Top class exhibitions despite city's lack of municipal art gallery

The visual arts aspect of Galway Arts Festival’s has developed significantly in the past five years and is now a major component of the programme.

But one of the biggest problems the event faces annually is the lack of a permanent, dedicated exhibition space to house large-scale shows. That means that year after year the Festival has to acquire a large venue and convert it into a gallery. This year’s Galway Arts Festival Absolut Gallery, located in the former Atlantic Homecare store in Galway Shopping Centre, is the event’s biggest and most ambitious and challenging build to date, according to Festival Director, Paul Fahy.

The Festival’s ongoing investment in temporary gallery spaces helps to develop an audience for visual arts in Galway, he says, pointing out that last year over 25,000 people visited exhibitions during the fortnight. But it also highlights a significant cultural infrastructure deficit in Galway which still lags behind other Irish cities despite the prominence of the arts here.

“The introduction of these temporary spaces makes a big statement in Galway City and every year we make a call to Galway City Council to assist in the provision of a more permanent space for the visual arts.”

From July 11-24 the Absolut Festival Gallery will become home to a museum-scale exhibition, The Road, by one of Ireland’s leading international visual artists Hughie O’Donoghue.

The Road will premiere at Galway Arts Festival prior to a three-month showing at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague in the Czech Republic as part of an international tour supported by Culture Ireland.

The exhibition will feature the monumental painting Tomb of the Diver, alongside the new works, and Road, a painting in 60 parts which will form the core of the exhibition. Complementing these core works are selected paintings, which elaborate on the theme of the road as metaphor.

Hughie O’Donoghue is one of Ireland’s leading international artists. He has exhibited all over the world with major shows in the Imperial War Museum, London and at the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

Other visual arts projects in the same venue will feature live art and new technology. In Search of the Truth (The Truth Booth), created by Cause Collective from San Francisco is part installation and live art project which asks audiences to respond to their notion of the truth. Meanwhile Scotland’s Billy Cowie presents his 3D dance installation Tango de Soledad, at the same venue. Viewers will view it wearing 3D glasses to give the impression that they are sharing the space with a real live dancer. Fictional Portraits sees Paul Maye investigate identity in a show which is part live project and part exhibition.

Other major exhibitions at the Festival include new work by Aideen Barry specially created for the event. Her show, Possession, is at Bank of Ireland Theatre NUIG.

We are Playing at Being Explorers, featuring the work of Stephen Brandes, Andrew Dodds and Sonia Shiel co-presented with Galway Arts Centre as part of the Absolut programme, and it’s in the Arts Centre Gallery in Dominick Street.

Other exhibitions include Charles Lamb’s Lamb in Connemara at the Galway City Museum; group shows by Galway’s Engage Studios at the new Niland Gallery; the Lorg Print Studios Gold at University Hospital Galway; a major exhibition celebrating the human form, Nude: Blatant Exhibitionism?, at the Kenny Gallery and Jay Murphy’s Hydro at the Norman Villa Gallery.

Two exhibitions in association with the Crafts Council of Ireland mark the Year of Craft 2011, Material Poetry and Modern Languages which both examine and highlight the diversity and new waves of ideas in design.

A series of Backstage at the Festival Gallery Talks will take place during the two-week event. Like the exhibitions, they are free. Hughie O’Donoghue will give a talk on July 12 at 2pm in the Absolut Festival Gallery. Brian Kennedy, curator of Material Poetry, will be in the same venue on July 16 at 2pm. Katy West will be in the City Museum on July 16 to discuss Modern Languages and there will be a talk with the artists involved in We Are Playing at Being Explorers on the same date in Galway Arts Centre at 3pm.

Full details at www.galwayartsfestival.com