Part of Aidan Hickey’s Ulysses series, which was exhibited in Zurich, at the UB Law, as part of the exhibit “James Joyce, Ulysses, and the Law” (April 15 to May 18, 2025).
“Several mourners return to the Freeman’s Journal office in the city centre.
The hectic coming-and-goings of journalists and visitors seem driven by a centrifugal force. There’s a great deal of talk but little communication. Only Bloom, ignoring the chaos, doggedly plies his trade as a seller of advertising space.
Is this cauldron of hot-air Joyce’s way of dismissing print-journalism? Did he see it as a thought-scattering monster, fed with words and stories to provide each day’s sensation? Fifty years later Marshall McLuhan would say the same about television.
My version of the Aeolus maelstrom started with W. M. Turner’s Storm at the Mouth of a Harbour … I used a collage technique because it would take months to paint those Victorian printing presses.”
Aidan Hickey