Category: CQAF2019 Visual Arts

Double Take showcases original paintings by award-winning artist Dan Ferguson featuring scenes of urban spaces in Northern Ireland.

They invite viewers to look at well-known places with new eyes or take notice of the most overlooked ones, and ultimately encourage them to reflect upon their experiences of urban spaces and how they have singled out particular ones for their importance.

Curated by art consultant Francesca Biondi. Works can be purchased online from Gallery 545, a gallery specialising in contemporary art from Northern Ireland

Opening times: Mon-Fri 8am-5pm, Sat 10am-5pm.
Friday 3 May, 1pm – Dan Ferguson presents his work (free but must be booked by emailing maggie@cqaf.com)

For more information visit: http://www.gallery545.com

This exhibition is kindly sponsored by Clements Coffee.

Opening: Thursday 2 May 7.00pm

Belfast’s historic tiled street signage is immediately familiar to the city’s residents and visitors alike as a representation of the city’s unique character. Originally hand-made with poured clays as white capitals on black tiles during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the signs were first commissioned by the Belfast Corporation for use on major thoroughfares.

The exhibition traces how John McMillan, Emeritus Professor of Graphic Design at Ulster University and a Belfast resident, took the lettering and developed it into a functioning typeface then translated this into a corresponding gaelic typeform that would afford bilingual usage and a shared ownership by our citizens.

Exhibition Launch: Thursday 2 May 6.00pm

“The production of abstract painting has been a thread running throughout my work since the 1960s. I use painting as an evolutionary process, mixing colours directly onto the canvas, incorporating chance and accident, taking a series of calculated risks.

Throughout the process there is an emotional reaction to the painting, it’s nothing more and nothing less. I carry elements of the real world into the work through observations of colours and shapes that I see in the environment but I am not bound by the need to make representational images.” – Ray Duncan

Ray Duncan attended night classes at The Art College studying under John Luke and Terry Flanagan in the 1960s and went onto teach Art and Design in Belfast for over forty years.

He has exhibited his own work locally regularly since the early 70’s. In the 1980’s, with a group of artists, in a response to a lack of local venues he ran a series of ‘House Shows’ in artists’ houses.

His work is held in the Northern Ireland Civil Service Collection and the Northern Ireland Libraries collections.

Exhibition Launch: Thursday 2 May 5.00pm – 8.00pm

The Golden Thread Gallery is delighted to presenting a new solo presentation by the internationally celebrated artist Susan MacWilliam in the Project Space in May.

The Telepaths is an installation of sculpture, video, and photographic work that explores the ideas and imagery related to historical investigations of telepathy and extrasensory perception.

With a fascination in the experimental handmade objects and apparatus used within psychical research studies MacWilliam draws parallels between the exploratory space of the researcher’s laboratory and that of the artist’s studio.

Susan MacWilliam uses diverse forms of reconstruction, portraiture and storytelling to explore personal and social histories. Subjects include psychic mediums, ectoplasm, X- ray vision, telepathy, table tilting, remote viewing and dermo optical perception.

Susan MacWilliam represented Northern Ireland at the 53rd Venice Biennale, 2009. In 2017 she was awarded the EIKON Award (45+) for European women photographers and media artists.

Gallery opening hours: Wednesday 4pm-7pm Thursday 4pm-7pm Friday 12pm-7pm

Opening: Thursday May 9 from 7pm

Neil Shawcross is one of Ireland’s leading artists. This is his powerful & emotional tribute to Belfast’s authors, poets, playwrights and musicians…many of whom he has known personally. Neil has gifted the 36 paintings to the city & people of Belfast, and is being exhibited courtesy of the collection’s owners, Belfast City Council.

The large 7ft canvasses reflect the rich variety and contribution of Belfast writers to Irish & British culture… .from the renowned C.S Lewis, Seamus Heaney, Anna Burns and Van Morrison to lesser-known names such as Thomas Carnduff & Déirdre Ní Grianna.

Sea Holly is a stunning new independent art gallery at the heart of Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter, designed to showcase and support local artists.

In The Clothesline Project Mayer transforms the clothesline, a traditionally feminine object, into a tool designed to engage the community and facilitate a dialogue around women’s experience with violence —including topics such as sexual harassment, domestic violence, and trafficking.

Mayer has implemented El Tendedero/The Clothesline Project in various museums and communities throughout Mexico, South America, and the United States, asking women from different economic classes, ages, and professions to respond to the statement, “As a woman, what I dislike most about my city is…”

Participants write their responses on small pink ballots, which are then hung on a clothesline. The site-specific installation documents the project’s results by using content created through community outreach, inviting visitors to add their voices and experiences to the tendedero, or clothesline.

Mónica Mayer (born March 16, 1954) is a feminist Mexican artist, activist and art critic whose work includes performance, digital graphics, drawing, photography and art theory.