Salmon Poetry in association with the Courthouse Gallery
Presents and invites you
to celebrate the publication of a new collection of poetry

Night Horses

by Ilsa Thielan          

On Friday 29^th June 2012, 7pm

We hope to see you but if you can’t make it to the launch, you can order directly from:

www.salmonpoetry.com

Book Description:

Ilsa Thielan's poetry, like her renowned photographs, embraces a variety of landscapes.   She is well known for her photographs of the flora and fauna of the Burren in Co. Clare, Ireland.  Her poems have a lyric intensity and beauty that capture the presence of this unique landscape.  As well as her careful appreciation and commitment to her Burren home, Ilsa Thielan is an adventurous traveller. For many years she has spent time on her own in the wilderness of Northern Canada and explored the landscapes of New Mexico, North Africa and Spain.  Her photography and poetry exhibitions include a homage to the people she met at the Festival au Desert, 65 kilometers beyond Timbuktu, in the vastness of the Sahara.  She has attended the legendary Festval of St. Sara,  also known as the Festival of the Gypsies, in  Saintes Maries de la Mer, Carmargue in the South of  France, an area famous for it's beautiful white horses.  As indicated by the title of this collection, horses appear often in Ilsa Thielan's poetry; a freedom both real and metaphorical. In this, her first poetry collection, she shows her love for the wild  places, for people who live closely with nature and the animals who aid and inspire them.

Bio:

Ilsa Thielan studied literature and art in her native Germany. She moved to Ireland in the 1970s and settled in Doolin, Co Clare.  Since then she has gained a considerable reputation as a photographer of the Burren and North Clare landscapes, and has written and published poems and short stories. She was an early member of  the North Clare Writers' Workshop, Ennistymon. Her poems and stories appeared regularly in the North Clare Writers' annual  anthology. Her work has been published in many journals, including Stet, Women's  Work, The Burren  Meithal, Revival,  and with the North Clare 'Three Legged  Stool Poets'. Her poem 'My Brother' was published in Dogs Singing: A Tribute Anthology (Salmon Poetry, 2010).

She has read her poetry at The Cuirt International Festival of Literature, the Ennis Bookclub Festival, Glor Music Centre and the Courthouse Gallery, Ennistymon.

Her poetry and stories are born out of her experience and observations
of life, the natural environment of her Burren home, her love for the animals whose paths she has crossed, her relationships with people she met on her travels, and her time spent in the American Southwest, the Sahara of North Africa, and the Canadian wilderness.

Jessie Lendennie
Managing Director
Salmon Poetry Ltd.

http://salmonpoetry.com

http://jessielendennie.com

Salmon Poetry receives financial assistance from the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon

Flamenco - Fatima Lucia with Al-Andar

Thursday 21st June @ 8.30pm

Admission €10, concession €8, children €5

Flamenco company "Al-Andar" presents their new show "Soltando Amarras" ("Casting off") ,   Singer Olayo Giménez  will travel to Ireland from Andalusia to join dancer/choreographer Fatima Lucia  and guitarist John Walsh on their new tour together. Fatima launched Flamenco in Ireland, teaching and performing nationwide since 1993, when she arrived from her hometown, Cadiz. She has done 'Flamenco-Sean Nos'  fusion work touring with Irish musicians such as Martin O'Connor, Arty Mc Glynn and Sean Keane,
 Al-Andar performs Flamenco in its purest form, bringing you the unique sensitivity and passion of this old tradition from Southern Spain.

How the Land Lies

Paintings by Mairead O’Neill Laher

14^th June – 12^th July

Official opening Saturday 16^th June at 4pm

Mairead O’Neill Laher

The work is mostly oil on canvas, with some oil on paper.

Laher’s paintings are a response to the landscape, in particular that of the west coast of Ireland. Though the work is based in an actual landscape what emerges from the work process are landscapes of the imagination.

It is said that in every new landscape we see something that triggers memory and reminds us of other half forgotten landscapes. Any attempt to respond to the natural world in paint must also by extension be imbued with memory and personal

experience.

