Formal opening in Istabraq Hall at 6pm on Tuesday 16 August

Limerick City Gallery of Art is pleased to present Convergence: Literary Art Exhibitions, curated by Dr. Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes. The exhibition features work by twenty artists and artists groups: Allotrope, antepress, Julie Bacon, Ecke Bonk, Pavel Büchler, Davide Cascio, Tacita Dean, Cerith Wyn Evans, Maria Fusco, Kenneth Goldsmith, Rodney Graham, Joanna Karolini, Sean Lynch, Simon Morris, Brian O’Doherty, Michaelis Pichler, Tim Rollins, Andrea Theis, Nick Thurston and Eric Zboya. Convergence is presented in partnership with the Golden Thread Gallery Belfast where Convergence first opened in June. As part of LCGA’s off-site programme, the exhibition is presented in Limerick at two venues: Istabraq Hall, Merchant’s Quay and Ormston House, Patrick Street. Convergence is the inaugural exhibition at Ormston House, a new art venue in the city supported by Creative Limerick.

As the curator has noted, Modernist visual artists were told to “avoid literature like the plague” (Clement Greenberg). Convergence makes clear however that today, reading and interpreting literature is, in diverse ways, core to the practice of so many contemporary visual artists who make work that challenges or changes our understanding of both the literary text and the visual artwork. Literature has entered the contemporary art gallery invigorating exhibitions, their content and the experience of the viewer.

The purpose of the exhibition is to investigate how art practice, literature and exhibition formats can relate to one another. Part of its premise is to demonstrate that writers continue to have something to say to artists today – and artists to writers – and how we read. Not every reference that artists make (to the literary ‘canon’) is praise: writers can be an intense, productive annoyance to artists. The foundation for their respective creative practices (writing/making) however is the same: the capacity to think for oneself.

The diverse work featured in Convergence is accessible at many levels from the enticing reading environment provided by Davide Cascio’s Polyhedra (a space for reading Ulysses), to the humour of the narrative related in Sean Lynch’s Dear JJ, I read with interest which perfectly evokes the wit and irreverence of its source, Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman. Like the lady’s bicycle on top of Carrauntoohil, Convergence, in exploring the relationships between art, literature and exhibitions, provides an alternative ‘monument’ to writers and their work, to well read artists and to innovative ways of bridging these realms through exhibition.

Convergence: Literary Art Exhibitions will be formally opened in Istabraq Hall at 6pm on Tuesday 16 August by the Mayor, Cllr. Jim Long. The exhibition continues until 29 September 2011.