On The TownListening to music by Marconi beside a roaring fire, enjoying a glass of port, Dubliner Bill Doyle said he was not inclined to leave his home to come to the opening of a retrospective of his work at the Gallery of Photography, Dublin, this week, writes Catherine Foley
But he had. "And there you all are," declared the great photographer looking about him at the packed room with delight.
His ability for "finding a beautiful composition in a chance moment has made him iconic", said Tanya Kiang, director of the Gallery of Photography. She cited a photograph, which features a priest who is surrounded by a group of women holding their babies to be christened in Dolphin's Barn Church in 1970. Doyle, she says, "spotted this from higher up".
The resulting image with the heads of the babies "like the numbers on a clock" is "like time and the beginning of things", said Kiang.
The photograph of a youth looking back cheekily at a young woman in a very short skirt "is full of movement and grabbed from life and yet they stand outside of time. There's that pleasing contradiction that they [the photographs] are very fleeting but timeless as well," she said.
"We are just full of admiration," said Seán Hillen, of himself and Victor Sloan, both artists who use photographs in their work. "They are iconic images we are so familiar with. It's great to see them in the flesh."
Doyle "can locate the personality of the individual", said Fiach Mac Conghail, director of the Abbey theatre, who recalled working with him in 1977 on Slogadh.
"His work is so warm and true of the time he's portraying," said Olive Braiden, chair of the Arts Council, who opened the show. "They are so evocative of a time that has changed." Her favourite photograph in the collection is of the elderly couple saying the rosary.
Born in Dublin in 1925, she said Doyle took up photography as a career when he won the Daily Telegraph Magazine Photographer of the Year Award in London in 1967.
"This long-awaited retrospective exhibition . . . gives us all an opportunity to look again at the amazing range and variety and sheer quality of Bill Doyle's work," she said. "For many years he has been one of our most important exponents of the much-neglected art of photography . . . his work demonstrates a uniquely insightful vision that has captured many aspects of the changing Ireland over the past 50 and more years."
Photographer Johnnie Doyle was also full of admiration for the work of his namesake and distant cousin. The "feeling" in one photograph of men transporting a coffin on a bicycle was "reminiscent" of life in west Cork in the 1950s, he said.
The show includes his iconic photographs from Inis Oírr and Inis Meáin in the 1970s.
[ www.galleryofphotography.ie ]
Birthday bash marks 21 years of exhibitions
Frank Lewis welcomed a gathering of artists, musicians and poets to the Frank Lewis Gallery 21st birthday group exhibition in Killarney, Co Kerry, on Tuesday night, writes Anne Lucey
He described how artist Michael Travers was "struggling" to get from Inch Strand to the birthday celebrations, giving a new take on the struggling artist. But luckily a series of dramatic paintings of the sea at Inch by the artist had arrived beforehand on this night of wild winter weather.
Other doughty art lovers had stepped in from even further - exhibiting artist Derry Shannon and her husband Tom O'Reilly came from Toe Head in west Cork, while Seán McCarthy and Clinton Ellis came from Skibbereen.
There to listen to music by Opus '96 Chamber Choir under the baton of Martine Egan was Noranne Dennison, Abbeyfeale, Joan Ruddle and Statia Lyons, both from Newcastlewest. Mona McNamara from Castleconnell, Limerick, who grew up two doors from the gallery where her 98-year-old mother Nora Mannix lives, also popped in.
Artist Helena Brunicardi, who retired after a lifetime as art teacher in the community college in Killarney, said she was looking forward to the bluebell season when she would be out in the woods with her easel.
Canon Declan O'Connor, parish priest of Killarney, confirmed that a Liam Lawton fundraiser for the Pugin Cathedral down the street sold out within hours of the tickets going on sale.
Margery Long, who earlier in the day organised an annual lunch for 75 of her retired national teacher colleagues, said she has made a collection of the gallery invitation cards spanning up to 250 exhibitions.
Also popping in on the night were artists who had worked with Frank Lewis in the past. Dermot McCarthy, whose intriguing and stimulating pieces has led to him setting up his own gallery in Killarney, still exhibits in the Lewis gallery, he told us.
