Event Details

Dates

28/01/2011 – 28/01/2011

 Rosie McGurran

The Gathering

Galway Arts Centre January 28th – March 5th 2011

Opening Friday 28th January at 6pm

 Rosie Mc Gurrin

Galway Arts Centre is proud to announce The Gathering, a solo collection from Rosie McGurran which documents her work over the last ten years to the present day.  Opening Friday 28th January at 6pm, this exhibition will run until the 5th March 2011.

Originally from Belfast, Rosie McGurran received a B.A. in Fine Art from the University of Ulster in 2000.  She has subsequently won many prestigious awards while developing her practice both in Ireland and internationally.  Since 2001, McGurran has curated and exhibited at the annual Inishlacken Project in Roundstone, an Island-based initiative which invites artists to produce work on the now uninhabited Inishlacken Island.  Recent exhibitions by McGurran include group shows at the Royal Ulster Academy (October 2010) and Europe’s Edge, Group Show at Tromso University, Norway (December 2010).
 
A native of Belfast, McGurran has been living in the village of Roundstone, Co. Galway for several years.  The idyllic scenery of Roundstone has been influential in the development of McGurran’s work.  Her paintings borrow scenes from her Connemara surrounds and celebrate the beauty of the area as well as its rich history of fishing.  Rolling picturesque landscapes, ocean views, pastoral settings and charming local dwellings are recurring motifs which are vividly rendered in McGurran’s cleverly composed scenes.  Also included in her paintings are invented characters, often ethereal female inhabitants who add to the surrealism of McGurran’s local scenes.
The Gathering  exhibition at the Galway Arts Centre shows a selection of work from the past ten years of McGurran’s career.  From her early works, to her dreamlike representations of Inishlacken, we see the continuing development of McGurran’s distinctive, magic realist, style. The artist’s most recent pieces are also represented here; portraits which have been inspired by old photographs of strangers which McGurran collected while travelling abroad.  A sense of distance and melancholy is wonderfully portrayed in these works, amplifying our sense of physical and chronological separation from McGurran’s subjects.
To celebrate the exhibition of this unique collection of work, McGurran has produced an original unframed Intaglio print (edition of 50) which will be sold at the Galway Arts Centre for €150 each.