Dunamaise Arts Centre announces the opening of its
'Open Submission’ Exhibition
‘One artist to be awarded month-long residency in The Arthouse, Stradbally’
The Dunamaise Arts Centre, is delighted to announce the opening of the annual ‘Open Submission’ exhibition at the Dunamaise Arts Centre in Portlaoise, on Friday November 14th at 8pm.
This year’s exhibition is featuring 30 pieces of art by 26 artists, carefully selected by guest curator, Geraldine O’ Reilly of Aosdána, out of some 50 submissions entered into the competition.
One selected artist will be awarded a month-long residency in The Arthouse, Stradbally, Co. Laois, kindly sponsored by Laois Arts Office. This is an opportunity for the artist to develop their work in a professional studio setting, with full residency support. The winner of this opportunity will be announced by director of Dunamaise Arts Centre, Michelle de Forge on the night.
The Open Submission has become an exciting addition to the Dunamaise Visual Arts calendar sparking immense interest from both established and emerging artists all over Ireland and also locally from County Laois.
Geraldine O’ Reilly is a visual artist and printmaker, who has had many solo and group exhibitions throughout Ireland, America, Australia, the UK and Europe. Her work is in many private and public collections and Geraldine has been commissioned to create new work for Offaly County Council and Dublin City Council. In 2004, Geraldine was elected to Aosdana for her contribution to the arts in Ireland.
She says, “This exhibition represents a wonderful snapshot of the talent and diversity of artists that are working on their craft throughout Ireland and locally here in Laois. I have chosen a selection of work that I believe showcases the best of the talent of Irish artists and I am very excited about the exhibition and the collection of works on display for the public to enjoy. I wish everyone that entered this competition the best for their future career as artists and we thank everyone who took part and look forward to seeing more of your work in the future.”
The artists chosen to exhibit in this year’s exhibition include: Paul Bokslag, Allan Buckett, Conor Brennan, Robert Dunne, Rebecca Deegan, Aisling Conroy, Pamela de Bri, Aidan Flnagan, Conor Flynn-O’Donnell, Eileen Ferguson, Crona Gallagher, William Hamilton, Sharon Murphy, John Lalor, Lia Laimbock, Rosemarie Langtry, Paul McCormaic, Eoin Mac Lochlainn, Bernadette Madden, Sue O’ Brien, Patricia Pachova, Margaret Ray, Zita Reihill, Paul Roy, Sarah Ryan and Andrea Woodgate.
The 30 works chosen for exhibition will be of mixed media and sizes. The exhibition will run until December 19th, 2014. Entry is free and all members of the public are invited to visit the gallery throughout the month to enjoy this diverse exhibition.










Eddie Murphy (left), with Ciaran Benson. Photograph: Matt Kavanagh














Aisling Conroy’s current exhibition, ‘Ocular Reverberations’ at Draíocht Arts Centre, Blanchardstown, Dublin is a sensory installation of paintings and sculpture that bring colour, form and sound into focus through the prism of past masters. Conroy has been artist in resident at Draíocht since January 2013 and this show is her parting gift, an abstract study in which she travels though modernism, architecture, monuments, sacred art and iconism in ritualistic manifestations.In ‘Ocular Reverberations’ Conroy has built a sculpture made from discarded empty frames, once filled with pictures but now redundant, useless, forgotten, their loss made all the more poignant by the sound emanating from the base of the sculpture, a chanting, a humming, a mystical reverberation from the past, a haunting perhaps.On one of the walls are four large circular digital prints, abstract in form, each print a colour; red, yellow, blue and green with the lighter colour receding into the dark centre from which a sound emanates, a recording you can listen to on headphones. The yellow print gives us the sound of children, the green evokes emerald forests, blue brings up images of mountains and open skies while red gives us a passion, a desire, a yearning, life. These are beautiful evocations of a sensual life and give us space to daydream, to wander through our mind.On the remaining walls of this exhibition are a series of mixed media paintings made from discarded corrugated boxes cut into various sizes and painted in similar colours to the digital prints. Stuck on top of each other, the cardboard pieces take on the aspect of an architectural model, a 3D version of a Joseph Albers painting. Infact Conroy makes this association explicit by titling three of the compositions, Albers Ritual I, II, III. It is Albers work – he made paintings of coloured squares to explore the effects colours had on their neighbouring colours – who Conroy chooses to re-examine, to push the boundaries of, his two dimensional explorations giving way to her boundless forms that escape the picture plane, are free to express themselves.You might say that this show is a conversation with both the past and the present and if you’re in Dublin check it out. It’s ongoing until Saturday 31st August, 2013 at Draíocht Arts Centre, The Blanchardstown Centre, Blanchardstown, Dublin http://www.mutantspace.com/aisling-conroy-ocular-reverberations-draiocht/








































