Penumbra

New exhibition shines a light on female artists

The F.E. McWilliam Gallery and Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council are delighted to present Penumbra, an exciting exhibition of contemporary painting on show at the Banbridge arts venue from 15 February – 30 May 2020.

Featuring the work of eight artists: Sinéad Aldridge, Hannah Casey-Brogan, Susan Connolly, Sarah Dwyer, Fiona Finnegan, Alison Pilkington, Yasmine Robinson, Louise Wallace, and co-curated by Dr Riann Coulter of the F.E. McWilliam Gallery and Dr Louise Wallace of Ulster University, Penumbra brings together artists who are connected by their gender, their associations with the island of Ireland and their commitment to testing the limits of painting.

Penumbra can be understood in relation to a number of historical and contemporary exhibitions of Irish female artists, including most recently, Elliptical Affinities: Irish Women Artists and the Politics of the Body 1984 to the Present, at our cross-border partner, Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda. Like its predecessors, Penumbra, seeks to address the historical under-representation of women artists in museums and galleries and to shine a light on the wealth of talented contemporary female painters from Ireland and Northern Ireland.

The historical tendency for women artists to be overshadowed is particularly surprising in Ireland where pioneering female painters including Mainie Jellett, Evie Hone, Mary Swanzy and Norah McGuinness, were at the forefront of the avant-garde who introduced international modernism to Irish audiences. Today, despite the majority of art students being female, women artists are still under-represented in both the collections and exhibition schedules of many museums and galleries.

Although the artists in Penumbra are united by their gender, their dedication to painting in its broadest sense and their varied connections to Ireland and Northern Ireland are also significant points of connection. Whether they live here, or elsewhere, each artist and their work has been shaped by their individual relationships to place. Ultimately, these artists share a commitment to exploring and expanding the definitions of painting and to engaging in the struggle to create work that is unique, relevant and meaningful.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by Dr Cherie Driver, Ulster University.

A seminar on the themes explored in the exhibition will be held in the gallery on Friday 3 April 2020 from  1.00 -4.30pm.

Admission to the exhibition is free. For further information and opening times go to femcwilliam.com, www.facebook.com/femcwilliamgallery or T: 028 4062 3322.

F.E. McWilliam Gallery launch Linen Lab exhibition

Saturday 12 October – 9 November 

The F.E. McWilliam Gallery & Studio and Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council are delighted to present Linen Lab, a dynamic new exhibition which is the result of a year-long creative collaboration between eight artists – Rachel Fitzpatrick, Deborah Malcomson, Lyndsey McDougall, Robert Peters, Jill Phillips, Heather Richardson, Archibald Godts and Theresa Bastek of Studio Plastique and 400 young people from 13 local schools.

Linen Lab, which runs at the Banbridge arts venue from 12 October to 9 November 2019, is part of a large-scale engagement programme called Connected, jointly funded by the Council and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s Local Government Challenge Fund. This fund has offered local authorities the opportunity to increase investment in the arts by offering match funding of up to £1.5 million across Northern Ireland.

The Linen Lab exhibition documents the creative interactions between the artists and the young participants and presents new work developed during the project. Each artist’s distinct thematic and aesthetic concerns have emerged and developed to produce an exhibition that reveals the versatility of linen as a material, and reminds us of the significance of linen in our families, homes and industrial past.

The story of linen and Banbridge are intertwined, as it was once one of the main linen producing towns in Northern Ireland. At the height of the linen industry, there were some twenty mills associated with different processes in the production of linen dotted along the Bann Valley from Katesbridge to Gilford. Banbridge is the only town in Ireland that still produces Irish double-damask linen, under the auspices of Thomas Ferguson Irish Linen, which was established in 1854. Today, with a new focus on sustainability and biodegradable materials, linen and flax are once again in the spotlight and are being celebrated through the work of Linen Biennale NI.

The Linen Lab exhibition is a celebration of the many creative collaborations that took place over the course of the project and would not have been possible without the enthusiasm and curiosity of all the young people, artists and teachers who engaged in the project along with the support of the project partners: Thomas Ferguson Irish Linen, Banbridge and McConville’s Flax Mill, Dromore and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

Community Arts Development Officer and project lead, Louise Rice, said ‘Collaboration and engagement is at the heart of the Linen Lab project. We are all delighted to have had the opportunity to establish such positive working relationships and look forward to developing and widening further connections with the community in the future. The Local Government Challenge Fund has given three of our borough’s cultural venues a fantastic opportunity to develop innovative creative programmes that help sustain collaborative partnerships between artists and local residents’.

Linen Lab runs at the F.E. McWilliam Gallery & Studio until Saturday 9th November.

Admission is free.

For further information go to femcwilliam.com.