LIMERICK City Gallery of Art was host to a major launch when Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Jimmy Deenihan opened the Arts Council’s anniversary exhibition ‘Into the Light – 60 Years of Supporting the Arts’.
The 150 works on show are taken from the Arts Council’s collection, with Limerick being one of four destinations – Dublin City Gallery, Cork’s Crawford Art Gallery and The Model in Sligo – selected for exhibition. ‘Into the Light’ is magnificent, a once in a lifetime opportunity to engage in our city with paintings by Michael Farrell, a triptych by Anne Madden, tapestry by Louis Le Brocquy, works by Scotts Patrick and Michael, Tony O’Malley, Camille Souter and much more.
“Each of the four shows have their own expression,” Cliodhna Shaffrey, visual arts office with the council confirmed to Limerick Post. “The Limerick one is about tracking the origins of the Art Council’s collection in the 1960 and ’70s. It started at the very end of 1961 and there was a decision to invest in paintings by living artists.
“There are over 1000 works between the four exhibitions for which Karen Downey was lead curator for the council, working with all the partner curators such as Helen Carey here in LCGA. Karen also edited the book ‘Into the Light’. There is a catalogue specific to each show that gives the original comment and reviews on the participating artists, according to what was published in newspapers and journals of their time”.
Frank Lee Cooper had travelled from Dublin for LCGA to view his work upstairs in the gallery dating from 1971, ‘Crisis 1961’: “I am on recherche du temps perdu”, he told Arts page with a chuckle.
Looking up the progamme notes on this Irish born artist, Brian Fallon in The Irish Times of March 1971 had aid of Cooper’s exhibition in Brown Thomas Gallery, then closing: “The swan-song exhibition is contributed by Frank Lee Cooper, who shows mainly abstracts of the Hard Edge and ‘chromatic’ kind, most of them on rather a small scale.. at least this gallery ends on a youthful and extroverted note”.
The temptation to do another round of Pery Square’s tiers with the wise voice of yesteryear to place our best modern works in the context of their times is strong.
‘Into the Light’ is open until January 18; concurrent with Enda O’Donoghue’s pixellated paintings, ‘The Last Days of Gravity’.
