'I think she was sent to us for a reason': Cork artist to unveil exhibition inspired by ghost ship (Copy) (Copy)

To most, it’s a rusting hulk of a wreck, an ugly scar on the coastline, but for island artist Majella O’Neill Collins, the ghost ship MV Alta has brought inspiration and changed her life.

Thanks to a break in the weather on Thursday, the Sherkin Island-based artist managed to ferry to the mainland the final batch of her 33 oil paintings inspired by the ship ahead of the opening next week of her debut solo exhibition in the Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre in Skibbereen.
The MV Alta was abandoned in 2018 and drifted across the Atlantic for 496 days before grounding in East Cork during Storm Dennis in 2020, Ms O’Neill Collins said she became almost obsessed with the ship’s story and journey across the Atlantic and spent three years working on the paintings.

“I think she was sent to us for a reason,” she said.

“When I heard about her first, I felt she could have landed on our front door, and then began to wonder how could this happen, with all our satellites and AI, how she slipped through all those nets and avoided shipping to land on the Irish coast near Ballycotton.

“I did a lot of research on her, got the original plans and charts, and lots of photos of her from a friend involved in salvage. But I made a conscious decision not to visit her.” 

She said the ship’s story — how it was renamed 14 times, abandoned, and left to drift in largely uncharted waters, reminded her of “the abuse of capitalism”, and how as she worked on the paintings, she began to dream about her.

“I thought as if I was on a boat going through life, and how one day you're sailing along, and think everything is grand, and then suddenly life throws things at us, you find yourself in uncharted waters, and then, in the blink of an eye, you hit a rock," she said.

Although an islander, Majella says she was not an outdoors person and rarely swam, but as she worked on the paintings, she felt an urge to experience the sea, to become immersed in the ocean, as the Alta was.

“And now I swim every day,” she said. 

“If someone told me three years ago that I’d be in the water nearly every day, I'd have told them they were mad. But it has helped my mental health enormously. 

"And my palette changed, my work changed. It has transformed my life really and has been such a special honour to have had that excitement about doing it. This is the first body of work I've done that I don’t want to let go.” 

Majella said it's important to remember that the Alta has been rendered safe, with no environmental hazards left on board, and she believes the wreck should be left on the coastline as a reminder to society of how disposable life has become.

Her Allegory of the MV Alta exhibition runs from January 13 to February 24 at Uilinn, West Cork Arts Centre.