Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Jimmy Deenihan will officially open Athlone’s new art gallery, the Luan, on Thursday November 29, it has been confirmed.
The Luan will have a soft opening early November, along with the castle, followed by the official opening which will be attended by over 200 guests.
Members of the public will be able to visit the gallery from the first week in November where they can indulge their senses in a variety of artistic works.
Shance Cullen and Daphne Wright will be amongst artists exhibiting in the new gallery featuring alongside other works from the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection.
Shane Cullen, is a Longford artist who is one if Ireland’s foremost contemporary artists. His work is largely text-based and deals with political issues, making reference to the history of classical republicanism, from the formation of nation states in the 18th and 19th centuries to a variety of contemporary manifestations. The subject matter (often official documents ) is controversial and subversive but painstakingly transcribed, reproduced and presented in a highly disciplined fashion which references historical, sculptural monuments.
His work, The Agreement, will be displayed in the Luan. The work is conceived to commemorate the signing of the Anglo-Irish Peace Agreement reached in the multi-party negotiations of 1998. The work presents the full text of the document known as the Good Friday Agreement, in a clear and comprehensible manner on 55 panels, some of which will be shown in Athlone.
Daphne Wright’s Where Do Broken Hearts Go is a selection of cacti. The cacti are formed through the highly organised, even obsessive repetition of a single motif: folded strips of household tinfoil. Thousands of strips of foil are prepared and then the process of creating the structure of the cacti begins.
For more information log on www.athloneartandheritage.ie
