Exhibitions to showcase the best of new and established print makers

Galway Arts Centre and Galway City Museum will present Impressions, Ireland’s longest running print exhibition, and an exhibition by Chris Orr titled ‘Chris Orr - Social Surrealist’, running from this Friday to Saturday, January 8.

Impressions promises to showcase emerging and established print makers from across the country, at the Galway Arts Centre.On launch night, the winners of the competitions run in conjunction with the exhibition, will be revealed. The first prize is a €1,000 purchase prize while the second prize is €750 purchase prize. Also on the night, the Norman Ackroyd Etching Award will be presented, which is valued at €300. Also on the night, the Impressions Committee Mid Career Award along with the Lorg Printmakers Emerging Artist Award will be presented.

This year over 400 prints were submitted to the competition. This time round, the Galway Arts Centre will exhibit over 200 for the duration of the exhibition and all prints will be for sale.

This year’s adjudicator John Hewitt had the tough job of choosing the winners. He described the work as being of an exceptionally high standard this year. An artist based in the English South Pennines, who works primarily in the media of print and drawing, he is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art, where he taught printmaking for 18 years.

Renowned printmaker Chris Orr will officially launch the exhibition at 6pm and later in the evening, an exhibition of Chris’s own work will be launched by Galway City Arts Officer, James Harrold at the Galway City Museum at 8pm. This exhibition is being run alongside Impressions. “Chris Orr, Social Surrealist” is a hugely exciting exhibition, which will showcase some of the artist’s best work.

Chris Orr, until recently, ran the Royal College of Art postgraduate Printmaking Department in London and has been making prints for many years in a variety of mediums that have been shown all over the world.

He sees a close affinity between printmaking, drawing and writing. His work teems with allusions, narratives, sub plots and puns. The influences Chris Orr claims are principally film, TV and the novel but there are serious concerns in what at first may be taken as comic. In the lithograph “Nagasaki mon amour”, he visits and responds to the contemporary view of the city that epitomises the horror of the nuclear age.

In this show in Galway, some of recent “greatest hits” can be seen the work he has produced from time spent in New York, Japan and China.

Chris Orr has been a frequent visitor to Ireland and has had shows in the Crawford Gallery Cork, Skibereen Arts Centre and the Temple Bar Gallery Dublin. He has published a number of books including recently The Multitude Diaries and Cities of Holy Dreams. He lives and works in London. He is a member of the Royal Academy.