‘Flail’ presents a new body of work encompassing a peripatetic culture clash of history, tradition, custom and ethno cultural notions as seen through the lens of the harvest.

Harvest time in Ireland is an annual event that has both divided and bound communities across all aspects of life, for many centuries. Famine, war, religious tensions, social divisions, providentialist belief, love and folklore are all bound up in the complex rituals and labours related to the gathering in of grain.

The exhibition augments work created by Godsell in 2023, which re-evaluated the silences in the historiography of the collecting of Protestant stories of custom and belief in Southern Irish museums and archives, mainly relating to the custom of the harvest thanksgiving, which itself has rich and complex origins.

Through an eclectic fusion of film, installation, printmaking and digital photography Godsell re-evaluates our current understanding of identity construction, nationality, and belonging within a multicultural contemporary Ireland. ‘Flail’ creates a vital space for dialogue in relation to a minority community and its inherent historical tensions and entanglements.

Flail is funded by an Arts Council of Ireland bursary award.