The Past is a Foreign Country
AT LIMERICK City Gallery of Art into January, ‘The Past is a Foreign Country’ exhibition by Anita Groener addresses the refugee series of crises and our response to it. “Through drawings, large scale installations, film and animations, Groener explores the tissue of trauma and loss rooted in this question. She makes work for what still needs language, experimenting with both figurative and abstract geography.”
‘The Past is a Foreign Country’ gives its title to a large installation for which 20 young birch trees, stripped of their leaves, their branches cut, unearthed and uprooted, are reconstructed and suspended from the ceiling in a closed circuit grid.
We can walk around it, look into it but we cannot enter this enclosure.
From the gallery: “The exhibition incites an imaginative journey between here, the geographical, social, and cultural locations of the spectator and there, the site of the represented trauma. The work counters what the artist sees as an emerging collective alienation by encouraging the viewer to walk in the footsteps of a multitude of anonymous people, without a country and without a home.
“Focusing on specific current events, their archetypal and psychological resonances, the artist traces urgent connections between the experience of refugees driven from their homes by armed conflict and her own life and family.
“A special performance by world renowned Syrian musician, Maya Youssef, will be held on Thursday 18 October 6pm. Maya Youssef born in Damascus is hailed as “queen of the qanun”, the 78 stringed Middle Eastern plucked zither. For Youssef, the act of playing music is the opposite of death; it is a life and hope affirming act. For her, music is a healer and an antidote to what is happening not only in Syria, but in the whole world.”
This exhibition received an Arts Council Touring and Dissemination Award and will tour to The Dock, Carrick-on- Shannon, Uilinn, Skibbereen and The Lab, Dublin in 2019.
Open seven days at the Pery Square venue.
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Fabled illustrator of Anthology
ANTHOLOGY in this instance is an exhibition of selected drawings and prints by Helena Grimes on show at Belltbale until October 20. Her works are in tandem with Bualadh Bos Children’s Festival running currently; book at venue manager www.limetreetheatre.ie
These small, dramatic paintings and drawings of fabled creatures and concepts emerge from Grimes’ last four years of practice.
A Longford woman, she is a Limerick based artist and illustrator who graduated from LSAD. Each new piece is about “exploring a new boundary and seeking to tell a different tale.”
Her line drawings act like fables, “the whimsical creatures in her compositions acting as metaphors of the human mind, present at different stages of social challenges. The environments portray a layer of familiarity, intertwined with dream–like elements to isolate the mind and hold the gaze of the viewer, enabling a deep engagement with their own subconscious.”
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TAKE your mind back to LCGA at Pery Square for Maud Cotter’s show running also at this municipal venue. Titled ‘a consequence of – without stilling’, browse its sculpted dimensions until January next.
