Response ­ listings ­ Irish Printmakers

Response

Venue: Belfast Print Workshop Gallery, Cotton Court, 30-42 Waring St

Date: 14th of October – 25th November

Opening hours: Monday-Thursday 9.30-5.30p.m Friday 9.30-5pm Saturday 11am -4pm
Tel: 048-90230323

Eight poets – Eight artists

Response is an exhibition that explores the relationship between text and image. Printmaking has a longstanding association with the written word and, at a time when ubiquity of digital publishing knows no bounds, Belfast Print Workshop is redoubling its efforts to preserve the tradition of putting ink slowly and thoughtfully on to paper in the confident expectation that the outcome will have a long lasting resonance.

With Belfast owning a proud tradition of poetic excellence we invited eight poets to submit a poem that they thought would elicit a visual response from a Belfast Print Workshop artist. Poets Ciaran Carson, Michael Longley, Paul Muldoon, Sinead Morrisey, Leontia Flynn , Alan Gillis, Miriam Gamble and Medbh McGuckian accepted the invitation and artists were asked to submit a small portfolio to see if their work could be matched successfully with a poem.

Belfast gallery owner Jamshid Mirfenderesky selcted the artists and the resulting group of eight artists – Jim Allen, Helen Paisley, Sarah Gordon, Jessica Hollywood, James Millar, Ray Henshaw, Peter Hutchinson and Bill Penney – contains both established and emerging printmakers. Artists were given no direction other than the limitations of paper size and the resulting work contains both illustrative and abstract responses.

The poems and the images have been printed side by side on 56cm x 38cm Somerset Velvet Buff paper. Ten of these pieces are for sale as a single framed print and ten have been hand bound into a book of which nine are for sale. In 2012 Belfast Print Workshop intends to further explore the creative opportunities afforded by similar publishing projects in association with established and emerging writers.

[Source: http://bpw.org.uk/bpwgallery/]

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