MUSIC October 4th – 22nd 2016
A music-themed exhibition will open at the Lavit Gallery on Tuesday, October 4th. Music, like visual art, is a rich and varied art form which has the power to move us emotionally. Music appears as a subject in visual art down through the ages in the ancient murals of Pompeii, Renaissance paintings of musicians and their musical instruments through to Kandinsky’s more abstract interpretations of music. This exhibition will feature the work of Katherine Boucher Beug, Elizabeth Charleson, James English, Tim Goulding, Bob Quinn, Vivienne Roche, Brian Smyth, Trish Taylor Thompson, Conor Walton and David West. All of the artists take different approaches to the subject with a variety of different types of music referenced.
Three of the artists live within both the art and music worlds. Elizabeth Charleson, a former Cork Arts Society Student of the Year Award winner is also a classical violinist and past member of the RTE Vanburgh Quartet. Talking about her abstract paintings, she compares the act of painting to the subconscious flowing from one note to the next in improvised music and discusses the stops and starts within her painting, created by her mark-making.
Tim Goulding is another artist who paints abstractly, using forms which seem to suggest elements of musical instruments. A renowned visual artist and member of Aosdana, Goulding is also a member of Dr Strangely Strange, the ‘psychedelic lounge’ band – he recently played at this year’s Electric Picnic and is due to play at The Kino in Cork on October 9th.
A fine art Graduate from Limerick School of Art and Design, Trish Taylor Thompson will also be known to radio listeners as a presenter on RTE Lyric FM. Botanical subject matter is often the focus of Taylor Thompson’s paintings. In her works to be exhibited here, she focuses on the cherry blossom which she uses to “delicately capture the essence of the tragic love story of Madame Butterfly from Puccini’s opera of the same name.”
Other artists, while not musicians themselves, show their love and appreciation of the artform. Katherine Boucher Beug’s playful and humorous series of painted paper pieces are inspired by a visit to a Jazz bar last winter and depicts the eccentricity of musicians lost in the art of creating music. The figure also appears in the work of Conor Walton, but in a very different manner as he is inspired by music and mythology in this painting – Siren.
Like Beug, Bob Quinn focuses on musicians at work in his bronze piece – Vivaldi which shows the physical movement of the musicians and the interaction between members of this quintet. The second sculptor in this show is Cork artist Vivienne Roche who returns to a recurring motif in her work – the bell. Known for her large-scale public sculptures, this is a great opportunity to acquire some of this artist’s less often seen small-scale pieces.
Still-lifes are focused on by the artists James English, Brian Smyth and David West with the mandolin, a bugle, castanets and maracas all making an appearance. While some of these works have a traditional feel, there is also a contemporary twist, with Smyth’s addition of a contemporary toy to an otherwise very classical subject, English’s inclusion of a sketch of a country singer – The Houston Kid pasted to the wall within his painting , and the colour of David West’s pieces adding a playfulness that is characteristic of a lot of his work.
Another visual artist Eileen Healy will provide music on the night of the preview, while Evelyn Grant, Cork Pops Orchestra and from RTE Lyric FM’s Weekend Drive will say a few words at 6pm. The exhibition continues until October 22nd.