2 October 2015–20 February 2016

“I want to make a book that will change all men. That will lead them where they never consented to go….a door simply ajar on reality,”
Antonin Artaud (1896 - 1948)

The Door Ajar is a film by the Irish artist Paddy Jolley (1964-2012), that considers the work and life of the influential French poet and theatre director Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) through a journey to Ireland Artaud undertook in the summer of 1937. He had set out on a quest in which he pro-posed to examine ancient Gaelic traditions, and aimed to re-turn the supposed staff of Saint Patrick to its rightful owners. His expedition resulted in his arrest, repatriation and internment in a number of mental institutions on his return to France. Little is known of what took place during those few short weeks in Artaud’s life, of his wanderings and of his state of mind.

The film does not attempt to fill in the missing facts; rather, it builds upon the biographical evidence by developing a partial and broken narrative around Artaud’s presence. The Door Ajar follows the path of a man set on attaining true visionary power at any cost and features two strong central performances - one visual and one aural, bringing about ‘what could best be described as his unconscious breaking out into the conscious world’ (Steven Galvin, Film Ireland).

The first part of the film relates to Artaud’s outlook on life and his ideas about theatre. The second part is concerned with his search for signs in natural phenomena and his efforts to harness the forces of nature to his own ends. The third describes a crisis of resolve followed by a decision to move beyond ‘lucid madness’ in an effort towards total epiphany. The conclusion outlines his deportation and subsequent incarceration in asylums for the insane over the next eight years.

In his films Jolley resisted conventional narrative structure, preferring instead oblique, fragmentary sequences. He was profoundly interested in the ordinary and its proximity to the horrific, and in how little can be done to stop the one turning into the other.

The Door Ajar is screened within a wider context as an introduction to the forthcoming exhibition at the Crawford Art Gallery titled Dreams and the Unconscious (October 2, 2015 – February 6, 2016). The exhibition examines how innovations in art and psychology, mainly in France and Germany, influenced British and Irish art from the 1920’s onwards. 

Patrick Jolley‘s recent exhibitions include Inside, Palais de Tokyo, Paris; EXPO1: New York, MoMA PS1; 30th São Paulo Biennial and a solo show at Limerick City Gallery. His work has been exhibited at TATE, London; Pompidou Centre, Paris; Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid; the Berlin Biennial and Dublin Contemporary. His work has featured at numerous international film festivals including Sundance Film Festival, Kassel Documentary Festival and Les Rencontres Internationale. His work is in the collections of MOMA, New York; the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (NBK), Berlin; Julia Stroschek Foundation, Dusseldorf and IMMA, Dublin.

With sincere thanks to the Estate of Patrick Jolley.

2 October 2015–13 February 2016

An exhibition at the Crawford Gallery in October 2015 will explore the theme of dreams and the unconscious, focusing on the influence of Surrealism on Irish and British art, mainly in the mid-twentieth century. 

The exhibition will touch on the earlier influences of Symbolism, and in particular on Jungian and Freudian analysis. Early paintings by Brian Boydell and Thurloe Conolly will be a highlight of the exhibition. 

The influence of the White Stag artists, the work of Colin Middleton, Hilda Roberts, Nevill Johnson, Cecil ffrench Salkeld, Patrick Hennessy, Mary Swanzy and a number of others will all be touched upon.

Roland Penrose: Surrealist Camera

2 October 2015–13 February 2016

Also included in The Language of Dreams is an exhibition of photographic prints, by the formest promoter of Surrealism in Britain and Ireland. Roland Penrose: Surrealist Camera is shown courtesy of Farley's Yard Trust in Sussex, Where the Penrose and Lee Miller archives are housed.

For further information please contact: dawnwilliams@crawfordartgallery.ie

10 November 2015–
20 February 2016

Crawford Art Gallery is delighted to present My Last Day at Seventeen by American artist-photographer Doug DuBois (November 10, 2015 – January 23, 2016). Combining portraits, spontaneous encounters, and collaborative performances, the images of My Last Day at Seventeen exist in a delicate balance between documentary and fiction. The series looks at the bravado, adventure, fragility and inevitable loss of childhood.

