A PORTRAIT of former taoiseach Bertie Ahern, which incorporates a Louis Vuitton shopping bag and chopped-up credit cards, has gone on display at a Dublin art gallery.
The painting Dig The Garden Or Grow Bluebells, by Belfast artist Jonathan Aiken, is being shown at Gormleys Fine Art in South Frederick Street and is for sale at €2,500.
Mr Ahern did not sit for the portrait and the artist said the title of the painting was inspired by comments made by Mr Ahern to VIPmagazine.
In a November 2009 interview, Mr Ahern attacked critics of the Government’s economic policies and said: “I don’t know why they wouldn’t go out and dig the garden or grow bluebells or do something useful!”
Spokeswoman for Gormleys Lorraine Brett said the image was a “mixed media” portrait “painted on a re-used Louis Vuitton paper shopping bag”.
The luxury French designer brand is sold at an outlet in the Brown Thomas department store on Grafton Street; waiting lists for its expensive handbags were frequently cited as symbolic of Celtic Tiger boom excesses.
Ms Brett explained that the artist had used “delicately built- up layers of oil paint” to depict Mr Ahern’s “well-known jovial gesture of a wave and a smile for the public” and “a montage of broken credit cards” to create a suit jacket.
She said Mr Ahern was “most welcome” to come in to see the painting at the gallery, which is just a few hundred yards from the Dáil.
Mr Aiken told The Irish Timeshe had been "stirred by Bertie Ahern's response" to his critics and "the portrait seems as though Mr Ahern is set up for us to yet again point the finger at him, but in his gesture he is also waving back at us, as such throwing it back to us".
He added: “Bertie was just an iconic figure to express these ideas and an emblem of where we were as a people. I see this time as an opportunity to realise where we are, look at what has happened, take responsibility for ourselves . . . This is a critical point where we have the opportunity – to seek out the bluebells.”
