SIRIUS ARTS CENTRE Presents
OPEN HOUSE 3
A unique group exhibition
Opening THURSDAY 4 February 7:00pm
Special Guest Opening Speaker Mayor of Cobh Paddy Whitty
Exhibition continues until Sunday 28 February
Sirius Arts Centre presents Open House Three a unique group exhibition that showcases the wide range of visual art work that being created in Cork City and County. The exhibition is an open call that was put out to all artists living and working in the Cork Area over the age of 18 to illustrate the vast range of creative energy happening in Cork County and to address the limited exhibition space available to emerging artists.
The idea for this Open House grew from a presentation made in Łodz, Poland of the Homeless Gallery (Galeria Bezdomna http://www.galeriabezdomna.art.pl), a spontaneously created photographic exhibition begun in 2002. The idea of the Homeless Gallery is to make an exhibition space available to everyone. In Poland, artists were told a day and a time to show up to hang their work and once hung, the exhibition runs for as short as a day or two to sometimes as long as a week (for instance where a building is undergoing redevelopment). The initial Homeless Gallery was organised in the Former Merchants Guild House in Warszawa in May 2002, followed by the second Homeless Gallery in the Gdansk shipyards.
Unlike these Homeless Galleries – Sirius Arts Centre doesn’t have the vastness of space for such an exhibition, but we thought the idea was worth a try, in a somewhat edited format. This is our third year of running OPEN HOUSE and we are constantly surprised at the wide range of work submitted for exhibition.
Sirius Arts Centre made a call out in December, using our mailing list and email lists to artists either living in or originally from the Cork Area. We opened the submissions to any 2D visual art piece that was ready to hang on the wall and not bigger than 75cm squared. We had to take advanced bookings - again due to our limited space - allowing only those artists who took the time to arrange an appointment for dropping off their work to participate.
The exhibition illustrates once again to us the huge need for more exhibition space in the Cork region which is, of course, the result of the incredible amount of artists working in wall based media alone!
The presentation of this exhibition is very casual, Open House is not a “formal” exhibition in the traditional sense of the word. Instead, it is evidence of the huge energy, variety and talents existing in the area and the creativity that abounds in our community.
Exhibition runs until Sunday 28 February – for more information contact Sirius at 021 481 3790 or via email at cobharts@iol.ie
