05 May 2014

New Season of Exhibitions and a Major Painting Symposium at the MAC, Belfast

The MAC is pleased to announce a new season of exhibitions across the galleries from 9 May as well as preliminary details of a major painting symposium taking place on 21 June.

Richard Gorman : KIN
Exhibition preview 7-9pm Thurs 8 May.  Tall and Upper Galleries.

Richard Gorman has spent the past twenty years refining his vision of, and his fluency, in paint. He has chiselled out a compositional language and tonal spectrum that are his own.

Gorman insists that his paintings mean no more or no less than what they are. To stand before his work and experience the pleasure of shape, line, colour, texture, scale and realise that in that alone may be the essential effect of painting.

For this exhibition Gorman continues this evolutionary refinement with a series of paintings that confirm his position as one of Irelands leading abstract painters.

Born in Dublin in 1946, Richard Gorman was educated in Ireland but has lived and worked in Milan since the 1980s. He has exhibited widely and regularly since the mid-80s, especially in Dublin, London, Milan and Tokyo.


Susan Connolly : Something about Some Thing to do with Paint
Exhibition preview 7-9pm Thurs 8 May. Sunken Gallery.

Susan Connolly will present a series of new works which explore the physical qualities of paint extending our understanding of contemporary painting.

The artist says of her practice "Most of my studio work comes from time spent looking; considering and questioning much of what I see, read or experience in relation to making objects. I think it is a very exciting time to be thinking about painting, with all the rhetoric of ‘death’ within the medium proving sheer nonsense again and again.”

Susan Connolly was born in Dublin, studied at Limerick School of Art and Design (BA, 1994-1998), The University of Ulster at Belfast (MFA, 2000-2002) and The National College of Art and Design (MA, 2011-2013). Recent exhibitions include; Three Degrees of Painting, 2013 ‘Airport for Shadows’ at The Cross Gallery, Dublin, 2011 ‘Constellations’ at Visual, Carlow, 2011 and ‘Connections’ at Red/Rua, Dublin, 2010.


The Place of Painting
Saturday 21 June

The Place of Painting symposium will address the diversity of approaches within contemporary painting practice today and its influences. Speakers will include artists Linder Sterling, Victoria Morton, Kevin Henderson, Alison Pilkington, Susan Connolly, Dougal McKenzie, and art writer Ian Massey.