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.

Scottish Colourists from the Fleming Collection

1 June – 28 September 2019

The F.E. McWilliam Gallery and Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council are delighted to present Scottish Colourists from the Fleming Collection.

This stunning exhibition of landscapes, still-life and portraits created during the first decades of the twentieth century is the first exhibition of Scottish Colourists to be shown in Northern Ireland and provides a unique opportunity to see work by some of Scotland’s most important artists.

Today, the four artists known as the Scottish Colourists – S.J. Peploe, J.D. Fergusson, Leslie Hunter, and F.C.B. Cadell – are acknowledged as one of the most talented, experimental and distinctive groups in twentieth century British art. However they did not emerge as a quartet until relatively late in their careers when their Glasgow dealer staged the first group show in Paris in 1924, turning a loose affiliation of friends bound by common artistic goals into a movement.

A love of France and an immersion in the current trends of French art is a defining characteristic of their development as artists. France unlocked the young Scots’ creativity and emboldened them to explore the frontiers of contemporary art from the emerging Post-Impressionist giants, Cezanne and Van Gogh, to the ‘wild beasts’, known as the Fauves, a group which in 1905 cut loose from representational values to convey an emotional reality through an expressive, often brutish, use of pure colour and line.

Presenting thirty works from the Fleming Collection, complemented by loans from National Museums NI and a private collection, this exhibition charts the Colourists careers from their early experimentalism under the sway of Whistler and Manet via the breakthrough moment of their exposure to the Fauves to their mature works. Examples by precursors and inspirers such as John Lavery, Arthur Melville and Roderic O’Conor are also included.

Dr Riann Coulter, Curator of the F.E. McWilliam Gallery said, ‘This exhibition presents a rare opportunity to see an outstanding collection of work by some of Britain’s most important artists. During the first decades of the twentieth century, the Scottish Colourists adopted the latest trends in French art and used them to create a new way of seeing the Scottish landscape and life in Scotland. We are thrilled to be able to bring this stunning exhibition of important art to Northern Ireland’.

James Knox, Director of the Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation said, ‘It is a huge privilege to bring the first exhibition of the Scottish Colourists ever held in Ireland to the FE McWilliam Gallery and Studio in Banbridge. The four Scottish Colourists were one of the most talented, experimental and distinct groups in 20th century British art – combining beauty with radicalism as masters of portraiture, landscape and still life. Another first for this ground breaking exhibition is their pairing with work by Ireland’s Roderic O’Conor, whose cutting edge, French inspired work anticipated the Scots painters’ achievement. The links with Scotland and Ireland have always been strong and this dazzling show reveals the depth of this cultural connection.’

The Fleming Collection owns the finest collection of Scottish art outside institutions comprising over 600 works from the seventeenth century to the present day. The collection dates back to 1968 when Flemings investment bank, which had been founded by Dundonian, Robert Fleming in 1873, began to acquire Scottish art to hang in its offices worldwide.

The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation was established in 2000 to pursue a programme of cultural diplomacy furthering an understanding and appreciation of Scottish art and creativity through exhibitions, events, publishing and education. Scottish Colourists from the Fleming Collection is part of the Foundation’s ‘museum without walls strategy’ of touring art from the collection.

Details on all FE McWilliam Gallery and Studio activities and exhibitions can be found at www.femcwilliam.com or www.facebook.com/femcwilliamgallery