Connaught – Galway
Seo é Inis Oírr
24th – 26th May
Dive into a unique opportunity to experience island life only open to a limited number of visitors. This festival celebrates the traditional skills and crafts still practiced as part of daily life on Inis Oírr, the smallest of the Aran Islands.
The weekend will begin on Friday evening with an opening social and exhibition of local craftwork. On Saturday and Sunday, locals will share their skills and knowledge through a variety of intimate workshops. Each participant will get a taste of three aspects of island culture, including Aran Knitting, Willow Basket Making, Séan-nós Dancing, Seaweed Cookery and Dry Stonewall Building. There will be ample time for visitors to enjoy the many other activities on Inis Oírr, such as traditional music sessions, pony and trap tours, and scenic walks taking in views of the Cliffs of Moher and the Connemara mountains.
Both English and Irish speakers are welcomed, and there will be plenty of chance to practice the “cúpla focail” for those who so choose.
This all inclusive package covers three workshops, a lunch and two nights B&B. Leave your car and cares behind; Inis Oírr is easily accessible by ferry from Rosseveal or flights from Inverin, Co Galway, or by ferry from Doolin, Co Clare. Further details at www.inisoirr-island.com
Spaces are limited and early registration is recommended. REGISTER NOW.
For further information, visit www.seoeinisoirr.com
Thomas Ryan, PPRHA – exhibiton of selected works, watercolours and oil paintings
15th May – 7th June | Opening: 14th May at 5pm
Mechanical Soils Lab, adjacent to Áras na Mac Léinn/Student Centre, NUI Galway.
NUI Galway proudly presents a retrospective of the work of Thomas Ryan PPRHA, prolific Irish artist, who works in oils, pastels, pencil, charcoal and watercolour, and has been painting for over 60 years.
The exhibition of Selected Works, selected by the Artist, Thomas Ryan and the Arts & Theatre Office, NUI Galway, includes two of his large historical paintings, ’ The Flight of the Earls’ and ’ G.P.O. 1916’, both oil on canvas and painted in the great European Tradition. These paintings normally hang inside Dublin Castle and Leinster House, respectively, and have been generously loaned by the artist and the Institutions. Tom Ryan is renowned for imaginative re-workings of historical and religious episodes and he is also heralded as an important chronicler of the changing face of Ireland, through his portraiture, and paintings of exteriors and interiors of buildings.
On show at NUI Galway, will be portraits, self-portraits, religious paintings, interiors, still lives and landscapes, many loaned from the artist’s home, for this ’retrospective’ of his career. Two portrait highlights on show are a pastel drawing, ’ Seán Keating, aged 82 years’ and a drawing of the late Professor of Marine Science , ’Padraic O’Céidigh’, which is part of the NUI Galway Collection. In addition, there is a selection of watercolours from a recent project, Dublin and Thereabouts, when Thomas Ryan painted the buildings and places that took his fancy in Dublin, 2010-2011, all painted directly from the subject, and mostly in one sitting.
Thomas Ryan PPRHA: Selected Works will be officially launched at 5pm on Tuesday 14 May by the Academic Secretary to the University, Gearóid Ó’Conluain and Thomas Ryan will also be in attendance. Refreshments will be served and the event is open to the public.
Remember me (Before I forget)
2nd May – 1st June
Galway Arts Centre, Nun’s Island, Co. Galway
Red Bird Youth Collective will present Remember me (Before I forget), an exhibition presenting work by artists Cecilia Danell, Emmet Kierans, and Red Bird in collaboration with Jonathan Sammon and Ruadhrí Brennan. Remember me (Before I forget) opens on the 2nd of May at 6pm, in the Galway Arts Centre, 47 Dominick Street. The exhibition will run for four weeks, until June 1st. In addition to presenting their debut film ‘Belong’, Red Bird have curated the exhibition and carried out all of the administration work, under the guidance of Galway Arts Centre.
The exhibition and film ‘Belong’ has been funded by the Arts Council’s Youth Ensemble Scheme 2012–2013. This is Red Bird’s second time receiving this award. The funding has been used to fulfil Red Bird’s mission of creating new work in collaboration with professional artists and also programming and curating visual art. The group is made up of young people aged 16–24. Red Bird is also supported by Galway County Council.
‘Belong’ is a sci-fi psychological thriller exploring the themes of societal dislocation, isolation and the role of companionship and the many forms it can take in our lives. The group devised the script together and began filming in December 2012. Upon its completion, work by Danell and Kierans were selected.
Cecilia Danell is a member of Engage Art Studios, Galway. Her most recent exhibitions are ‘Secretly, we thirst for reality’ in Wexford Arts Centre, and ‘The Consoling Dream Necessity’ in Talbot Gallery, Dublin. Danell has an interest in the way we explore the world around us, often using landscape and the built environment as metaphors for internal states and the human condition. She works with a number of mediums including paint, film/video, installation, and object making.
Emmet Kierans originally from Limerick, is now living in London completing a PhD in Practice Based Fine Art. Kierans most recent solo exhibition entitled ‘Something From Nothing’ focused on reality and perception, looking at how the mind perceives colour and shape, and aiming to reveal the plasticity of visual perception. In other work, he has dealt with the concepts of identity and the unconscious. Kierans has worked with paint, sculpture, photography and installation.
