at CRAWFORD ART GALLERY in Partnership with CORK INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Friday 10 November – Sunday 19 November

until 21 November 2023
Harry Clarke Room

The three panels displayed in this exhibition are the earliest known works in stained glass by Harry Clarke (1889-1931). Dating to a highpoint in the Celtic Revival period, they were made while the artist was in his early twenties and still a student at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art.

In 1911, Clarke was awarded a highly coveted gold medal for The Consecration of St Mel, Bishop of Longford, by St Patrick (1910), The Godhead Enthroned (1911), and The Meeting of St Brendan with the Unhappy Judas (1911) in the Board of Education National Competition atSouth Kensington.

Taken collectively, they offer very early evidence of the artist’s emerging creativity and also anticipate the inventiveness of his later work, particularly his first major commission, in 1916, at the Honan Chapel, University College Cork.

These three rare panels were repaired and cleaned, in August 2023, by stained-glass conservator Philip Crook before being fitted to new conservation-grade display frames.

A short film by Marcella O’Connor about the conservation process accompanies this exhibition.

This project is supported by The Heritage Council through the Heritage Stewardship Fund.

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Until 3 December

This Is What We Call Progress is set in the drawing-room of 18th Century Newbridge House, Donabate, a Georgian Villa built to the design of James Gibbs in 1747 for the Archbishop of Dublin, Charles Cobbe.

His great grand-daughter Frances Power Cobbe (1822-1904) who was born in Newbridge House became a writer, social reformer, anti-vivisection activist, and a leading women’s suffrage campaigner.

In this film a group of young women Benedit Akemba, Drucille Akemba,  Gabriella Ogwude and Ihuaku Igbosonu who collectively call themselves My Sisters Keeper assert their agency surrounded by oil paintings of colonial masters.

The film explores ideas of how cultural identities are formed and represented in the public realm and the concerns expressed by young multi-ethnic youth growing up in a time of rapid change in Ireland and internationally.

Production meeting for This is what we call progress (2021) © Anthony Haughey

This film by Anthony Haughey is part of a trilogy of short films called Assemble which reflect on the impact of global migration from the point of view of young people living in Balbriggan, it was commissioned by Fingal County Council Infrastructure Public Art Programme 2017-2021 and produced in collaboration with the Global Migration Collective.

The research for the films refer to historical antecedents from Civil Rights in the 1960s to the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020.

Within this socially engaged production, young people collaborated and negotiated every aspect of filmmaking from scripting to film treatment and choice of location. At the end of this process, the same young people assumed the role of non-professional actors as they claim agency and ownership of the narrative.

Production image, This is what we call progress (2021) © Anthony Haughey

Anthony Haughey is a socially engaged artist, photographer, filmmaker, and educator. His artworks have been widely exhibited and collected nationally and internationally.

The Global Migration Collective was founded in 2005 by Lauretta Igbosonu, Warsame Ali Garare and Anthony Haughey. It is an ongoing collaboration with migrants from all over the world, many arrived in Ireland as asylum seekers from 1999 onwards.

In response, Ireland’s government set up Direct Provision Centre’s where asylum seekers are held indefinitely during the process of negotiating citizenship. Asylum claims are supposed to be processed in a timely manner, however, many families have lived in Direct Provision for more than ten-years.

The Global Migration Collective have collaborated to produce public art interventions, video installations, photographs, texts, performances, and public talks, in Ireland, Europe and North Africa. These transformative actions set out to dispel myths and reductive stereotyping surrounding transnational migration. 

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Exhibition dates: Saturday 26 August 2023 – Sunday 7 January 2024

Official opening: Saturday 9 September from 12noon

Art is a doing thing, and this exhibition is about making and learning together.

The art is often playful and experimental. Technique and materials are explored and tested.

The artwork was made in the gallery, at MTU Crawford College of Art & Design, St. Finbarr’s Hospital and through zoom calls in partnership with Cork Migrant Centre.

Crawford Art Gallery Learn and Explore programmes support a range of learning and exploratory activities including: children’s art classes, children’s animation programme, a collaborative art programme with Cork Migrant Centre, teen programmes, portfolio preparation, a supported studio in partnership with MTU Crawford College of Art & Design, a long-term memory-loss and dementia-friendly creative programme, tours and art and well-being workshops.

