Majella O'Neill Collins

Unnamed 1

Fine Art Archival Pigment print on 270gsm cotton rag paper,

Limited edition of 25, each signed by the artist.

Unframed: 40 x 40 cm - €140

Unnamed 14

Fine Art Archival Pigment print on 270gsm cotton rag paper,

Limited edition of 25, each signed by the artist.

Unframed: 40 x 40 cm - €140

Majella O’Neill Collins lives and works on the island of Sherkin, just off the West Cork coast. She developed these two prints on the occasion of her solo exhibition Allegory of the MV Alta at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre (13 January 2024 to 24 February 2024). This body of work imagines the journey of the MV Alta, a merchant vessel which was abandoned at sea, 1,400 miles south-east of Bermuda in October 2018 after suffering main engine failure, and washed ashore at Ballycotton, Co. Cork during Storm Dennis in February 2020, where her wreckage remains.

The mysterious vessel is a modern-day ghost ship having been abandoned by its 10 person crew while en route from Greece to Haiti. The Alta drifted for 496 days over a distance of 2,300 nautical miles before running aground in Ballyandreen Bay. The vessel’s exact position and distance travelled during this time is unknown and unrecorded and can only be estimated. Despite exhaustive enquiries by Irish authorities, the MV Alta’s owners have never been found. The vessel, unclaimed, un-salvaged, is slowly being broken apart off the cliffs through the action of the wind and waves. Majella’s paintings capture the plight of the ship, evoking moments of that time adrift at the mercy of the sea, before being washed ashore to be broken on the rocky Irish coast.