Lagan Exhibition

The Lagan Exhibition opened on Thursday 3rd April 2014 at our city centre gallery in Linenhall Street as part of Late Night Art with over 200 visitors! 

 

The Lagan Exhibition is a celebration by artists young and old of the river Lagan and its communities. The wide range of work from traditional landscape through to expressionist and abstract, reflects the Engine Room Gallery's desire to give artists freedom to express their own feelings about the river and the many communities that stretch along it's banks, especially in the Belfast area.

 

From the romance of the Shaw's Bridge area around Stranmillis, Botanic, the Holy Land, Gasworks, Markets, Short Strand, Newtownards Road and Sydenham. The diverse landscape in a few miles spans beauty, commerce and heavy industry, all with living communities centred around them.

A central part of the exhibition is the work Liam de Frinse has done on the Lagan towpath 'The Lagan Love Poem' and has a mix of installation, painting, print and poetry. Many other artists have responded to the project with a wide range of art practice, which makes a wonderful and diverse show

The gallery also played host to 'Callings', a live performance workshop with Vernon Carter on Saturday 5th April at 2.30pm. The performance was based on bird callings and participants used instruments and found objects to rehearse and perform to the public

 

Hue: 3 Approaches to Colour

The Engine Room Gallery is delighted to exhibit a selection of new work by Lisa Ballard, John Macormac and Kevin Miller and small prints by Tristan Barry. The exhibition opened on Thursday 10th April and we had a fantastic response to the show from all who attended.

Lisa Ballard 'Pink Mountain Tops' £3000

Lisa Ballard uses landscape to explore her obsession with colour and light, in particular the juxtaposition of colours and how they affect each other. Often leaning towards abstraction, Lisa looks through the landscape itself creating powerful images that reflect the temporal and fleeting nature of her experience in that place. Putting great emphasis on her practice, Lisa incorporates painterly brush marks that encourage an organic response to every colour and layer she applies. 

John Macormac 'Billowing' £400

John Macormac’s work has evolved from dealing with an overload of information to more refined and reflective a visual vocabulary of marks, flat blocks of colour, text, tracings, drips and collaged elements. 

Kevin Miller 'Shrinking' £320

Kevin Miller is concerned with notions of materiality. The current work is created first in the frictionless world of digital painting before being laser cut and carefully painted and glued by hand. 

Using drawing as his medium, Tristan Barry explores human impact on the environment. Current concerns are centred on issues relating to boundaries - from the deliberate, man-made stone walls that mark borders in the Northern Irish countryside to the increasing pressures put on town limits. 

The participating artists are part of the Cathedral Studios in Belfast. For more information on the artists and the studios please check out the Cathedral Studios website.

The exhibition continues until Saturday 26th April 2014