VISUAL ARCHIVE

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A Night Thought

Colette Murphy

October – January
Irish Arts Center Gallery

Artist Talk and Reception
Tuesday, October 23 | 6:30 pm
Admission: FREE

Gallery hours by appointment
Monday – Friday | 10 am – 6 pm
Please call 212-757-3318

With her new exhibition, A Night Thought, Colette Murphy offers a fresh perspective on the immigrant experience brought about by memories of her homeland in County Wexford, Ireland. Her paintings of chaotic seas and floating icebergs present the oceans unchained, exploring the arduous journey made by travelers from her hometown of New Ross to Newfoundland in the 18th and 19th century.

Colette Murphy lives in Brooklyn and was the recipient of the 2008 Estelle Levy Award and 2009 Tony Smith Award. Her solo exhibitions have run in New York, London, Berlin, Venice and Dublin. Her most recent exhibition Gone to Ground ran in Emerson Gallery, Berlin. Her work has been published in New American Paintings. She received her MFA from Hunter College in 2008.

BORDERLANDS

Kate Arslanian

January 26 - April 18
Irish Arts Center Gallery

Artist Talk and Reception
January 26 | 6:30 pm

Gallery hours by appointment
Monday – Friday | 10 am – 6 pm
Please call 212-757-3318

Kate Arslanian was born in Crossmaglen, County Armagh and this unique part of Ireland is the center of everything she paints. BORDERLANDS is an instinctive, moving and nostalgic series of abstract works, reflecting on the breathtaking countryside of the northern and southern borders ofArmagh, Louth and Monaghan.

BORDERLANDS will travel to Iontas Arts Center in Castleblayney, County Monaghan in May, Strule Arts Center in Omagh, County Tyrone in July and ACOSS in Yerevan, Armenia in September.

This program is supported, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and Culture Ireland, the agency for the promotion of Irish arts worldwide.

To Love Two Countries

The New England series of To Love Two Countries, John Minihan’s photographic celebration of the men and women who immigrated to the United States in the early half of the twentieth century.

Our original exhibition of To Love Two Countries is currently on view at the Aisling Irish Community Center in Yonkers, New York.

The Fighting Irishmen

Celebrating Celtic Prizefighters 1820 – Present

Irish Arts Center, New York, NY | August-December 2006
South Street Seaport Museum, New York, NY | March-December 2007
John J. Burns Library, Boston, MA | March-November 2008
Ulster American Folk Park, Omagh, Northern Ireland | May- December 2009
Croke Park, Dublin, Ireland | May-August 2010
University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland | April-September 2011

From the Crucible
An Exhibition of Bronze Sculpture 

Colm Brennan and Leo Higgins

September 12 - December 18
Irish Arts Center Gallery

Extended through Jan 10th!

Artist Talk and Reception
October 25 | 6:30 pm

Gallery hours by appointment
Monday - Friday | 10 am - 6 pm
Please call 212-757-3318

Personal and celebratory, From the Crucible features 24 new bronze sculptures from masters Colm Brennan and Leo Higgins. Side by side, continuities and differences begin to emerge between these two artists: Brennan’s sculptures take a figurative approach, directly linking to his childhood in County Mayo, whereas Higgins’ explore abstract themes evoking nature and a sense of place. 

The exhibition coincides with the 25th Anniversary of Crucible Arts Services and Technology (CAST Ltd.) Bronze Foundry, founded by Brennan and Higgins in Dublin in 1986. The output of that “crucible,” or vessel, in which bronze is melted, has since spread from their Foundry to many parts of the world. 

This program is supported, in part, by Imagine Ireland, Culture Ireland’s year of Irish arts in America in 2011.

Court Phase II
A Public Art Event by Andrew Duggan

Wednesday, December 7 | 6pm - 8pm

West 51st Street
(Between 10th and 11th Avenues)
New York City

The second phase of Duggan’s Court series will be projected on an intimate street space on West 51st Street between 10th and 11th Avenues in New York City. This video wall projection features GAA player Paul Galvin. The work continues the artist’s occupation of placing “the individual” within a particular built environment and representing it in a new context in which to visually explore urban/rural congregation and cultural transmission.

Special thanks to the Police Athletic League –Duncan Center for use of their 51st Street wall for the projection.

