Mayo community honours the legacy of the great Johnny Kirrane

CLAREMORRIS Town Hall Gallery was a hive of activity on Thursday night last as the Claremorris Open Exhibition (COE) was officially launched by renowned Irish sculptor John Behan.

The exhibition honoured the legacy of the late Johnny Kirrane, former chairperson of the COE.

The exhibition was organised by the Claremorris Arts Committee, a committee which was founded in 1978, and they have seen the COE develop into a prestigious event in the arts calendar.

For each exhibition a different adjudicator is asked to select the show.

Such is the esteem that the exhibition is held in that some of the artists who have submitted works to the COE have gone on to be invited to exhibit abroad.

Many internationally known artists have had their works exhibited at COE and due to the fact that it is an open exhibition, lesser-known artists have an increased chance of having their work shown at the prestigious event.

The exhibition has received many plaudits over the years, including from the renowned Contemporary Arts Society in London.

The late Johnny Kirrane, who sadly passed away in February 2025, was a founding member and driving force behind the Claremorris Open Exhibition, which transformed Claremorris into a centre for contemporary art.

In 1978, at a time when professional artists rarely exhibited outside Ireland’s main cities, Johnny proposed holding a contemporary art show in Claremorris. He formed a small committee, which included his wife Angela, and the exhibition was born.

With guidance from professional artists such as John Behan and Hugh McCormick, it quickly established strong professional standards.

The exhibition was renamed the Claremorris Open Exhibition in 1980, which adopted an open submission format. Adjudicators were drawn from respected bodies such as the Arts Council of Ireland, and the British Arts Council, which gave artists in rural Ireland access to international expertise.

Johnny Kirrane served as chairperson for over four decades, guiding the COE’s growth and development. Over the years, the exhibition has expanded to include installation, video and site-specific work, bringing art onto the streets of Claremorris. Indeed, the exhibition has travelled to Belfast and Sligo, and also to Wrexham in 1996.

It was quite fitting that in order to honour the legacy of the great Johnny Kirrane, the Claremorris Arts Committee also sought the involvement of local talent, by inviting last year's Texaco Art Competition winner, 19-year-old Danny Walsh, to paint a portrait of Johnny Kirrane that took pride of place at the launch.

Danny was the overall winner of last year’s Texaco Art Competition with his pencil portrait ‘Colm’, having started working on portraits only a couple of months before the competition. With no formal training, Danny went on to be short-listed in the 2025 AIB Young Portrait Prize.

His portrait of Johnny Kirrane took him about a month to complete and was painted with acrylics in a hyper-realistic style.

“I’m honoured to be able to take part in remembering Johnny Kirrane considering the work he did to help artists like me,” Danny said, adding that he was delighted to have the opportunity to contribute to the exhibition.

Hard-working Claremorris Arts Committee member Eileen Gleeson explained the planning and preparation that goes into the COE.

“This exhibition honouring Johnny has been a long time in the making. The Claremorris Open Exhibition has been in existence for 40 years. The pieces that are curated here tonight represent different eras of the exhibition. It has gone through many formations and transformations over the years.

“Tonight was really about honouring our late chairperson Johnny Kirrane and celebrating his legacy, and what he brought to the town and what he did for the town. Johnny had a great vision for the committee and the exhibition and did a lot of great work for the COE over the years.”

Ms. Gleeson was delighted to see such a large attendance in the gallery at the town hall and was pleased to see various generations in attendance.

“We had a great attendance and there was a variety of all age groups. We had so many here tonight from various decades of involvement in the arts committee. We are delighted to have Johnny’s wife Angela and his family here.

“It is also a great honour to have John Behan as our special guest speaker to open the exhibition. John Behan was one of the founding members of COE, along with Johnny Kirrane, Hugh McCormick and Edward Delaney.

“For our portrait artist, Danny Walsh, who did the portrait of Johnny Kirrane, to meet those types of people tonight and to get that level of exposure is fantastic, and Johnny would have been delighted with that. Johnny always had great time for new and emerging artists and making sure that they could see a way forward.

“Over the years, the Claremorris exhibition was extremely prestigious and was probably more lauded in London than Ireland, and it was very well known.”

Special guest speaker John Behan said that emerging Hollymount artist Danny Walsh has a bright future, and Ms. Gleeson also had high praise for the 19-year-old.

“He is self-taught, and he only started painting a year, or a year and a half ago, and he was able to produce something like this. Portraiture is a particularly difficult type of art, and he didn’t just get the physicality of Johnny, but he also captured him perfectly, which also showed Johnny’s spirit.”

It has been a busy couple of weeks for the arts in Claremorris, with the town hall also hosting the Claremorris Drama and Fringe Festival. Ms. Gleeson said that creativity and the arts play an important part in the world, especially in these turbulent times.

“It is a huge two weeks for the arts in Claremorris. As John Behan said, Claremorris is not the county town or the biggest town in Mayo with the most resources, but it does have a real feeling of a proper embrace for the arts and a thirst for the arts.

“With the times that we are living in, and the atmosphere of the world right now with war hither and thither, we never needed creativity to be cherished in the way that we need it at the moment.”