Art making will be turned into child's play in Northern Ireland next week as part of an initiative aimed at popularising visual arts. Six arts centres in the North are taking part in the second annual UK-wide National Gallery Week which starts today. Children and young people are being targeted for this year's event with a range of hands-on activities. More than 300 galleries throughout the UK are taking part in the week, which is promoted by the National Association for Gallery Education.
London-based advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather has produced posters to promote the event, featuring photographs by Howard Winter. Besides a homage to Damien Hirst, the posters feature a little girl standing giggling next to a Venus de Milo whose arms she has chopped off and a boy holding a fractured portrait inspired by Picasso.
The Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast is hosting cross-community youth workshops, exhibitions and gallery talks in conjunction with its current exhibition by Patrick O'Reilly, The Marching Hare.
Some 500 eight-to 14-year-olds from Belfast City Council's summer scheme are taking part in the workshops which began in late June and will culminate in a mini-exhibition during National Gallery Week.
Under the guidance of local artists Ben Allen and Jim Russell, the youth groups have been transforming recycled materials into artwork inspired by O'Reilly's work which includes animated sculptures and huge clockwork toys. Parents and youth leaders will be invited to the mini-exhibition's opening next Thursday. "The workshops really go well with Patrick O'Reilly's exhibition because it's playful and it's childlike without being childish," says the gallery's director, Hugh Mulholland. "His work is very complicated and complex without being intimidating and a lot of it is interactive so the kids can relate to it."
The Ulster Museum in Belfast's Botanic Gardens will have dinosaur art activities for children and an exhibition of photographs by David Gepp called Dinosaurs: A New Genera- tion: The Narrow Road To The Deep North.
The Old Museum Arts Centre in Belfast is hosting a storytelling evening and a talk by local historian Fred Keatley on Thursday. This will accompany an exhibition of photographs taken by children from west Belfast in conjunction with photographic group Belfast Exposed.
The Irish Linen Centre and Lisburn Museum is offering a two-for-one admission price for guided tours on its exhibition From Flax To Fabric, A History Of Linen, as well as free novelty gifts to children on the tours. The other Gallery Week galleries include the Clotworthy Arts Centre in Co Antrim and the Flowerfield Arts Centre in Portstewart, Co Derry.
