Dnote - Dnote is a guide to art and culture in Ireland

To celebrate Chinese New Year 2012, the Gallery of Photography is presenting the Irish premiere of The Opera, Varvara Shavrova’s spellbinding work on traditional Peking Opera.

In his lifetime John Deakin (1916-72) achieved notoriety for his portraits for Vogue of the leading figures of early post war cultural life – from Dylan Thomas to Humphrey Bogart, Maria Callas to John Huston. Vogue might have expected flattering likenesses but Deakin instead provided unretouched and pitiless documents. It was a short-lived relationship for the lure of the pubs and clubs of London’s West End, conveniently close to Vogue’s studios, ultimately claimed him. And in so doing, Deakin’s lasting fame became instead for his portraits of the artists of the 1950s, specifically those who congregated there and contributed to the myth and the reality of a ‘Soho bohemia’. Chief among these figures were Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach, the luckless John Minton and the ill-starred ‘Two Roberts’, Colquhoun and MacBryde.

From Dublin to LA and Back is a Printmaking Exchange Exhibition between Black Church Print Studio & Los Angeles Printmaking Society. This exhibition was selected by master printmaker, John Greco, who is also the founder of Josephine Press, Santa Monica, CA. This is the return leg of a printmaking exchange exhibition of Black Church Print Studio members to LA in 2010/11 and all works included in this exhibition are by members of the Los Angeles Printmaking Society. A wide selection of styles and media are included such as: intaglio, lithography, serigraphy, monoprints, monotypes and  relief.

This exhibition features two works from the Irish Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Art Biennale re-imagined for the Atrium Space at the RHA.

A Vivid Imagination invited 40 people who have been closely associated with LCGA to select pieces from the Collection which particularly engage them. The title references Sean Keating’s speech when awarded Freedom of the City on the launch of the West Gallery extension in March 1948. Keating praised Limerick Corporation for its foresight to inaugurate a municipal gallery and expressed his impression of Limerick as ‘a city of dignity and manners’, whose ‘people had a vivid imagination and only needed a vivid vocabulary to be entirely distinctive’.[i] This exhibition responds to Keating’s words, inviting the people ofLimerick to delve into both imagination and vocabulary in describing how the LCGA Collection engages them.

The Coercion of Substance is a new body work by the artist Samuel Walsh who describes his practice as one that emerges “from endless dualities: drawing and painting, line and colour, art and audience, seeing and drawing and poetry and prose.”

Intimate, casual, direct and personal, Alan Daly’s new drawings mark the final stage in a chronicle started in 2006. The project began from a desire to draw from observation using humble materials of charcoal and paper. Sitters for the portraits are recruited from acquaintances, friends and family members. The levels of intimacy and familiarity in the one-to-one encounter contribute to the process. Closeness and distance can be detected from the positioning and scale in pictorial space. Sittings are completed in one session lasting two hours. Direct contact with the subject is essential. The drawings survive as evidence of the encounter. White space dominates the surface giving small details and expressions an intense concentration. The viewer’s focus shifts over time as they discover the various marks that are embedded in the drawing, re-enacting the gaze of the artist. The drawings rely predominately on an intuitive response. Daly is interested in awkwardness and imperfection.