How to Flatten A Mountain Exhibition Wed 8 November
This November, photographic artist Alisha Doody launches her latest collection ‘How to Flatten a Mountain’ in Backstage Theatre’s Atrium Gallery.
Alisha’s practice is centred on issues relating to contemporary society and is focused on understanding how this relates to person, space and home. Her working methods are fluid and concerned with the interplay of medium and subject.
Her latest exhibition, ‘How to Flatten a Mountain’ is a reflection of human interaction with the landscape. Through movement in nature and space, the impact of this relationship is explored and made visible in the details. ‘How to Flatten a Mountain’ was first created during a residency of the same name in Cow House Studios, Wexford.
‘How to Flatten a Mountain’ opens in the Atrium Gallery, Backstage Theatre Longford on Wednesday 8 November at 8pm. Open to all.
Eve’s Garden – Stories from the Wild
Eibhilin Crossan’s latest exhibition ‘Eve’s Garden – Stories from the Wild’ was a huge hit with local art-lovers when it was on display in the Atrium Gallery in Backstage Theatre Longford in September. The exhibition represents a body of work she has created over the last year inspired by nature and in response to her environment.
The title of this exhibition – ‘Eve’s Garden: Stories from the Wild’, brings together the themes of the garden and the goddess.
The Longford-based contemporary artist has rediscovered her passion to create over the last number of years. Working predominantly with acrylic paint and inks, both on canvas and paper, she explores a range of subjects from abstracted botanicals and soft landscapes, to portraits and abstracts. The natural world that surrounds the garden and woodlands behind her home provide a rich source of inspiration for her work.
The Goddess series celebrates the sacred feminine as symbolic of mother-nature. Just as woman gives birth, so too does the earth give birth to the flowers and plants. The personification of this energy that gives birth to and nourishes form is properly female. The Celts honoured goddesses of nature and natural forces, with diverse qualities such as abundance, creation and beauty, as well as harshness and vengeance.
In the Garden series, she has explored both Canopy and Wildflower themes. Abstracting her experience of being immersed in nature, of walking through the woods, or sitting in the garden, under the trees, beneath the canopy of leaves. She has borrowed from shapes and shadows of the flowers and leaves and use the negative spaces to create composition. The soft lines and layers of rich colours create a sense of reflected light and evoke the sensuality and beauty of the organic world.
Three Thoughts One Breath
‘Three Thoughts, One Breath’ is a very unique exhibition which graced the walls of the Atrium Gallery in early September, showcasing work by three local portrait artists – Shelley Corcoran, Phil Atkinson and Angelika Florkiewicz.
“The exhibition originally came about with the idea of three artists using three different mediums depicting one subject, hence the name ‘Three Thoughts, One Breath’,” Shelley explained.
“Our admiration for each other’s work drove us to combine our individual skills and, because we are all portrait artists, we wanted to choose the portrait of where we live, Longford, and its people.”
The three styles used in the exhibition are unique to the artist. Shelley herself uses photography to express her psychoanalytical concept of the subject. Phil looks at life after humans, and how the earth claims back what humans have destroyed.
And Angelika aims to bring happiness to those who look upon her work, so she has created art in a comic book style, “because all comics that I read have a happy ending”, she says.
The three artists differ greatly, both in the media through which they choose to express themselves, and in the concepts the use in that expression. They didn’t physically work together for this exhibition, but selected the singular theme of the people of Longford to bind the exhibition.
The results were beautiful, with images depicting the people of Longford in very unique and interesting ways. And, with the success of ‘Three Thoughts, One Breath’, this autumn, the artists are bound to work together again.
“With the response we received from everyone in attendance, we feel it was a huge success and would love to collaborate again,” Shelley concluded.
See www.backstage.ie for more information on the Atrium Gallery.
