Sara Cunningham-Bell & Michael Egan

Sara Cunningham-Bell is an award-winning artist with work in the collections of Mater Hospital, Hastings Group, Pope Benedict XVI and many others. "Wall Street" is a play on the financial chaos we are experiencing world wide. It looks at the effect on children and the next generation. The "Brothers" is based on the competitive and supportive relationship between brothers within the family - both positive and negative. "Downhill to Finish" is based on the physical area of Downhill Beach County Antrim with the idea of how life is referred to as a race, and the challenge to run it with as much conviction on the last day, as on the first. "Towards More" is a play on the change of political power internationally, the upheaval of the old replaced with a contrasting new politics and the industrial wealth moving power from the West to East. Michael Egan is a recent graduate who won the Graduate Prize at Ulster Society of Artists 2009 and was an Invited artist at the RUA.

Sara Cunningham-Bell & Michael Egan

Square Space Gallery - Belfast - 24th June - 29th July 2010 34 Shaftesbury Square Belfast, Tel: 02890 200850 Irish Art

Claire Rollinson Leads Mullan Summer Art Show

Following Martin Gale's sell out solo show, Caroline Mullan launches into her summer show with a mix of quality art from her talented stable of gallery artists - some of the most collectable and respected artists in Ireland.
Her latest new gallery artist - Claire Rollinson - features with 12 works and her exceptional paintings are sure to find favour with Mullan's regulars. Whilst collectors will no doubt want to add Rollinson's work to their collections, they will be spoilt for choice with others like William Crozier, Donald Teskey, Martin Gale, Lisa Ballard, Keith Wilson, Comhghall Casey, Geoffrey Robinson, Frances Ryan, Jacinta Feeney, Orla de Bri, Chris Wilson, Sean Campbell, Mary Theresa Keown, Padraig Macmiadhachain, Breon O'Casey, Michael McGuinness, Karen Nickell, Leo Higgins, Anna Campbell and Petr Holecek. Belfast collectors look forward to this summer show because it never fails to deliver quality and this year is no exception. A "must-see" show.

Summer Mixed Show - Belfast
Mullan Gallery - Belfast - Sat 19th June - End of Aug 2010
239 Lisburn Road, Belfast Tel: 02890 202434
http://www.mullangallery.com

Irish Art

Martin Gale- Irish Artist - New Show In Belfast

Five years after the Ulster Museum's major retrospective of his work, Martin Gale has a new solo show in Belfast. One of Gale’s earliest influences was the iconic Portadown-born artist Charles Lamb, a friend of the family. Gale studied at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, influenced - not by abstract expressionism like most contemporaries - but by Pop Art and artists like Hockney, Rivers and Blake. He has exhibited widely in Ireland, England, Europe and the United States. He has represented Ireland in the XI Biennale de Paris and is a member of Aosdana and the RHA. His work is finely painted and detailed, often described as being a combination of early 20th century realism and more modern photo-realism. On one level he says the narrative of the work is usually implied or suggested, giving ingredients of the story and leaving the observer to bring their own interpretation. As Gale says "If it has a beginning, middle and end then it has nowhere to go. It’s over."

Martin Gale - Solo Exhibition
Mullan Gallery - Belfast - 20 May - 6 June, 2010
239 Lisburn Road, Belfast Tel: 02890 202434
Irish Art

Irish Art - The Female Form

The work of Ken Hamilton and Paddy Campbell celebrates the grace, strength and vulnerability of the female form. Hamilton is a well known classical-style portrait painter who studied fine art at Belfast College of Art, rejecting modern art movements and seeking to restore some of the ancient, often discarded values of painting. He says “I want my paintings to be contemporary and also timeless; realistic yet representing an unreal world; almost touchable but totally beyond our reach; as plain as day but still mysterious.” Paddy Campbell retrained at the Florence Academy of Art, working in the traditional "Renaissance" style. He studied anatomy to understand how the body functions and was taught to concentrate on proportion and to represent everything in the most thorough way. His detailed bronze sculptures that are produced using a lost wax method. In 2007, Campbell sculpted the official portrait of the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese and he has often exhibited work in the RHA.