                                                                                                                                     

                                                                                        

Mairead O’Neill Laher was born in Limerick and now lives in Dublin. A graduate of NCAD, she is a painter who since graduating has had solo shows in Chicago, New York and Johannesburg, as well as shows in Dublin and Belfast. Influenced by poetry and memory, her work is an investigation of landscape as part of an ongoing exploratory process

 'Over the Rocks' Mairead O'Neill Laher

“Just as none of us is outside or beyond geography,
none of us is completely free from the struggle over geography”.
Edward Said

In the Red Couch Space

Oblivion

Tiger Lily. Maudie de Kaijzer

Paintings and Small Installations by Maudie de Keijzer

14^th June – 12^th July

Official opening Saturday 16^th June at 4pm

Maudie de Keijzer is a Dutch artist based in Co. Clare since February 2011

In September 2011 she started working as a studio artist at the Ennistymon Courthouse Gallery. Oblivion will be her first Exhibition in Ireland.

With a mixture of oil paintings and small installations I explore the tensions between people and the world around them. I am looking at their ability to communicate and how they communicate and relate to each other within these tensions. To me oblivion is a state of being in which the possibility of transformation is concealed.  

            Discarded. Maudie de Kaijzer

Dear all,

As you may have noticed, yesterday our email address was hacked and used to perform a well known phishing scam to try and convince people to pay money to supposedly rescue me, Trudi, from Spain. I can assure you all I am very well here in Ennistymon and we have taken extensive measures to increase the security of our email. The mail you received was in itself no threat to your computer, private data or your personal information at all - it was just trying to convince you to send money like so many other email phishing scams. It is important to note that this was a hack carried out external to The Gallery, Computers and Data. G-mail is a very popular email provider that many of us use and is 99% of the time reliable. We have informed g-mail of the incident and hope that this is the last time we have such an occurrence.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your concern and I apologise for any inconvenience caused.

With best regards,

From Trudi

And all of us in the Courthouse.

http://www.finolagraham.com/
http://www.paulineturmel.com/

WEST CORK the premiere of a short film

WEST CORK

 ....PLUS SOME NORTH CLARE VOICES

Friday 18th May at 8.00 pm

Free event

The poem West Cork - Gobnaits' Bed ; Rag Tree ; Holy Well  by the late Seán Dunne is a remarkable homage to an idiosyncratic form of public worship which is still practised in Ireland today - the veneration of holy wells, rag trees and curiously-shaped stones. The poem is set in the magical St Gobnait's monastic site in Ballyvourney in Cork - a great magnet for pilgrims right down to the present day. St Gobnait is the patron saint of bees.
The poet Seán Dunne is a sorely lamented voice of Irish poetry. His premature death in 1995 was a major shock in the Irish literary world. Brendan Kennelly said of him "Dunne constantly pitted his own values against the pain, suffering, violence and futility of the world. And his values are strong, perhaps lasting ones"

Three North Clare based people came together this spring to make a short 5 minute film version of the poem.

 Carles Casasin of Ballyvaughan filmed and edited ; Mick O'Riordan of Doolin provided voice and original soundtrack whilst Tony Kirby of Kilnaboy produced.

There will be a fine cast of North Clare voices on hand on the evening to enrich the event with song, music and thoughts. M.C. on the evening will be John Morgan (Kilfenora) and guests will include Fr Denis Crosby (Liscannor), Phil Gaston (Kilnaboy) and Susan Daly (Doolin) 
The event coincides with Ennistymon's first ever Dylan Thomas Literary Festival which takes place over the same weekend. All are welcome for what promises to be a memorable evening. More information 065 707 1630.

Liens An exhibition of new work by Finola Graham and Pauline Turmel

11 th May – 7th June
Official opening 11th May at 8 pm by Siobhan Mulcahy

Liens (ties, bonds, connections) is an evolution of the work done by the French

artist Pauline Turmel and the Irish artist Finola Graham for their exhibition Cross-Currents in the ‘Centre Culturel Irlandais’Paris in 2011.

The Paris exhibition was the result of a process of exchange of ideas and of place

that took place over a period of three years, between the two artists of different worlds, nationalities and generations.   

