In our series on Irish artists abroad, John Mulcahy recalls Andrew Nicholl’s adventures as teacher of landscape painting in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
In the month of July 1848, three of us left Colombo in a hired palankeen carriage, to proceed to Kandy where we had been invited to accompany the Colonial Secretary on one of his official tours through the interior of the island. The scenery is of a beautiful sylvan character, the banks of the Kalany Ganga being lined with alternate rows of jack and teak trees planted under the direction of Sir Edward Barnes. Passing native gardens of citron, pomegranate, clove, orange and lime trees, with the many-coloured convolvulus-formed flowers hanging in garlands from their branches, cultivated fields of paddy (as the rice is termed here) appear in all stages from the tender blade to the ripening ears, intermingled with cocoa and areka palms, while the gliding river is seen through their tall, graceful stems, sparkling in the gorgeous light of the tropical sun.
Northern Ireland: 30 Years of Photography at Belfast Exposed and the MAC this summer highlights the medium as a highly-charged, critical artform that constantly questions its own role in the construction of memories, writes Stephanie McBride
As a building commissioned by a State entity charged with the stewardship of a precarious energy resource, Bord Gáis Network Services Centre warrants some reflection on its relevance as a benchmark and path-finder, writes Seán O’Laoire