This program is supported, in part, by Imagine Ireland, Culture Ireland’s year of Irish arts in America in 2011.

Ireland: Alphabet Series

A Touring Exhibition from Cork Printmakers

Extended through August 21

Irish Arts Center Gallery

Gallery hours by appointment
Monday – Friday | 10 am – 6 pm
Please call 212-757-3318

This exhibition consists of 26 prints by 26 artists, each work taking a letter of the alphabet as a starting point. Cork Printmakers, a fine art print studio and arts service organization, invited participating artists to investigate what a specifically “Irish” alphabet would look like. Artists were encouraged to be ­humorous, confessional, personal, subtle, ironic, iconic, or controversial; and to take on cultural and economic challenges that are relevant to contemporary Ireland. The result is a rich, varied exhibition executed in a range of styles and printmaking techniques.­­

Founded in 1991, Cork Printmakers is a specialist support organization dedicated to fostering excellence and innovation in contemporary print and enabling the development of professional artists. The workshop supports a high standard of printmaking through state-of-the-art facilities, promotes public appreciation of the art form through innovative education programs for all ages, and supports over 90 artist members based in Ireland, Britain, and the United States.

Participating artists:

Dave Connolly, Zoe D'Alton, Deirdre Delamere, Tom Doig, Aisling Dolan, Shirley Fitzpatrick, Marion Gilroy, Valerie Gleeson, Sean Hanrahan, Catherine Hehir, Heike Heilig, Mae Holland, Marianne Keating,
Jo Kelley, Eileen Kennedy, Brian Lalor,
Paul La Rocque, Aoife Layton, Peter McMorris, Donna McNamara, Claire Nagle, Noelle Noonan, Shane O'Driscoll, Antonia O'Mahony, Georgina Sutton, and Sylvia Taylor.

The New England series of To Love Two Countries, John Minihan’s evolving photographic tribute to the men and women who emigrated to the United States in the early half of the twentieth century, opened at the Massachusetts State House in Boston, in November 2010.

Stay tuned as this moving collection of portraits of “Ireland’s Greatest Generation in America” continues its course throughout New England, including the John J. Burns Library at Boston College where it will open on April 5th.

Court 

A Video Installation by Andrew Duggan

January 24-March 28
Irish Arts Center Gallery

Artist Talk and Reception
March 2 | 6:30 pm
RSVP to Jen at 212-757-3318 ext. 202 or jen@irishartscenter.org

Gallery hours by appointment
Monday – Friday | 10 am – 6 pm
Please call 212-757-3318

In his latest multimedia project, Court, Andrew Duggan explores the sport of handball—which is Irish in origin—with juxtaposed videos of handball courts in Ireland and New York. A familiar feature of the urban landscape and informal social gathering place, the handball court in the context of the gallery becomes a meeting point for two cultures.

Andrew Duggan lives in the West Kerry Gaeltacht and was the first artist to be awarded the prestigious Arts Council of Ireland Location One residency fellowship in New York City in 2005-06. His work has been presented in Philadelphia, Italy, Slovakia, Lithuania, and New York. He studied at the Crawford College of Art and Design, Cork; the National College of Arts and Design, Dublin; and the University of Ulster, Belfast. 

This program is presented as part of Imagine Ireland, Culture Ireland's year of Irish arts in America in 2011.

UNA CORDA
Photographs by David Creedon

September 16 - January 9
World Premiere

Gallery hours by appointment
Monday-Friday 10:00 am - 6:00 pm
Please call 212-757-3318 ext 203

Cork-based photographer David Creedon’s stunning, large scale photographs document Cuba’s small population of piano tuners and technicians at work in Havana’s National Workshop of Instrument Repair. Una Corda is inspired by the work of the Irish group of the same name, which transports Irish experts and supplies to Cuba to mentor and train a new generation of piano tuners. In richly detailed, at times almost abstract photographs of the innards and architectural framework of ruined instruments reborn, Creedon conveys the optimistic spirit of the Una Corda project’s efforts to bring new life to music schools throughout the country.

