• Picture This: Your National Visual Arts Guide – Time

    October 24, 2016 - By 

    Mankind has always will be obsessed with time. How long does anything take? When will something happen? We use it as a yardstick for task and events. As a society we’re enthralled by time-travel, constantly preoccupied with how long things take to do and get to. We’ve even coined the phrase ‘time immemorial’ to indicate how long things have been the way there are – it’s July 6th 1189 in case you were curious. Time is a revisionary tool by which we revisit the past and judge previous actions, comparing and contrasting them to now – they same time heals…

  • Picture This – Your National Visual Arts Guide: Culture Night 2016: Dublin

    September 15, 2016 - By 

    Ireland’s annual night of culture is upon us again this Friday as her galleries, museum, studios and a host of others cultural hotspots open their doors for a night of exhibitions, demonstrations and insights. Culture Night 2016 sees over 3,000 events take place across the whole island, and what started out as a capital only event 10 years ago has now spread to 40 towns and cities across the all of Ireland. Dublin sees a host of music gigs, gallery openings, late night museums and open houses with events taking place across the city until 11pm. As always Culture Night…

  • Picture This – Your National Visual Arts Guide: Collection

    September 13, 2016 - By 

    Collections come in many sizes, outputs and forms. They can be collated by the similarity in object or output, they can also be defined by a universal signifier such as a time, artist or theme. In this edition of The Thin Air’s Picture This we see this idea manifested in four of its many tropes. In Wexford we see a collection of national and international artists explore the idea of a residency and it’s impact on an artist’s practice. Galway also presents us a collection of artists, this time all of the Finnish and all of them discussing the same…

  • Picture This: Your National Visual Arts Guide – Re-Vision

    August 9, 2016 - By 

    The concept of ‘revision’ is often viewed as the process of returning to something and reevaluating what it was and how it was interpreted at the time. In this edition of Picture This we see revision as as a concept of revising based on new evidence, returning to something and reconsidering it, re-examining and creating something new, and to rethink what was and what will be. In Dublin we see The Douglas Hyde Gallery re-present a selection of Alec Soth’s past projects under a new theme, in Belfast Exposed we see Yvette Monahan reassess the legacy of a landscape on…

  • Picture This – Your National Visual Arts Guide: August Bank Holiday

    July 29, 2016 - By 

    August is upon us this weekend. The business end of the summer has arrived, and with it the penultimate Bank Holiday Weekend of the year. We’ve squeezed an extra day off from the boss (hopefully) and Ireland’s galleries have a host of great shows on offer. In Cork we see an exploration of the artist as a wanderer and recorder, with a host of international artist on display in the Lewis Glucksman Gallery. In Drogheda the Marmite Prize for Painting arrives on these shores for the first time with Highlanes Gallery playing host. The West provides refuge for a trio…

  • Picture This – Your National Visual Arts Guide: PhotoIreland Special

    July 22, 2016 - By 

    July is a strange month in Ireland, an interim of sorts. It’s the summer month without a bank holiday. Most sports have taken a hiatus. The Euros are done and dusted. Even the GAA Championship, that bastion of Irish summer months, doesn’t really start until August. The Leaving & Junior Certs are over, as Alice Cooper once said – school’s out for the summer. You could be half tempted to either count down or whittle away the days until that glorious long weekend at the start of August – and with the weather we’ve had this week who’d blame you.…

  • Picture This: Your National Visual Arts Guide – Environment

    July 12, 2016 - By 

    The concept of environments, and environmental impact, resonates across the broad content and diverse mediums featured in this edition of The Thin Air’s Picture This. While this theme is present in the traditional sense of the impact we as a human race have had on the environment, it is more keenly felt in the reverse and the impact an environment can have on us – the subject and the audience. The four shows highlight how it can alter the cultures and traditions of its inhabitants, help formulate ideologies and craft viewpoints. In a broader sense we also see the impact…

  • Picture This: Your National Visual Arts Guide – Boundaries

    June 27, 2016 - By 

    Boundaries as a theme is present in the four shows in this week’s Picture This – don’t worry we here at The Thin Air are not talking about Brexit. We mean boundaries in the sense of where something can be pushed to and expanded beyond, rather than the traditional sense of landmass and exclusion. Boundaries come with preconceptions, limitations and a sense of where something should stop or where you should stop exploring. The shows this week in Dublin, Belfast, Sligo and Cork alter, expand and shatter these while housing engaging and thought provoking exhibitions. We see a reexamination of…

  • Picture This: Your National Visual Arts Guide – Education

    June 13, 2016 - By 

    The three shows that make up this week’s edition of Picture This are as diverse and seemingly contrasting as the come. One features the retrospective of an Irish painter born a hundred years ago (Ulster Museum in Belfast), another is a graduation show of 16 photographers (Gallery of Photography in Dublin), while the third (Highlanes Gallery in Drogheda) takes a look at an altogether more national subject – The 1916 Rising. While the dates of 1916 and 2016, as both departure and reflection points, feature in each exhibition it’s the themes of education and understanding the ring out loudest from these four…

  • Picture This: Your National Visual Arts Guide – Retrospective Viewpoints

    May 27, 2016 - By 

    Merlin James, Fence, 2002 The themes of retrospectives and viewpoints, in terms of personal, institutional and national culture, resonate in the shows from Dublin, Carlow and Limerick chosen in this edition of Picture This. In Dublin, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios’ latest exhibition looks at the last 100 years history of Trinity College and casts a light on some of the institution’s lesser known fables. A more critical look at the role of educational institutions can be found in Limerick and Ormston House, this show also looks at the cultural appropriation of languages in Ireland and further afield. Cultural appropriation…