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FISH, FLESH AND FOWL

 

 

DERMOT SEYMOUR RETROSPECTIVE

 

 

15th December 2011 – 4th February 2012

 

 

Curated by Jim Smyth

 

 

Dermot Seymour was born in Belfast in 1956.  He studied at the University of Ulster and is a member of Aosdona. He has exhibited widely in Europe and the USA.

 

 

Writing on Dermot Seymour’s paintings, Seamus Heaney remarked that the works are never obvious, nor do they ‘invite questions nor repel them’.  Yet a characteristic of these paintings is the immediate effect they have on the viewer confronting a world turned upside down where animals, still against sulphurous skies, coolly observe the twisted world of humanity.  Moral and political judgements do not figure but the viewer is left in no doubt that something has gone drastically wrong, somewhere. If judgement is past it is by the very presence of the  bestiary that teems through the paintings : cattle reduced to units of consumption, road kill, birds, hares and seals  stricken in an alien landscape, knowing yet helpless.

 

More recently Seymour has produced a series of portraits of both animals and humans – if humanity were to be criteria the latter might well come off worse.

 

Seymour’s paintings, both baffling and insightful, present a unique commentary on the complexities of recent Irish history and the contradictions of a rapidly changing society.

 

 

The exhibition includes works from 1979-2012, with a selection of large works from the

 

period prior to 2000 alongside a number of smaller works from 2000 onwards. Broadly

 

speaking there are four distinct phases in the evolution of Seymour’s work, all of which

 

will be represented in this exhibition:

 

 

• Works prior to 1980 which are inspired by the urban desolation and orange culture

   

of Belfast’s Shankill Road where he grew up.

 

• Paintings produced in the 1980s when Belfast was the cockpit of the ‘Troubles’.

   

• The period from the late 1980s onwards when Seymour moved to the West of

   

Ireland. These works offer a unique slant on the landscape of the West and the interrelationship between man, beast and nature. 

 

• After 2000 the artist’s work embodies a continued interest in landscape and the

   

collisions between humans and animals as well as a well received excursion into

 

portraiture where earlier themes and concerns become distilled and focused.

 

 

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated publication with essay by Paul

 

Muldoon and poem by Dermot Healy.

 

 

 

Jim Smyth

 

 

Golden Thread Gallery

 

Great Patrick St 

 

Belfast

 

 BT1 2LU

 

0044 (0)2890330920

 

info@gtgallery.co.uk

 

www.goldenthreadgallery.co.uk

 

 

TOURING: Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast - Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris - Solstice Arts Centre, Navan - Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin - West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen - Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny.

 

January 2012 will mark Golden Thread Gallery’s seventh consecutive year of participation at London Art Fair, once again exhibiting contemporary works from Northern Ireland in the innovative Art Projects section of the fair. With an unusual selection of performative drawing, sculpture, painting and wall drawing, Golden Thread Gallery is focusing on three of Belfast’s most exciting emerging artists, exhibiting works by Jenny Keane, Miguel Martin and Keith Winter.  New works by London-based Northern Irish artist Darren Murray will also be exhibited, following from his success with the gallery at London Art Fair 2011.