What began as a month artist residency at Sirius Arts Centre, developed into a five year project, from 2009-2014, with DuBois spending his summers in the Irish coastal town of Cobh, Co. Cork. Working with an extraordinary group of young people from a housing estate area in Russell Heights, DuBois gained entry to the community when two of its residents, Kevin and Erin (who would later become one of the central subjects of his work), took him to a local hangout spot, opening his eyes “to a world of the not-quite adults, struggling—publicly and privately—through the last moments of their childhood.”  

Dubois has commented ‘the place you grow up in is what forms you as an adult – coming of age is an experience that everyone goes through –it can happen at 17 or 12 or 45 but it’s that moment when you realise that your youth is behind you and no longer in front of you which can be a very difficult moment’  

DuBois’ photographs try to project his subjects into the future while honouring their present and their potential. ‘Life has limits and maybe one of the important signs of leaving childhood behind is understanding some of your limits and hopefully never ever forgetting your potential’ he observes.

Moving through the transitions of life, people who came and left, the relationships formed and dissolved, and babies were born, DuBois is quick to mention that his ‘eye’ was that of a ‘middle-aged American photographing a group of young people from a few blocks of a housing estate’ in Ireland. However, despite remaining the outsider looking in DuBois has noted “There is a sense of family and identity attached to neighborhood, town and county that is much stronger than what I felt growing up in New Jersey.” 

The photographs, situated viewed in the historic Sculpture Gallery and the Modern Galleries, offer ‘to honour the idea of being young’ says DuBois.  

The exhibition also features a fourteen page illustrated narrative series by Patrick Lynch, which together creates a unique dialogue that mixes documentary and creative fiction echoing DuBois concept of the project. (see www.patrickl.net)

The exhibition is produced in partnership with Sirius Arts Centre and with support by Aperture. With special thanks to Peggy-Sue Amision, Miranda Driscoll and Doug DuBois and the young people of Russell Heights.

About the artist: 
Doug DuBois’ photographs are in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City; SFMOMA in San Francisco; J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles; the Museum of Fine Art in Houston; the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the  MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the National Endowment for the Arts, SITE Santa Fe, Light Works, and the John Gutmann Foundation. DuBois has exhibited at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles; the Museum of Modern Art and Higher Pictures in New York; SITE, Santa Fe; New Langton Arts in San Francisco; PARCO Gallery, Tokyo, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma and the Irish Museum of Modern Art.  DuBois’ photographs have been published by the Aperture Foundation, Museum of Modern Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Double Take, the Picture Project, the Friends of Photography, and in magazines, including The New York Times, Details, Black Book, The Guardian; The Telegraph (London), and Monopol (Berlin). www.dougdubois.com

4 February–9 April 2016

Born in Cork to a family of silversmiths, Adam Buck specialised in painting miniatures from an early age and soon progressed to larger watercolour portraits. After working in Cork and Dublin, Buck left Ireland for London in 1795 and began a long and prolific career as a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy. He quickly became one of the most sought after miniature and portrait artists of the Regency Period, as such his work provides a fascinating insight into the life and style of the elite in society. 

This exhibition is a distilled version of the wonderful exhibition of the same name that appeared in the Ashmolean Museum from July to September 2015. The show at the Crawford will contain works from the National Gallery of Ireland, the Royal Collections Trust and the Crawford's own Permanent Collection.

A monograph publication, written by respected authority on the life of Adam Buck, Peter Darvall, will accompany the exhibition.

Some coverage was given to the exhibtion in RTE's Nationwide programme. You can view that here (approx. 10 minutes in). 

4 March–7 May 2016

Crawford Art Gallery is delighted to present Martin Healy: A moment twice lived, an exhibition of new and recent work by the Dublin-based artist. 

Martin Healy’s film and photographic installations have explored ideological motifs from early 20th century literature endeavoring to mine the synthesis of fact, fiction and manifest mythology embedded in systems of belief. The work featured in A moment twice lived extrapolates concerns about earth and the cosmos, dreams and reality, and investigates states of temporal being, both physical and psychological. Frequently examining the relationship between scientific truth and aesthetic form, the works emphasise fleeting or ethereal moments when these two ideologies coalesce. 

