Highlights from Cork 2005
TRANSFORMING TEXTILES . . . Stone, wood, slate, glass and barbed wire are among the ingredients of the Textile Communication exhibition Transformation at the Stephen Pearce Emporium at Shanagarry in Co Cork. Unlikely as it seems, these materials support a needlework display of great delicacy and great complexity, which Stephen Pearce himself, in opening the exhibition, confessed was almost impossible to describe. He knew, he said, that the work by these inspired seamstresses would be something to think about, but he had not anticipated what had been produced.
This series of individual pieces of work interprets the transformation theme in silk and lace, in mathematically-precise designs of embossed sunbursts, in lettered, intersecting ribbons, in fragments of hand-dyed cotton, in spirals of running-stitch, in embroidery of silk thread on a silk organza ground, and in layers of silk paper burnt, scorched and stiffened as images of old tiles at Rievaulx Abbey.
Eileen France (whose A Metre of my Life is pictured below), Catharina Sherrard, Carole Robinson, Mary Whittaker, Maureen Marron and Moya Geraghty are all working in east Cork and using traditional craft skills to produce contemporary art. With this, their first exhibition, they also aim to increase public awareness of textiles and needlework as an art medium. The exhibition continues until August 20th, in a venue which has the added attraction of windows opening on sea-ward views of an east Cork landscape ripe with harvest.
GOING NATIVE . . . The Fota Lichens Project opens at Fota House tomorrow. Artist Mara Adamitz Scrupe presents a survey of native Irish lichens found at the arboretum and studied during her residency at the Sirius Centre. She will give a talk at the Crawford Gallery on Thursday at 1pm. Commissioned by the Crawford, Sirius Arts Centre and Fota Arboretum, the project continues until August 24th. Here the value-added element is the re-opened walled garden behind Fota House. Back at the Crawford, an exhibition of the Bank of Ireland art collection - the largest in 25 years - opens on Friday, with work by John Behan, Cecil King, Eilis O'Connell, Nano Reid, Charles Tyrell, George Campbell and Oisin Kelly.
WESTWARD HO West Cork Music presents its festival of traditional music in Bantry, August 17-21 (www.westcorkmusic.ie). A little further south and west, the summer festival of music at St Barrahane's Church in Castletownshend continues with Anúna, conducted by Michael McGlynn, on Thursday at 8.30pm.
