19^th January – 23^rd February 2019
Opening Reception 7.30p, Friday 18^th January

Sadhbh Gaston’s debut solo exhibition at The Courthouse Gallery & Studios Red Couch Space

The Courthouse Gallery & Studios is delighted to welcome artist Cléa van der Grijn with her exhibition JUMP, which opens at 7.30pm on Friday 18^th January 2019 and runs until 23^rd February.

Trasna 8 marks the final chapter (for now) in The Courthouse Gallery’s annual open submission of small works, where all work is accepted and exhibited.

20^th October - 24^th November
Opening reception with speaker Pauline Goggin 7.30pm Saturday 20^th October

20^th October – 24^th November 2018
Opening reception 7.30pm Saturday 20^th October

8^th September 13^th October

Opening reception Friday 7^th September 7.30pm, with guest Shelagh Honan

5th May – 16th June
Opening reception Friday 4th May 7.30-9.30pm

Please join us between 7-9pm on Friday 30th June for the opening of our new exhibitions:

Entering Other Territories was a month long project held in October 2016 including an evolving exhibition, workspace, and Public Engagement Programme (see Public Programme list of activities below), created by Maeve Collins and a collection of creatives.

This exhibition presents a film installation, ‘Other Possibilities’ in the main gallery by Sarah Fuller, and a series of presentation-performances, ‘Actualities’ by Maria Kerin. July 15^{th -}  August 11^th 2016

RED COUCH SPACE July 15^th - August 11^th  
'I live and work in the small borough Viimsi in Estonia. Since 1997 I have been exhibiting my work in a number of group and solo exhibitions in Estonia, Finland, Latvia, USA and Ireland. Exhibition "Above the Clouds" consists of giclee prints from my new collage series. Before materialisation all combats and battles are held on the idea level or so to speak, above the clouds or in the spirit.' Sven-Erik Stamberg.

and we sense something
always afterwards,
when it echoes back
out of our memory,
an enduring murmur and
in the thicket
the smell of longing

Sven-Erik Stamberg

RED COUCH SPACE And Still There Are Secrets  Photography Narratives by Patricia Delker June 10 - July 7 Opening 11th June at 8pm. Delker indicates she photographs intangibles such as memory, time, dreams, and loss, all of which shape our individual lives and our mutual experiences. In the Courthouse Gallery exhibit, the intangibles are her secrets depicted in traditional black and white silver gelatin prints. Delker stated, "While the series is highly personal, we all have secrets. It's not so important to know what secrets are being depicted, but rather the images are intended to allow the viewer to confront and explore their own secluded memories and hidden experiences."  Objects and attire were carefully selected with attention paid to strong compositional elements.  Often the poses and the relationship of model to objects were sketched beforehand. And Still There Are Secrets was made with a 35 mm film camera and the negatives printed to archival standards in a traditional darkroom on Foma fiber-based multiple contrast paper.Delker has taught workshops/classes in alternative photographic processes, embracing the personal in one's photography, history of women photographers and using toy plastic cameras.  For the past nine years she has organized and led photographic workshops to the Aran Islands and Co.Clare. Her photographs have been exhibited in solo, group and juried exhibits throughout the U.S., as well as published in B&W magazine, Shots, and the magazine for plastic camera enthusiasts, Lightleaks. The Courthouse Gallery exhibit will be the first international exhibit of her photographs.

 



 

Gerry O’Mahony is a graduate of LSAD Limerick. He has lived in Ireland, Israel and Malawi. On returning from Africa he became a member of one of Limerick’s first artist collectives (All + 10 sorts), and exhibited at length with the group. His first solo exhibition was in the Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick, and subsequently he has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. His work is in private and public collections in Ireland and abroad, including Limerick County and City Councils, Government buildings, Dublin, and Berlemonte Buildings, Brussels. His most recent show was at Draiocht, Blanchardstown Art Centre, Dublin in 2015. O’Mahony lives in County Clare and has been a member of Contact Studios, Limerick, since 2005.

Originally trained as a sculptor, his output for many years has been in painting. Working in mixed media, his pieces combine watercolour, gold leaf, and acrylic, using a layering process to give an impression of marks floating on and within the surface. He employs a vocabulary of symbols and characters in work which distorts the line between painting and drawing. The work though not allegorical, flows between the visible and the concealed, the effervescent and the obscure.

His upcoming solo show “Changing Shadows” is a combination of sculptural work and paintings, and will be on show in the Courthouse Gallery, Ennistymon, from May 6^th to June 2^nd 2016. This exhibition shows parallel strands of O’Mahony’s practice. He works in series, often on a number of paintings at a time, shifting back and forth between the various pieces to create a body of work. Some pieces explore the power of words to produce a positive or negative response in the listener. Other paintings examine the nature of change as discussed in the allegory of Plato’s Cave, which explores the idea that it is easier to live in the shadows than to move out beyond a self-imposed comfort zone.

The exhibition will be opened at 8pm on the 6^th of May by Helena Close, a writer from Limerick. A novelist, playwright and teacher, she recently completed the inaugural M.A. in Creative Writing in University of Limerick. “Changing shadows” will run at the Courthouse Gallery, Ennistymon, from May 6^th to June 2^nd 2016.

