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2 August - 1 September 2018

Bríd Higgins Ní Chinnéide

The human figure features in most of Brid’s work, whether in portraiture, studies of the nude, or populated landscapes and interiors. In this exhibition, Brid extends her study of the figure and investigates how bodily movement can be portrayed in paint. She is inspired by the perpetual motion that we enact during a lifetime, and how it can be seen in terms of a journey, with a direction, a purpose and an endpoint. 

Bríd paints in oils. In these works she explores new ways in which to render motion, using this traditional, static medium. She often works from life, and she uses her own photography, as well as the early motion photography of Eadweard Muybridge and Ettienne-Jules Marey as references.

John Behan

Motion and movement are at the centre of the work of sculptor John Behan for almost 60 years. Into the uncompromising stillness of bronze and stone he imparts immediacy of motion, of tension. His pieces are animated by the moment that came before and the moment that will follow after. His work also travels through time, bringing his subjects such as Irish mythology, political and social history of the centuries into animated perspective for us, here and now. Famine ships sail into view, ancient bulls lower their heads to charge , James Connolly topples executed from his chair in the prison courtyard.

A Moving Journey - Bríd Higgins Ní Chinnéide /Click on Thumnails for lightbox viewing

A Moving Journey - John Behan /Click on Thumnails for lightbox viewing

Introduction 

by Susan O'Keeffe, Director of Yeats Society, Sligo

We are always fascinated by the idea of journey, sometimes afraid, anxious, but always with a sense of anticipation – for the journey and for the end of the journey.
This work magnifies and intensifies the notion of journey in so many different ways – ways I certainly had not thought about before.
The images of a man pushing a cart, swans wheeling, women waltzing, men running, wrestling, leaping
The sense of human motion captured in many different ways
The individual suspended frames of time in Brid’s work, so that we too are suspended, caught, waiting for the splash, yet able now to see every tiny move that makes the splash happen, that created the movement, the journey, the collision of forces at work in that tiny space and time that create the journey
Then the motion of wings beating, the pushing of air, the effort of the action to create a different journey
And the stillness of the bronze, causing us to pause, to wait – knowing that this is a fragment of journey all solid – before it moves again
Some of these tiny actions are over in a heartbeat, yet, here, with this work we stop to appreciate, to contemplate,
to remember the effort, the input, the creation of the journey, moving always, sometimes with clear direction, sometimes with none, sometimes with a circular motion in its own rhythm
not journey as a matter of miles and time zones, but journeys in individual nano seconds.
And we see in the many different presentations here
- the journey of the artists through the work,
- the journey in conceiving of the work, 
- the physical sending of the work to this space
- the journey to this place,
- the journey each of us has made to be here this evening

The journey we will make with the work, each journey unique to the viewer.

All tied to the constant journey of life that we all make together, apart, sometimes the road is crowded, sometimes, empty,
Sometimes lonely, sorrowful, joyful. 
All that sense is caught up here in this room in a kind of magical whirl of journeys for us to savour and to contemplate
Two quite different artists converging with their styles, inspiration and experience to share something of the pain and the exhilaration of journey
And tonight we are sharing IN the journey, in these fragments of journeys that Brid and John have created and shared – and we will create a new journey together while we do so.