Dlightstudios’s Blog

Blue Mountain by Jonathon Hunter

Chrissie by Stephen Loughman

Island by Cora Cummins

Landscape Exhibition at D-light Studios as part of the Five Lamps Arts Festival

Artists featured include; Cora Cummins, Stephen Loughman, Wendy Judge, Anna Rackhard, Jonathan Hunter.

Curated By Alison Pilkington.

The exhibition will open at 7pm on the  23rd of April , and there will also be a concert at 8pm by Lucjan Wesolowski.

This exhibition brings together a group of artists who respond to landscape in its many forms. Landscape and the representation of landscape is steeped in tradition and the artists in this show both embrace and critique traditional representations of landscape. Whilst the work on show is not predominantly painting in Jonathan Hunter’s lush gestural paintings perhaps it could be argued that painting and the material of paint itself will always have an important role in  understanding landscape. Hunter’s paintings conjure up rich arcadian worlds that are disrupted by the immediacy of the material of paint itself.  Cora Cummin’s also responds to an arcadian landscape but it is a troubling one, islands inhabited by solitary towers, mountain top retreats that are inaccessable perhaps suggesting that what we seek in the world is refuge or retreat and this refuge is always just out of reach. Wendy Judge similiarly finds landscape a terrain that that can be both familiar and unsettling. Scaled down models of buildings are situated in large expanses of land. These structures  seen from an aerial viewpoint show us  concrete bunkers, artificial water systems, modernist monuments to a past or perhaps a future that we have yet to experience. How the figure is used in representations of landscape is always crucial even when there is no figure as in Stephen Loughman’s painting Crissie. With loughman’s paintings which are meticulously sourced from film stills or photography there is a sense that the figure is part of the scene, just passing though like an actor on a stage,  never present but nonetheless part of the event unfolding. The figure in Anna Rackards photographs of landscape function almost as an unnecessary distraction from an otherwise picture perfect view of Irish beauty spots. Landscape, in Rackard’s work, forms a backdrop to Irish cultural and social identity.  She makes reference to the work of photographer John Hinde whose idealistic and nostalgic style she deconstructs  to pose questions about the contemporary face of  Irish culture and Identity.

Blackchurch Print Studio Members Show

With over 50 members and running for over 21 years the Black Church Print Studio both pushes the boundaries of what can be considered printmaking and continues a strong tradition of artists exploring  the medium print in all its forms.