Long Meadow
- Artist: Rita Donagh
- Date: 1982
- Medium: Oil paint on canvas
- Dimensions: support: 1524 x 1524 mm
- Museum: Tate Britain
- Collection record: Tate Britain website
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About this artwork
This is “Long Meadow” by Rita Donagh. The work is an oil painting on canvas, completed in 1982, that draws the eye up from a bird‑sitting perspective to view the Maze Prison’s H‑blocks in County Antrim, once called Long Kesh or ‘Long Meadow’. Donagh lays out the eight block plans as if they were projected onto a square canvas; each block repeats its own geometry, echoing the shape of a single cell. The light is rendered subtly – a pale, diffuse wash that feels like an air raid over the rooftops.
In the early 1980s, when the Troubles in Northern Ireland were still raging, Donagh chose to capture the institutional architecture itself rather than the political drama inside it. By flattening perspective and treating each block as a single square, she gives us a quiet but precise aerial survey that invites contemplation of confinement and its surroundings.
The painting has appeared in several group displays – from the 2003–04 “Rita Donagh” show at Tate Modern to loans at Ikon Gallery and other venues. It currently sits on the square frame in Tate Britain, part of the Modern and Contemporary British Art exhibit that ran until 2016.
See it in person
Long Meadow is in the collection of Tate Britain on Millbank, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
