13 April - 9 June

Gibson Galleries

NIGHT CLASS is a response to Crawford Art Gallery’s archive, often unseen materials that are imprinted with evocative layers of informal histories and invisible labour.  

This gallery building functioned as a School of Art from 1832 until 1979 and, during this time, professional photographers were periodically hired to stage and document examples of painting, sculpture, and lacemaking. These images of fine art students’ labour were printed in aspirational prospectuses promoting the work of the institution.  

In NIGHT CLASS, Jan McCullough uses photography and sculptural intervention to make visible alternative forms of labour and knowledge. She was drawn to the archive’s quietly forgotten register of technical classes – building construction, carpentry, and painting and decorating – which often took place at night. Her works also explore the fabric of the building itself; the interventions and the skilled work of technicians and caretakers that have been part of the building’s maintenance for over a hundred years. 

This project also represents a personal performance by the artist. Entering the building with a camera at night alongside the gallery’s caretakers and cleaning staff, McCullough immersed herself in the nocturnal rhythms of the gallery, learning to construct, reframe, stage and document the remnants of past actions – a night class of her own. 

Jan McCullough is a Belfast-based artist who explores the human acts of construction, fabrication and DIY, and the communities of interest and place that form around them.  

Commissioned by Crawford Art Gallery as part of BUILDING AS WITNESS, kindly supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media under the Decade of Centenaries Programme 2012-2023. 

With additional support from Arts Council Ireland and the Making and Momentum [In Conversation with Eileen Gray] Artist Bursary. 

Image © Jan McCullough, Frame Work II, from the series Night Class, 2024.

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26 April – 5 May

Long Room

SIT STAND SMOKE is a short Virtual Reality (VR) experience that explores some of the motivations and circumstances that led to the creation of the painting Men of the South (1921-22) by Seán Keating. As the Irish War of Independence drew to a close, it reveals the artist’s feelings and misgivings about some of the choices made by the new Irish State that followed.

Funny, provocative, and poignant, SIT STAND SMOKE takes the viewer into the unexpected world of Dr Éimear O’Connor, art historian, biographer, and – in this narrative – a newly initiated VR director casting actors for her first VR project. Although full of challenges, VR does afford Éimear the opportunity to have a conversation with Seán Keating, played by his great-grandson, Jonathan Quinlan.

Created by CURTIN // KEATING (co-artists Linda Curtin and David Keating, the latter being the grandson of the painter), SIT STAND SMOKE marks a century to the month since the purchase of Men of the South for the Collection, by the Gibson Bequest Committee, in April 1924.

This VR experience features characters based on volunteers who appear in the painting – Jim Riordan, Denis O’Mullane, Jim Cashman, John Jones, Roger Kiely, and Dan Browne – all of whom were members of the Cork No.2 Brigade of the Irish Republican Army and came mainly from the Newmarket and Kiskeam area of County Cork. 

Click here to pre-book your 30-minute SIT STAND SMOKE experience through Eventbrite.

Warning: This VR experience may not be suitable for individuals with photosensitive epilepsy or light sensitivity. Viewer discretion is advised. Recommended for ages 14+.

Commissioned by Crawford Art Gallery as part of BUILDING AS WITNESS, supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media under the Decade of Centenaries Programme 2012 - 2023.

With additional support from Screen Ireland, Animation Ireland Innovation & Immersive Development Fund, Ballymore, BT Business, Cork Film Centre, and Immersive Ireland.

Sit Stand Smoke (left to right, Adam Duggan, Al Draper, Danny Horgan) Photo: Tadgh Richardson

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 25 May – 21 July

Sculpture Galleries

Ursula Burke will be in Conversation with Dr Edwin Coomasaru
Friday 24 May, 6pm
More details here.

Ursula Burke will create a tapestry frieze which investigates Irish historical, art historical and contemporary representations of guerrilla warfare. The tapestry is inspired by the work of Norwegian tapestry artist Hannah Ryggen (1894-1970) who made a series of powerful tapestries representing images of resistance and highlighting the brutality of Nazi occupied Norway during World War II. The artist has invited Ukrainian weaver Zhanna Petrenko to weave the tapestry, creating a thread between two countries and periods of time - Ireland and Ukraine, both suffering oppression at the hands of a more powerful neighbour and both having common experiences of the devastating effects of famine.

Burke will also create a sculpture of a battle - bruised dog modelled on ‘The Jennings Dog’ - a Greek bronze from the 2nd century CE - which will be covered in hand embroidered flames emblematic of all the houses and commercial premises that were burnt out by the Black and Tans.

Ursula Burke Work in Progress (2023) © the artist

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