LIMERICK Printmakers are behind ‘The Cool Vernacular’, an exhibition by emerging artist Jim Furlong current at Belltable until May 27.
Aine Nic Giolla Coda, programme leader of the Limerick School of Art & Design’s painting department, will officiate.
Limerick based Jim Furlong is the recipient of the 2016/17 Tom Fox Painting Award, an accolade bestowed on an outstanding graduate of LSAD’s Painting degree program each year. Putting this show together, he asks the question, ‘what is cool?’ His programme notes tell us:
In March 1999 the Levi Strauss Company shut down half its U.S manufacturing plants and laid off 6,000 workers because of a 50 per cent slump in sales over the previous decade.
“Levi Jeans were no longer perceived as cool. Since this event and the growing importance of the teenage consumer market, the question of what is and what is not cool is no longer merely a topic for discussion among insecure and rebellious teenagers.”
“Companies now send ‘Cool Hunters’ into the urban ghettos to infiltrate sub cultures and discover and influence the latest notion of cool.”
Expect works in ‘The Cool Vernacular’ to reflect ideas of shifting trends, commodification, dissidence, rebellion, ephemera, “the customised self” and “existential crisis”.
Current until May 27 at O’Connell Street.
