The world-renowned and shamanistic artist Barry Flanagan, Welsh-born but an Irish citizen, was one of the world’s foremost figurative sculptors, with his work exhibited in streetscapes such as Park Avenue in New York, the Champs Elysées in Paris and O’Connell Street in Dublin. His trademark hare sculptures marked him out as an innovator, as he described himself as an ‘English-speaking itinerant European sculptor’.
In the moving and invigorating Flanagan’s Wake, the filmmaker Peter Bach embarks on a personal journey making a vow to Flanagan – who at the time was wrestling with motor neurone disease on the island of Ibiza – that he will travel the world and bring back footage of strangers by his public works and film the artist watching this as he wrestles with his disease.
This journey of discovery across Europe and the United States is a celebration and homage to Flanagan’s work as Bach captures the artist’s responses to his travelogue, offering a unique and fresh look at his work. Sadly, Flanagan died in 2009 before the film was completed yet this remains a picaresque tribute to the work of a true individual. - Colm McAuliffe, Jameson Dublin International Film Festival
