Breathe
A solo exhibition of drawings and animations by David Begley
Tuesday 4 August – Saturday 5 September 2015
Opening Reception
You are invited to an opening reception on Saturday 1 August at 4pm
with guest speaker artist Anita Groener (download opening speech below).
Artist Talk
Artist David Begley will present a talk on his work on Saturday 29 August at 2pm.
All welcome to attend.
Wexford Arts Centre is delighted to host a solo exhibition of drawings and animations by Wexford based artist David Begley. Begley’s work steps outside the realm of the ordinary and takes us into a dreamlike and imaginative new world.
Intuitive, impulsive and elemental; Begley has created another time and place within his atmospheric charcoal drawings. This body of work combines surreal and ever-changing worlds with strange lands, people and beasts; creating a darkly contemplative, evocative environment where figures transform through form and contrast. Begley’s process of making his own charcoal from driftwood, the act of dirtying the paper, adding and removing charcoal, obscuring and revealing the drawings, then pushing this forward again and letting it grow into something new make his drawings feel natural and self creating. What began as drawing naturally developed to become the animated pieces Breathe, Seed and Be; and thus become somewhat of a documentation of his drawing process. There is a narrative element to his animation work; however, it progresses from the act of drawing.
From one perspective the animations are created through the destruction of these drawings, but in another sense they cause his images to exist in a new and more permanent form, with each stage creating both a resolved and a potential image. Images in his animations tread the line between the comfort of a childhood story-book and the mysteriously abstract, all while moving through themes such as birth, death and regeneration. Ghostly images merge in a hypnotic way, creating a dreamlike world for the viewer to step into. Sound is integral to the process, and Begley has created this through personally composed piano pieces and field recordings. He describes his investigation and collection of sound, citing metal sinks and the hiss of moving sand along the shoreline. These recordings are made at the same time but in a different space to the drawings, with one feeding and influencing the other. Finally, time is a crucial element of this work as the transformation of still drawings to a moving form challenges our perception of how time passes.
Recent solo exhibitions include Breathe, Linenhall Arts Centre, Mayo (2015), Drawings and Paintings, Presentation Centre, Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford (2013), and Amke Tiem, Olivier Cornet Gallery, Dublin (2012). Recent group exhibitions include Drawing 2015, Oriel Myrddin, Wales; Homeland, Damer House, Roscrea, Tipperary,DAS2015, Belfast (2015), the 185th’/184th Annual Exhibition, RHA, Dublin (2015, 2014), Irish Wave 2013, Beijing, Shanghai (2013), and Eigse, Visual, Carlow (2015, 2014, 2013, 2012). David was awarded The Artists Film Award at In Motion, Stiwdio Maelor, Wales (2015) an Artlinks Bursary in 2014 and the Tyrone Guthrie Bursary Award by Wexford County Council in 2012. His work can be found in the collections of AXA, The Contemporary Irish Art Society, The EPA, OPW, INTO and Wexford County Council. David is a featured artist at The Drawing Suite.
Breathe will run in the upper and lower galleries of Wexford Arts Centre from Tuesday 4 August to Saturday 5 September, and gallery hours are Monday to Saturday, from 10am-5pm. For further information on the artist or exhibition please contact Catherine Bowe, Visual Arts Manager on +353 (0)53 9123764 or email catherine@wexfordartscentre.ie.
Wexford Arts Centre acknowledges the ongoing support of the Arts Council of Ireland and Wexford County Council.
anitagroener_openingtalk.pdf
Download File
