Alphabet

Thanks to Sara Baume for her review of our previous exhibition, Alphabet - featuring Ireland: Alphabet Series by Cork Printmakers and other work, which ran from 20th September until 9th November here at West Cork Arts Centre.

Sylvia Taylor, E For Evening Echo, 2013

 Check it out here...  

Paul Le Roque, F for Forde, 2013

A different perspective

Sometimes, all it takes is to look at something from a different perspective...

From across the river

Yes, that towering structure in the middle of the frame, that's our building!

The view from Bridge Street

Magnhild Opdøl - Three Days Later

The Silence After, pencil on paper, 65 x 130cm, 2013

Three Days Later, an exhibition of new work by Norwegian artist, Magnhild Opdøl opens tonight at 7.00pm at West Cork Arts Centre. Featuring film, sculpture, drawing and photographic work, this dark, yet thought-provoking exhibition invites the viewer to contemplate our relationship with the natural world. 

Opdøl's beautifully made and understated pieces contain a common feeling of silence, of having missed the 'happening' and being caught in the moment after. Three Days Later picks up on themes explored in Opdøl’s previous exhibition, Point of No Return. Continuing with open-ended visual narratives, Opdøl allows the viewer to draw their own conclusions on what it is that has been interrupted, disturbed or altered. She explores our relationship with nature and the ongoing damage being done by human hand. She gently focuses our attention on the unnoticed passing of things we regard as unchanging, and so which are taken for granted.

Just before midnight, lambda print on dibond, 2013

Of this Opdøl remarks, ‘I am fascinated with things not being reversible, such as the depletion of our earth's natural resources, the extinction of species, and the strangeness of a human race that keeps on ravaging the planet, while knowing we are the authors of our own destruction.’

Her work is laden with stillness to the extent of creating unease. She is influenced in part by the work of filmmaker David Lynch, specifically Twin Peaks. Her work shares Lynch's dark yet beautiful sensibility, and suggests multiple interpretations of what may already have taken place.  

Her observation of wildlife and nature is not from a reverential or idyllic perspective, but instead succeeds in communicating the complexity of relationships and perception, and that things are not always as they seem. The Silence After, a drawing, depicts a snowscape. It replicates that feeling of snow blindness but begs the question - what is covered by the pure white blanket of snow?

Magnhild Opdøl was born in Sunndalsøra, Norway in 1980. She lives and works in Dublin and Ålvundeid, Norway. Opdøl received a B.A. in Fine Art in 2004 and an MA in Fine Art Painting in 2007 from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. She has exhibited widely both in Ireland and internationally and has been the recipient of many awards and residencies, including being the first recipient of the Tony O'Malley Residency in Callan, Kilkenny in 2011. Solo exhibitions to follow at The Painting Society, Oslo, Buskerud Arts Centre and Agder Art Centre, Norway in 2014

Three Day Later continues until Saturday 11 January 2014.

Our New Building!!!!

You might think it strange to get excited about a few slabs of poured concrete, but, well, that's the kinda gal I am! Since summer there has been progress on site of our new building, but it is not the kind of progress you could regard as glamorous. Piling, laying foundations and all sorts of other shiz that involves dust, dirt and men in hard hats and high-vis vests, but out of this a large concrete structure has been growing. At first it was surrounded with scaffolding.

In this state it had been gradually creeping higher and higher.

until it finally reached its five storeys height. 

Then as soon as the first piece of the steel structure was in place

 the scaffolding began to come down. 'What the..?' I hear you express. Well, the concrete structure you see in the photograph will house the elevator shaft and the stair well. The rest of the building will be made up of glass and steel. So very soon the remaining structure will start to be hung from that pretty plain and dull concrete slab. Rather unglamorous right now, as I say, but over the coming weeks passers-by will witness the incredible engineering feat of constructing a building from the top down!

Keep checking in here for more updates. It's only going to get more interesting!

To look at plans for our new building for the Arts in West Cork go to 

http://westcorkartscentre.com/documents/Plans%20and%20Elevations%20for%20New%20West%20Cork%20Arts%20Centre.pdf 

The install of Three Days Later by Magnhild Opdøl

So this was the scene in the gallery earlier this week! We're all set up now and ready for tonight's opening at 7pm. See you there!