Out of Belfast

The Wright State University Art Galleries are pleased to present Out of Belfast, an exhibition of installations by three women artists living in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The exhibition will run from November 2 through December 5, 1999. On Sunday, November 7th the exhibition curator, Joy Sperling will present a lecture on the work of the Belfast artists at 2:30 p.m. in room M252 of the Creative Arts Center. The lecture will be followed by a reception in the University Art Galleries from 4 to 5:30 p.m. The exhibition and reception are free and open to the public.

The exhibition was organized for Denison University by Joy Sperling, Associate Professor and Chair of the Art Department and a native of Ireland. It showcases the works of Kathy Herbert, Sharon Kelly and Eilis O'Baoill. Sperling, who grew up in Lisburn, a town some eight miles from Belfast, sees the exhibition and catalogue as "an effort on my part to let seven Belfast artists speak for themselves without intermediation." In addition to the three artists represented in the exhibition, the catalogue also features four additional artists - Ann Henderson, Aisling O'Beim, Sally Young and Susan MacWilliam.

Kathy Herbert's installation piece is about women working; gathering, making a home, nurturing and gleaning. It is also about the natural cycles of life and the land and about the power of place in Irish identity.

Sharon Kelly works primarily through the medium of drawing to exhume and revivify memory, transition and identity. In this exhibit Kelly describes her own very private and personal loss, somehow translating the individual local experience into the universal.

Eilis O 'Baoill works in various media, including performance and installation. Her pieces in this exhibit demonstrate how language, mother tongues and acquired languages (voluntary and otherwise) frame cultural, and (in Ireland) political identities. A fully illustrated 112-page scholarly catalogue accompanies the exhibition and features an essay by Sperling on art in Belfast. The catalogue, made possible by the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, will be for sale at the Wright State University Art Galleries.