Contemporary Irish drawings coming to Bell Gallery Jan. 29

The David Winton Bell Gallery in the List Art Center will exhibit A Measured Quietude: Contemporary Irish Drawings beginning Jan. 29. The exhibition will feature nine artists from the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The show continues through March 12.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A Measured Quietude: Contemporary Irish Drawings, an exhibition featuring the work of nine artists from the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, begins at the David Winton Bell Gallery in the List Art Center at Brown University Saturday, Jan. 29, and continues through March 12.

The exhibition opens with a lecture by John Kindness, a participating artist, in the List Art Center Auditorium Friday, Jan. 28, 2000, at 6 p.m. A reception will immediately follow. Both events are free and open to the public.

With its title taken from the William Butler Yeats poem “To Ireland in the Coming Times,” A Measured Quietude explores significant themes and characteristics of 20^th-century Irish visual art. The exhibition provides both abstract and figurative images by artists concerned with intimate explorations of the medium of drawing.

It features a large-scale wall piece by Maude Cotter entitled Absence, composed of cardboard, plaster and steel, as well as drawings by Colin Darke and Liadin Cooke, both juxtaposing texts and images. Darke’s drawings incorporate cigarette papers covered with minuscule text, referencing a practice well known in Northern Ireland in which prisoners secretly passed letters written on such paper. Cooke’s ink drawings, on the other hand, are printed with excerpts from Juliette written by Marquis de Sade.

Also showcased are works by Róisín Lewis that fluctuate between writing and drawing, gouaches by Richard Gorman and watercolors by William McKeown. The fragile ink diptychs of Fergus Martin and the lyrical drawings of Fionnuala Ni Chiosáin are also included in the exhibition.

In addition, Kindness, an artist from Northern Ireland, will recreate a large-scale wall drawing, produced first at The Drawing Center’s Project Room in New York City. The work, Scenes from the Life of Herakles #2, is executed as a black and white fresco painting and is based on the antique mythology, retelling the narratives of Herakles’ labors in the context of the contemporary Irish experience.

A Measured Quietude: Contemporary Irish Drawings was organized by The Drawing Center and the Grey Art Gallery of New York University in collaboration with the Berkeley Art Museum. Its première in New York in the summer of 1999 coincided with the city’s Irish Arts Celebration. The exhibition is supported by the British Council, The Cultural Committee in Ireland, the Fifth Floor Foundation, and Delta Air Lines.

Located at 64 College St., the Bell Gallery is open Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.