A dedicated team of artists and art historians lead the programmes expertly and imaginatively; they are Gillian Cussen, Rebecca Crunden, Sue Dolan, Julie Forrester, Mary Galvin, Chloe Griffin, Karolina Clénet, Lynda Loughnane, Danielle Sheehy, Mary Timmons, Avril O’Brien, Mairead O’Callaghan, Fionn Van der Noll, Inge Van Doorslaer, Matthew Whyte.

We hope that the diverse range of subject matter free-wheeling in the gallery space will delight the visitor, and spotlight the role that art can play in building connection and confidence; teaching techniques or the ‘how to do,’ and exploring imaginative ideas through drawing, painting, printmaking and 3d making.

Saturday Art Classes for children aim to build confidence; teaching techniques or the ‘how to do,’ and exploring imaginative ideas through drawing, painting, printmaking and 3d making. Artists leads are Mary Timmons and Mary Galvin, with Roan O’Boyle Sheehy and Emma Price assisting.

The Children’s Summer Animation programme has been showing children how to make their own start-stop animations for over a decade. Workshops focus on play, invention and working collaboratively. Artist lead Julie Forrester with Emma Price assisting.

We have been Following our Noses into art with young people and Cork Migrant Centre.

We meet on Zoom on Saturdays to chat, draw, make things, and have silly fun.

Artist lead Julie Forrester, with support from Fionnuala O’Connell, Youth Worker at Cork Migrant Centre and Emma Klemencic.

Teen Art Programmes invite young people to draw inspiration from art in the gallery, to study art works up close; developing responses using drawing, collage, print and mixed-media. Artist lead is Sue Dolan. Our Portfolio Preparation Programme focuses more intently on drawing techniques, sketchbook development, self-portraits and print making. Artist lead is Lynda Loughnane.

A supported studio is a creative environment that centres disabled artists. Crawford Supported Studios provide technical artistic support, friendship, and networks outside health and social care settings. Dedicated studio days led by Karolina Clénet and Danielle Sheehy take place in the Crawford Art Gallery on Tuesdays and MTU Crawford College of Art & Design on Thursdays each week.

Lonradh at the Crawford Art Gallery is an arts programme for older adults experiencing memory loss, their families and carers. While memory may change, creativity and the scope for self-expression remains. Artist leads are Gillian Cussen and Inge Van Doorslaer

Presented by MTU Crawford College of Art & Design the Arts & Wellbeing programme offers creative activities, in the gallery and art college space, supported by a reflective process. Artist lead is Avril O’Brien.

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Screening 28 July - 10 September

In 1968, the BKS Traffic Plan* for Cork city proposed an elevated highway, stretching from the Port to the Courthouse (Washington Street) and from Patrick’s Hill to Barrack Street. Over ninety acres of demolition for parking clearance and spaghetti junctions would have seen the centre of Cork city surrender to the motorcar.

Michelle Delea's film The Sprawling Octopus of an Elevated Highway (2022) documents the actions of journalist Mary Leland andthe City Seventy Planning Group (born of Cork’s first class of architects), who rose up against the BKS Traffic Plan to protect and preserve the character of our city.

In this documentary, the architects recall their college years in the Crawford School of Art, which led to youthful activism, prolific careers, and an enduring desire to see the city flourish.

* named after the consultants who devised the plan

Still image, The Sprawling Octopus of an Elevated Highway (2022) © Michelle Delea

The City Seventy Planning Groups’s vision of pedestrianisation, public transport networks and a liveable city filled with parks and public spaces has deep resonance today at a time when the population of County Cork is projected to expand by 2050 to 850,000, with a Metropolitan Area of over 500,000 – double the current population of Cork City**.

Michelle Delea’s film creates a space to prompt an urgent and necessary cross-generational conversation and questioning of our city’s past, present and future.

**Sources: 2022 National Census (published May 2023) and Cork 2050 Realising the Full Potential – Cork’s Submission to the National Planning Framework (published March 2017).

Still image, The Sprawling Octopus of an Elevated Highway (2022) © Michelle Delea

Michelle Delea currently works between architectural practice and education, alongside film and poetry. Delea has a particular focus on public engagement in her work.

She is currently assisting research and development of the new European MSc programme Redesigning the Post-Industrial City (UCC and UNIC alliance) and is a member of the Irish Architecture Foundation Graduate Panel.

Contributors
Mary Leland, Gerard O’Callaghan, Harry Wallace, Gerald McCarthy, John Santry, Des Heffernan, John Heffernan, Neil Hegarty and Dr. Michael Waldron.

