Golden Thread Gallery are taking part in the Great Art Quest – a unique initiative funded through Children & the Arts that aims to develop stronger links between schools and their local art gallery. This touring exhibition builds upon the ongoing partnership between Golden Thread Gallery and Libraries NI.

The exhibition that we used as a point of inspiration for our Great Art Quest was Seán Hillen: 100 Works. The four primary schools are Bunscoil Bheann Mhadagáian, Glengormley Integrated Primary School, Hazelwood Integrated Primary School and Holy Family Primary School.

Seán Hillen: 100 Works is the first major solo exhibition of Seán Hillen in the North of Ireland with works dating back to the early 1980s. Hillen grew up in Newry, during an intense phase of the Northern Ireland conflict, before studying in London at the Slade School of Fine Art.

His earliest works were fine art-documentary photographs, which quickly became source material for a series of paradoxically funny but politically-charged photo-collages, created between 1983 and 1993, when he moved to live and work in Dublin.  The Irish Times critic Fintan O’Toole stated that these works “remain the best expression of what it felt like to be in Northern Ireland during the Troubles”

For the Great Art Quest, pupils from Bunscoil Bheann Mhadagáian, Glengormley Integrated Primary School, Hazelwood Integrated Primary School and Holy Family Primary School responded to our exhibitions and created their own collages with artists Johanna Leech and Sinéad Breathnach Cashell while Chelley McLear and Chloé Morrison set the words and stories free.

Seán Hillen & The Great Art Quest showcases the work done on the Great Art Quest along with 4 Seán Hillen prints, offering new audiences an opportunity to experience the magic of collage.

Join In

Sean Hillen: 100 works can be viewed in Golden Thread Gallery until 11 March 2017.