30 January – 6 March 2004
Crawford Municipal Art Gallery is pleased to present ‘By the way´, an exhibition of photography by AIB prizewinner 2003 Dara McGrath.
The exhibition depicts the changing landscape of Ireland´s national road network. McGrath takes direct and arresting images of the current condition of these roads as they expand and sprawl, and invade the Irish countryside.
Born in Limerick in 1970, Dara McGrath is a graduate from Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology. In 1999 he was awarded a Young European Artist Award (Pépinieres européennes pour jeunes artistes) During his residency he produced a body of work on the internal European borders, which was subsequently published in Source Magazine - with text from writer Colm Toibin. This series of work also sparked his current interest in the ‘borderlands´ of roads under construction.
Drawing on landscape painting tradition, his compositions are poetic, witty and pragmatic. The 13 photographs included in the exhibition “render the hinterland of our new roads in acute focus, every element razor-sharp in vivid colour. The concentration and clarity of the image is almost surreal, the human eye could never see so much : every speck of stone in an upturned field, the tiniest fragments of strewn debris, the surface and texture of both fabricated and natural world.” (Fiona Kearney, in By the Way 2003)
Exhibition runs in the second floor galleries from Friday 30 January to Saturday 6 March 2004. Private view at 6.30 pm on Thursday 29 January.
George Petrie: Artist and Antiquarian
13 March–17 April, 2004
George Petrie: ‘Artist and Antiquarian´ is an exhibition at the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery in which over eighty drawings, watercolours and engravings will be re-evaluated and re-contextualised.
Although George Petrie´s (1790-1866) interests were wide-ranging he is, perhaps, best remembered as ‘the father of Irish archaeology´; engravings of Petrie´s work were used to illustrate guidebooks to Ireland published in the 1802´s, when tourism first became a feature of Irish life and the Irish economy.
Petrie invests his Irish landscape with a strong romantic flavour. Besides attaining considerable reputation as a painter of landscape he devoted much time to the illustration of the antiquities of the country. In 1828, he was appointed to conduct the antiquarian and historical section of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, and through his work with the Ordnance Survey, the Royal Irish Academy and other bodies, he laid the foundations of modern Irish archaeology. His Essay on Round Towers, for which he received the prize of the Royal Irish Academy, still ranks as a standard work. His topographical drawings and watercolours are an invaluable record of Irish sites and landscapes, such as Clonmacnoise and Glendalough in the early 19th century.
In 1832 he became the editor of the Dublin Penny Journal, a periodical designed to disseminate information among the masses, to which he contributed numerous articles on the history of fine arts in Ireland.
Somewhat of an idealist Petrie believed that through opening people´s eyes - particularly the wealthy and literate middle classes - to the beauties of Ireland, to the wealth of its history and culture, and to the inherent qualities of the native population, that the root cause of social unrest would be swept away and replaced by a new age of high civilisation. Petrie died of fever on January 17th 1866 in Dublin.
The exhibition is accompanied by a specially commissioned book George Petrie (1790 – 1866): The Rediscovery of Ireland with essays by Professor Tom Dunne (University College Cork), Professor Joep Leerssen (University of Amsterdam) and Peter Murray (Curator, Crawford Gallery)
13 March–17 April, 2004
The inspiration of ‘Echoes´ was drawn from historical records of a part of the Killarney Lakes´ history where tourists were taken by boat to the ‘Eagles Nest´. During these trips the call of a bugle or the firing of a cannon lured the Golden eagle, which resided in the eagles nest at the time, from its nest. The situation of the ‘Eagles Nest´ meant that such sounds created multiple echoes. The parallels, which exist between the elements of echo and reflection (both having qualities of duality, repetition and distortion) are explored in the installation. Ciara Moore´s work also documents the landscape which is a theme currently examined throughout the gallery´s temporary exhibitions programme.
