A large and diverse collection of masks from around the world on show in Dublin is well worth a visit, for all the family, writes Catherine Foley.

GREAT GRINNING faces peer down at you from every direction. Serpents, goats, devils, witches . . . there are images of delirium, nonsensical whimsy and terrific hilarity all around. The Ark, a cultural centre for children in Dublin's Temple Bar, is the setting for a large and diverse collection of masks from around the world.

It's the transformative power of masks that has caught the imagination of Tomás Hardiman, curator of Masks! With a mask, you can become somebody else for a short period and in this vale of tears, it's great to have a little out like that sometimes," he says.

"By putting on a mask, you look different from the outside, but you are prompted to go inward, so you are also, by necessity, going inside, and what you discover is many more parts of yourself that you may not have thought were there. That's the wonder of creation and it exists within. It releases our spirit.It's a magic that everyone can relate to."

The show comprises workshops and an exploration of masks from around the world, including Mexico, sub-Saharan Africa and traditional Irish Mummers' masks from Armagh, as well as carnival parade masks from Macnas, masks from Hollywood and the world of film such as the original Batman and Robocop outfits, and a rich collection of performance masks including those from the Noh and Commedia dell'arte traditions.

"You can become mesmerised very quickly by the use of masks in theatre," says Hardiman, who is former managing director of the Galway Arts Centre and of the Cúirt International Festival of Literature, as well as a former marketing/publicity director at the Abbey Theatre.

He recalls the use of Noh masks in a number of productions during the Yeats Cycle at the Peacock Theatre in the late 1980s as "a wonderful experience".

In order to make a visit to Masks! memorable and special, he says, "we have included as many authentic artefacts as possible from a wide variety of traditions".

Children and their parents will be able to join workshops and learn how to make masks during the exhibitions run. On Sunday July 27th, the Armagh Rhymers, all bedecked in straw and willow, will arrive to perform in The Ark's ground floor theatre.

Another element in the collection are the latex masks by second-year model-making students at the Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology and the masks of the four temperaments as found in the medieval four humours, namely choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic and melancholic are also on display.

There are ritual and ceremonial masks from Ghana, Guinea, the Dominican Republic of Congo, the Ivory Coast, Mali, Nigeria and Guinea, all from a collection owned by Dubliner, Frank X Buckley.

The first group of masks to greet the eye at the entrance to The Ark are all from Mexico. Like every other culture, in Mexico too "masks carry different weights", explains the exhibition's designer, Tony Donoghue, who has contributed his own collection of 47 Mexican masks to the show.

The diablo and muerte masks "are totally playful", he says. "Children have toys like these. There was no revenge involved, as they come from the prehispanic tradition when the Aztec gods were neither benevolent or malevolent."

There are Viejos and Viejas (old men and old women) masks here too, caballero masks (knights) and wild animal masks such as the "tigre", which is the term used in Mexico for the jaguar.

The jaguar has featured in local folk dances for hundreds of years both out of fear and respect, says Donoghue. It was also an image used by Aztec warriors on top of their helmets to give power and strength.

There are beards, horns and moving eyelids and mouths. These masks are made to be worn again and again. Many that have been broken or chipped are stuck together again to be worn to another event. With so many festivities, masks are used all through the year in Mexico, says Donoghue.

"Theres nothing ancient about these masks," he explains. The widespread practice of making and wearing masks in Mexico is a bit like the prevalence of traditional music in the west of Ireland, he says. "It evolves, it's not just referencing an art culture," he adds.

THE EXHIBITION ALSO features some short pieces of film, such as two little Indian boys who were filmed last year pretending to be lions by holding masks made from paper plates up to their faces, or the group of men who are dancing and playing instruments, wearing horns and mirrors on their heads, as filmed in a village in Borkina Faso in west Africa.

On the second floor, a diverse collection of some of the masks used in performance is on display, as supplied by the Scottish Masks and Puppets Centre.

You can see the lupetta, a toothless old woman or she-wolf cub, who is "a prototype of the wrinkly, cross-eyed old woman or toothless witch covered with warts. She has an obsessive nature. Her appearance might give the impression of being servile or obedient but instead she is predatory, impatient and evil," according to the centre's director, Dr Malcolm Knight.

There are Korean Ta'chum masks, Topeng masks from Bali, Java and Lombok, and examples of the masks that were used in the original stagings of Greek tragedy.

Hardiman hopes the exhibition "will inspire children towards further creativity in their lives".

He says there's "a deficit in our engagement with masks in Ireland", in spite of the fact that this area is "such a vast and rich vein to tap in to creativity especially with children".

The exhibition will give children and their families a chance to see, smell, touch, wear and experience masks that are "authentic ones and to experience their power first-hand, he says. "The workshops are as important as the exhibition,'' Hardiman points out. "Masks! is not about knowledge. It's about experience."

Artist Laura de Búrca, who will run a series of workshops for the three- to five-year-olds and their parents or guardians, entitled Go Wild, says "if children are shy sometimes, they can act a little bit (when they don a mask) because they feel a bit hidden".

She hopes the children will do a little parade once they have made their masks. She has mirrors in the studio because, she says, once the masks are on, "they want to see themselves". Other workshops will cater for different age categories.

Masks! continues at The Ark, 11A Eustace Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2, until Sun Aug 17