Art Tour 2013

This year we visited the new Luan Gallery in Athlone and Clonmacnoise for our tour. We had an enjoyable day out, and hopefully learned lots about exhibiting art and Early Christian Ireland.

The Luan Gallery was opened in November and is the first dedicated visual arts space in the Midlands. All the work on display at the moment is Midlands based, which made it very relevant for a Midlands school. The Engaged exhibition showcases the work of the artists who have been resident in the Abbey Road artists' studios since they opened in 2011. The was a great diversity of pieces on show from traditional and abstract painting to sculpture and film.

The second exhibition A Very Grand Canal, is a group show which mixed visuals, text and video and seemed to make an impact on our group. Our guides Catherine and Joe gave a very informative tour which highlighted the nature of the artworks, the architecture of the building as well as the practical aspects of curating and maintaining the exhibition, from controlling the humidity, light and temperature to building temporary walls and dividing the space to suit the work on display.

Also on display is the second of four installments of Shane Cullen's Fragmens sur les Institutions Républicanes IV. Shane is a native of Longford and Catherine explained that the mammoth work was all hand-painted over four years. This sits opposite a wall of glass overlooking the River Shannon, which Catherine referred to as a constantly changing, living artwork.

The gallery supplied worksheets after the tour which were well laid out and broad ranging and will be very useful when preparing for the Leaving Cert gallery question. Here's everyone busy filling them out:

Our trip to Clonmacnoise consisted of an audio-visual presentation and a self-guided tour of the exhibition and ruins. We focused on the architectual styles and the high crosses which are part of the Irish Art section of the Leaving Cert paper. Replicas of the beautifully decorated High Crosses now stand where the originals were, while they are housed inside the interpretative centre. These replicas are made of a mixture of sandstone, chalk and other materials and look identical to the originals which served to inform the masses about the scriptures at a time when literacy levels were very low. The buildings of the centre itself are designed to fit in with the ruins and resemble the round houses which once stood on the site.