• 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…

  • RHA 187th Annual Exhibition 

    May 25, 2017 - By 

    Opening this week for its summer run is the RHA’s 187th Annual Exhibition. The exhibition, which is the largest open-submission show in Ireland, features a multitude of mediums and provides viewers with a broad synopsis of current styles, trends and directions within contemporary Irish art. As well as it’s open-submission platform the RHA invites artists each year to contribute to the discussion. This year includes a site-specific installation by Miranda Blennerhassett – which sees the Scottish born, Irish based artist transform the gallery’s staircase. Drawing on inspiration from an Iranian mosque, the work is a reflection on the human tradition of…

  • Exhibition: School Portraits @ Draíocht

    May 24, 2017 - By 

    School Portraits, an exhibition which presented the work of four artists who have submerged themselves within the environments of Irish schools, opens tonight in Blanchardstown’s Draíocht. The show features the work of John Ahearn, Mandy O’Neill, Blaise Smith and Kilian Waters. Each has approached the topic with a different medium – photography, video, sculpture and paint, with Ahearn’s 1994 piece St Francis Street Boys on loan from the IMMA collection. School Portraits promises to be a fascinating look at life in Irish schools and will also help engage children in visual arts from a young age and spark discourses across generations. With that in…

  • Exhibition: Set in Time @ Glucksman

    June 21, 2017 - By 

    Founded in 1909 by Russian ballet and art impresario Sergei Diaghilev, Ballets Russes is recognised as a pivotal organistaion in the establishment and promotion of performative dance in the early decades of the 20th Century. As well as being home to some of the greatest ballet dancers of its time, including Nijinsky and Pavlova, Ballets Russes also saw Diaghilev commission pieces from contemporary artists, such as Picasso and Matisse, as well as costume designs from Coco Channel and compositional pieces from Stravinsky – who Diaghilev would eventually be buried near in Venice. In 1921, while only 16, Serge Liar was spotted by Diaghilev and he became his…

  • Picture This: The Recount of Conflict @ Pallas Projects

    May 11, 2017 - By 

    © Jasper Bastian – Across The River What: The Recount of Conflict Where: Pallas Studios, Dublin When: 4th to 14th May {Recount: noun, An act or instance of giving an account of an event or experience. Conflict: noun, A serious disagreement or argument, typically a protracted one; a state of mind in which a person experiences a clash of opposing feelings or needs.} It is the collation, and subsequent narrative extraction, that solidifies The Recount of Conflict as both a successful exhibition, in terms of expression and discourse, and as an introductory platform for seven artists. On initial surface value, the imagery…

  • Exhibition: Showing Off @ VOID

    May 16, 2017 - By 

    This week is the last to see Showing Off in Derry’s Void gallery. The show, which has been curated by Mhairi Sutherland, has seen screenings from the New York initiative Women Make Movies’ archive. Void’s Gallery 2 has a rotation of feature film’s, with a fixed series of shorter films in the gallery’s other spaces. For this final week it’s Barbara Miller’s 2012 film Forbidden Voices: How to Start a Revolution with a Computer – which looks at female bloggers in Cuba, China and Iran as they document their countries’ regimes. This film will be shown daily at 11am and 1pm, with the shorter films, including…

  • PhotoIreland Festival Launch

    May 4, 2017 - By 

    Having moved from its traditional July slot to the start of Summer, the PhotoIreland Festival launches tonight in Dublin’s Tara Building from 7pm. Previous incarnations of the month long arts festival have seen artists being invited to respond to a specific theme, this year sees a shift in that practice as the invitation has been to respond to a specific place – Marsh’s Library, the 18th Century library nestled in St. Patrick’s Close adjacent to the cathedral.  As well as this main brief there are looks at the Hispanic World as well as bodies of work by Michal Iwanowski and Steven Nestor, with the…