Event Details
Dates
26/02/2021 – 24/05/2021
Location
Galway Arts Centre
Friday, 26th February – Monday, 24th May
‘Open Shutters’ is a window installation featuring work by Galway based artists located within 5km of the building on Dominick Street. Galway Arts Centre will open the window shutters every day from 10am to 8pm to bring a little magic to the West End for passers-by, in what are hopefully the final weeks of the latest lockdown. Artwork has been selected in conjunction with fellow visual art organisations – Interface, Engage Art Studios and 126 Artist-Run Gallery & Studios – and will change every two weeks until Galway Arts Centre is able to open it’s doors to the public again.
Artwork by Red Bird Youth Collective, made at the beginning of 2020 with artist Marielle MacLeman, featured in the window for the first two weeks, followed by the first solo artist to exhibit work as part of this window series, award-winning visual artist Maeve Curtis. Currently exhibiting is Peter Bradley, with Enda Burke following on
Galway Arts Centre is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Galway City Council.
Red Bird Youth Collective and Marielle MacLeman, Exhibit from Islannaltenage (Friday, 26th February – Sunday, 14th March)
Red Bird Youth Collective is a visual art group for young people (aged 15 – 24) living in Galway city and county. They deliver large-scale youth-led projects in collaboration with professional artists.
The culmination of a process-based project, Islannaltenage explores the material trace of Nuns Island’s industrial heritage amidst the plans for its regeneration. Through experimental processes and found materials, the group have articulated notions of placemaking and belonging, and how built and natural environments coexist within this urban space.
https://www.galwayartscentre.ie/en/red-bird-youth-collective
https://www.mariellemacleman.com/
Maeve Curtis, Unamed (Monday, 15th March – Sunday, 28th March)
An award-winning visual artist, Maeve Curtis’ work has been selected for numerous juried shows including the prestigious Columbia Threadneedle Prize, London, and the Pallas Periodical Review, Dublin.
The selected artwork is part of an ongoing meditation on the unseen and the unheard. It takes its cue from the practice of nineteenth century studio photography where a mother or guardian, covered entirely in a cloth, held a child still for a portrait.
Looking out from the window of a locked Galway Arts Centre, itself a nineteenth century building and once home to the Gregory family, Unnamed poses the question – who is carrying the burden of this pandemic and who, in these times, are unseen and unheard.
Peter Bradley (Monday, 29th March – Sunday, 11th April)
Since graduating from Limerick School of Art and Design in 2014 with a first class honours BA in Painting, Bradley has exhibited work in group shows with The Royal Hibernian Academy, The Royal Ulster Academy, The Hermione Annual Exhibition, and was shortlisted for the Hennessy Portrait prize in 2016 and Zurich Portrait Prize in 2018. He has been awarded the Tyrone Guthrie Residency Award by the Galway City Council in 2017, and the R.C. lewis Crosby Award for Painting in 2013. Bradley lives and works in Galway City.
Identity, gender, sex, and sexuality are prevalent themes in the work of painter Peter Bradley. Having had an obsession with Identity and gender from a young age, Bradley’s investigation is driven by the artifice of social constructionism and is inspired by those individuals who do not feel constrained by outdated ideas of what is acceptable or expected of them. His paintings are an analysis of identity presentation between and beyond the gender binary and a celebration of self-expression.
https://www.peter-bradley.com/
Enda Burke (Monday, 12th April – Sunday, 25th April)
Enda Burke is a photographer based in the west of Ireland, mainly known for his narrative and street photography.
Enda’s current project ‘Homebound with my Parents’ was the recipient winner of the International Bartur photo prize, and Enda is currently doing an artist residency with Coffeewerks and Design Press. The series has recently been featured in Rolling Stone magazine Italia, Causeette magazine, Irish Arts review, Featureshoot magazine, Fotonostrum magazine and some smaller publications.
“When the strict measures were introduced in Ireland in March 2020, I decided to take portraits of my parents during the ongoing lockdown. These images are taken using nostalgia, humour, and Catholic iconography, as a form of escapism from the stress of lockdown.”
Enda’s work explores themes of family and identity in contemporary Ireland, allowing humour and integrity to shine through the mundane. “I am particularly drawn to the strange monotony associated with family class life and how small transient details of colour and play can become marvels in monotonous settings.”
Enda has exhibited his work at the courthouse gallery in Clare as part of a group show reflecting the Covid lockdown. He also exhibited at Photoworks Trongate 103, Glasgow as part of a showcase of the best of new Scottish graduate students. He has exhibited in NCAD, Dublin; Catalyst Arts, Belfast; and other galleries in Galway and Aberdeen.
Enda graduated with a BA in Photography and Filmmaking from Gray’s School of Art in 2013.
Noelle Gallagher (Monday, 26th April – Sunday, 16th May)
Noelle Gallagher is a visual artist based in Galway, Ireland. Although primarily a painter, she incorporates photography and film into her practice. The themes of life, death and temporality thread through all her work and currently focus on the science of biophilia, deforestation and rewilding. Her first short film, Still Life, was selected premiered at DIFF in 2019 alongside two Oscar nominated shorts. A member of Engage Art Studios, Interface Inagh, and graduate of GMIT (2011), she recently completed two years of mentoring by painters with Turps Art School, London. Her paintings have been selected for numerous juried shows both nationally and internationally, including PeripheriesOPEN, Rua Red, the neo:artprize, Cairde Visual, and the Claremorris Open. Her work was selected for Restless curated by Paul McAree at 126 Gallery , Cahoots: The Space Between curated by Nicola Anthony at Sample Studios and Essays for the House of Memory curated by Haizea Barcenilla at Ormston House. Solo shows include Silent Rhythm (Linenhall Arts Centre, 2018) and Recollect (Saolta Arts, 2016). She is a recipient of the Emerging Irish Artist Residency Award and several Individual Artist Bursaries from Galway County Council. In 2020 she was awarded a bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland.
Tom McLean (Monday, 17th May – Monday, 24th May)
Tom is a figurative painter and Illustrator based in Galway.
“My medium of choice would be oil; however, I also incorporate elements of mixed media to add varied surfaces and textures to my paintings. My creative process involves the construction and deconstruction of the form and figure through a preliminary stage of drawing, collage and photography. This avoids the original references defining the outcome of the painting and instead striving to create work which is unique and unpredictable. I am interested in narratives and how texture, space and expression can convey a mood. In my work I attempt to capture the essence of the sitter and convey emotive qualities rather than simply replicating a photograph.
Through painting I hope to capture a moment in time, some more fragmented than others. I am interested in capturing feelings of vulnerability and anxiety resulting in raw and honest portraits that aim to express underlying narratives based around both the sitter’s experiences and my own”.
Awards
Screaming Pope Prize finalist 2015.
RHA Visual Artist Awards- Long list 2016.
Screaming Pope Prize finalist 2016.
Whytes Award RHA Annual exhibition 2018
One to watch under 40 Irish Arts Review 2018
Screaming Pope Prize winner 2019