Waking History

Sculpture by Michael J. Brolly

April 8 – August 20
Gallery hours by appointment
Monday-Friday
10:00 am - 6:00 pm

Artist talk and opening reception
Thursday, April 8 | 6:30 pm

Woodturning artist Michael J. Brolly’s recent sculptures combine the form of household objects with images based in personal and political history.  His painstakingly crafted bowls, teacups, and soup pots take the form of fine bone china or ancient wooden cauldrons recovered from the Irish bogs, and the images within them refer to the political and religious strife faced by many residing in Northern Ireland, Vietnam, and other sites of conflict over the last century.  Brolly’s work is simultaneously deeply personal – as in works that reflect the challenges associated with emigration faced by his parents and countless other Irish who came to the United States during the twentieth century – and universal.

Michael J. Brolly’s lathe-turned objects have been exhibited all over the United States and internationally in Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.  He holds an MFA in Wood Furniture Design from the University of Massachusetts and a BFA in Fine Arts from Kutztown University in Pennsylvania.

EARTHMAPPING
Fresco Paintings on Linen
Olga Baunbaek Reilly

Through December 21   

Artist Talk and Reception Wednesday, September 23
5:30 pm
 
Gallery Hours by Appointment
10 am - 6 pm and one-hour before all Donaghy Theatre performances

Copenhagen-based Irish artist Olga Baunbaek Reilly uses bold, sensual blocks of color to represent memory fragments of journeys and returns, exploring themes of memory, mapping, displacement, desire and transformation.  Reilly’s inspiration comes not only from the fresco tradition of India and Italy, but can be traced through her travels and the social and physical landscapes of the places where she has lived, including Ireland, the United States, Japan and Denmark. Earthmapping is a playful and thoughtful consideration of the paths that might be imposed on us verses the maps we create and carry with us.

Fragments
An Exhibition of Paintings by Enda O’Donoghue

April 30-September 1 | Gallery Open by Appointment Monday-Friday 10am-6pm

Artist Talk Thursday, April 30 | 7:30 pm | Reception to follow  

Enda O’Donoghue is known for his work in painting, photography, video, installation, public art and interactive media. His most recent paintings depict banal scenes of everyday life such as packed subway cars, travelers waiting at airport gates and fast food checkout counters.  Rather than being based on live models, O’Donoghue’s subject matter is drawn from snapshots he finds on the Internet.  The artist refers to the subjects of these works as “in-between” spaces, which are neither public nor private.  The same could be said of his work, which is neither the original product of his imagination nor a direct copy.  Using the ancient art form of painting to comment on contemporary phenomena, he challenges the viewer to think about the connections between fine art and technology as forms of self-expression.  O’Donoghue has been living and working in Berlin since 2002.  For more information about his work, visit www.endaism.com.

This exhibition is supported, in part, by Culture Ireland, a government agency dedicated to promoting Irish arts worldwide.

A Different Land: Irish Bogland Interpretations
Featuring the Work of Artists from
County Kerry, Ireland

March 6-April 23| Gallery Open by Appointment Monday-Friday 10am-6pm

The boglands in the west of Ireland have long been the subject of song, poetry, and visual art.  This exhibition brings together the paintings of artists from Kerry—both established artists such as Liam O’Neill and emerging talents—in a celebration of the bogland as an ecological and cultural treasure.  A combination of abstract interpretations and topographical landscapes, the paintings in this exhibition vividly evoke the people, colors, and textures of the bog.

This exhibition was organized by Jimmy Deenihan, TD from County Kerry, Ireland, and Fine Gael Spokesperson on Defence.  The exhibition has previously been displayed in County Kerry during the Sean McCarthy Memorial Weekend, and at  Magnan Projects and O’Neill’s Irish Bar & Restaurant in New York.

Corresponding Approaches
A Collection of Mixed-Media works by John Spinks

January 19 – February 26 | Gallery Open by Appointment Monday-Friday 10am-6pm

Artist Talk and Reception
Thursday, February 5 | 7:30pm

Click here for the article in the Daily News.

The Irish Arts Center continues to bring you exciting visual art this spring with Corresponding Approaches, a collection of mixed-media works by John Spinks.  In works that combine original letters from his father that offer an intimate view of 1980s England with photographs, newspaper clippings, matchbooks, and painted forms, Spinks embarks upon what he describes as a “collaboration.” Other collaged works reflect upon the artist’s relationship with his mother through the use of pages and bindings from prayer books.  With these alternately humorous and poignant works, Spinks creates intimate, poetic vignettes that explore the intersections between drawing and writing, giving equal weight to the narrative and the visual.  At times, the artist responds to the written word, while in other works he isolates a word or phrase and riffs on it, giving the text a whole new meaning.

