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Conor Tallon talks with curator Michael Waldron about East Coast Light 1 (1973) by Sean Scully.

It is an example of hard-edge painting, which is characterised by sharp transitions between colours achieved using tape and spray paint. Consisting of a grid of layered bands, this work blends aspects of the artist’s background in graphic design and construction with the influence of Moroccan textiles and the impact of a fellowship to Harvard University in 1972.

First exhibited at the Dixième Biennale Internationale d'Art, Menton (1974), this abstract painting may be seen to anticipate Scully’s subsequent use of a characteristic stripe motif. For the artist, the stripe “is always concerned with thinking, and it is concerned with acting free of context … it is always reaching outwards,” as he observed to Allie Biswas in 2016. “The stripe can do anything in any direction, and since it is so common, it corresponds to everything around us.”

In 1980, this work was featured in Rosc Chorcaí ’80: Irish Art 1943–1973. Its curator, Cyril Barrett, wrote that the “exhibition covers a period which some people might describe as the great awakening of modern Irish Art and others as the great betrayal.” Presented at Crawford Art Gallery, the exhibition later travelled to the Ulster Museum, Belfast.

Born in Dublin in 1945, Sean Scully is a contemporary artist with a major international reputation. He is a member of the Royal Academy of Arts and Aosdána, and visitors may remember the major retrospective exhibition here, Sean Scully: Figure / Abstract (2015).

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You don’t need anyone to tell you that singing is good for the soul.

There are hundreds of choirs all over the county who are trying to do things online right now. And so many of them began with no clue at all this time last year how to work a camera or synchronise the recordings sent in from home.

And then there are the workplace choirs. Having a workplace choir does so much for bonding and teamwork in a company. And at the moment, when so many workers are isolated at home, then perhaps this could be as good a time as any to start a workplace choir and try it virtually!!

This week the Cork International Choral Festival announced that Ibec, Ireland’s largest business representative group, has come on board as the title sponsor of the festival’s new Workplace Choir of the Year competition.

This will be the culminating event of the festival’s ‘Choirworks’ programme, which has been devised specially for this year.

The programme offers workplace colleagues around the country the chance to learn to sing……. and form a virtual company choir,

or improve their singing and existing workplace choir.

It’ll all be done through online interactive music lessons, choir workshops and team building activities.

The aim of the initiative is to help companies connect with their staff and teams during Covid through the uplifting medium of music.

So to find out more about it, Elmarie Mawe spoke to Peter Stobart, Artistic Director of the Cork International Choral Festival. 

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This week marks a historical landmark....as Conor Tallon found out from Crawford art gallery curator Michael Waldron

The Widow (Mrs. Terence MacSwiney, Lady Mayoress of Cork 1920) by John Lavery is a remarkably stark portrait. Only the face and neck of its subject emerge from the background and dark clothing. Her parted red lips, brimming eyes, and flesh described in light and shadow convey dual emotions – mourning and hope.

By the time this portrait was painted a century ago, in 1921, Muriel Murphy MacSwiney (1892-1982) had been catapulted onto the world stage in the aftermath of her husband’s death by hunger strike. In that same year, she attended the Abbey Theatre’s production of Terence MacSwiney’s most prophetic play, The Revolutionist. Such was the sympathy for her loss and Ireland’s independence that, in 1922, she became the first woman to be granted the freedom of New York City.

Muriel had first met Terence in 1915 at the home of Aloys and Tilly Fleischmann. They married against her family’s wishes on 9 June 1917, the day after she came into her inheritance, and their daughter Máire was born a year later. In her widowhood, Muriel continued her interest in left-wing politics and, in 1926, had a second daughter, Alix, with the French Marxist academic Pierre Kaan (1903-1945).

In 1928, this portrait was donated by the artist along with his Sketch for the Funeral of Terence MacSwiney (1920).

The Widow (Mrs. Terence MacSwiney, Lady Mayoress of Cork 1920) by John Lavery is featured in CITIZEN NOWHERE | CITIZEN SOMEWHERE: The Imagined Nation until 5 April.

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Conor Tallon spoke to Michael Waldron about Spring being in the air!

To mark Imbolc or St Brigid’s Day, we’re embracing a sense of joy and renewal with this WORK OF THE WEEK!

The first day of February is the traditional beginning of spring in Ireland and finds us halfway between the winter solstice and spring equinox. Festival Scene (c.1960) by Sylvia Cooke-Collis may not specifically be about this new season, but we think its palette of soft bright colours and upbeat mood suits this time of year.

Inspired by the style of Fauvism, Sylvia Cooke-Collis (1900-1973) composes a scene filled with people – and goats! Many of the figures wear wreaths of foliage on their heads, while in the background some form of ritual appears to play out under the trees. A figure in the foreground offers red flowers to a goat. A tasty treat perhaps?

In 2018, Festival Scene underwent its own renewal and benefitted from much needed conservation. As part of a shared NGI-CAG-IMMA conservation internship, it was transported to the National Gallery of Ireland for treatment by Giulia Campagnari.

The painting had become distorted over time and its paint layer was beginning to flake. Giulia conducted a full consolidation treatment with specialist solutions and equipment. Festival Scene was then re-stretched, cleaned, filled, and retouched where losses had occurred. Its original frame even got some love before the painting returned to Cork to be cherished once again. Certainly cause to celebrate!

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