Mayo Landscape: Artists View
For Mayo Day 2020 Ballinglen Arts Foundation with Mayo Arts Service, presented Mayo Landscape: Artist View, curated by Nuala Clarke & Úna Forde and coordinated by Breda Mayock.
The Ballinglen Arts Foundation was established in 1992 by Margo Dolan and Peter Maxwell awarding artists time to create artwork in the idyllic village of Ballycastle surrounded by magnificent landscape. Right on the Main Street the buildings hold work spaces for artists, an Art Gallery and the new Museum of Contemporary Art which opens this summer. Each artist who visits leaves one piece of work to our Permanent Collection. This notable collection, as you can see from this exhibition, reflects the world around Ballycastle, a world overlaid by a map of works made by the artists who have been coming to work for 28 years.
Each work selected here poignantly reflects presence and time, cyclical returns, the land, sea and sky. Scroll down and let the paintings guide you on a virtual walk from Shralagagh bog to the West of the village, to Céide Fields and the cliffs, along the coast to the beach at Bunatrahir Bay and visit the Ballinglen studios in the village before heading on out to Downpatrick Head.
Over the years the artwork made here has become a record of the passing of time - presenting evidence of that which remains the same and that which has changed. At the studios, a community of artists come and go laying down overlapping traces in their wake. A visit to Ballycastle is not complete unless we take the road, out to the monolith which is Dún Briste, catching glimpses of it nestled in the landmass. Generations of artists have recorded the power of Downpatrick Head with its architecture of watchfulness and Dún Briste, the broken fort, its distinctive solitary, geometry standing in the wind and the wave, perfectly jagged, unreachable and sublime.
Ballinglen is proud to be supported by The Arts Council, Mayo County Council, Creative Ireland and many donors throughout Ireland, the USA and throughout the World. Ballinglen is a registered Irish Charity and all donations go directly to supporting the great work of the Foundation.