Ken Hamilton & Paddy Campbell
Gormleys Fine Art - Belfast - 20th May - 3rd June 2010
251 Lisburn Road, Belfast Tel: +44 (0)28 9066 3313
Irish Art

Julien Friers - Irish Art Exhibition

Julian Friers was born in Bangor, Co. Down in 1956. His father was a wood sculptor whose work was influenced by nature, and this enthusiasm subsequently affected the interests and future of his son. At the age of nineteen he attended Art College, but left after three months to pursue the dream of becoming a wildlife artist. He had his first exhibition in 1976. Since then his international reputation has increased rapidly with paintings in many important collections. The rugged landscapes of Scotland and Ireland have been the primary inspiration for his work over the intervening years. The opportunity to paint animals and habitats of the desert has encouraged the desire to travel and paint species throughout the world. He is fortunate to have received many opportunities to exhibit internationally with the worlds most respected wildlife painters. In recent years his reputation as a wildlife painter has taken him to Germany, Holland, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and the USA.

Julian Friers - Solo Exhibition
Gormleys Fine Art - Belfast - 29th Apr - 13th May 2010
251 Lisburn Road, Belfast Tel: +44 (0)28 9066 3313
Irish Art

Lisa Ballard at Mullan Gallery, Belfast

"I create my work with oil paints on canvas, using washes and scratching the paint along with painterly brush strokes to create the image. I like to paint regularly to keep a flow to my work, but of course this doesn’t always work, as it is a creative process. My main influences come from the landscape around me, and the changing light on it, particularly at twilight and dawn that only lasts for a brief moment. The Irish landscape has had a huge influence on my work, particularly the north coast and Donegal where I love the rugged landscape. It has been a important influence in this exhibition. Also by travelling for long periods of time to places such as Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Mexico and Hawaii, where I stayed for a few months camping and moving around, exploring the islands, I can experience new landscapes that inspire me to create work whilst away and once I return home to my studio. Each trip has led me to create a very distinct body of work". Lisa Ballard.

Lisa Ballard - Solo Exhibition
Mullan Gallery - Belfast - 22nd April - 13th May 2010
239 Lisburn Road, Belfast Tel: 02890 202434

Irish Art

Irish Art Auctions - Dublin, April

GORMLEYS ART AUCTIONS - Berkeley Court Hotel, DUBLIN

This auction will take place on Sunday 18th April 2010 at 2pm in the D4
Berkeley Court Hotel in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4 - The Grosvenor Suite.

280 quality works of Irish Art will be offered including: Conor, Middleton,
Blackshaw, Wilks, McDonnell, Murphy, Le Brocquy, Hamilton Vallely and
Campbell feature. 200 lots have a guide price of ?500 - ?3000 including works by
Knuttel , Morris, Sutton, Waldron, Gillespie and Maccabe among others,
contributing to an interesting and exciting sale.
Viewing will be held 16-18th April during the following times: Friday from 5pm to 9pm
Saturday from 11am to 7pm Sunday from 11am to 2pm

WANT TO BID ONLINE?
Once registered you will be able to place bids for items in any of Gormleys
Auctions, take part in Live Auctions and purchase 'Buy Now' items right
away.

GO TO: http://www.gormleysartauctions.com/auction.asp?AuctionID=33 to see
works offered for auction.
GO TO: http://www.gormleysartauctions.com/pg_login.asp to register to bid
Online or Live at the auction.

Entries are now also being accepted for Gormleys May auction.
For more information on selling your works please send an email to
info@gormleysartauctions.com

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WHYTES AUCTIONS - DUBLIN
Next Dublin sales at Whytes is History & Literature on 23 April followed by
an Important Irish Art on 31 May. Contact Ian Whyte (Iw@whytes.ie) or go to
http://www.whytes.ie to take part - selling or buying.

