14 February–5 April 2003

First exhibited at and curated by Limerick City Gallery, Crawford Municipal Art Gallery is now delighted to present this major exhibition of new work by Limerick-born artist, John Shinnors.

John Shinnors has selected three broad subject themes for this exhibition, which are the Shannon River -Estuary in Snow, the ancient site of Dun Aengus and the Scarecrow. "Shinnors clearly represents these subject themes, but does not refer to their literal-visual details in a linear, sequential, connected display of a 'realistic' technique. Rather, he assembles a mosaic of traces, clues and hints that refer to the subject themes."
Paul M O'Reilly, in John Shinnors: New Work Considered, July 2002

Studies in watercolour on paper accompany each series of large-scale works on stretched cotton or linen. The new paintings employ rich chiaroscuro qualities and dramatic contrasts, yet a subtlety of colour is retained throughout.

Opening hours: Monday - Saturday 10am-5pm
(Admission Free). Full wheelchair access.
For more details and visuals please contact:
Anne Boddaert (Exhibitions Officer)

1–22 FEBRUARY 2003
2003 - EUROPEAN YEAR OF PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

The National Training and Development Institute instigated eleven, six month artist-in-residence projects, in as many locations throughout Ireland during 2002.

This exhibition represents a cross section of work produced and NTDI are proud to present Art Reach 3, in association with the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery.

2003 has been designated the European Year of Disabled Citizens as a direct response by the European Commission to the fact that there are 37 million people in Europe who experience disability. The key objectives of this endeavour are:

• To promote understanding and acceptance of citizens with disabilities
• To encourage disabled people to express their views
• To take action in order to improve disabled peoples lives.

Art Reach 3 endeavoured to provide those who work and train in NTDI with the opportunity to discover their ability and interest in the visual arts. For many participants this exhibition represents their first engagement with the arts. Approximately 300 people with disabilities across Ireland have engaged with the project.

NTDI CORK
Artist in Residence - William Frode de la Forte
"Access and participation to creativity are essential to peoples life. Programmes like Art Reach are vital. The role of the artist in a programme like this is a wonderful one. It is to take people on a journey into unchartered waters, a journey of experiment, challenge and discovery. This one was a great trip, full of energy, curiosity and talents. Thanks to everyone involved."

NTDI CLONMEL
Artist in Residence - Ronnie Fitzgerald
"The human potential for creativity is not limited by physical or developmental disabilities. Through cultivation of artistic expression, people with significant challenges can develop creatively. I believe people with different abilities should have access to cultural activities, and should be able to participate fully in those activities. Most artists believe that talent and quality should be the most important criteria in evaluating their work. This certainly applies here"

NTDI Longford
Artist in Residence - Lucy Tormey
"It has been a wonderful and enlightening experience to work with a group of such energy and generosity of spirit. The colour, vibrancy and creativity of each individual are evident in the works that the participants have produced. In preparation for this exhibition, the participants have begun to unfold and develop their own creative language and have been building on existing talents, skills and resources. Their commitment to the project has been outstanding and all are to be congratulated on their immense achievements"

NTDI BRAY
Artist in Residence - Trish Brennan
The photographic process is constantly used for identification purposes; we are frozen in a still image, which represents us to the world. Photographs furnish evidence of our existence, this image may be distorted, but there is always a presumption that something exists, or did exist, which is like what's in the picture. For this exhibition the participants photographed each other over a few sessions and edited the images to select the one they were most comfortable with and reflected upon the image. The results are an extremely honest and frank expression on photographic representation.

NTDI TALLAGHT
ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE - GENEVIEVE HARDEN

NTDI SWORDS
ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE - PAT MC ALLISTER

NTDI CASTLEBAR
ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE - BREDA BURNS

NTDI TRALEE
ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE - ANGIE BUCKLEY

NTDI WATERFORD
ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE - CLARE HORGAN

NTDI MONAGHAN
ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE - ROSITA MC KEARNEY

NTDI LIFFORD
ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE - MARIE BARRETT

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
FINOLA MC TERNAN
ARTS DEVELOPMENT OFFICER
NTDI
ROSLYN PARK, SANDYMOUNT, DUBLIN 4
TEL: 01-2057293
EMAIL: aap@iol.ie www.rehab.ie

CULTURE 2000
Art reach 3 has been carried out with the support of the European community, culture 2000 funding initiative.

The content of this project does not necessarily reflect the position of the European community, nor does it involve any responsibility on the part of the European Community.

1 March–5 April 2003

Crawford Municipal Art Gallery is delighted to present a retrospective of the artist Pat Moran. To mark the tenth anniversary of his death over forty-five works have been assembled to provide a comprehensive overview of this fascinating and much respected artist.

Pat Moran's work centres on an almost 'romantic' vision of cityscapes and provides an enthralling and very personal record of the changing urban environments of Dublin and Cork. His work is lucid, responsive and communicates an intimacy of place and a real affection for lived in, often shabby and neglected spaces of urbanity. 

