Over two years, artists Catherine O’Halloran and Grace Dyas created The No Show, a ‘trauma-informed contemporary art film’ inspired by working-class men who don’t ‘turn up’.
Working with young men in community organisation Limerick City Build, the duo devised a work exploring the experiences of working-class families, going back six generations.
Ahead of a screening at this year’s First Fortnight festival, Catherine O’Halloran introduces The No Show.
There are so many unfilled seats and unanswered calls, appointments missed, and absentees in our world, but rarely do we pause to ask where they are.
This film presents visceral flickers of hunger, loss, abuse, banality and reality that celebrate our absences, emptiness, and blank spaces, to bring us right into the present and allow us a window to show up for ourselves.
I remember being in school and absence for me meant peace, for my mother it meant safety, for my father the stakes were even higher again. And in cases you were made to go, we can even be no shows as we stand right in front of you, having dissociated a long time ago.