With special thanks to Kerry County Council and Kerry Water Services
Ciara Moore was born in Dublin in 1966 and graduated at National College of Art & Design, Dublin in 2000. In 2002, Moore was granted an Arts Council of Ireland Commission Award to produce an Art Video for Cork Film Centre and in 2003 she was a recipient of the ‘Pépinières européennes pour jeunes artistes´ where she undertook a three month residency at the Rethymnon Centre of Contemporary Art in Crete.
In Spring 2004 Moore is exhibiting in a group show featuring Canadian and Irish female video artists entitled ‘Locus Suspectus´ at Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast and four venues in Canada.
13 March–8 May, 2004
The Lios is a new installation work by innovative Cork-based company half/angel. half/angel (Jools Gilson-Ellis and Richard Povall) have been making experimental work involving new technologies, poetic text, sound, video and performance since 1995.
Known for their work with contemporary dance theatre and motion-sensing technologies, The Lios transfers this knowledge to a gallery space, so that instead of dancers triggering sound / text scores, visitors to the installation trigger voices by their movement and interaction with the work itself.
The Lios is thematically focused on the lios at Warren Beach, near Ballymacoda in East Cork, and the surrounding area. Through a combination of audio walks, and interviews with young and elderly local residents, the work builds up layers of memory and time. The Lios evokes one version of the emotional geography of place by combining oral history with experimental motion-sensing / haptic interfaces in an immersive installation environment.
The Lios is imagined as a poetic mapping of this site, into which visitors enter singly or in couples. As they move in and touch the space, they raise whispers and laughter and cacophonies of voice ghosts. In one space they must remove their shoes, to tread barefoot, and conjure voices out of water with their hands. In another space, emptiness gives way to light and narrative, as the visitor moves in the intelligent environment.
At the bottom of the boreen, the path splits into two. One takes you down to the rocky beach, the other lifts you up to the cliff edge. Here there is an old summer house, a shed really. Carla wonders about it. She can see that someone loved it once. But the wind and vandals have torn some of the shutters away from the windows. And there is a hole in the roof. On the sea side, if you stand on the old shutters, and shade your eyes from the light, you can see in. Here, curtains blow in the breeze, beyond them, a table and chairs, a rug, a sink and a dresser with china on it. And a closed door. What happened here? Here on the edge of the cliff, where no one comes.
Jools Gilson-Ellis 2003
JAAKKO NIEMELÄ ‘Mourning´
30 April–26 June, 2004
Mourning´ is a series of installations by Finnish artist Jaakko Niemelä at the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery.
For his first exhibition in Ireland Niemelä has completely transformed the lower gallery of the Crawford and divided it into several areas. Each area is a dark space in which a distinct story is told.
Characteristic of Jaakko Niemelä´s work is scale: the relationship and tensions of small and large visual and audio elements. Other themes such as childhood plays and playing, concepts of memory and control also inform his work.
“There is a constructive drive in the works of Jaakko Niemelä (b. 1959). Not constructivist or formalist, but constructive in its purest sense. He builds, assembles, amasses, disassembles, and reorganises. The world is recognisable with all its bizarre details, but somehow different.
A lot of his works have involved toys. It could make you jump into the conclusion that he is a particularly childish artist. This might even be true, but is beside the point. Just as childhood can be just as full of pain and horror as any other period in life, the works of Jaakko Niemelä construct, reconstruct and represent dark emotional landscapes from a world of toys. These are the killing fields of growing up, but involving the playful act of mock and caricature. The city is reinterpreted as a miniature, equipped with surveillance cameras and the sounds of modern warfare and of popular fiction - sounds produced by the toys themselves. He distorts the scale by projecting minimal details into huge formats. The worlds he builds are strangely alien, though recognisable in every detail.”
Pontus Kyander, Art critic, curator, Chief editor, SVT Bildjournalen
The exhibition has been made possible with the support of The Finnish Fund for Art Exchange (Frame), The Finnish Institute in London, Sirius Arts Centre and Suomen Kulttuurirahasto.
GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN Irish and Other Landscapes
3 July–4 September 2004
Continuing the Crawford Gallery´s theme of documenting the landscape, internationally renowned artist Goffried Helnwein will exhibit a number of large-scale (some are of seven metres in length), photo-realist canvases depicting landscape. Helnwein divides his time between Co. Tipperary and Los Angeles and his paintings draw upon the sublimity and drama of these contrasting environments as well as revealing the parallels of Irish and American terrains.
Perhaps more recognised as a painter of highly emotive portraits, this exhibition will reveal the influence of landscape throughout his career from the early Vienna cityscapes to the present series of Irish landscapes and recognises the impact in which the German romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) has had on Helnwein´s work. In addition four new smaller scale canvases will also be on view. A full colour catalogue with an essay by Mic Moroney will accompany the exhibition
Gottfried Helnwein, (born in Vienna in 1948), is a formidable artist and his work has often been seen as controversial because it functions as moral probes. He continually reveals affecting issues within his work practice.
He has exhibited extensively at key venues throughout the world and is currently preparing for a one-man show at the Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco (July 31 2004 – January 16 2005) and will have a retrospective exhibition at the China National Museum of Fine Arts, Beijing in 2005.
www.gottfriedhelnwein.ie or www.helnwein.com
Marshall C. Hutson- A Retrospective
17 September–9 October 2004
Marshall C. Hutson was an artist of great versatility. This retrospective celebrates the life and work of this much respected and influential artist.
The works shown in this exhibition are but a small part of the large and varied œuvre completed by Marshall Hutson during a career that spanned almost eighty years. Marshall C. Hutson (1903-2001) was originally from Nottingham, but adopted the city of Cork when he took up a teaching position at the Crawford School of Art in 1930 where he would continue to teach until his retirement in 1966.
Primarily a painter and sculptor working in wood and stone, Marshall C. Hutson also promoted a wide range of artistic disciplines both in his own practice and his teaching. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Hibernian Academy (R.H.A.) for over fifty years between the 1930s and 1980s, and in 1958 he was elected Associate of the R.H.A.
Hutson also exhibited at the Royal Academy, London.
A prolific artist, Hutson worked as a designer for the Irish Ballet Company, and received numerous commissions for church murals, public sculptures, including University College Cork, Cork Harbour Commission (completed in 1958). and Cork Public Library.
This exhibition is made possible with the kind support of the Marshall C. Hutson Estate.
EYE LANGUAGE Geraldine O´Reilly & Denise Curtin
17 September–9 October 2004
“Eye Language” is a collaborative work by the poet Denise Curtin and visual artist and printmaker Geraldine O´Reilly.
The exhibition features ten poems written by Curtin accompanied by ten photo-etchings by O´Reilly from their hand printed book Eye Language. The images and language combine to evoke an exploration of the senses set against a midland backdrop.
Curtin is a native of Athy, Co Kildare, now resident in Portlaoise, Co. Laois. She has received a number of awards for her poetry including the Cecil Day Lewis Award for poetry and first prize in the Syllables Poetry Competition.
O´Reilly is a native of Killucan, Co. Westmeath and is presently resident on Inis Oírr, Aran Islands. She has a degree and diploma in Fine Art from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. To date she has had nine solo exhibitions and appeared in numerous major group shows.
For further information and visuals contact:
Anne Boddaert (Assistant-Curator)
Crawford Municipal Art Gallery
Emmet Place Cork Ireland
T: +353 21 4907857
10/12 September 2004
Crawford Gallery is pleased to announce its first original print fair. Exhibitors from Ireland and England participating in the fair will offer an extensive array of high quality original prints from the eighteenth century to the present day. While most of the prints on sale will have an Irish bias, European and American artists will also be on view.
The Cork Original Print Fair will be accompanied by a print lecture series and a number of workshops in which participants can learn the various techniques, skills and the history of printmaking.
Organised in association with the Friends of the Crawford Gallery. All proceeds will benefit the Crawford Gallery Acquisition Fund.
For full programme please contact:
crawfordgallery@eircom.net
Anne Boddaert
Assistant-curator