Recently appointed Director of the National Gallery of Ireland, Sean Rainbird, reinvented the exhibition programme at the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart; Nicola Gordon Bowe asks him about his plans for the State Collection while the NGI is undergoing refurbishment.
My first sighting of the exotically surnamed new Director of the National Gallery of Ireland was on YouTube where, in his previous role as Director of the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, he can be found performing ‘The Cranko’. Beguilingly celebrating both that gallery’s architectural extension by James Stirling as well as the town’s celebrations for John Cranko (acclaimed ballet director and choreographer) of the Stuttgart Ballet, he leads the viewer in impeccable German towards a Franz Marc painting, an early 20th-century masterpiece which represents one of his fields of art historical expertise. As if by magic, both the picture frame he holds up and his scarf, jacket and the football he twirls are transformed from white into the ‘Dance the Cranko’ signature black and white houndstooth design as he twists and turns through the Stirling Wing. This choreographed ritual involves wielding the sort of hat favoured by artists as diverse as David Hockney and Joseph Beuys.
Stephanie McBride examines the startling imagery of Richard Mosse who has made infrared film his signature medium
From a rural setting in County Antrim, Basil Blackshaw has contributed a new chapter to the story of Irish art, writes Brian Fallon as the retrospective at the F E McWilliam Gallery marking Blackshaw’s 80th birthday continues.
Frederick O’Dwyer follows the evidence to unearth the design sources for Dublin Airport’s original terminal at Collinstown