Pat Moran was born in Port Laoise in 1961.  He studied Fine Art Painting at Dun Laoghaire School of Art and Design and at the National College of Art and Design from 1982 - 1983. His working life was mostly spent in Dublin in various studios and derelict buildings throughout the city. In addition he spent a year painting in Italy in 1984 - 1985 and travelled in Mexico studying mural painting in 1986.

He exhibited his work regularly in group shows and had his first one-man exhibition Local Colour in the Temple Bar Gallery in 1988. He was involved in a number of community art and mural projects throughout Dublin.  In 1990, Moran moved to Cork, as part of the Triskel Arts Centre's Artists in Residence scheme and worked from a studio in the Cork Artists' Collective. His work matured and developed considerably during this period culminating with his second solo show at the Triskel Arts Centre in 1991. He continued to live in Cork and became involved in the Artist in Prison scheme as a teacher in Port Laoise Prison. Pat was in the process of moving back to Dublin when he died on Sherkin Island, Whit Weekend 1992.

This exhibition, which will tour to Dunamaire Arts Centre, Port Laoise will raise the public profile of this very accomplished artist and will provide a definitive record of Pat Moran's work through the publication of an extensive catalogue published by Gandon with an essay by Aidan Dunne.

"Pat Moran painted pictures and he painted pictures of what he knew and experienced. The honesty to paint cars - no one paints cars in the romance language of cityscape. Giddily leaning lampposts clawing in to blue and green streetscapes - black and white expressions of inner city grubbiness. Pat painted as he lived with vitality and directness, and of course in the usual confusions of our being" (Richard Gorman, 2001)

17 April–3 May 2003

Crawford Municipal Art Gallery in collaboration with the Institute of Choreography and Dance presents a multiple video installation by dance choreographer Hervé Robbe.

The theme of the house suggests itself as the subject for this innovative choreography. Choosing this space of reference is to question its symbolism, Mythology and architectural materiality. The dancer, who will be present only in images, will become the subject of, and character in, the different pieces of video fiction.

The physicality of the minimal space in this installation allows image and sound to recompose the fragmented scenography. The use of space and projection will echo the multiple components of the dancing bodies who renew themselves unceasingly.

Hervé Robbe sees the coexistence of choreography with video and sound as a way to create new qualities of space and to allow a re-invention of the way the choreographic event unfolds. The architecture of the installation encourages a perceptive process by the public, as "the spectator is confronted with mystery".Robbeís collaborators include composers such as Andrea Cera and Etienne Cuppens and filmmakers such as Christian Boustani.

Open: Monday - Saturday 10am-5pm (Admission Free). Full wheelchair access.

For more details and visuals please contact: Anne Boddaert (Exhibitions Officer)

17 April–7 June

Yuko Shiraishi's work at once engages and informs the viewer - and is inspired in part, from European colour field paintings by superimposing different hues layer by layer.

Shiraishi's work not only provides a new interpretation of painting but will be viewed in a unique way - as a site-specific installation on the walls and ceilings in the architecturally dynamic upper gallery.

The gallery's curved 'wave-like' wall will be the starting point of Shiraishi's site-specific installation painting hues of colours into the deep curve of the gallery's wall.

Accompanying the installation will be seven large-scale canvases and over twenty box paintings from an ongoing project.A dialectic between the Eastern and Western comprehension of language informs her approach to visual communication. The idea of "tacit understanding", an understanding through silence which is rooted in Japanese culture is evident in her approach to painting.

The critic Waldemar Januszczak wrote of her pure and quiet abstract works: "It strikes me that she collects colour in the way that a scientist collects samples or a butterfly collector collects butterflies"

Born in Tokyo in 1956, Yuko Shiraishi left Japan in 1974 to live in Vancouver for three years before permanently settling in London in 1977. She has successfully exhibited to great acclaim internationally and her recent exhibitions include As Dark as Light, St. Ives Tate Gallery (1999), Shigeru Yokota Gallery, Tokyo (2001), Colour - A Life of its Own, Kunsthalle Budapest, Hungary (2002), Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, (2002) and Infinite Line Museum Wiesbaden, Germany (2002).

Yuko Shiraishi is represented by Annely Juda Fine Art, London

14 May–28 June 2003

Neil Conroy and Lesley Sanderson make collaborative work that engages with an exploration of physical displacement.

This is used metaphorically to suggest an anxiety about how one is positioned within specific societies. Feelings of belonging or alienation are made visual by an emphasis on the physical relationship or dislocation that the subject might have with their surrounding, be that a domestic space or a landscape.

Elsewhere brings together several related works which explore these themes through different mediums. The exhibition includes an installation which uses drawing with moving light and intermittent sound; a series of colour photographs which are seen alongside drawings emphasising certain elements within the image; and a performative video of the artists. In these works the subjects are isolated, floating or out of context, which infers that their sense of belonging is 'elsewhere'.