Irish Art To Fetch Top Prices

Influential paintings by two of Ireland's most sought-after artists top the bill when a collection of Irish art goes under the hammer next month reports Independent.ie. And despite the drop in art prices, experts at Sotheby's of London said the works by Sir John Lavery and Louis le Brocquy could fetch more than half a million euro each. Auctioneers said le Brocquy's Spanish Shawl, A Study in White, was hugely influential while Lavery's The Gold Turban was one of his finest art works. Auctioneers put a guide price of 331,000-555,000 euro on the le Brocquy work and 441,000-665,000 euro on the Lavery, both of which are being sold from private collections. The pieces are included in Sotheby's annual Irish art sale on May 6 but will be brought to Dublin, Belfast and Lismore Castle, Waterford for pre-auction displays later this month. http://www.sothebys.com/(Sotheby's). For full source and full article click the Headline).
Irish Art

Allied Irish Bank Owes Us Its Art

AIB’s terrific art collection of art should be handed over to the people of Ireland as a very small and very humble gesture of apology for the bank’s fecklessness, writes Fintan O'Toole for The Irish Times. Since we are impoverishing ourselves, our children and perhaps our grandchildren to bail out the bankers, we may as well get something back. In the case of Allied Irish Bank, which has behaved with contempt for the law and the public for decades, one of the things we should take back is its terrific collection of Irish art. AIB has what is surely the finest collection of 20th century Irish painting in private hands, and one that in some respects rivals the holdings of public institutions. We’ve already paid for it many times over, so we should at least be able to enjoy it. Indeed, if AIB had managed money half as well as it has collected art, we probably wouldn’t be facing another bill of €7.5 billion for its fecklessness and recklessness. The bank adopted, as early as 1980, a coherent and farsighted approach to buying art. At a time when Irish work was still hugely undervalued (both in monetary and in aesthetic terms), AIB took the bold decision that, instead of just accumulating stuff higgledy-piggledy to cover the walls of its new corporate headquarters, it would try to do one thing right. That one thing was to represent the entire history of Irish modernism, roughly from 1890 to the present. In largely fulfilling that ambition, the bank has ended up with something of genuine importance. There may be duds among the 3,000-odd pieces, but if the artworks were loans, the ratio of performing to non-performing assets would be such that there would be no need for an artistic version of Nama. A repository of works could be established, allowing paintings to circulate or responsible groups to borrow particular works for exhibitions, discussions or other events. The living artists whose work makes up the bulk of the collection would surely feel far more honoured to have that work bring a little joy to benighted citizens than hanging in a boardroom where so much harm has been done. For full source and full article click the Headline). Irish Art

Docherty Star Of NI Art Exhibition

Willie Doherty may not consider himself a "professional Derry person", but growing up in Northern Ireland's second city has had a considerable influence on his art, the BBC reports. Since first coming to prominence in 1985, Doherty has gone on to become one of Northern Ireland's most successful artists. He was nominated for the Turner Art Prize in 1994 and 2003 and also represented Northern Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 2007, an event which is billed as the world's most prestigious visual art festival.
Ghost Story, the work he created for the festival, is going on display at the Ulster Museum in Belfast for the first time this Friday as part of their exhibition of contemporary Irish art. Doherty has also been asked to curate a series of films for the Queen's Film Theatre to coincide with the exhibition. Born in Derry in 1959, there is no doubt that growing up in a city he describes as being "constantly under surveillance" has had an effect on the work he produces. "I grew up in Derry and certainly at that point in the 70s and 80s we had a level of surveillance that wasn't experienced elsewhere. "I was trying to make work from the perspective of someone who lives there. So for me, the daily grind of the place, the continual presence of surveillance was part of the landscape." Doherty's piece entitled Re-run was nominated for the Turner Art Prize. The centrepiece of the Ulster Museum's Visions exhibition is Doherty's work, Ghost Story. It has been described as a study of Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement and is said to challenge the political desire to bury the past.For full source and full article click the Headline).
Irish Art