Every three months from 2007 to 2010  Turmel came to Co. Clare to work in Graham’s studio and the surounding area, while Graham went to Paris and worked in Turmel’s studio there.

 Finola Graham

While working for our last exhibition in the ‘CCI’ in 2011, I was spending time in an area of paris where, as a student in the 1960’s,  I had lived one of the most intense and formative periods of my life. This brought up a map of submerged memory and layers upon layers of feelings (See image  Lariboissière).  This sense of a mapped history dictated what was for me a new approach to my work.  I started to use fine ink lines and nikawa glue paint   for a very sparse intense use of colour.  Since the Paris exhibition I have continued to work this way using  different textures of paper with prints, paint and  inks. The works in this exhibition combine some of the Paris  works with my recent works.

Pauline Turmel

Pendant que je travaillait pour notre Exposition dans le Centre Culturel Irlandais à Paris 2007/2011 j’ai passé De veritable periods d’immersion dans le quartier de Clare entre Fanore et Ennistymon.

J’ai eu beaucoup des contacts, facilité par le ‘courtyard gallery’

Je suis rentrée en contact et je suis allée à la rencontre de nombreuses

Personnes.c’est de ses expériences que nait les oeuvres qui font partie de cette exposition

Don’t be frightened, it’s just Quantum Logic – an exhibition by Barry Foley

C.G.I (computer generated imagery) watercolour & ink

11 May – 7 June 2012

Official opening Friday 11^th May at 8 pm by Siobhan Mulcahy

Barry Foley is a native of Tipperary town but is now based in the Burren, Co Clare. In this exhibition Barry explores intriguing questions about science and scientific exploration.

“Not since Victorian times science and scientific exploration have captured the public’s attention, nor has it been more controversial. The world is at a juncture; Global Warming, Economic and Cultural disaffection. Has scientific evolution contributed to the situation we now find ourselves in? Can science bridge these gaps and aid in the solution to such problems?”

The Victorians were impressed by science and progress, and felt that they could improve society through discovery in the very same way they were advancing society through technology. Is it possible that our outlook on life and the world can be changed by looking back? Back to a time when science was met with romanticism and wondrous excitement? Can a more nostalgic perspective open a door to an accessible modern relationship with science?

An inspiration for his work is Charles Quartermaine a scientist, explorer and artist. He received his Doctorate in Quantum Anthropology from Harvard in 2008 and is best known for the discovery of the Higgs Boson Field, which not only confirmed the multi-verse space time theory but opened the door (literally) to inter-dimensional travel. “His work deals with current research in Cosmology and Quantum Physics, and is trying to reveal the very essence of our world. To challenge what we think we know to be true. Influenced by Victorian Plate Photography and the era itself Charles displays his work believing that we all possess this sense of shared history”

Barry received his Degree in Sculpture from the Crawford College of Art and Design, Cork in 2004, he had numerous shows before gaining a Masters Degree in Fine Art (Virtual Realities) from the National College of Art and Design. He has taken part in numerous exhibitions and has works in Private Collections both in Ireland and Europe.

North Indian Classical Music and the Foreign Phenomenon

In the gallery  4th May 8pm   a concert, small talk and show of a short 9 minute film.

North Indian Classical Music and the Foreign Phenomenon

:Musical conversations

This event explores the unique experiences of foreigners undertaking serious study of North Indian Classical Music.  Beginning with a discussion by Australian born Mattu Noone, who is a long time student of the North Indian 25 stringed lute called the sarode, this evening will give the audience an insight not only of the music of North India but the physical, emotional and mental challenges of it's discipline.  Dara O' Brien, a Cork based sitar player, will also present ideas from his recent PHD material on the spiritual beliefs of North Indian musicians.  A short film entitled, We are Nocturnal Animals, will be presented which outlines the experience of the concert season in Kolkata, West Bengal.

Finally, Mattu, Dara and tabla player, Sadanand Magee, will present a recital of North Indian instrumental music.  This item will be a jugal bundi or conversation between sarode and sitar.