Helen Merrigan Colfer’s 2023 exhibition Tribes & Tribulations brought sculpture, painting, poetry and a personal lockdown diary to The Alley Theatre in Strabane.
Curated by Noelle McAlinden, the exhibition focused on the communities people form and the relationships that sustain them through difficulty.
Five sculptures centred on sanctuary
The exhibition included 30 resin and mixed-media sculptures alongside paintings and written work.
Five central sculptures addressed compassion, connection and the experience of finding sanctuary within a group.
The title used “tribe” not as an anthropological category, but as a description of chosen communities and people who provide support during life’s challenges.
The pandemic recorded through personal reflection
Colfer’s Lockdown Diary documented a period when physical separation interrupted many of those ordinary support systems.
The work allowed visitors to reconsider the pandemic after daily life had begun to return to familiar patterns.
Curator McAlinden described the exhibition as a celebration of life in the face of adversity and of the role played by creativity, expression and cultural connection.
The presentation had travelled through several locations in Ireland, while The Alley Theatre included works specific to its version of the exhibition.
Tribes & Tribulations connected mental wellbeing with the social conditions surrounding it. Its works suggested that resilience is rarely an individual achievement produced in isolation. It depends on relationships, communities and spaces in which difficult experience can be shared.