Both acclaimed artists in their own right, Lesley Sanderson, a Chinese/Malaysian artist has been working in collaboration with British born artist Neil Conroy over the last five years. Previous exhibitions include East International, Norwich 2002, Leeds Metropolitan Gallery, Leeds 2002 with forthcoming exhibitions Cruel/Loving Bodies touring X-Ray Art Center, Beijing and Para/Site, Hong Kong.

These Colours Run 2001 courtesy of the artists.

14 May–28 June 2003

Crawford Municipal Art Gallery presents an exciting new site-specific work by artist Inge Van Doorslaer.

"A gathering of winged seeds tumbling gracefully at random into space simultaneously lifted up, airborne; all of a sudden all over the place hopeful potential held gently aloft, on a passing breeze, in temporary suspension, somewhat restless, containing the promise of something".

(Inge Van Doorslaer, April 2003)

Rambling tumbling potential is a mixed media wall installation specifically developed for the Project Room space. The work will allow natural light to become an element of the work

Inge Van Doorslaer has exhibited widely across Ireland, Europe and the USA.

Her process is concerned with an attentive gathering of understanding of our everyday world, and a curiosity about the perception of the ordinary.

She enhances the subtle qualities of a wide variety of media, from textiles and printmaking to photography and the sculptural.

In her work, a re-contextualising of the banal allows subtle presences to emerge, revealing the hidden qualities of objects and drawing attention to the process of discovery.

30 August–4 October 2003

The exhibition brings together Robert Ballagh's most intriguing portraits, which span the artists' long career and his ongoing exploration of personal and public issues.

Central to the exhibition is the showcasing of Ballagh's new portrait of his late colleague and sometimes mentor, the artist Michael Farrell (1940-2000).

The collective exhibition of portraits form links with both Ballagh and Farrell's artistic ideologies, some of which have never been on public view before, such as the portrait of Gerry Adams. Other familiars of the Irish cultural landscape appear, such as Oscar Wilde and Parnell.

Through his practice, Ballagh has always been connected to the contemporary moment. He "experiences the historical past as an unstable ideological site where there are matters to be settled" Ballagh's engagement with contemporary and historical issues is reflected in a style of painting once coined "photo-realism". However, within the artist's expansion of his impeccable technique, the potential for the symbolic and the abstract is endless.

The self-portrait appears also among the myriad of faces, playing a role such as voyeur or trans-historical visitor, occurring in the unexpected manner that you might find in a Valazquez or a Goya.

A full colour catalogue will accompany the exhibition.

Brian O'Doherty "Robert Ballagh's Community of Faces"

Central to the exhibition is the showcasing of Ballagh's new portrait of his late colleague and sometimes mentor, the artist Michael Farrell (1940-2000).

The collective exhibition of portraits form links with both Ballagh and Farrell's artistic ideologies, some of which have never been on public view before, such as the portrait of Gerry Adams. Other familiars of the Irish cultural landscape appear, such as Oscar Wilde and Parnell.

Through his practice, Ballagh has always been connected to the contemporary moment. He "experiences the historical past as an unstable ideological site where there are matters to be settled" Ballagh's engagement with contemporary and historical issues is reflected in a style of painting once coined "photo-realism". However, within the artist's expansion of his impeccable technique, the potential for the symbolic and the abstract is endless.

The self-portrait appears also among the myriad of faces, playing a role such as voyeur or trans-historical visitor, occurring in the unexpected manner that you might find in a Valazquez or a Goya.

A full colour catalogue will accompany the exhibition.

Brian O'Doherty "Robert Ballagh's Community of Faces"

30 October–29 November 2003

In a partnership between the National Sculpture Factory, Cork County Council and Cork Institute of Technology, artist Danielle Sheehy was selected to undertake a twelve week residency to produce an artwork relating to the interface between the Rural and Urban in Cork City and County.

This project has three components, a preliminary component at the Cork Institute of Technology, in which the artist painted on a disused tennis court and created a major floor-based work in the cafeteria; an installation component, (‘Inscribed Landscape´), to be exhibited at the Crawford Gallery Project Space; and an exterior temporary installation component, (‘Memory of Water´), proposed for Emmet Place, during the Midsummer Festival in 2004.

Danielle Sheehy is concerned with expressing the patterns we create and through which we move in the landscape and bringing back to light the lost waterway movement underlying the contemporary fabric of Cork City. These movement patterns will be expressed in ‘Inscribed Landscape´ as line - based ‘drawings´ into wall mounted ceramic and cement panels, as well as large-scale works on paper.  ‘Memory of Water´ will bring line images of ships back to Emmet Place, which was once an area of Maritime Traffic and where ships would have been moored by the Customs House, (now the Crawford Gallery).

This exciting project is an interesting prelude to the Capital of Culture celebrations in 2005, reminding us of the unique and fascinating history of Cork City and County. The work traces the historical pathways often defined by redundant methods of transport, which we re-surface and continue to use and contrasts it with modern roads designed far away from the location for cars not people.