The exhibition, displayed over two floors, includes a number of new photographic and sculptural works and a key new single screen installation entitled, A moment twice lived (2016). The film’s circuitous narrative makes reference to JW Dunne’s writing, in particular the book An Experiment with Time (1927), by way of a curiously overlooked painting in the Crawford Gallery’s collection by Nathanial Grogan[1] . 
During the course of the film, a voice-over periodically refers to dreams and experiences of temporal dislocation that raises questions about our perception of reality and relationship to the physical world. 

Set in lush botanic gardens, the mesmeric film Harvest (2015) is shown alongside exquisitely detailed photographs and sculptural installations, which explore time in all its variant possibilities. Here Healy creates a reflective counterpoint for the consideration of the histories and destinies of our local and cosmic environments. 

Dr Francis Halsall (Course Director MA Art in the Contemporary World) and Matt Packer  (Director, CCAD, Derry/Londonderry) will participate in a public conversation with the artist at 5:30 pm, Thursday 31 March in the Crawford Art Gallery. 
. 
A publication to accompany the exhibition A moment twice lived featuring new texts by Francis Halsall and Matt Packer published by Crawford Art Gallery, Cork (ISBN.978-1-874756-25-5).

[1]  Nathaniel Grogan the Younger (c.1765-c 1825) Banditti around a campfire c.1796) 

Ongoing

Drawn from the permanent collection of the Crawford Art Gallery, to celebrate the hundred and fiftieth of W.B. Yeats’ birth this exhibition explores the familial connections between the works of W.B. Yeats and his younger brother Jack Yeats. 

This exhibition views their shared common background and the recurrent themes which occur through both their works. It also draws from the literary influences W.B. Yeats benefited from and the political and social relationships he cultivated. 

12 May–13 August 2016

Commissioned by Larry Lambe, the exhibition will feature works by artists including: Alice Maher, Robert Ballagh, Rita Duffy, Michael Coady and David Lilburn.

Varying in scale and media, from painting to poetry, the only instruction the commissioned artists received from Lambe was that the work should be linked with any event of 1916 that affected Ireland, including the Easter Rising.

The commissioning process started in 2009 in order to allow the artist time to have a mature look and consider the commission over a generous time-span. The artists have also been invited to write in relation to their created work, which will be hung alongside each work offering the viewer an added layer of context and mediation.

The exhibition is created in partnership with the Toradh Gallery, Co. Meath and the Galway City Museum. 

3 June–20 August 2016

Curated by Dr Éimear O’Connor the exhibition will focus on several themes, both social and political, that effected Ireland between 1900 and 1916 including the First World War as seen through the eyes of Irish war artists Sir William Orpen and Sir John Lavery; the Cork International Exhibition (1902); artistic responses to the Easter Rising 1916; the cultural lives of Cork-born Terence McSwiney and Sir Hugh Lane; the consecration of the Honan Chapel (1915), the Cork International Exhibition (1902-03); and the rise of the Irish Agricultural Co-Operative Movement as espoused by Sir Horace Plunkett, Cork-born R.A. Anderson, and artist and cultural commentator, George Russell (AE).


The exhibition will include works from the Crawford Art Gallery collection and paintings, posters, film footage, photographs, and ephemera from public and private lenders in both Ireland and England. In addition, the Gallery hosted an extraordinary day on 21 November 2015 during which the people of Cork and surrounding areas were invited to bring their personal items of treasured history to the gallery, which will form a digitized display entitled the ‘The People’s History’.  It is our way of connecting the narrative of the exhibition with the personal narratives and histories of us, the people.

See a recent video of an RTE news report 
on the exhibition here:
Major Irish art exhibition opens in Cork

Click here to view A Heart That is Free - Terence MacSwiney in Context, recorded on 17 June 2016 at Cork Opera House.

