calendario eventi  :: 

X

9/1/2013

Six Exhibitions

Royal Hibernian Academy RHA, Dublin

Anita Groener, State
11 January – 28 April 2013

The drawing installation State - conceived for the RHA foyer space - shows monumental circular grid made up of around 1800+ minuscule black silhouette figures pinned to the large wall and, on opposite walls, two black clouds are painted as a framework to drawings, a pin flag and a small video projection. The entire space is cast in a pink glow.

The enduring theme in Anita Groener’s work is the dialectic surrounding the dual perspectives of home and displacement as situated within modern geopolitical realities. State engages with the complex of trauma, of hurt and loss that constitutes the core of this dialogue. Ineluctably situated within a collective system, individual trauma seems unrepresentable. Using strategies and economies of drawing, as well as formal aspects of scale and monochromes, the installation seeks to capture the actuality of this lived experience.

Anita Groener was born in The Netherlands and has worked in Dublin since the 1980s. Groener makes paintings, monumental site-specific wall drawings, film and animation which she exhibits extensively in Europe. In 2006 she presented Crossing in RHA Galleries II and III. Groener is a member of Aosdána and was Head of Fine Art at Dublin Institute of Technology 2004-6, where she now is a lecturer. The artist is represented by Rubicon Gallery Dublin.

----

Vivienne Roche RHA, Spirit and Light
11 January – 28 April 2013

Vivienne Roche, one of our foremost sculptors, will be showing three suites of work in the Atrium.

Monuments, 2011, consisting of five pieces, were originally installed amongst the stone monuments in Christchurch in Cork that commemorate historical luminaries of the city. Roche’s monuments are a democratic act implying that regardless of status of any individual in society, every life remembered is an act of commemoration. These five pieces refer to five actual individuals who the artist describes as “not of my family but the lingering light of their lives has touched me nonetheless”.

In Sunlines 2011, Roche exploits the quality of dichroic glass to change colour as sunlight hits it at different angles. This four part piece is a simple and quiet meditation on time and change.

Well-Water Font/ Sea-Water Font, 2013, a two piece bronze, is again a rumination on mortality in this case to a life lost at sea and to a life lost while saving at sea.

Vivienne Roche lives and works by the sea in Co. Cork, Ireland. Recent exhibitions include A light interlude from the pulpit, Christchurch, Cork in 2011, The Geometry of Water, Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris in 2012 and Hinge Work, Vangard Gallery, Cork in 2005.

----

Justin Larkin, Scenery
11 January – 24 February 2013

To captivate the imagination is crucial.

Making relationships is an essential part to what Justin Larkin does. Combinations of images removed from their original narrative context, become obsolete in one sense, but also available for re-animation in another, often a vastly different scenario.
Re-configured pieces are positioned in dramatic new situations where notions of value and authenticity are questioned.

Working intuitively and instinctively overflowing spills of installations imbued with a sense of humour and play are part of the creation process. Photographs, paintings, printed matter, sculpture, drawing and collage are all important. Cartoons play an important role, their illustration of physical and mental situations presented illogically are inspiring.

Often polar aspects reside in the work primarily concerned with metaphysical dualities: the play of opposing concepts such as true and false, presence and absence, inside and outside, authentic and manufactured, disgusting and beautiful, history and future, sense and nonsense. Various arrangements of paintings, sculptures, and market bought items reference uncertainty.

Larkin hopes to delight, inspire, and intrigue the beholder and in some way, reference experience being contested and fragmented.

Justin Larkin graduated from NCAD in 2009 with a degree in Fine Art, he went on to complete a masters degree in Fine Art Print Making in the Royal College of Art in London. He has been the recipient of awards including London Print Studio Emerging Artist Award in 2011 and the AXA Award, NCAD Degree Show, 2009. Larkin was also short listed for the 20/21 art prize in the Royal College of Art. In 2010 he exhibited in a solo show in The Joinery, Dublin and he has also exhibited in several group exhibitions including Reincarnation, London Print Studio, Impressions, Galway Arts Centre and the Annual Exhibition, Royal Ulster Academy, Belfast.

----

Zineb Sedira & Amina Menia, Becoming Independent
11 January – 24 February 2013

Curated by Caroline Hancock, these artists create their individual installations to deal with the fragility of history and identity. Working in the context of contemporary Algeria each identifies a specific loss or disappearance of material culture that will impoverish the formulating and understanding of societal growth.

Zineb Sedira was born in France of Algerian parents. Her videos and photographs often inspired by her family stories are made in Algeria and exhibited worldwide to great acclaim.

Amina Menia is based in Algers. She has an incisive fascination for art and life in the public sphere and the possibilities or incongruities of the urban environment.

Both artists, who work in very distinctive ways, concentrate on collecting traces and testimonies that are both poetic and socio-political.

This exhibition had been made possible through the generous support of Petroceltic Plc, the French Embassy in Ireland and additional support from the Institut Francais.

----

Richter and Polke, Works on Paper from the Kunstmuseen Krefeld
11 January – 24 February 2013

The exhibition at the RHA, Dublin, includes approximately 30 prints, water colours and gouaches by Gerhard Richter (*1932) and Sigmar Polke (1941-2010) from the collection of the Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Germany. From an early stage in their careers both artists produced prints in addition to their paintings, usually in the form of editions created in association with specific exhibitions. The earliest work in this exhibition, a joint project entitled Transformation from 1968, testifies to the long-standing friendship between Richter and Polke. The work is an ironic reflection on the myth of the artist as altro dio or ‘other god’, on the one hand, and the efforts by the emerging Land Art movement to undertake the large-scale reshaping of natural earth formations, on the other. It suggests the apparently effortless transformation of an entire mountain massif into a sphere – a fantasy of omnipotence that also incorporates its own deconstruction. The use of photography is typical of Richter and Polke, particularly in the early phases of their work, in which they used both photos they had taken themselves and photos circulated in the mass media.

The blurring technique used by Richter in his photo-paintings also features in his print works. For example, the iconic portrait of Chinese revolutionary leader and dictator Mao, 1989, which had already been reproduced millions of times, is presented in the print as an enigmatic memory portrait; a toy ship from the artist’s childhood (Ship, 1972) receives similar treatment. In Betty, 1991, which features the artist’s daughter, the creative process evolved from a photograph taken by the artist to a painting, which was then photographed, and finally culminated in the offset print presented here. The seemingly blurred offset print Squatters’ House, 1990, is also based on a painting of the same name. Richter adopts an approach here that already featured in his famous painting Woman with Umbrella, 1964: he eliminates all historical references that could allow the clear identification of the image with a specific event. Hence, the historical figure of Jackie Kennedy becomes a general image of bereavement; a specific event involving house squatting becomes a marginal note on socio-economic action. Richter’s series of offset prints Colour Fields: 6 Arrangements of 1260 Colours, 1974, reflects his early preoccupation with colour charts like those used in the printing industry. The series presented here follows the principle of contingency whereby each individual colour emerged through the mixing of different proportions of the three basic colours red, yellow and blue. In contrast, the three watercolours are examples of the new direction taken by Richter from 1976, following a period in which he produced monochrome grey paintings, which represented an end point for him in terms of formlessness and indifference. As opposed to this, the multicoloured, abstract paintings and watercolours are characterised by a maximum of openness; for Richter they are an ‘analogy for something non-visual and incomprehensible’* and, as such, have a perceived quality that cannot be accessed through reason.

For Sigmar Polke printed graphics represented a completely unlimited field of experimentation – more than they did for Richter. His work Schuldruck (School Print), 1972, which incorporates an embossing on paper, a circle punched out of card bearing a screen print on tracing paper, is an early example of this approach. All 250 editions of this work were also individualized with coloured glitter. For the work Figur mit Hand (Es schwindelt ... )(Figure with Hand (I am made dizzy ... )), 1973, the artist used paper with a prominent lizard-skin pattern as a basis for the offset print, and for the three-part series Rechts- oder Linksseher (Left or Right Seer), 2001, he used motifs which he moved in a photocopier during exposure and thus transformed into anamorphic sequences.

