Opening Reception Thursday 17 November at 6pm

A Rocky Road is an exhibition curated by Sean Lynch for the Crawford Art Gallery.Artistic production and its reception is a subject full of contradiction and conjecture. Lynch’s curated exhibition suggests that incidental events and occurrences around the making and showing of art are as much a genuine theme of aesthetic understanding as the intentions that bring the art object into being. With an emphasis on the social realities that cultural invention has encountered in Ireland, several topics repeatedly arise: conservative reactions and protest to the introduction of modern art into the country, vandalism of artworks, and the news worthy character of artists with their many creative ideas and schemes are all prominent.

Gathered together, these instances might be considered more than occasional oddities in the progress of history. Instead they might be viewed as a phenomenon recurring in different forms but sufficiently similar to shape a tradition with specific customs and allusions, one that evidences the challenges that art can pose to the public realm and society at large.

A Rocky Road features new artworks by Nigel Rolfe, Danny McCarthy and Gerard Byrne, a filmed interview with Sean Keating, the Tau Cross of Kilnaboy, a print by David Lilburn, a curatorial collaboration with Eilis O’Connell based on her sculpture located in Kinsale, a quote from French curator Pierre Restany, an article reproduced from the Daily Mirror, an artwork by John Carson, a press photograph of Charles Haughey encountering a painting by Tim Rollins and KOS, a photograph by Jack McManus, images from the Kennelly Photographic Archive, pages of the Clare Champion and Limerick Leader, cartoons by George O’Callaghan, and a Rosc exhibition catalogue. A publication with an essay by Sean Lynch is freely available to exhibition visitors.