Galway International Arts Festival’s Festival Gallery and Visual Arts Programme 2015 will officially be opened this evening by renowned artist Hughie O’ Donoghue at the Festival Gallery where Australian artist Patricia Piccinini’s startling sculpture exhibition Relativity will be showcased from the 13th-26th July.
The 2015 Visual Arts Programme will feature work from some of the world’s most celebrated artists as well as presenting exciting new work from Ireland. This year will also see the return of the new city centre Festival Gallery in the former Connacht Tribune Print Works, Market Street, Galway. The Docks Shed Gallery, Middle Pier, Galway Harbour will be further developed and enhanced for Festival 2015.
Patricia Piccinini is one of Australia’s most acclaimed contemporary artists whose startling sculptures examine the connections between science and nature, art and the environment. In a major coup for the Festival, Piccinini makes her Irish debut in Galway this July with a major solo exhibition of her show Relativity at the Festival Galway and central to this year’s visual arts programme. The exhibition is sure to capture the hearts and minds of Festival audiences’. Visitors will be drawn to Piccinini’s sculptures which consider a strange new world of artificial or mutant beings derived from experimental biotechnology.
Piccinini’s spectacular sculpture, the 100 foot-long Skywhale, also took to the skies from NUI Galway on Sunday afternoon and flew over Galway city to the delight of surprised onlookers. Skywhale is a registered flying machine operating similarly to a hot air balloon and has wowed Australian audiences since commission by the City of Canberra in 2013. This Galway show is Skywhale’s European debut and is set to be one of the highlight events in Ireland this summer. Skywhale will be tethered and fly from various city centre locations during the first week of the Festival, weather permitting, and audiences’ are asked to stay tuned to the Festival’s Facebook and Twitter pages for daily updates.
The Festival is also hosting exhibitions by the internationally acclaimed artists Louise Bourgeois and Sophie Calle. Bourgeois’ show Autobiographical Works features two print portfolios made during the later stages of her career. One of the most influential artists of recent decades Bourgeois’ work, whether in sculpture, drawing or printmaking, always maintained strongly autobiographical themes, centering on her own obsessions and vulnerabilities. It will run at Galway City Museum.
Calle, one of France’s leading conceptual artists, shows two of her earlier video works at this year’s Festival. Calle immerses herself in examinations of voyeurism and identity in both Double-Blind with Gregory Shephard and her collaboration with Fabio Balducci in Unfinished. Both shows will run at the Bank of Ireland Theatre, NUI Galway.
Also running during the Festival is the Theatre/Installation A Girl’s Bedroom presented in a Gallery setting by Enda Walsh. This will run at the Bank of Ireland Theatre, NUI Galway.
Irish artist Martin Healy is originally from Galway whose works are primarily through the mediums of film and photography. His show at Galway Arts Centre co-curated with the Festival explores the connections between belief systems, mythology and the phenomena of perception and how they intersect through recorded imagery or sound.
Russian artist Varvara Shavrova has long made Ireland her home dividing her time between her studios in Dublin and Co. Mayo. Shavrova also spent many years living and working in Beijing. Her exhibition Border Crossings featuring paintings, drawings, photographs and video work set against the longest border in the world between China and her native Russia. Shavrova examines the lasting imprint that borders – physical, political, cultural and historical – contribute to our notion of freedom and belonging. It will run at The Shed, Middle Pier, The Docks.
Galway based artist Sioban Piercy’s exhibition Books, Folded Drawings & Constructions features unique and beautiful sculptural print works. Piercy is Head of Fine Art Printmaking at the Centre for Creative Arts and Media, Galway Mayo Institute of Technology. Piercy’s exhibition will run at the University Gallery, NUI Galway.
Another major print exhibition see the return of the Impressions Biennale which was established in 1988 and is Ireland’s longest running open-submission print exhibition. The show will be curated by the artist David Ferry. The Festival is also working with Galway’s artist led 126 Gallery who are collaborating with Glasgow's Transmission collective for their July exhibition.
