• National Gallery of Ireland Re-opening

    June 15, 2017 - By 

    After six years of extension refurbishment, tonight sees the reopening of the National Gallery of Ireland’s Merrion Square wings. Starting in 2011 with The Dargan Wing (originally opened in 1863) and continuing with The Milltown Wing (originally opened in 1903) in 2014, the gallery at one stage had an estimated 80% of its floor space closed. This weekend sees the opening of the gallery’s much anticipated Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting: Inspiration and Rivalry exhibition, with the gallery’s main space open to the public from today. Access has been limited to the Clare Street entrance due to the refurbishments,…

  • Critical Bastards #14 Launch

    June 14, 2017 - By 

    Critical Bastards launch their new issue later this evening in Dublin’s Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. The latest release from the critical art journal is centred on the theme of ‘hope’ and its role within the creation and enjoyment of art – the open call for submissions earlier this year advised: “Critical thinking without hope is cynicism. Hope without critical thinking is naïveté… We are looking for critical responses to the idea of the hope that underpins the ceaseless endurance of existence, and of art.”  As we continue in 2017 with the current global and national social and political crises, this…

  • Exhibition: Sea and Summer @ ArtisAnn Gallery

    July 5, 2017 - By 

    Opening tonight in Belfast’s ArtisAnn Gallery is a new exhibition featuring the work of Northern Irish painter Carol Graham. Graham, who’s portraits of Mary McAleese and Mary Robinson hang in Queen’s University and Trinity College respectively, is due to present a selection of works from the past decade as well as newly created pieces specifically for the show. These works will draw on the themes of the Sea and the Summer, and this lends itself to the name of the exhibition: Sea and Summer. The preview opens tonight from 6:30pm until 8:30pm, with the show set to continue until August…

  • Exhibition: Babel Unbound @ CIT Wandesford Quay Gallery

    June 13, 2017 - By 

    This Friday at 6pm sees the opening of Babel Unbound in Cork’s CIT Wandesford Quay Gallery. Featuring the works of American artists Leslie Mutchler and Jason Urban, Babel Unbound is a multi-disciplinary show with focus on the print medium. Mutchler and Urban are collaborative artists and here they focus on the role of printed media and editions within the context of a library, and ultimately as a curated and performative space. “A series of printed works, risographs, xeroxes and screenprints become a publication pulled apart, ephemeral and in-flux, lining walls of the CIT Wandesford Quay Gallery. Photographs, 3D printed objects and large-scale digital prints…

  • Exhibition: Eamon O’Kane @ Butler Gallery

    June 7, 2017 - By 

    The work of Danish fairytale behemoth Hans Christian Anderson, and specifically his 1858 short story The Last Dream of an Old Oak Tree, provides the title for the latest exhibition by Irish artist Eamon O’Kane in Kilkenny’s Butler Gallery. The show, titled Does all the beauty of the world cease when you die?, features a broad range of mediums including on-site installations, print and photography, that have been combined to provide a multi-faceted and immersive exhibition. Anderson’s short story discuss the interaction between an old oak tree and a May fly. The tree feels pity for the fly as he views his ephemeral life…

  • Exhibition: Brigitte Zieger @ Void

    June 3, 2017 - By 

    Parisian based German artist Brigitte Zieger has a new exhibition of works, entitled Other Scenes, opening tonight in Derry’s Void gallery. The new show, which is curated by Gregory McCartney, see Zieger “explores virtual and spatial 3D images which relate to history and the integration of displacements between images, sculpture and space”. The opening is proceeded by an artist’s talk at 6:30pm, with the launch scheduled for 7:30pm until 9pm. Tonight also see the launch of Abridged’s 0 – 1979 issue, which can be picked up on the night. Other Scenes continues until July 29th, with full details on the exhibition available here, with info on…

  • Exhibition: The Last Wilderness @ The Dock

    July 29, 2017 - By 

    The Last Wilderness is the current exhibition in Carrick-on-Shannon’s The Dock, and features the work of Cecilia Danell. The show is an expansion of a body of work shown by Danell earlier this year in Galway’s Art Centre. In this version of the work, the artist’s landscape paintings, which draw on her native Sweden and its neighbour Norway where she recently completed a residency, are recontextualised to reference Danell’s interests in film, theatre and performance based art. These interests see the artist present an experimental film shot on 8mm alongside her work – the piece is is screened from a small theatre set constructed as…

  • Exhibition: The Triadic Ballet @ VISUAL Carlow

    July 11, 2017 - By 

    In 1922, and a year prior to him being named as the Head of the Bauhuas School’s Theatre Workshop, Oskar Schlemmer unveiled his first major theatrical work: The Triadic Ballet. The ballet saw 3 participants (always 2 males and 1 female) perform 12 dances in 18 costumes spread across 3 acts. The dancers, akin to life-size marionette dolls, were transformed into abstract geometric shapes as Schlemmer explored modernity and the human form. The ballet was shown extensively during the artist’s time at Bauhaus (’21-’29), with touring performances taking place. In 1970 Bavaria Film GmbH captured a colour film of the ballet with…

  • Picture This: Belfast Photo Festival

    June 20, 2017 - By 

    Sensory Deprivation – © Juno Calypso 2016 Belfast Photo Festival returns to the Northern Irish capital for the month of June. The main theme for this year’s biennial is Sexuality & Gender, with eleven exhibitions taking place across Belfast discussing this topic. As well as the festival’s main brief a number of exhibitions discussing other subjects are integrated within the programme along with a host of talks, workshops and events. With the current social and political environments that exist on this island, and further a field, a look at the role of gender in society, and specifically the ability of the…

  • Exhibition: Dennis Dinneen @ Douglas Hyde Gallery

    May 26, 2017 - By 

    Today and tomorrow are the last chances to see an extensive selection from the Dennis Dinneen archive in The Douglas Hyde Gallery. Operating out of the room adjacent to this pub in Macroom, County Cork between the ’50s and ’70s, Dinneen captured an Ireland that has faded in recent decades. The imagery created is an important sociological document of an Ireland transitioning from the a newly established country to entering the European fold in the start of the 1970s. The Church stilled loomed large in community affairs and emigration had become an all too frequent bedfellow. Dennis Dinneen continues in The Douglas Hyde…