In these paintings, the artist plays with transparent washes of color and form that demonstrate a thorough familiarity with the masters of the 20th century, while also giving a nod to the arts of calligraphy and bookbinding.  Spinks’s works are simultaneously deeply personal and reflective of the broader experience of immigrants around the world. 

Born in Ireland and raised for much of his childhood in Northern England, Spinks has lived in New York for 25 years.  He cites artists as diverse as writer James Joyce, jazz musician Thelonius Monk, and painters Juan Gris and Giorgio Morandi as sources of inspiration for his harmonious blending of imagery, rhythm, and text. 

Ireland in Prints

Photographs by Bill Doyle

March 7 through July 2008

Monday – Friday, 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM

Featuring the work of renowned Irish photographer Bill Doyle, this exhibition captures the landscape and people of Ireland in a series of hauntingly beautiful photographs.

Bill Doyle was born in Dublin in 1926 and still lives there today. From an early age he was involved in photography but did not take it up as a fulltime career until 1967 when he won the Daily Telegraph Magazine Photographer of the Year Award. This was a major achievement for an Irish photographer at the time and was awarded to Bill for his collection of photographs taken on the Aran Islands (many of which form part of this exhibition).

Bill Doyle is well known in Ireland, not only as a photographer, but also as a lecturer in photography and photo-journalism. He has won three Carrolls Press Awards and was the winner of the Irish Independent Newspaper’s Irelands Eye Photography Competition. He has also won numerous awards and competitions in Japan, Germany, England and the United States.

As well as publishing a number of books of his own photographic work, Bill’s photographs have been used to illustrate the work of others, including books of poetry and album covers. His work has been featured in many magazines, including Cairde and Aer Lingus inflight magazine Cara as well as being exhibited all over the world.

His books of photography include: Ireland of the Proverbs, The Aran Islands - Another World, The Magic And Mystery of Ireland, Island Funeral, Images of Dublin... A Time Remembered.

Irish Travellers

An Exhibition of Photographs by Alen MacWeeney

Through February 29

Monday – Friday, 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM

In 1965, Alen MacWeeney came upon an encampment of itinerants or Travellers in a waste ground by the Cherry Orchard Fever Hospital in Dublin. MacWeeney was captivated by their independence, individuality, and endurance, despite the bleakness of their circumstances. Accepted by the Travellers, he began to take photographs. Over five years, he spent countless evenings in their caravans and by their campfires, drinking tea and listening to their tales, songs, and music – resulting in this beautiful collection of photographs.

Alen MacWeeney was born in Dublin in 1939 and came to the United States at age 21 to become assistant to renowned photographer Richard Avedon. He has contributed to the New Yorker, Life, Esquire, and The New York Times Magazine. His photographs are in over sixty public collections in the U.S. and Europe, including M.O.M.A., the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. He is the author of five books of photography.

THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF KIT DEFEVER

September, October, November, December

Kit DeFever combines ancient memories of his ancestors and a revolutionary IRIS Giclée print technology to produce images that celebrate the enduring qualities of the beauty and emotion of Ireland. A celebrated fashion portraitist, DeFever’s work has appeared in numerous national and international publications, including Vogue, Mademoiselle, Image, Stern, Irish Americaand World of Hibernia.

FIGHTING IRISHMEN
Celebrating Celtic Prizefighters 1820–Present

Curated by James J. Houlihan, Honorary Chair Liam Neeson
In association with South Street Seaport Museum

Click here for more information

Following a hugely successful run at the Irish Arts Center, this eclectic collection of boxing photography and artifacts was also exhibited at the South Street Seaport Museum in downtown Manhattan and at Boston College in 2008.

Click here for articles about Fighting Irishmen | Click here for photos

Fighting Irishmen: Fighters & Family
Tuesday, November 20
6:00pm to 9:30pm

Featuring:
Jay Tunney, author & son of boxer Gene Tunney
Dave Anderson, NY Times sportswriter 
Tim Conn, son of boxer Billy Conn 
Doug Graham, son of boxer Billy Graham
Charlie Sharkey, great grand nephew of "Sailor" Tom Sharkey

For tickets and information call Carol Rauscher at the South Street Seaport
Museum at 212.748.8776.

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