Watching the Irish Echo Arts and Culture awards on Friday night and Saturday morning (they concluded at 2:45am local time) I was inspired by the young women in Chicago, Megan Derrig, who was using traditional Irish music in lockdown with her dementia patients to connect them with their ancestral home.

I also was taken with the the artist Elisa Jensen who spent her time in New York during lockdown looking out the window and painting what she saw.

I was also struck by the well-established artist Rodney Dickson from Co Down originally who said he had not made any more work during lockdown as he had already been working at capacity and everyone else he knew was the same.

What he forgot in his privilege of being a full-time artist was that many creative people do not have the time or money to do devote all their time to the practice. Lockdown, therefore, has given thousands of people an opportunity to turn to their own creativity in a different way.  

LOCKDOWN: Untitled (2015) by Down artist in New York Rodney Dickson.
3Gallery

LOCKDOWN: Untitled (2015) by Down artist in New York Rodney Dickson.

As I watched these Irish Americans, I saw a longing in their eyes as they spoke of ‘home’,  feeling the distance more than ever with the pandemic ban on flights. Their sense of loss confirmed for me my decision in the early 90’s  not to stay in the States. Yet I sometimes wonder what would have become of me if I had have stayed. 


Onto contemporary Belfast. The Duncairn releases it’s new art class offering this week with an interesting mix of classes. Intercomm have announced there will be a new pilot seasonal artisan market in the Waterworks.

When I worked in North Belfast the potential of this park was obvious so it’s great to see this new step being taken.

What if you want to take your creative expression a bit further? If there was one road map to success as an artist, it would quickly become obsolete as everyone would just try and take it.

However if your work gets selected for specific exhibitions, it’s like a stamp of approval to the outside world and this time of the year a lot of the submissions take place. There is usually a cost so you need to pick wisely. The Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin are now open for their 161st  submission for their annual exhibition.

They told me around 10 per cent of their submissions come from Northern Ireland. The Gallery itself is a great Celtic Tiger contemporary building. The first stage of selection is via online application and at the second stage art is handed in for a view by the selection committee. If you are selected, the exhibition is currently planned to open in September .

The Royal Academy in London annual exhibition is the world's largest open submission show and has been running since 1769.  This year, Yinka Shonibare RA is coordinating the show and will focus on the theme ‘exploring magic’ to celebrate the joy of making art. Yinka is a British-Nigerian artist whose work explores cultural identify, colonialism  and post-colonialism.

He also plans to include some work that has not been made in a ‘Western tradition’. Shonibare said ‘Reclaiming Magic’ is an exhibition which seeks a return to the visceral aspects of art-making. It will transcend the Western canon which formed the foundations of the Royal Academy and Western Art history’s point of reference. "The exhibition," he says, "will be a celebration of the transformative powers of the magical in art, a return to the ritualistic and sheer joy of art making” Entries are now open and the submission deadline is 24 May. This is a great opportunity if your art does not fit the mainstream Western model , i.e. hyper-realistic. There are some great videos on photographing your work and making your submission on their main website, if you are not sure how to proceed.


PRESTIGIOUS PLATFORM: The RHA has issued call for applications to show at this year's exhibition.
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PRESTIGIOUS PLATFORM: The RHA has issued call for applications to show at this year's exhibition.

Most commercial art galleries will open on 30 April with non-essential retail. It was nice to see Declan Byrne being named as one of the artists whose work was recently purchased om the €1m unprecedented spend for the National Art Collection of Ireland. Other names I recognised on this purchasing round were Michael Hanna, Amanda Coogan, Jennifer Trouton, Rita Dufy, Sandra Johnston, Dermot Seymour and Declan’s collaborator Alastair Maclennan.  I featured Declan’s work earlier in the year he’s a non-verbal artist. Just imagine what other creativity is out there that would flourish if properly supporter.

How is my campaign for assisted studios going? Well I found out that in England some of the assisted studios that exist do so with Council funding, particularly in term of adults with learning difficulties. Here, our Councils are not that ‘super’ and as such the funds instead go to the Health Trust. If anyone reading this has an influence over this situation, I’d be delighted to share what I’ve discovered.

My lobby recently brought me to insist that assisted studios are included in the Visual Arts forum plan supported by Belfast City Council. To which a privileged, ablest artist retorted, "Yes it would be good to give a couple of artists a job." Not considering artists with learning difficulties as artists in their own right! We still have a way to go.

In terms of online cultural wellbeing for Bealtaine, there is a great list of activities in the weekly highlights of the department of  the Irish Government department of Tourism, Culture, Arts Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. 

The British Council are launching the Creative Communities Learning Lab on 28  April  a dynamic and accessible online learning hub for creative and cultural professional all free, the content has been developed between communities in South East Asia and the UK. Topics include new ways to monetise creative work and strategies as well as stories of resilience and creative adaptations, we could all do with a bit of that.
 
Love and light, Bronagh.