Bloomsday 2017 at the Olivier Cornet Gallery: 'There's a touch of the artist about old Bloom', a four-day sketching event followed by a group show.
"From day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave and unweave his image". Ulysses, James Joyce.
Ulysses is about the relationship between individuals and the city they inhabit, it deals with memory and meaning, the mundane and the fantastical. The aim of the exhibition is to create a dialogue around these ideas through the personal visions of the artists involved.
‘There's a touch of the artist about old Bloom’ is a visual response to Ulysses through sketching on location in the Parnell Square Cultural Quarter of Dublin. Curated by Marie-Hélène Brohan Delhaye, Olivier Cornet and Jessica Peel-Yates, this four-day sketching event explored the fabric of the James Joyce’s Dublin, real or imagined.
Participating artists were drawn from a number of disciplines (fine art, illustration, architecture, animation, costume and set design as well as graphic design) where drawing and sketching are an important aspect of their work; either as an end in itself, as a way to develop ideas, or as part of their creative process.
The sketching event run from Saturday 10th to Tuesday 13th June in locations connected to Ulysses. Joyce famously declared “If Dublin were ever to be destroyed, it could be rebuilt from the pages of my works.” The focus of the event was the Parnell Square Cultural Quarter, an area which features in many parts of Joyce’s modernist masterpiece.
The event is a celebration of on-location drawing and sketching. Participants were inspired by Joyce and Ulysses to reflect on the relationship between an individual and the city they inhabit. Sketching styles were influenced by the background of the 12 participants who were drawn from a number of communities:
Alice Campbell (graphic artist), Aisling Conroy (visual artist), Aideen Griffin (artist), Balazs Keresztury (architect), Frank Kiely (artist and print maker), Niamh Lunny (costume and set designer), Pat McAfee (stone mason and author), James Moore (artist and illustrator), Mauro Moroni (graphic designer), Mary O’Carroll (draftswoman), LEYHO (visual effects artist), and Nina Ruminska (illustrator).
Official opening of the exhibition:
Bloomsday, Friday 16th of June, 7 pm.
Olivier Cornet Gallery, 3 Great Denmark Street, Dublin 1.
Guest speaker: John McCourt, author and lecturer, University of Macerata (Italy)
The exhibition also features some beautiful sketchbooks in addition to a great collection of very affordable sketches and drawings.
All welcome. The exhibition runs till 25th of June.
There will be also a special event at 2:30pm on Sunday 18th of June with Senator and Joycean expert David Norris reading from Ulysses.
Also on Tuesday 20th of June, 7pm, gallerist and co-curator of the show Olivier Cornet will be in conversation with some of the artists who have participated in the sketching event and whose work is in the show,