a picture of my studio and work in progress. Something happens in Cill Rialaig. Always the question you have is answered, even if it is not the question you thought you were asking. Sean O’Connaill’s cottage. He lived and died here without speaking a word of English. He didn’t read or write. Yet he held a thousand stories in his head. Cill Rialaig, where Sean lived, is a place of stunning visuals. The people there are witnesses from birth to the theatre of an immense, ever-shifting sea and sky, and a vivid, multicoloured tapestry of land. The colours in my paintings are the colours I saw all around; The blues of the sea, the purples of the sky, the orange, green, and yellow hills. So attuned are the local people to colour, that even the towns are a riot of reds, turquoises, indigos. These paintings are a reflection of that intensely visual world, as well as a homage to the folklore of the people.
The sky is a theatre here. Nothing is ordinary. Sometimes it is hard to paint when outside it is always changing.
Darkness closes in. Darkness frames us. Then light shouts. I had to drag myself inside and paint and hope the landscape might be inside me now.
Here are some of the paintings so far.
OH RIDER OF THE WHITE HORSE
I called the exhibition this because it is an image that struck me from one of his stories. This is the story:
THE FAIRY HORSEMEN
I heard an old man say long ago, that when he was a little boy, he and a group of children had been out on the road opposite the houses when day gives way to night, and, at nightfall, they saw many horses coming toward them from the east, and there was a rider on every horse. They went past them westward. They stood watching them. After a while he said they came from the west. The moon was shining – it was a fine moonlit night. He and many other boys watched them going past to the east; and the horse which had been in front when they were going west was at the end as they went east – it was a white horse.
It was a year when whooping cough was widespread among the children. “We followed them east,” he said, “and this is what we were saying to them:
“Oh Rider of the white horse, what cures whooping-cough?”
We followed them as far as the boundary of the town land. But I do not remember if they got any reply from the rider of the white horse. Oh Rider of the White Horse! - Oil on canvas 100×160cm
The Children Chased the Fairy Horses, Oil on canvas 70×100cm The Children Called to the Rider of the White Horse - Oil on canvas 100×140 cm
But I do not remember if they got any reply from the rider of the white horse. - Oil on Canvas 70×100cm
The other story that I painted into is The Bull Bhaelbhae. What follows is a summary of the epic story. For me it is the central story of the book:
The Bull Bhalbhae
The princess goes to her Father’s mirror and demands to marry the Bull Bhalbhae. Her parents forbid it, but she hops on the bulls back when he comes for her and leaves her family home. Each time she has a child by the bull, a terrible hag reaches down the chimney when she sleeps. The hag’s enormous hand gropes around the dark room for the tiny baby. The hag snatches the baby from the sleeping princess and throws it into the river. After three of their children are thrown in the river by the hag, the poor bull has enough and orders her to go home. She tells him she will not go home but will follow him until she dies. First, she disobeys her family by demanding to marry the bull, then she disobeys her husband by refusing to go home. To get away from her, the bull sprouts wings, turns into a crow, and flies off down a hole into the underworld. The amazing princess follows him into the underworld and together they defeat the hag, get their children back, and remain married. At last she rules the underworld.
The interesting thing about stories like this that were part of the oral tradition is that you never enter into the head of the characters. We know nothing of their interior lives; we only know them by their actions. I hope that my paintings fill in the gaps somehow. I want to explore their emotional lives through colour and expression, and the intense focus on pivotal moments. The extraordinary thing about this story is the resiliance of the defient princess. She disobeys her parents and then she disobeys her husband. Her love for the bull is unexplained and unrelenting. Unlike the Greek legends and usual fairy tale warnings, here there is a happy ending. The princess triumphs and is not punished for her transgressions.
Sean O Connail went to the next parish to get that story and fell into the river in the dark stormy night as he tried to make his way back home. But he had the story. For me it is the central story in the book!
“She told him she would not go, and that she would never return home until she died for him.”
Their Dangerous Love Transformed Them, Oil on Canvas 100X70cm
detail from Their Dangerous Love
Detail from Their Dangerous Love
“He asked her whether she would prefer him to be a bull by night and a man by day, or a bull by day and a man by night. He said she must choose one or the other. She said she would prefer him to be a bull by day and a man by night. And so while some time passed, he was a bull by day and a man by night. He had a great court; but she knew nothing about him except that he was a bull by day and a man by night.” I Will Marry The Bull - Oil on canvas 70×100cm
She Asked the Bull To Become a Man by Night, Oil on canvas 70×100cm
Under the Tree is a Duck, and in that Duck there is an Egg, and in that Egg Lies my Death. Acrylic on Canvas 70×100cm
This is The Moment that The Journey Begins, Oil on canvas 100×140cm
“He flew away as a crow and she kept watching him go into a glen in the hills, and he went into a hole there. She kept on walking until she came to the hole. It was a big deep hole. She waited at the hole until daybreak and all next day, hoping he would come to her but he did not come. She stayed there then for seven weeks making ropes of straw and gads and adding them one to another, and by that time she had so much made that it reached the land below when she played it into the hole. She tied the upper end to a pillar-stone, and she herself went down to the land below by the rope and gads.”