Presented by Crawford Art Gallery & 
Dr. Éimear O'Connor HRHA

13 May–3 September 2016

Elaine Byrne’s research-based practice examines overlooked histories, historical texts and artworks as a platform to mobilize history as it relates to current political and social concerns. Employing sculpture, video and photography Byrne focuses on opening new questions for the viewer to highlight present day urgencies.

The film centres on two Irish uillean pipers, Leonard Barry and Padraig Carberry McGovern, who are asked to perform Rakoczy’s March without any previous knowledge of the score. The music, which was once the unofficial national anthem of Hungary, is played by Irish pipers as Lipóti Virag  (Leopold Bloom) departs for Százharminczbrojúglyás-Dugulás in James Joyce’s Ulysses (episode 12, Cyclops). 

From the musicians initial startled reaction of hearing and reading the music, to their frustrated, repetitive and exhaustive attempts in realizing the score’s complex musical phrases, Byrne films the musicians in their attempt to discover if Joyce’s fictive reference to Irish pipes playing Rakoczy’s March is a viable literary construct.

In using Joyce’s text excerpt, Byrne creates a device to explore issues of censorship, nationhood and the rise in anti-Semitism or the ‘Other’. Mirroring the complexity of the musical score and the text, the film presents to the viewer questions that are prevalent in today’s global and conflictual societies. The dedication of the musicians to push their own musical knowledge and skill touch upon the enduring qualities of human’s need to overcome and survive yet they also explore the dichotomy of experience and factual knowledge, accelerated by the omnipotence of the digital world, and if fictional narratives have become the basis of fact in real life.

9 September–29 October 2016

While 2016 is a time to remember the past; it is also an opportunity to re-imagine the future and to expand our perceptions of future possibilities for a brighter society. With their new exhibition, Perceptions 2016: The Art of Citizenship, Cork City Council Arts office, Crawford Art Gallery and CIT Crawford College of Art and Design are building on the success of the 2013 Art of Inclusion exhibition.

From 9 September – 29 October a diverse range of artwork will free-wheel across ten city venues, with subject matter ranging from a Beetle Circus, to television personalities Miriam O’Callaghan and Gay Byrne, buildings, love stories, machines, places, patterns large and small. 

Perceptions 2016: The Art of Citizenship will showcase the artwork of over sixty artists working in supported studio settings, both nationally and internationally. The exhibition will include a screening programme featuring animations, artist profiles, and more.

This exhibition will delight visitors, while seeking to prompt a real dialogue around creativity, ability and the active role that the arts can play within our communities. It is provocative, humorous and confident. The artwork demonstrates a mastery of materials and technique that undermines easy assumptions.

Perceptions 2016: The Art of Citizenship aims to broaden the range of voices, visions, perceptions and approaches to creativity that the public engages with in cultural venues. The project is based on the premise that, when we create spaces and opportunities to listen to a broad range of diverse intelligences, perspectives and voices, our knowledge, experience and understanding of the world is enriched. 

This exhibition will also showcase outcomes of the Expanding Realities project, a European Erasmus + funded partnership. Over the past 2 years GASP Cork, Art in Motion (AIM) Bristol and Debajo del Sombrero Madrid - have developed and exchanged approaches to engaging the creativity, and supporting the professional development of their artists. (www.expandingrealities.eu)

Artists and organisations presenting work will be involved in public engagement events, tours and workshops with the opportunity for schools, community groups, and any members of the public to get involved. For updates see: www.perceptions2016.com, www.crawfordartgallery.ie.

A symposium investigating our understanding of citizenship within the unique context of the Perceptions 2016 exhibition will be held on October 25 and 26. 

Details of full programme and for registration: www.perceptions2016.com

Thursday 13 October at 6pm
Saturday 15 October  at 1pm

A film by Aideen Barry with The Ridgepool Training Centre & Scannán Technologies will be screened in the lecture theatre.

As part of the national IGNITE Disability Arts Commissioning scheme, Ballina Arts Centre produced a film entitled Silent Moves – made by artist Aideen Barry working with two Ballina-based groups of people with disabilities: The Ridgepool Training Centre & Scannán Technologies.

The film is a 28 minute silent movie – inspired by the classic black & white silent films of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd.