Black Church at Bluewall ­ listings ­ Irish Printmakers

Black Church at Bluewall

Venue: Bluewall gallery, Corracanvy, Cavan,

Date: 16h July- 6th August 2011

Opening hours: Wed - Sat 12pm – 5pm Closed Sunday, Monday & Tuesday
Tel: 049 436 1627

Autumn Ravens, etching by Vincent Sheridan

Opening reception – Saturday July 16th 3pm – 5pm
This exhibition of Fine Art Print brings together five accomplished and established print makers, Cora Cummins, Stephen Vaughan, Sinead O’Reilly, Colin Martin and Vincent Sheridan, all members of the Black Church Print Studio, Dublin. An overriding concern with nature and contemporary society emanates from their collected works.

The landscapes and environments presented to the viewer are familiar yet strangely dislocated, imbued with a seeping sense of foreboding perhaps. Obscured or undisclosed narratives leave the viewer unsure of the safety or threat of these spaces, are they stepping into places of calm control or of underlying chaos?

Through images of vacant sites, Cummins’ explores the ‘aesthetic and psychological appeal of contemporary and man-made spaces’ such as golf-courses, industrial sites, huts and shacks. It is unclear if these spaces are tamed ‘havens to escape to’ or exposed, detached ‘places to flee from’.

Martin’s contemporary environments such as holiday towns and camping grounds are equally devoid of human presence. These images explore the ‘values that underpin and form communal space’. We may be observing peaceful, quietly inhabited constructs that are in harmony with their surrounding environment or symbols of a dislocated, individualistic society that is at odds with the natural world.

Through heavily worked plates depicting abstracted landscapes, Vaughan’s work expresses the struggle of man and nature more directly. Architectural forms represent the way in which ‘humanity has imposed itself on the natural world’. More organic and apparently chaotic elements suggest ‘nature as adversary to human enterprise’.

Sheridan’s dark and windswept landscapes inhabited by gatherings of birds are concerned with ‘social behaviour, modes of communication and group dynamics’. Crows and Starlings seemingly circumvent in adverse conditions, waiting, watching, conspiring. The sense is of impending danger, over which the viewer has neither knowledge nor control.

The real and the mythical are combined in a more narrative fashion in O’Reilly’s imagery. We are presented with scenarios in which what has happened or is about to happen seems a mystery both to the viewer and to the characters portrayed. Equally O’Reilly is questioning our relationship with nature. With dark fairytale humor she keeps us wondering exactly how much in control we might be!

[Source: www.bluewallgallery.com]

[Source: Black Church Print Studio www.print.ie]

Bluewall gallery,
Corracanvy,
Cavan,
Tel: 049 436 1627
Mob 086-290 2493
Email: bluewallgallery@gmail.com

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