Sydney-based Irish artist Anthony Quinn who is a regular contributor to Tinteán has a new artistic project underway and is seeking input from the public. He writes:
I’ve been thinking about Halloween. Not the plastic-pumpkin supermarket sugar-rush, but something quieter, older: Samhain. The mythical, magical heart of modern-day Halloween. Fading, but still whispering — a ghost that lives among us.
Like many, I live between two worlds — Ireland and Australia — with love and longing in both places. Sometimes it’s disorienting, even painful, feeling rooted and uprooted at the same time.
Samhain Stories is an invitation into that presence — into a quiet creative calling.
It’s a way to honour the echoes of Irish tradition not just with nostalgia, but with relevance. To say: this still lives in me. It belongs here, too.
It’s for anyone who feels stretched between homes, between times. A space to find solace, to play with memory, to create something quietly powerful.
If you feel inspired, I’d love for you to share something — a story, a flicker of memory, a whisper of feeling.
Whatever you share will inspire a new series of artworks I’ll share at a special event in October.
You can find the project here
Anthony Quinn is an Irish artist and an Australian citizen who lives and works on the lands of the Guringai and Darug people in Sydney. His Irish heritage inspires his artistic practice and also helps him to forge a connection with his adopted home
Here’s my own Samhain memory in the form of a Drabble (a prose piece in 100 words)
Swinging on the front gate with my brother for mother to arrive home with the fruit we only saw once a year: coconuts and pomegranates. My brothers attacking the coconuts with a hammer and chisel. Me, the youngest, given the first taste of the milky juice. Transfixed by the jewelled wonder of the split red fruit but no memory of the taste.
What remains of this Samhain ritual far from my native land is this flicker of memory to be passed down to my Australian family, retold with what remains of my first family, and shared wherever memory now lives.
Dymphna Lonergan (a member of the Tinteán editorial collective)
Tinteán 