​This October, The Wexford Arts Centre is proud to present a body of work by Irish born artist Joy Gerrard in Fractured Crowd. This exhibition of drawings & paintings by Gerrard is honoured to be presented during the 67th Annual Wexford Festival Opera and will be on display in the upper and lower galleries of the Wexford Arts Centre throughout.

Joy Gerrard, born in Ireland in 1971, has been living & working between London & Belfast in recent years, creating a body of work in response to social & political interactions, movements and expressions worldwide. Having studied in London, Dublin and Cork, Gerrard’s wealth of knowledge in research, printmaking and fine art painting continues to emerge from her body of work and is evident in her extensive history of exhibitions, residencies, commissions, lectures, presentations, awards and collections in which Gerrard is proudly part of. Her current practice examines and concentrates on crowds, specifically protest crowds; their effect on political outcomes and social segregation and the systems by which they relate to their surroundings, in particular; with architecture and the structural environment of cities and towns. Gerrard has taken familiar media-based imagery and recreated the perspective of these scenes, creating a new level of importance through the retelling of historical events and resulting in the production of paintings and drawings in pen and ink including large scale drawings, pictured below.

Gerrard’s practice in multimedia and work concerning the social aspect to; in particular; protest crowds, expressing and creating social divisions has been a contentions link in this body of work.  Gerrard’s interest in media led imagery recreated as pen and ink drawings, commenting on the freedom of expression that comes with protest, navigated by the confines of industrial structure, results in the documentation of these events on, not only a socio-political level but also noting the movement of people in crowds in a mechanical way, hinting at pack mentality and the adaptability of organic structures.

Fractured Crowd will run from Sunday 21st October 2018 to Saturday 24th November 2018 & will be presented during the 67th Annual Festival Opera in County Wexford running form the 19th October – 4th November 2018. For more information on events at the Wexford Arts centre during the Wexford Festival Opera please visit www.wexfordartscentre.ie, www.wexfordopera.com or email lisa@wexfordartscentre.ie. ​