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.