Co-Producers
Patrick Creedon, Dr. Sarah Mulrooney

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Until 30 October 2023
Gibson Galleries

Click on the cover image to download a pdf version of the exhibition catalogue (104mb)

For her first solo exhibition at Crawford Art Gallery, artist Rita Duffy presents a trilogy of new, largescale works that address urgent themes of planetary crisis and political chaos. This triptych for our times has its genesis in Duffy’s intense series of small, satirical drawings, The Emperor has No Clothes (2020), which was recently acquired by Crawford Art Gallery for the National Collection.

Rita Duffy (b.1959) is one of the major contemporary artists to emerge from Northern Ireland. Encompassing themes and images of Irish identity, history, and politics, her work is often both personal and autobiographical. In her work, she also pays homage to the language of magic realism. A member of Aosdána, Duffy has previously been Artist-in-Residence at Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Institute (Trinity College Dublin) and held a Leverhulme Fellowship with the Transitional Justice Institute (Ulster University) to look at the role that visual art has in post-conflict societies.

Leaving cert Visual Studies, Today’s World: Art as Social Commentary or Commentator resource.

Exhibition supported by an IMMA Production Residency.

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28 April – 20 August 2023
Preview: 5pm Thursday 27 April

Created by Anna Furse,muscle: a question of power is an immersive experience that takes visitors on an audio-guided journey through Crawford Art Gallery’s historic collection of Canova Casts followed by a short film screening in the adjoining Project Room.

To experience muscle with a headset, visitors can select timed entry between 13:30 and 14:30 daily.

Please pre-book your free 50-minute (audio 25 minutes / video 25 minutes) timed slot here: www.eventbrite.ie/o/crawford-art-gallery-15384679145

Alternatively, by scanning a QR code in the gallery space, visitors can use their own device and headphones outside of these hours.

Please note: This exhibition will be temporarily closed 14-18 June (inclusive) to facilitate I Fall Down performances.

“Take two steps back and look right.

Compare her curves to the figure at the end:

a male athlete extended in archery,

counter-tension of front left arm and back right,

the body gently held upright,

all energy and calm centre.

Streamlined,

stretched

like his missing bowstring.

Sound of stretching elastic and a ping

Look back at Venus,

all soft and simpering.

Sound of muscle”

Created by Anna Furse, muscle is an immersive experience that takes visitors on an audio-guided journey through Crawford Art Gallery’s historic collection of Canova Casts.

Designed to bring visitors up close and personal with these ancient Classical forms, muscle is an invitation to contemplate the idealised nude, and its legacy today. The viewing of these artworks – which were once objects of international relations and teaching – is from a ‘lived body’ experience: that is, the visitor is prompted to experience these figurative forms not only visually, but also viscerally and imaginatively. The audio-guide refers the spectator to their own body sensations, presence, and curiosity as they are invited to follow gentle but precise instructions to progress through the Sculpture Galleries.

muscle engages with society’s contemporary and damaging obsessions with beauty and perfection, strength and power. It alludes historically not only to the Ancient Greek cultivation of mind and body in service to the State, but to the Nazi obsession with Antiquity in its effort to sculpt the flesh of the German nation according to Greek ideals. In exploring examples of the traditional male heroic body, muscle raises specific awareness of women and muscle, and how ‘the weaker sex’ gains agency through the acquisition of physical strength. This does not settle the matter, however, since the question of the body’s muscularity and strength remains an on-going question in today’s gender discourse.

The experience culminates in a new video film, women talking – muscle: a question of power. Created with Kilian Waters, Furse engages the voices of women who work professionally with their muscularity: a 73-year-old (and still active) dancer-choreographer; a para-athlete; a soldier; a pole-dancer; a bodybuilder; and a top fashion model.

This project has been created by
Anna Furse
Theatre Artist, Writer, and Professor Emerita, Goldsmiths, University of London

In collaboration with:
Sound Composer: Graeme Miller
Filmmaker: Kilian Waters
Producer: Paula Van Hagen
Research Assistant: Ruah Berney-Pearson
Graphic Designer: Dave Darcy
Curator: Michael Waldron
Production Manager: Kathryn Coughlan

Click here to view some activities created especially for Primary and Secondary schools' students.

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28 April – 20 August

Artists: Rachel Ballagh, Elizabeth Cope, Yvonne Condon, Stephen Doyle, Rita Duffy, Debbie Godsell, Eithne Jordan, Dragana Jurišić, Breda Lynch, Brian Maguire, Leanne McDonagh, Eoin McHugh, Nick Miller, Peter Nash, Maïa Nunes, Sandra Johnston, Alice Rekab, Rajinder Singh and Jennifer Trouton.

