Cork to Venice: Eight art exhibitions to watch out for in the coming months
L-R: Dorothy Cross; Johannes Vermeer's Girl with the Red Hat.
The rusting hulk of the MV Alta has become an unlikely attraction since running aground outside the East Cork town of Ballycotton during Storm Dennis in February 2020. The Alta is believed to have drifted 1,400 miles across the Atlantic after being abandoned by its crew in October 2018.
Sherkin Island artist Majella O’Neill Collins has made it the subject of her upcoming exhibition at Uillinn, a suite of paintings that vividly imagine the ghost ship’s travails on its 496-day journey to destruction.
How will the arts accommodate advances in artificial intelligence? This is a question addressed by Irish artists Aoife Shanahan, Mark Joyce and Alan Butler in their exhibition Suspended Particles at the Art SG International Art Fair in Singapore this month, where the three will use photographic forms, colour and painting to challenge conventional understanding of artistic media. This is only the second edition of Art SG, but the fair drew 43,000 visitors in 2023 and is expected to attract at least as many this year, a welcome start to a calendar of art fairs and festivals that will see Irish artists exhibit all over the world.
Dorothy Cross’s Kinship project – centring on her efforts to repatriate an ancient mummy from the UCC collection to Egypt - will hopefully happen early this year. In the meantime, the Cork-born artist joins Sara Baume, Gary Coyle, Daphne Wright and 16 others in exploring the subject of time in an exhibition of more than 50 works over two floors of the Crawford Art Gallery. Among the themes addressed are climate change, nationhood, post-colonialism, urbanism, hope, memory, health and death. Also continuing at the Crawford is the exhibition Harry Clarke: Bad Romance and Venus Patel’s artist’s film Eggshells.
‘Tronies’ may never have been as ubiquitous as ‘selfies’, but they were certainly popular in the Dutch Golden Age and Flemish Baroque periods of art, when the term was used to describe a painting that depicted a more extravagant or distinctive facial expression than one might find in a formal portrait. Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Red Hat (c1665 - 67) is a perfect example, and will be a highlight of Turning Heads, an exhibition of tronies at the National Gallery of Ireland that also includes Rembrandt van Rijn’s The Laughing Man and Peter Paul Rubens’ Study of an Old Woman.
Just as art fairs and festivals showcase the work of Irish creatives around the world, so too does the circuit of biennales. Last June, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Hugh Lane Gallery and Culture Ireland announced a new initiative, Ireland Invites, to promote Irish art at such events. Inti Guerrero, Artistic Director of the Sydney Biennale, was invited to visit artists in their studios across the country. As a consequence, two - Breda Lynch and Sana Shahmuradova Tanska – have now been invited to participate in the 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns. Lynch is a Kilkenny-born artist whose recent projects include Blue Dyke at Ormston House in Limerick, where she now lives, while Tanska is a Ukrainian painter who spent two months in early 2023 on a production residency at IMMA in collaboration with EVA International.
Co Waterford, March 23 – October 27
Since opening in a renovated wing of Lismore Castle in 2005, Lismore Castle Arts has produced a wonderfully diverse programme of exhibitions by international artists. Leonor Antunes from Portugal, Alexandre da Cunha from Brazil, Rhea Dillon from the UK, and Veronica Ryan from Montserrat are the artists contributing to this year’s exhibition of sculptural works, curated by Habda Rashid, in the main space at the castle. There will also be exhibitions by Aleana Egan at St Carthage Hall and Caroline Aguirre at the Mill, for those wishing to make a day trip to one of Ireland’s loveliest small towns.
The Venice Art Biennale is the most prestigious showcase for the visual arts in the world, and usually attracts over half a million visitors. Co Longford artist Eimear Walshe – whose recent project The Department of Sexual Revolution Studies involved collaborations with translators, metal fabricators and a choir - is to represent Ireland at the 60th Biennale, which opens in April. Walshe’s exhibition will be curated by Sara Greavu and Project Arts Centre. Ireland was represented by the sculptors Niamh O’Malley in 2022 and Eva Rothchild in 2019.
The Lavit’s programme for 2024 includes solo, group and members’ exhibitions, as well as an intriguing joint show by two local artists, Katherine Boucher Beug and Mags Geaney. Boucher Beug, an American resident in West Cork since 1971, is known for her engagement with Josef Alber’s colour theory and her love of writing, drawing and collage. She will publish People, The Book in July. Mags Geaney, from Cork, is known for her figurative paintings and drawings, as well as her work in video.
