STRIKING IMAGES of a fox that starved to death in a tree and portraits of the artist as Don Quixote are among four decades of work by Brian Bourke unveiled yesterday for the annual Galway Arts Festival.
The fox had climbed the tree to escape the flooding Shannon waters, the artist explained yesterday. “It was near Banagher, in Co Offaly. Sometimes foxes are shot and their bodies put up a tree as a warning, but this one hadn’t been. And so I took some sketches.”
A “pure force” was how broadcaster and film-maker Lelia Doolan described Bourke at yesterday’s opening of his work.
His series of diptychs, triptychs, quadriptych, oils and sketches have been mounted in the arts festival’s borrowed Fairgreen gallery, along with work by US video artist Bill Viola, US director and producer Spike Jonze and printmaker Lynne O’Loughlin.
Bourke’s artistic genius “revives the spirits” and reflects “ribaldry, eroticism, sensual beauty and benevolence”, Doolan said.
She paid tribute to arts festival director Paul Fahy and his team for transforming a former retail space near Fairgreen for the exhibitions, and appealed to Galway City Council to acquire the property as an art gallery for the city before “people not associated with art” moved in.
Brian Bourke has been described as one of the most significant artists working in Ireland, with a range of painting, drawing and sculpture over four decades reflecting an affinity for his subject and a marked sense of humour.
Born in Dublin in 1936, Bourke studied at the National College of Art Design in Dublin and St Martin’s College of Art in London. He represented Ireland at the Paris Biennale and the Lugano Exhibition of Graphics, both in 1965.
He won the Arts Council portrait competition in 1965, the Munster and Leinster Bank competition in 1966, and first prize in the Irish Exhibition of Living Art competition in 1967. Other plaudits have included the O’Malley Award from the Irish-American Cultural Institute in 1993. His work hangs in many prestigious collections and galleries in Europe.
The festival’s extensive visual art dimension includes the Seóda group sculpture exhibition at the Kenny Gallery, work by Alice Maher at the Galway Arts Centre, original lithographs by Henri Matisse, and group work by Engage Studios of Galway and the Graphic Studio Dublin fine art printmakers.
The Hofesh Shechter Dance Company, Druid Theatre, the Bristol Old Vic, New York Theatre Workshop, National Theatre of Scotland and theatre and opera director, Sir Peter Hall have been billed by organisers as highlights of the two-week event, which will be opened by Minister for Tourism Mary Hanafin this evening.
