WHAT happens when artistic and business communities work together can be mighty fine. This Friday June 22 at Lucky Lane on Catherine Street, the 7pm launch of a weekend pop up exhibition by Contact Studios’ Carl Doran is the first in a series of episodic shows by Contact artists.
The business stakeholders, Mark Sheehan and Dave Irwin of Lucky Lane who are musicians as much as they are entrepreneurial, are giving indoor space over to the artists free of charge.
Works are mounted on a proper gallery wall.
Ger Callanan of The Glen Tavern is sponsoring the Friday opening nights with beer. The Bigger Picture Framing Service, O’Connell Street will offer a discounted deal on works bought that require framing.
Back to the art of art.
Photo: Brendan Gleeson
“This ‘Gallery Interlude’ show is of six new paintings in oil on canvas and three are charcoal. The majority have been made by me over the past six months since I started with Wickham Street Studios,” Carl Doran tells us. “The main thrust to this Contact Studios project to make it public that we are still in search of a place. [For the dozen or so artists displaced by a HSE regional audit from Mulgrave Street, to make their individual works].
“Gallery Interlude is in some ways us telling Limerick Council that the offer to provide hours of pubic service in the art domain is still there.”
While operating from an independent unit in the grounds of St Joseph’s Hospital over 20 years in a mutually beneficial agreement, the professional artists had traded work hours with mental health groups in various capacities around town to underwrite their residency at Mulgrave Street.
Doran’s own works are represented in Limerick City Gallery of Art, in UL and this year he will be inducted into the National Self-Portrait collection at Bourn Vincent Gallery.
His weekend show is inspired by the antics of the feline species, as with his illustrated book series.
At Lucky Lane, this solo show opens Friday 22 from 7pm-9pm and Saturday 23, 11am-3pm only. Thereafter, every six weeks or so.
