Running
25 August-1 October
Crawford Art Gallery
Emmett Place, Cork
Opening Hours
Mon-Wed 10am-5pm
Thu 10am-8pm
Fri-Sat 10am-5pm
Sun 11am-4pm
Free
Bodywork
Rachel Ballagh, Elizabeth Cope, Yvonne Condon, Stephen Doyle, Rita Duffy, Debbie Godsell, Sandra Johnston, Eithne Jordan, Dragana Jurišić, Breda Lynch, Brian Maguire, Leanne McDonagh, Eoin McHugh, Nick Miller, Peter Nash, Maïa Nunes, Alice Rekab, Rajinder Singh and Jennifer Trouton.
Over thirty artworks from the National Collection of Crawford Art Gallery and the Irish Museum of Modern Art consider issues around love, familial relationships, gender identity and sexuality, mental and physical health, body agency, marginalisation and prohibition.
Bodywork explores aspects of art making that interrogate how our bodies perform under internal and external forces and through lived experiences. In doing so, the exhibition offers a space to consider our bodies and how they relate to our understanding of body image.
The human body is a complex, fascinating, and wondrous entity which becomes both subject and object for the artist. Our bodies can become either the vessel or the weapon of love, empathy, commodification, or manipulation within the realms of community, family, and self.
Selected from recently acquired artworks from the IMMA and Crawford Art Gallery collections, the exhibition seeks to both platform the featured artists and the collaborative partnership of IMMA and Crawford Art Gallery in their acquisition of new works for the National Collection.
Bodywork highlights the crucial relationships between contemporary art practice and the body. ‘In a way,’ as writer Adrian Stokes (1902-1972) observed, ‘all art is constructed in the body’.
Dawn Williams, curator, comments ‘Bodywork is the act or process of making or repairing bodies and the exhibition considers the body within the artistic process and how the resulting work provides insights on lived experiences whether they be familiar to our own or observations of another’s. Whilst necessarily, the exhibition doesn’t cover all artists that represent the image of the body in their work, it is exciting to see new work acquired for the National Collection through the collaboration of Crawford Art Gallery and IMMA.’
An extensive Learn and Explore programme will accompany the exhibition including artist talks, panel discussions and workshops.
[Image: Dragana Jurišić from Hi, Vis]