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

 

 

 

Gerald Dunne is a photographer, digital artist and fine art printer based in Quin, Co. Clare.

His current exhibition "Beyond the Lines" aims to stir the subconscious in the same way as a flame or lapping water. A visual distraction allowing mental contemplation.

Nature is at the core of the work, often the neglected details around us, brought to life by exploring the colours and forms just beyond our normal perception.

Gerald has moved from a pared down black and white photographic style with a leap into colour and imagination. Although each piece originates with a photograph, they owe more to modern art than to any photographic genre. Some images have an obvious source, others are totally abstract, but the idea is not "what is it a picture of", more "what is it about". The answer is to give the conscious mind a distraction and let the imagination out Beyond the Lines, to see what else is in the wave.

The exhibition is in the Red Couch Space upstairs in The Courthouse Gallery, Ennistymon from Friday 6th May 2016, and runs until June 2nd

MARCH 18 – APRIL 14
Opening Friday,March 18 @ 8 pm by Maria Finucane, Artist / Lecturer



hem

The works presented in this exhibition hem embody in one way or another diverse meanings ascribed to its title:

old Frisian word hemme meaning enclosed land

border of a piece of clothing

encircle and restrict the space or movement of

denoting or meaning blood

The starting point was a strange half told family story related to events 100 years ago. Ghost story as allegory perhaps.

This set in motion a meditation through drawing of edges and movement in both external and internal imagined landscapes. We see this in the series entitled Trace, which are made of layers of paper, compressed earth and pencil. They are shown laid out flat at table height in specially constructed frames of perspex and oak. The drawings become at points in their making like a set of shaken out signs and patterns encoded in and into the work, maybe to be deciphered into meaning or taken as direction.

Fiona O’Dwyer’s work possesses a sensitivity to material, a musicality and experiential poetic nature. In the video work we see the repetitive movement of the hem of a garment, the line that circles us in, the part that touches the ground.

In another piece, set out like wings, are six stone guns collected by the artist between 1992 and 1993 while building her studio in Co. Clare. The pieces are sandblasted with the words or more accurately the sound pill powder.

In this year, in the context of the churning of history O’Dwyer ponders her own history and her experience of continuing to be an artist on this rural edge. Articulated through the work itself, its materiality and relation to place she reflects on the possibility that the epigenetic memory of a migratory early life experience made her not the outsider but the artist.

www.fionaodwyer.com

 

Red Couch Space

'Neither Rhyme Nor Reason'

Art work by Patsy Ricks & Aoife Murray

 

 

'Traces & Treks'
Artwork by Antonio Lopez and Declan Kelly
February 19th - March 10th

Opening Thursday, Feb. 18th @ 7 pm

The Courthouse Gallery is delighted to present the joint exhibition “Traces & Treks” – ‘Artwork byvisual artists Antonio Lopez and Declan Kelly’. “Traces & Treks” features a selection of works that focuses on the journey made by the artists, the places remembered and changed by their personal experiences through reflection, observation and investigation.

Antonio’s work is the result of a number of different projects on which he has worked over the past number of years, but with a common source of interest: the habitat in which we live. His paintings and drawings develop from a mixture of sources: found objects, observational drawing, photographic material and found imagery. His work depicts a personal perception of our natural surroundings, observing our relationship with and use of the natural environment while reflecting on the contradiction between our basic connection to the natural world and our simultaneous detachment from it.

Declan’s art work is primarily about how journeys transform us, about how we are in a constant state of change during the passage of our lives. He takes inspiration from the everyday mundane as well as the landscapes and urban architecture he comes across during his many travels. He allows his subconscious to play an important role in the processing and the translation of ideas to paper or canvas. He strongly believes that the more you investigate, the more is revealed in what you might consider everyday wanderings. What you can possibly encounter on the way, both literally and figuratively is where Declan tries to provide a deeper insight.

Antonio Julio López Castro was born in Madrid and moved to Ireland in 1996. He currently lives and works in Co. Cork. He studied Fine Art at Sligo IT receiving an Honours Degree in 2003. Antonio exhibits regularly in Ireland and abroad, and his work was acquired by Mayo County Council, the Irish National Teachers Organization, and is held in many private collections. Antonio was an artist in residence at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Ballycastle, Co. Mayo (2014); the Custom House Studios, Westport, Co. Mayo (2014); the Cill Rialaig Project, Ballinskelligs, Co. Kerry (2010); and at Belmont Mill Studios, Co. Offaly (2010). He was awarded a Materials & Equipment Bursary by Kerry Co. Co. in 2012.

Declan Kelly currently lives and works in Drogheda. He works as a secondary school teacher, a visual artist and is also a founding member, co-director and curator with NeXus Arts. He has a higher degree in Art (HETAC – Ireland) and a Post Graduate Degree in Education in Art & Design (National College of Art and Design – Ireland). Declan has taken part in several residencies in the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakerrig, Co. Monaghan and the Cill Rialaig Project, Ballinskelligs, Co. Kerry. His work is part of private and public collections both in Ireland and in Belgium. Declan received awards by Create Louth, Drogheda Borough Council and the Arts Council of Ireland in recent years.