
Gallery
Drop Brían Crotty
Friday 17 January - Saturday 22 February 2025
The Linenhall Arts Centre are pleased to present ‘Drop’, an exhibition merging painting and cinema, by Brían Crotty, opening on Friday, 17 January from 5.00pm. With film screening and live performance piece at 6.00pm (40 minutes). Exhibition runs until Saturday, 22 February 2025. All Welcome.
‘Drop’ revolves around merging painting and cinema, meticulously exploring the temporal aspects of both mediums through hybridisation by intertwining elements of painting, animation, AI generation, and performance.
"I endeavour to present fresh perspectives, provocations, and empathy through hybrid cinematic artworks. My works strive to generate experimental narratives that take viewers on a psychoanalytic journey through the complexities of the Irish experience. Inspired by Helen Powell's ‘Dreaming Time’ (Powell, 2013), the paintings' static visual narratives interact with cinema's moving imagery, challenging viewers to engage with the permanence of painted scenes and the ephemeral qualities of cinema. By authoring and presenting short scripts that form the foundation of the paintings, a hybridisation of the two mediums allows paintings to unfold with a cinematic rhythm and imbue cinematic artworks with depth and contemplation. A hybridisation of mediums allows a cinematic rhythm and imbues cinematic artworks with depth and contemplation. In its narrative arc, the artwork mirrors the fragmented Irish psychological landscapes not merely as terrains ruptured by shifting weathers and historical upheavals but as metaphors for the disjointment of a people perennially navigating the tides of change through dreaming. It is within this sphere of hazy tumult that my cinematic and painting works cast their gaze, seeking in the interstice of broken ground a canvas for introspection and the germination of fresh paradigms, thus conjuring forth a complex dialogue by presenting fragments that both invite contemplation and command a reassembly of understanding in the mind's eye. The montages in the film find their analogues in the texture of the paintings, each element selected to resonate with its cinematic counterpart. The screen, ever in dialogue with its painted kin, offers a window into a layered reality where the tactile strokes of the brush and the ephemeral images of the screen dance in a delicate balance."
This exhibition invites viewers into a realm where art redefines the boundaries of storytelling, proposing an intellectual and emotional pilgrimage through the fractured tapestry of human experience, dreaming and time.
About the artist:
Brían Crotty is a visual artist, filmmaker and writer. Brían uses narrative and cinematic structures to investigate language, representation, and identity in his artwork.
The work examines the contemporary ideas of dreaming, non-space and the void between consciousness and the information age. Using allegory through several diverse media, Brían’s work reaches hybrid visual tableaux from various sources. Images draw from a storehouse of popular social description but in the mixing of artifice and realism. The present is revealed as an accumulation of diluted and partly forgotten histories and experiences.
Brían also works extensively in creative education. He is currently the Director of Macroom School of Art and a recent Lecturer of Visual Arts Education at Maynooth University. Brían is now a researcher and PhD candidate at MTU Crawford College of Art and Design Cork.