Polke’s themes are as varied as his techniques; they range from spiritualist séances, e.g. Weekend I, II, III, 1971/1972, and mass media, e.g. Fernsehbild Eishockey (Rauwolfalkaloide) (TV Picture Ice Hockey (Rauwolfia alkaloid)), 1973 and Die Treppe von Cannes (The Stairs of Cannes), 2000, to alchemistic experiments, e.g. Lackmus (Litmus), 1995/1999. In Spiegelung (I und II) (Mirroring (I and II), 1992, landscape motifs are fanned out with water reflections and rotated by 90 degrees in a grid structure typical of Polke’s work. The resulting mysterious and enigmatic figures are reminiscent of Salvador Dali’s paysage paranoïaque. The three Schüttbilder (Tilted Pictures), 1984 are also based on this combination of chance and deliberate pictorial form. They are unique works, in which the support bearing the wet gouache was tilted so that the paint followed its own random course and could only be controlled to a limited extent by the artist.

This concise overview provides both an intimate and varied impression of the creative processes of two artist colleagues who are among the protagonists of 20th century contemporary art.

----

Basil Blackshaw, Blackshaw at 80
11 January – 24 February 2013

The RHA in partnership with the F.E. McWilliam Gallery and Studio, Banbridge presents a major exhibition of work by renowned artist Basil Blackshaw. Blackshaw at 80, curated by Riann Coulter was first shown F.E. McWilliam Gallery and Studio, Banbridge in May 2012 and is open to the public on the 11th of January 2013 in the RHA.

The exhibition, coincided with Blackshaw’s 80th birthday and features over 50 paintings chosen by the artist from throughout his career.

Born in Antrim in 1932, Blackshaw is recognised as one of Ireland’s greatest artists. From the age of 16, when his precocious talent led him to Belfast College of Art, Blackshaw has been lauded by the art world and his fellow painters.

Although his early paintings of horses and dogs gained him critical praise and a loyal following of collectors, Blackshaw has refused to stand still and has, on several occasions, changed his approach to painting. This refusal to stick to one signature style has infuriated some critics but has also made Blackshaw one of the most exciting Irish painters of the last fifty years.

‘Blackshaw at 80’ presents a diverse range of works from throughout the artist’s long career. Early works including ‘Anna on the Sofa’ are joined by portraits of great men such as Douglas Gageby, Brian Friel, Michael Longley, Ted Hickey and John Hewitt. Pictures of friends – Cherith McKinstry, Mary McGrath, David Hammond and Paddy Falloon – are testament to close personal relationships that have been captured in paint.

Blackshaw’s beloved horses are well represented in paintings as diverse as The Fall, The Walk of the Horse and Niall’s Pony. Other favourites that Blackshaw has chosen include Big Brown Dog, The Gawky Cockerel and Dolly.

A number of superb pictures including The First Tractor at Randalstown, A Dog and Two Men and Night Rider first seen in Blackshaw’s last major exhibition, curated by S.B. Kennedy for the Ulster Museum in 2002, have also been selected by the artist.

Several more recent works, first exhibited in Cork at the Fenton Gallery in 2008, are also included. Zebra, Bird Cage and Pram are remarkably vital images, scratched out on surfaces that resemble parchment or plaster rather than canvas.

As his friends and admirers confirm one of the attractions of Blackshaw’s paintings is that they are often deeply rooted in Northern Ireland but are also refreshingly free of conflict or sectarian violence.

Perhaps that is why he has not received the international acknowledgement that many feel he deserves. For the majority of the time that Blackshaw has been working the world view of Northern Ireland was one-dimensional.

Blackshaw’s multi-layered work did not fit neatly into this frame. If he had left to make his name in London or New York he may have been recognised as the great painter that his admirers believe him to be. But, if he had left, he would not be the Blackshaw that we know and could not have painted these images deeply rooted in the landscape and lore of this small corner of the world.

The exhibition is accompanied by a hardback catalogue with 40 colour reproductions and includes essays by Colin Davidson, Dr S.B. Kennedy, Dr Fionna Barber and Dr Riann Coulter.

----

Press contact: Rebecca Gale rebecca@rhagallery.ie

Image: Gerhard Richter

Opening January 10th

Royal Hibernian Academy RHA
15 Ely Place - Dublin
Opening Hours
Monday & Tuesday 11am – 5pm
Wednesday – Saturday 11am – 7pm
Sunday 2 – 5pm
Free admission

stampa

permanent link