Red Bird Youth Collective has previously collaborated with artists on two exhibitions; ‘Sample’ with Louise Manifold in 2012, the collectives first show that encompassed many art forms and techniques creating a diverse collection of work, and ‘Shaping Space’ with Blaithin Quinn earlier this year, which explored the architecture of the West of Galway.
3rd – 31st May | Preview: 2nd May at 7pm
126, Artist-run Gallery, 4 Commerce House, Flood Street, Galway City
126 is delighted to present work by John Freeman and Jill Miller, Burren College of Art MFA Graduates 2013.
Freeman’s focus is on interrogating the cultural binary views of gender identity. His work addresses Carl Gustav Jung’s idea of the anima (the feminine component of the male psyche) and it’s archetypes. He attempts to separate the feminine psyche from the masculine, externalizing her through performance, video and sculpture. He takes on alter-egos and works towards achieving the masculine potential, by investigating archetypal feminine identities.
Miller’s paintings represent an autobiographical understanding of emotional reactions, specifically in relation to experiences of anxiety and fear. They investigate the idea of liminality as a metaphorical state, hovering between spaces, how this place of transition exists in physical body language. Liminality is defined as “relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process, occupying a position at, or on both sides of a boundary or threshold”. In these works, physical liminal space is expressed within the environment surrounding the figure, which enforces the fragility of the context. Bringing the idea of a constant state of fear-based anxiety into physical, cohesive visual representation through paint.
Burning Bright
1st – 31st May | Launch: 1st May at 1.30pm
Galway Arts Centre, Nun’s Island, Co. Galway
This year’s Burning Bright, an annual event celebrating the creativity in older age, is set to celebrate its 10th year on Wednesday May 1st until the 31st in the Galway Arts Centre. This is an annual exhibition with a series of visual art residencies in Care Settings throughout the City and County of Galway. This is a partnership between Galway Arts Centre, Galway City Council, Galway County Council, and University College Hospital, Galway.
Burning Bright is part of the Bealtaine Festival, which takes place nationwide throughout the month of May. Throughout the spring, professional visual artists gave workshops in residential facilities, exploring creativity with different art materials, focusing on this year’s theme; ‘Mapping and Memory’. The artists and residents worked together to create individual artworks which will be on display in Galway Arts Centre.
This year’s participants are St. Francis CNU, St Rita’s in UCHG, Units 5 and 6 in Merlin Park Hospital, Solas in Mervue, St. Anne’s in Clifden, Ionad Lae in Carraroe, Aras Ronán in Inis Mór, Aras Mhic Dara in Leitir Mealoan, Portumna Day Centre, Maryfield in Athenry, and Brendan’s CNU in Loughrea.
The launch will take place in the Galway Arts Centre on May 1st at 1.30pm, and will be followed by a tea dance in Nuns Island with a traditional Irish band formed specially for the occasion.
Lies and more lies
23rd April – 11th May | Opening: 23rd April at 6pm by the writer Celeste Auge
Norman Villa Gallery, Salthill, Galway
Opening hours: Daily from 12pm – 6pm
Philip Lindey’s images featured in the Galway Arts Festival posters of 2002, 2003 and 2004. English born and brought up in Sligo he lives in Co Galway. His long and winding artistic career culminated with a Masters of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Ulster in 1999. He is presently writing a book on seventeen century painting methods.
Lindey’s strongly figurative works are painstakingly realized with consummate artistic skill. This is classical painting with a twist, absurdity and humor feature strongly. His influences music, literature, films, gardening, and his children all go into the mix but it is his innate curiosity and attention to detail that make the work so unique and instantly recognizable.
Of this body of work Lindey says – This exhibition is in part about paint itself. While working on these paintings I’ve been working on a book about seventeenth century painting methods. Rembrandt and Velazquez were at my shoulder tutting, sighing and saying things like “what’s the big deal with baboons?” Those guys have been good to me. Once, over a pint Rembrandt said to me “the truth is Philip, it’s about maintaining a light hold on your imagination and never squeezing too hard”.
18th April – 18th May
Townhall Theatre, Courthouse Square, Galway.
The Cutting Edge by Ciaran Murphy
Ciaran has produced a series of papercut illustrations inspired by the fun and whimsy of Nursery rhymes and the more menacing nature of fairy tales.The images cut in a silhouette style out of black card with the occasional burst of colour try and give the viewer enough information to encourage their imagination to fill the rest.
Crossing - A collaboration between Manfred Url and Norbert Prettenthaler
Manfred Url, from Austria, has been working as a professional artist for the past twenty years. He has exhibited all over the world and is Artist in residence at Áras Éanna, Inis Oírr for the month of April 2013. Norbert Prettenthaler also Austria is a well known journalist,writer and film maker. Winner of the Carl Mayer Screenplay Prize at the festival of Austrian films, Diagonale. He has worked on documentaries in Ethiopia, Austria, Ireland and Romania and collaborated with different many different artists.