She Followed Her Love Into The Underworld - Oil on canvas 150×150cm
She Ruled The Underworld, Oil on canvas 100×140cm
Detail from She Ruled The Underworld
The Caillach Acrylic on Canvas 100×70cm
“But a couple of nights after the child was born, a monstrous big hag came down over the court and put her arm down the chimney and all the attendant women were asleep, and she groped for the child amongst them and got him and took him up through the chimney. She went her way with the child and threw him into a river.”
The Hag Reached Down The Chimney and Took the Child, Acrylic on canvas 100×70cm The Tear She Cried For Her Stolen Child would be the Tear that Would Heal Her - Oil on canvas 100×140cm
This series of paintings is based on the three infant children that are thrown into the river. It is such a violent and tragic image. The princess cries so much for her daughter that she saves her tears. The bull’s sisters sneak down to the river and they save the babies. The little girl’s eye is wounded. The bull’s sisters tell the Princess to use her saved tears to heal the child. I used the image of the dead child from Picasso’s Guernica as the model for the child. There is so much in the news about children that are bombed while the world sleeps. The UN covered up their tapestry reproduction of Guernica when Powell went there to tell his pack of lies that Bush and his cronies used as an excuse to go to war. These are dark days and the question of conscience is addressed in the figure that sleeps as the child is taken. Is that what we are doing? In this story the child is saved and ultimately healed by the tears that were shed for her. The paintings are of my hope that we will wake up.
The Child Was Saved From the River, Acrylic on canvas 80×90cm
Dream of the Stolen Child - Oil on canvas 80×90cm
The war child dreaming of Being Saved - oil on canvas 80×90cm
The Princess Went to the Mirror and Chose to Marry the Bull, Oil and Acrylic on canvas 100×70cm
Detail of Mirror
This was from a joyful story about the sighting of a mermaid down on Bolus Head as she played and sang to her child in the waves.
The Mermaid Was Heard Singing On Bolus Head, Acrylic on Canvas 100×70cm
The Mermaid Sang to Her Baby On Bolus Head, Gouache and Watercolour on Paper
An Da Scealach, (second sight) Acrylic on canvas 30×25cm
Etain was Transformed into Water before she Became a Fly, Oil on canvas 100×70cm
Sean and the bull, Watercolour and Gouache. The people of the place thought Sean was sometimes rather odd. He had never been in the least irrational, but he had a certain strange way that some of his neighbours found incomprehensible. Sean had always the greatest respect for his tales and anecdotes, and he would have preferred to lose his worldly goods than to forget them. When times changed and stories and storytellers were no longer sought after, when he was no longer being asked to tell tales and people had lost all interest in them he hit upon a device to preserve them in his memory. He used to tell the tales to himself when he thought no one was within listening distance. When he was alone herding cattle on the hillside or returning to Cillrialaig from the town walking slowly behind the cart, or working in the garden by himself, he would tell a tale to himself – and as he got well into the story he would spread out his hands to emphasize a passage for the missing audience. - Sean O’Conaill’s Book
Some nights the artists gathered in Sean’s cottage and we told stories and drank wine. One night I inadvertently fell asleep in his house, on a bench by the fire. I had strange dreams. And a hangover.
What follows is not my hangover but a series of small paintings with ink and oil. I’ve been thinking of incorporating them into the larger canvas works they are small, most about 30×25cm
From the Gallery -
Sean O’Conaill, the storyteller of Cill Rialaig, Co. Kerry inspired
> all these paintings: “If it weren’t for my stay down in Cill Rialaig
> this whole body of work would not exist. He was the keeper of the
> sacred stories of the people. If we lose our stories we lose our soul.
> In an increasingly gentrified world, even if we can no longer speak
> our own native language we can still hear the stories. They are our
> last link to the first of our people. They make us unique.” Emer‘s
> paintings are modern narrative explorations of the intense sexuality,
> spirituality, and transformative magical world of Irish Folklore. Her
> interpretation of the stories is vivid and contemporary: there are
> dark and erotic elements to these tales that they never told you in
> school. Often she connects this folklore to current issues, such as
> the war in Iraq. It is fascinating is to see how a modern artist of
> her generation bonds with ancient Irish culture and links it to the
> present. Crucially, this maintains its relevance in our everyday lives
> and protects what could so quickly be lost.
