Ulster Museum

On my visit to Blefast for our Elegiac Residue exhibition I visisted with Ben, Karl and Karen the Ulster Museum

• Paula Rego (1935–2022) is a key British artist of the 20th century.

• Known for dark, complex works confronting women’s oppression.

• Used varied techniques and styles to challenge male-dominated narratives.

• Centered female perspectives and experiences.

• Referenced political events, personal life, and family history.

• Expressed a distinctly feminist viewpoint.

• Casa das Histórias Paula Rego opened in Cascais, Portugal, in 2009.

• Honored with Royal Mail stamps (2005) and named Dame in 2010.

• Her work remains relevant and powerful today.

This etching is part of Paula Rego’s raw and powerful series responding to the trauma of illegal abortions. She made these works after the 1998 referendum in Portugal failed to legalize abortion. In them, women appear in everyday settings, caught in moments of deep physical and emotional strain yet they hold themselves with quiet strength. Rego doesn’t soften the reality; instead, she brings it to the surface, exposing the isolation and suffering imposed by moral judgement and institutional control. These images weren’t just personal or symbolic they became political, helping shift public sentiment and paving the way for the 2007 vote that finally legalized abortion in Portugal for the first ten weeks of pregnancy.

Joseph Beuys

The blackboards linked to Joseph Beuys at the Ulster Museum aren’t from 1960 as is sometimes thought, but from a key event in 1974. On 18 November that year, Beuys gave a four-hour performance lecture what he called an “Action” in the Fine Art Gallery at the Ulster Museum in Belfast. It was part of his touring exhibition The Secret Block for a Secret Person in Ireland, organised by art critic Caroline Tisdall. Over the course of the lecture, he worked across four blackboards, using them to sketch out his ideas—those boards have been kept in the museum’s collection ever since.

Beuys had been using blackboards as part of his performances since the early ’60s, especially in connection with the Fluxus movement. They were a way for him to work through and communicate complex ideas live, in the moment. In the Belfast lecture, he began by drawing the triple spiral, or triskele, from the Neolithic tomb at Newgrange a symbol of flow, energy, and ongoing transformation. The blackboards from that event are filled with chalk drawings and references to Celtic imagery, tying into his wider interests in mythology, place, and his idea of “social sculpture” the belief that art and creativity can reshape society.

I was interested to know more about Joseph Beuys so I watched this lecture on youtube by curator Logan Sisley