"SOME OF those who already know about John Behan would think of him as without question a Dubliner. For others, after forty years there, he is a fundamental part of Galway."
So wrote NUI Galway's Prof Adrian Frazier in his new biography of Behan, The Bull of Sheriff Street - The Life and Work of an Irish Sculptor, which is published by Lilliput Press. The Bull of Sheriff Street is also the title of Behan's new exhibition, featuring depictions of animals, birds, Irish history, and Greek myths. The exhibition opening nad the launch of the book, both take place in The Kenny Gallery, Liosbán Retail Park, Tuam Road, on Friday October 23 at 6pm. The guest speaker will be Gearóid Ó’Tuathaigh, professor emeritus in History, NUIG.
Behan was born in 1938 in Sheriff Street, Dublin. From childhood, he loved drawing and painting, and during his teens did an apprenticeship as a metalworker, and soon began making sculptures. As Frazier writes: "His first was a bull, and for bulls he has become famous...His hundreds of bronze bulls amount to a sensitive and profound meditation on the fate of the male, and particularly the Irish male, at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century."
All are welcome to the launch. See www.TheKennyGallery.ie
