Going for broke

Let’s be honest, a museum of broken things doesn’t sound the most promising of exhibitions.

This was how the ‘The Corracanvy Hoard’, an exhibition by visual artist and ceramicist Jane McCormick was billed.

Eye-rolling by those already suspicious of contemporary art is to be expected, particularly when the exhibition sounds like an artist clearing out the second drawer in their kitchen press. Perched up in the crow’s nest of the County Museum, the Corracanvy Hoard lives up to this billing, as the Celt can indeed confirm it is full of broken things, mostly little things, and there’s a whole go of them.

So what makes it a ‘museum’ of broken things? Its curation. The meticulous arrangements, particularly in the drawers viewed from above are mesmerising. In the selection of object, size, shape, colour and quantity the pieces are displayed, there’s rhythm, artistry, and humour. This results in a beautiful, thought-provoking exhibition.

Granted, the thoughts provoked might be: why on earth would anyone have so many taps lying about? What’s with all the flattened Coke cans? Or who owned those false teeth?

You can’t help but slip into personal reminiscences about some of the items – for me the ‘Ireland’ decks of cards brought back wonderful holidays in a caravan in the 1980s playing Crazy 8s. Other items, you are left to guess at reasons why they might have held importance for the artist, the single birthday candles, possibly a mother holding onto that precious first birthday of her children, who incidentally crop up here and there in the collection. Some artefacts are just plain cool like the framed cowboy pistols.

Jane’s Corracanvy Hoard playfully subverts the concept of museums by posing the question why should her domestic flotsam hold any less validity as a collection than anything else in the museum? Time elapsed? Some of the items look pretty old, and what arbitrary date needs to pass before something is old enough for a museum? Are they less valid because they didn’t come from a big house or someone of great fame? Mercifully those days are gone.

On the ground floor of the county museum are two recently donated artefacts exhibited together: a truly beautiful set of rosary beads dating from pre-1843, alongside a shoulder belt shield Cootehill loyalist militia from the late 1700s. The rosary is missing one of its beads, and has been repeatedly repaired, the belt shield is missing its belt. However these items were undoubtedly precious to those who owned them at the time, and they provide us with a glimpse about what was important to at least some people of that time, and importantly, as former curator Savina Donohoe said, they start conversations.

Jane McCormick’s collection certainly starts conversations.

The Corracanvy Hoard runs at Cavan County Museum, Ballyjamesduff until December 2021.