All is not harmonious in Una Sealy’s Neighbours, the winner of the Ireland-US Council/Irish Arts Review Portraiture Award at the 181st RHA Annual Exhibition, writes Isabella Evangelisti.
Two common over-simplifications frequently appear in discussions on portraiture. The first is that the genre is an outmoded repository of pictures whose main function has been to celebrate the achievements of the powerful in history, and to disseminate their aggrandized images to an impressionable public. The second is that 20th-century challenges to the genre, in the form of photography and, later, avant-garde modernism, have come close to precipitating the end of portraiture’s relevance to contemporary society. These arguments have led to repeated calls for the re-definition of portraiture for the modern age.
Ahead of Dragana Jurisic’s solo show at the RHA in September we republish Stephanie McBride’s examination of the photographer’s 2011 show at the Droichead Arts Centre, studies of urban survival taken during the Celtic Tiger years, revealing Ireland’s struggling society.
Paul Larmour visits the new theatre, which he describes as a boon for the dramatic arts and the most exciting building in Belfast