The human body is a complex, fascinating, and wonderous entity which becomes both subject and object for the artist. Our bodies can become either the vessel or the weapon of love, empathy, commodification, or manipulation within the realms of community, family, and self.

The works in this exhibition explore aspects of art making that interrogate how our bodies perform under internal and external forces and through lived experiences. In doing so, Bodywork offers a space to consider our bodies and how they relate to our understanding of body image.  Selected from recently acquired artworks from the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) and Crawford Art Gallery collections, the exhibition seeks to both platform the featured artists and the collaborative partnership of IMMA and Crawford Art Gallery in their acquisition of new works for the National Collection.

Bodywork highlights the crucial relationships between contemporary art practice and the body.  ‘In a way,’ as writer Adrian Stokes (1902-1972) observed, ‘all art is constructed in the body’.

An extensive Learn & Explore programme will accompany the exhibition including artist talks, panel discussions and workshops.

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Long Room
4 March – 12 November

“To make open the eyes”: Colour, Bauhaus, and Cork with Katherine Boucher Beug.
1pm Friday 10 November. Long Room. More information here.

As it prepares to embark upon a fourth century of development, it is timely to reflect on the evolution of Crawford Art Gallery’s site, building, and function from 1724 to the present.

This exhibition explores how the building has changed with the times. Repurposed from its original role as Custom House, it has operated as a School of Art, Municipal Art Gallery, and National Cultural Institution. At each shift in purpose, it has adapted and grown in response to the needs of the city and people of Cork, Munster, and Ireland.

SITE OF CHANGE draws together images and objects from across the centuries that express this much-loved building’s former and present appearance, as well as its role in the city’s cultural life.

The exhibition includes artworks ranging from John Butts’ iconic View of Cork from Audley Place (c.1750) to A Keeper of the Dust (for Joseph Beuys) (2011) by Danny McCarthy.

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12 May – 23 July

Screening Room

Voices From the Field / Guthanna ón nGort by Lisa Fingleton is a film which gives a powerful insight into the communities that work on the Dingle Peninsula (County Kerry) to rear animals and grow produce so that our wider society may be fed and nourished. With humour, diligence, and passion the ten farming families provide an urgent overview of the real-time consequences of climate change affecting our local ecosystems and our lives today.

Lisa Fingleton was the embedded artist with Corca Dhuibhne Inbhuanaithe / A Creative Imagining, one of 15 pilot projects funded by the Creative Climate Action Fund. She worked in partnership with the Dingle Hub, Green Arts Initiative of Ireland and Marei Centre for Energy, Climate and Marine Research and Innovation to creatively look at ways in which farmers can respond to climate change.

The resulting collaborative film was co-created with the farm families as a way of not only marking their stories and experiences but enabling a wider audience to hopefully reconnect and learn about the land and the types of farming the families are engaged in. The farmers also reflect on their learning from this project, their concerns about climate change and their ideas for the future.

Contributors

Eibhlín Uí Chíobháin, Seamus O’Cíobhaín, Lís Uí Chíobháin,
Nora Greaney, Tom Greaney, Joe Kelliher, Padraig O’Dowd,
Sharon Ní Shúilleabháin, Sinead Ní Dhubhda,
John Joe Fitzgerald, Teresa (Tess) Fitzgerald, Niamh Foley,
Sandra O’Dowd, Michael O’Dowd, Sean Kennedy
Aidan O’Connor, Jackie Bowler, Eryn O’Connor
Daragh O’Connor, Siobháin Prendergast
Tony O’Sé,  Rebecca Ní Shé
Artist / Director: Lisa Fingleton
Camera: Chris Garrett
Editor / Colorist: Clint Fitzgerald
Music: Clint Fitzgerald
Translation: Simon Ó Faoláin
Subtitles: John Kennedy

About the artist:

Lisa Fingleton is an artist, filmmaker, writer and grower who has spent over twenty years cultivating deep-rooted connections between art, food and farming. Her projects incorporate socially engaged, collaborative and performative process; participatory moving image; large scale drawing installations; as well as creative and autobiographical writing.

Grounded on a nineteen-acre organic farm and native woodland in Kerry, she and her partner run a project called The Barna Way. From here they engage with the diverse community groups through social farming and live food and cultural events, while protecting habitats for wildlife. This seventeen-year project is propelled by an accelerated sense of urgency around food insecurity, climate crisis, biodiversity loss and forced migration.