Also there from the shores of Lough Leane, the lake that inspired a gallery of artists down the centuries, was Brenda Coffey from Fossa, as was the Mac Monagle clan - 88-year-old Paddy and his nephew, photographer Don Mac Monagle.
Master uileann pipers Dave Hegarty and Michael Dooley played also. The birthday cake by Siubhan Lewis was cut later and Frank paid tribute to his assitant and fellow curator Mary O'Shea. "She does it all - I am only the puppet," he said.
The 21st Birthday/ Christmas Exhibition runs at the Frank Lewis Gallery, 6 Bridewell Lane, Killarney, Co Kerry, until Mon, Dec 24
An Gúm fills the room
The windy night didn't stop writers, artists, editors agus Gaeilgeoirí coming together to celebrate publication of 45 titles by An Gúm this year.
The annual "oíche mhór" was attended by a large crowd of reading enthusiasts and welcomed by Ferdie Mac an Fhailigh, chief executive of Foras na Gaeilge.
The year's crop of books was described as "saothar den scoth" by Peadar Mac an Iomaire, head of NUI Galway's Acadamy na hOllscolaíochta Gaeilge, the body within the university that is responsible for the teaching of courses through the medium of Irish.
An Gúm, which was established in 1926, is the single largest Irish-language publisher in the country. It operates under the aegis of Foras na Gaeilge, the body responsible for the promotion of Irish.
Among those in attendance at Foras na Gaeilge headquarters in Dublin's Merrion Square was Tadhg Mac Dhonnagáin with his son, Tadhg (nine), artist Róisín Curé whose drawings illustrate Gabriel Rosenstock's book, Na Daoine Dalla, and writer Jacqueline de Brún, author of Scoil an Chnoic.
Síle Ní Mhurchú (seven), the daughter of An Gúm senior editor Seosamh Ó Murchú, thought seriously for a moment before choosing her favourite book from the year's crop. Liam agus an Leipreachán by Gabrielle Ní Mheachair, she said, nodding sagely.
Máire Ní Laoi, of an Siopa Leabhar on Harcourt Street, which has been operating as a book shop specialising in Irish-language publications since 1972, said her favourite publication was Leabhar Mór an Eolais. "Tá sé ag díol go han-mhaith," she said.
Others at the reception were writer Anna Heussaff, whose novel Cúpla Focal was published by Cois Life earlier this year, and journalist and editor Máiréad Ní Chinnéide and her husband, Art Ó Maolfabhail.
Art across the Border
A new cross-Border award, which had its official launch in Dublin this week, honours five artists.
Dublin-based Brendan Earley, whose work is based on the built environment, explained that he's "concentrated on Wittgenstein, the Austrian philosopher, who lived in Ireland".
Meanwhile much of the work of Dublin-based artist Bea McMahon, a mathematical physicist, "has a hallucinogenic feel to it", as the artist herself explained.
The work of Northern artist Conor McFeely, which is entitled The Case of the Midwife Toad, is loosely based around the experiments of the early 20th-century Austrian biologist Paul Kammerer, who was trying to prove the law of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, McFeely explained. As part of the award, his work is now on view at Dublin's Douglas Hyde Gallery running until Thursday, January 17th.
And, Factotum, an arts organisation that was formed in 2001 by northern artists Stephen Hackett and Richard West, who work together as part of a collective, is currently creating a film to show in Dublin in March and also in Derry's Void Gallery.
Chosen from the submissions of 74 artists, the winners of the 2007 Curated Visual Arts Award were curated by internationally established British artist Mike Nelson.
"The submissions represented a range of practices and included artists at very different stages in their work," said Nelson.
The award is the initiative of the North/South committee of the two Arts Councils, in partnership with Dublin's Douglas Hyde Gallery and Derry's Void Gallery. A major feature of the award is the chance to exhibit work in both Dublin's Douglas Hyde Gallery and Derry's Void. The first exhibition is McFeely's work at the Douglas Hyde. The other shows will take place in the new year.
Mary Cloake, director of the Arts Council and Philip Hammond, of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, were among those who attended at the event.