>
> Her last show was extremely well reviewed and sold out on opening
> night. Social and Personal, in their 2006 Arts Issue, named her
> among the top five artist’s in the Irish market to collect. You can
> view a selection of her new paintings on emermartin.com
That’s it so far, more to come….
These paintings are new. I left them in California. Just wanted to know what you thought of them. They are based on my doodles of monsters. They are huge in scale which makes them work. I find them exciting but I don’t know if they’d have any appeal. It’s something I love to paint but I’m not sure that I should. Let me know if you have any thoughts.
In August ‘07 Social and Personal magazine listed Emer as one of the top five hottest artists to invest in on the current Irish art scene.
FUSION
A new exhibition with work edited by the brilliant and amazing painter ROBERT BALLAGH
Robert Ballagh will be opening this exhibition on May 15th at 7pm
Robert has helped the group with their paintings and chosen the pieces to be shown
This was funded by Meath County Council for the Bealtaine Festival
Toradh Gallery, Ashbourne Civic Offices, Killegland Street, Ashbourne, Co. Meath
Emer’s painting to be shown and for sale is below
The show will run till June 8th 2008
Emer will be displaying her paintings with
The Old Schoolhouse Art Group
At Trim Library
May 8th, 2008
Opening at 8pm
Exhibition runs till May 22nd
Members of the art group: Una Ryan, Mette Roche, Emer Martin, Noeleen Slevin
Annabel Potterton, Vincent O’Neill, Marysia Harasimowicz
Previous Exhibitions:
The Old Schoolhouse, Dunboyne, Co Meath,
Dec 15th-16th, 2007
Emer will be displaying a series of three paintings for sale at
The Old Schoolhouse Art Group
Summer Exhibition
Friday 22nd June until Tuesday 3rd July 2007
At Leixlip Library, Captain’s Hill, Leixlip
Private View with wine Thursday 21st June 7.30-9.30pm
Opening hours Mon-Sat 9-5pm
(Tuesdays and Thursdays 8pm closing)
Una Ryan, Mette Roche, Emer Martin, Noeleen Slevin
Annabel Potterton, Vincent O’Neill, Marysia Harasimowicz
The Old Schoolhouse Art Group
Summer Exhibition
Friday 22nd June until Tuesday 3rd July
At Leixlip Library, Captain’s Hill, Leixlip
Private View with wine Thursday 21st June 7.30-9.30pm
Opening hours Mon-Sat 9-5pm
(Tuesdays and Thursdays 8pm closing)
Butter Boots and Paper Stockings Exhibition opened on Wed the 18th Origin Gallery, 83 Harcourt St. @ 18:30
The traditional singer Caitriona O’Leary performed. Guest Speaker was Professor Seamas O Cathain from U.C.D Folklore Department
The show will run from 18th October to the 15th November
A tribute to Sean O’Conaill, the Kerry Storyteller
Review of painting show, Sunday Business Post 26/10/06
Martin’s latest breathes new life into old stories
Sunday, October 29, 2006 - By Ros Drinkwater
Continuity is alive and thriving at Dublin’s Origin Gallery.
The inspiration for Butter Boots And Paper Stockings, Emer Martin’s current exhibition, is a story-teller, or seanchai, as he would have described himself.
Sean O Conaill was a farmer and fisherman who lived in the Kerry village of Cill Rialaig, now internationally known as an artists’ retreat. O’Conaill could neither read nor write, but he had 9,000 stories on the tip of his tongue ready for telling.
He died in 1931, and his tales would have been lost but for Seamus O Duilearga, a UCD Professor of Folklore who took them all down between 1923 and 1931. They were subsequently translated into English by Maire MacNeill - daughter of John MacNeill, of 1916 fame - and published in a book.
There are now plans for a reprint illustrated by paintings by Martin and Trevor Stubley, an English artist similarly inspired.
It was when prize-winning artist and novelist Martin took up an artist’s residency at Cill Rialaig, last February, that she first heard of O Conaill and his stories.
She sees these as ‘‘our last link to the first of our people’’.
She stayed in a cottage next to his home, perched high on a cliff overlooking a landscape she has described as a ‘‘theatre of an immense, ever-shifting sea and sky and a vivid multicoloured tapestry of land’’.
That said, she brings to that landscape a palette that betrays a Middle Eastern influence, with the hot pinks and vibrant aquamarines of ancient Persian ceramics.
Not surprisingly, Martin has travelled extensively in the Middle East. She is married to an Iranian scientist whom she met in New York. The paintings are a joyful celebration of legend at its most fantastical with O Conaill’s own titles - There Was a Dragon That Came From The Sea, What Cures Whooping Cough? and The Fairy Cows Return To The Sea.