Fingleton is committed to creating cultural spaces where communities, artists, food producers and farmers can come together to resist industrial food systems and the fallacy of ‘cheap food’ by thinking global and acting local. Recent projects include the 30 Day Local Food Challenge, The Portlaoise Pizza and a recent installation of The Sandwich Project at the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork as part of Meat and Potatoes exhibition (2022).

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Screening until Sunday 7 May

Clare Keogh

Portraits of the Artists by filmmaker and photographer Clare Keogh features eight of the eighteen artists who work in Crawford Supported Studios – an integral part of Crawford Art Gallery.

Depicting intimate portraits of the working processes of featured artists Ailbhe Barrett, David Connolly, Brid Heffernan, John Noel Kenneally, Mary Rose Marshall, Stephen Murray, Eoin O’Brion and Katie Whelan. The film making was funded by MTU Arts Office through their innovative CONNECT Le Chéile Arts Project Fund. 

Crawford Supported Studios provide the artists safe studio spaces, art materials, equipment, two long-term studio facilitators, and assistance with transport and communications. It also enables the artists’ access to exhibitions, audiences, peers, and further support in terms of professional training and development.

Established in 2018, Crawford Supported Studios are a partnership project between Crawford Art Gallery and MTU Crawford College of Art and Design to support artists originally from Glasheen Art Studio Programme (GASP) founded by Hermann Marbe, and Cúig (Creativity Unlimited Integrated Group) founded in 2008 by Mayfield Arts Centre.

Dedicated studio days take place in the gallery and the college each week.

Over the years the artists have collaborated with L’ Arche, Cope Foundation and SECAD to support artist members, nurture individual creative projects and to create artist video portraits. The Studio is outward looking and builds links with organizations, artists, schools, community groups and fellow supported studios.

Crawford Supported Studios are a legacy project which honour and sustain the remarkable work that Artist and Nurse, Hermann Marbe, initiated at the John Birmingham Day Care Centre, Cork, in 2009.

The work of Supported Studio Artists is represented in the National Collection.

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26 November 2022 – 10 April 2023

Lower & Upper Galleries

Crawford Art Gallery is home to part of the National Collection, but how well do you know the stories behind it?

BEHIND THE SCENES takes visitors on a journey through the Collection as it unfolds across two floors and several thematic chapters, including Making, Conservation, Representation, and Research.

The exhibition offers an experience of the Collection with a twist, venturing beneath the surface of selected artworks to reveal the process of their making, how they have been collected and cared for, and what questions they may prompt in us.

The exhibition provides an overview of what comprises the Collection and what it expresses. Largely focused on painting – but also featuring photography, watercolour, drawing, and sculpture – the exhibition presents a rich array of artworks from across the centuries.

BEHIND THE SCENES seeks to explore the Collection in meaningful ways designed to intrigue, confront, and demystify. Ultimately the exhibition considers what a collection might say when asked to speak.

The Lower Gallery features artists Jo Allen, George Mounsey Wheatley Atkinson, James Barry, James Beale, Pauline Bewick, James Brenan, Jan Brueghel the Younger, Angela Burchill, Suzanna Chan, Sylvia Cooke-Collis, Shevaun Doherty, Willie Doherty, Stephen Doyle, Samuel Forde, Brigid Ganly, Charles Edward Gribbon, Eileen Healy, Grace Henry, Evie Hone, Mainie Jellett, Augustus John, Seán Keating, Anne King-Harman, John Lavery, Roseanne Lynch, Daniel Macdonald, Daniel Maclise, Ferenc Martyn, Norah McGuinness, Colin Middleton, Séamus Murphy, Norah Brigid Ní Chuill, Tony O'Malley, Ann St John Partridge, Moila Powell, George Romney, William Sheehan, Edward Sheil, Paul Signac, Mary Swanzy, Barend van der Meer, Leo Whelan, Anne Yeats, John Butler Yeats.

The Upper Gallery features artists Robert Ballagh, Tom Climent, William Crozier, Gerard Dillon, Eileen Healy, Brian Maguire, Anne Madden, Alice Maher, Janet Mullarney, Peter Nash, Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh, Tony O'Malley.

_{Curated by Michael Waldron}

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Ongoing

Demonstrating the emergence of one of Ireland's best-loved artists, this exhibition presents three of Harry Clarke's earliest stained glass panels in a darkened, secluded setting.

