IT'S Late Night Art this Thursday evening when most of the city's art galleries are open late. If it's a nice night you can see the city in a different way by walking through the streets and alleyways in search of art, mostly in the city centre. If you're not sure where to go, find one gallery and grab an art map.
If you want to marvel at the way the photographer's art has changed, the Alain Le Garsmeur retrospective at Belfast Exposed Gallery is a good place to start. Le Garsmeur lives and works in the North of Ireland and the exhibition focuses on over 200 images of various sizes from the 1970s and 80s.
From 1970 he was freelancing for many major newspapers and magazines, such as National Geographic, Newsweek, the Observer and the Independent. He covered many subjects around the world and in viewing the exhibition of his photos through the years you cannot help acknowledge that the art form has changed beyond recognition.
Belfast Exposed also runs two week-long junior photography summer schemes for ages 5 to 11 and 12 to 17. Contact them for more details.
Gary Shaw is on show at the Fenderesky Gallery, continuing his obsessional abstract watercolours, some two metres by two metres. The contemplative eye can find rest in gazing at them as if space itself opens up around them. The smaller rectangular pieces, meanwhile, highlight his lifetime obsession with colour and pattern.
Upstairs is a group show which includes Dan Shipsides and Graham Gingles and features small wall sculptures which jump out of the gallery walls, disrupting our thought processes.
The Cúlturlann's Gerard Dillon Gallery hosts a Tomas Monteiro exhibition. Ceramics are his core material but he also uses performance, installation, sculpture and mould-making to try and make sense of his experience as a young queer artist.
Fenderesky Gallery, 31 North Street, is open Friday and Saturday 3pm to 6pm and by appointment.
The Golden Thread Gallery has some July family art workshops and adult and teen workshops free, but booking is required. Its new exhibition, The New Dawn Fades by Clare Langan, opens on Saturday, July 8 at 1pm. The artist is showing for the first time in Ireland and the information suggests it might be a good one to bring any climate activists you might have in your summer schemes.
The Golden Thread Gallery, 84-94 Great Patrick Street, is open 11am to 5pm Tuesday to Friday and Saturday 11am to 4pm.
The Cúlturlann's Gerard Dillon Gallery hosts a Tomas Monteiro exhibition. Ceramics are his core material but he also uses performance, installation, sculpture and mould-making to try and make sense of his experience as a young queer artist. Upstairs, Lane Shipsey's first solo show, Homing, offers a photographic assemblage of eclectic images taken in Ireland and Britain. The considered formation of images will call to those who have ever found themselves away from the place they call home and invite them to reflect on the often difficult relationship they have with it.
The Ulster Museum as always is a great visit over the summer months and if you have not yet seen the Array Collective's Turner Prize winner it will cause lots of conversation – another great place to bring a summer scheme to. The Array crew are currently on a residency in the Irish Museum of Modern Art as their art star continues to rise.
So maybe see you out and about at Late NIght Art.