The most powerful depict the tale of a girl and the Bull Bhalbhae. In O Conaill’s words: ‘‘He asked her whether she would prefer him to be a bull by night and a man by day, or a bull by day and a man by night. He said she must choose one or the other. She said she would prefer him to be a bull by day and a man by night . . .”
The exhibition’s intriguing title is from a direct quote from O Conaill: ‘‘This is my story. If there is a lie in it, let it be so. It was not I who composed it. I got no reward but butter boots and paper stockings. The white-legged hound came, and ate the boots from my feet and tore the paper stockings.”
Butter Boots and Paper Stockings, paintings by Emer Martin, Origin Gallery, 83 Harcourt Street, Dublin 2, 01–4785159.
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A new short fiction film shot by novelist and filmmaker Emer Martin (Breakfast in Babylon) and staring Maria Hayden (Bloom 2003) (The Dead 1987).
The movie features Irvine Welsh as a social worker who finds a traumatized unaccompanied minor from Africa on the streets of Dublin. Produced by Niall McKay.
A young African boy who does not speak is found on the streets of Dublin. The authorities name him Danny and he comes under the care of Sarah, an over-worked social worker and single mother of two. Sarah and Danny form an ineffable bond, and she decides to foster him, but is shattered by his sudden disappearance.
For more info go to http://www.mediafactory.tv/
NUTS
a new short film written and directed by Irvine Welsh. This film is in post production with Media Factory in Berkeley California 2006. Producer Emer Martin.
Irvine Welsh’s debut as a director is Nuts - a dark comedy. Underneath the obvious comic elements there are bigger issues at play here. Notably, the much overlooked men’s health issue of testicular cancer, and the closet racism among the professional Irish middle-class. Ireland is a country that has just undergone dramatic changes, and the comfortable materialistic world that Dominic has built around himself is about to fall apart.
For more info go to http://www.mediafactory.tv/
http://emermartin.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/olgaleer.jpg FILMOGRAPHY
Baby Zero, An adaptation of Emer’s book Baby Zero has been optioned by Zanzibar productions and just received developmental funding from the Irish Film Board www.zanzibarfilms.net
Valley Of Ghosts , 16mm Color, 16 mins, 2003
Valley of Ghosts is a film about Silicon Valley - the new Wild West. Mary, a laid off high tech worker makes a film for her unborn child whom she is forced to sell to Michael and Sangita, dot com. Millionaires.
The Motel At The Mouth Of The Tunnel, 16mm B&W, 9 mins, 2000
Rosemary’s Baby in eight and a half minutes, this narrative film is about a young Irish woman who is tricked by her bulimic demon roommate into having a child.
Programmer For Filum 04, San Francisco International Irish Film Festival.
March 10/11 2004, Delancey Screening Room.
UPCOMMING EVENTS
NUTS will be featured at the prestigious Cork Film Festival 2007
MARDI GRAS
Spirit Nightclub
Sunday, 8 July 2007
Frank Ilfman AKA DJ Carnival-Pod / DJ Saskia /
DJ Tony Walsh/ Irish short films / Diva Manilla
Venue: Spirit Nightclub, Middle Abbey Street, Dublin 1
Date: Sunday, 8 July, 2007
Time: Short films start screening at 10.30pm on the main floor; DJ competition begins at the same time in the basement; Tocadisco music video premier at 12.00am followed by DJ Carnival-Pod.
Price: Tickets 10 (with passes)
Free before 11.00pm
Irvine Welsh’s film Nuts is a dark comedy. Underneath the obvious comic elements there are bigger issues at play. Notably, the much overlooked men’s health issue of testicular cancer, and the closet racism among the professional Irish middle-class. Ireland is a country that has just undergone dramatic changes, and the comfortable materialistic world that Dominic has built around himself is about to fall apart. This short film is novelist and screenwriter (Trainspotting) Irvine Welsh’s directorial debut. The film was produced by Emer Martin and Niall McKay.
Posted by emer | Filed in Uncategorized | Comments Off
Buy Book
Author
Emer Martin is a Dubliner who has lived in Paris, London, the Middle East, and various places in the U.S. Her first novel Breakfast in Babylon won Book of the Year 1996 in her native Ireland at the prestigious Listowel Writers' Week. Houghton Mifflin released Breakfast in Babylon in the U.S. in 1997. More Bread Or I'll Appear, her second novel was published internationally in 1999.
Emer studied painting in New York and has had a sell-out solo show of her paintings at the
Origin Gallery in Harcourt St, Dublin. Her new book is Baby Zero,
published March 07. She has just completed her third short film Unaccompanied. She produced Irvine Welsh's directorial debut NUTS in 2007. Emer was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2000.
She now lives in the jungles of Co. Meath, Ireland.
March 2007 Brandon Publishing
