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Ulster Art in the 80s

RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin

2 - 29 October 1988


True Blues, The Birches, Portadown, silver gelatin print, toners and gouache, 58cms x 48cms, 1988 ©Victor Sloan


The Irish Association, founded in 1938, to promote cultural, economic and social relations between the peoples of this island, North and South, is taking advantage of its Golden Jubilee Year to organise a festival of Ulster Arts in Dublin this Autumn. With so much concentration on political differences and tensions with their violent and destructive consequences, the Association through it proper to focus for once on the creative achievement of Ulster in music, literature, theatre, crafts, painting and sculpture.

Among its Jubilee events the Irish Association takes special pride in presenting this major exhibition of Northern Art organised by the Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast, at the RHA Gallagher Gallery , Ely Place, Dublin. The GPA Exhibition of Ulster Art in the 80s, illustrates very powerfully the role of the Irish Association in enabling Irish people in the South to encounter and understand their fellow Irish in the North. The mutually inflicted wounds of the past have frequently kept us apart and hostile to one another. Yet mutually endured suffering can also make us more accessible to one another. Artists are called to expose and explore the realms of human suffering and joy. As they explore they reveal the depths and sources of such human experiences. Beyond their exploration of suffering, artists exercise a healing and binding influence which enriches the wider community, in this case the wider Irish community, North and South.

The Irish Association, is very grateful to Dr Jamshid Mirfenderesky of the Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast, to Mr Tom Ryan and the RHA Gallagher Gallery and to the Guinness Peat Aviation Company who with Co-Operation North have so happily combined to enable people in Dublin and the South share in these exploring, healing and celebrating works of Ulster Artists.

Professor Edna McDonagh, Vice-President, Irish Association.

Participating artists: Anne Carlisle, David Crone, Diarmuid Delargy, Fergus Delargy, Micky Donnelly, Felim Egan, Graham Gingles, Elizabeth Magill, Clement McAleer, Jack Packenham, Dermot Seymour, Bob Sloan, Victor Sloan, Una Walker, Martin Wedge and Gordon Woods.

Organised for the Golden Jubilee of the Irish Association for cultural, economic and social relations 1938-1988.

The Irish Association
120 Harberton Park, Belfast
BT9 6TU
N. Ireland

E: info@irish-association.org
W: www.irish-association.org




RHA Gallagher Gallery
15 Ely Place, Dublin 2
Tel: 353 1 661 2558
Fax: 353 1 661 0762
Email: info@rhagallery.ie
Web: http://rhagallery.ie


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