Dating to a highpoint in the Celtic Revival period, these panels were made while Clarke was still a student at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art. For these, he was awarded a highly coveted gold medal at the South Kensington National Competitions in 1911, for which work by students from England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland was adjudicated. These panels offer early evidence of the artist's emerging creativity and also forecast the inventiveness and originality of his later work, particularly his first major commission at the Honan Chapel (1916), University College Cork.

The three stained glass panels are presented to visitors in order of creation: The Consecration of St Mel, Bishop of Longford, by St Patrick (1910), The Godhead Enthroned 
(1911), and The Meeting of St Brendan with the Unhappy Judas (1911).

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Modern Galleries

14 December 2022 – 19 March 2023

For a limited time only, Crawford Art Gallery’s annual exhibition of Harry Clarke’s watercolours and ink drawings returns!

OTHER WORLDS explores Harry Clarke’s extraordinary capacity for conjuring images from literature and bringing often romantic or macabre worlds into being. From his delicate blue-tinged watercolour studies for The Eve of St Agnes to the pen-and-ink illustrations for the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, Clarke translated his vivid imagination into remarkable works that have been in the collection for almost a century.

The exhibition also draws together works by other artists – including Pauline Bewick, Stephen Brandes, Salvador Dalí, Jan de Fouw, Stanley William Hayter, Brianna Hurley, Daniel Maclise, William Otway McCannell, Xaver Schilling, Noreen Spillane – to addresses a broader sense of world-building in visual art.

OTHER WORLDS is a timely celebration in that 2023 marks the centenary of Clarke's illustrations for Marie Rogêt and The Fall of the House of Usher, and watercolour studies for The Eve of St Agnes.

Curated by Dr Michael Waldron

WAKING THE DEAD: Laura McKenna and Éibhear Walshe on the Writing of Historical Fiction
1pm – 2pm Wednesday, 8 March. Lecture Theatre
Join us as writers Laura McKenna and Éibhear Walshe discuss their approaches to world-building in historical fiction and biofiction. 

This event takes place in the tiered Lecture Theatre (ground floor) of Crawford Art Gallery and runs in conjunction with the exhibition OTHER WORLDS: Harry Clarke Watercolours which is open daily until 19 March. Click here for more information.

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15 October 2022 – 15 January 2023

Gibson Galleries and Long Room

Corban Walker is an internationally renowned artist based in Ireland who creates installations, sculpture and drawings that focus on human-made systems and perceptions of scale.

In this exhibition Walker’s distinctive sculptural and installation works are sited in Crawford Art Gallery’s historic Gibson and Long Room galleries where they disorientate and reorientate audience perceptions to navigate known familiar spaces of the gallery.

In removing the Gallery’s significant Collection works from the part wood-panelled Gibson Galleries, Walker will create a new work responding to this context which addresses the interplay between space and perception. Consisting of a mirrored installation, the work disrupts and constructs alternative conditions where the viewer may become part of the object.

Along with interventions of recent glass and amber acrylic works including Untitled (10 x 4 mitre) and 129-40, Walker has sited the installation TV Man astride the 19^th-century grand staircase where the artist’s image fits, to scale, in a 65-inch screen. Where paintings of eighteenth-century luminaries of the British Empire have previously been sited, Walker constructs and reclaims marginalised histories and, in the process, also underwrites the future.

In addition, Walker’s perceptive selection of over thirty works from the Gallery’s Collection in the eighteenth-centuryLong Room, further brings the artist’s perspective to the fore and questions – as Corban Walker has noted – ‘how we orientate ourselves to recognizable objects and environments, both in very specific compositions and by opposite stylistic means.’

Walker’s specific philosophies of scale and sensitivity to local and cultural contexts are central to how he defines and realises his work. As artist and critic Brian O’Doherty has written “Corban Walker establishes himself as measure of his own art as body as mirror, module, standard. With this insistence - it is nothing less - he remakes his environment according to his own measure.” 

In offering audiences an opportunity to interrogate their own actions and interactions with the world around them, As Far as I Can See by Corban Walker is a compelling exhibition which alters and enriches understanding of perception and the human-scale.

Artist Talk

In Conversation: Corban Walker & Sarah Searson Wednesday 9 November.
Wednesday 9 November, 1-2pm
Gallery Lecture Theatre

Join us for a public talk about Corban Walker’s new exhibition. Corban will be in conversation with Sarah Searson, Director of The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon.
Entry is free

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