Featured Irish Artist To Appear In Support Of Carleton Exhibit

NORTHFIELD, MN — The Perlman Teaching Museum at Carleton College is currently celebrating "The Emerald Isle” with an exhibit in its Braucher Gallery. “Post-Picturesque: Photographing Ireland” presents the work of nine accomplished Irish artists, each taking a unique approach to showcasing the idyllic rural landscape of their homeland.

The ambitious exhibition, curated by Perlman Teaching Museum director Laurel Bradley, runs through May 7. One of the exhibit’s featured artists, Galway-based artist Ruby Wallis, will be on campus to speak about her own artistic experience in a lecture entitled “A Journey ‘Back to the Land’ Through Photography in the West of Ireland” on April 27 at 5 p.m. in the Boliou Hall Auditorium.

Bradley explains, “[Ruby]…reveals her complex relationship to the beautiful rugged landscape of the Burren in Country Clare, and to the alternative community where she grew up. She experiments, creating still and moving images, as she explores the best methods of embodying this unique place, and her own experiences.”

An artist long connected to Western Ireland, Wallis aims to use the camera, and lens-based practices, to both interrogate and to record experiences of place and human connection. Her multifaceted “UnFixed Landscape” project focuses on Coolarta, an alternative community in the scenic Burren region, where the artist grew up.

Wallis challenges her own intimate knowledge of this place by experimenting with subject, viewpoint and format, according to a news release. She reaches beyond the visual to incorporate touch and movement, in often haunting close-ups and deeply embedded on-site views.”

Wallis’ work has been exhibited in Paris, Galway, Donegal, Dublin and elsewhere, according to Carleton College. Based in Galway, she recently completed a PhD in Fine Art Media from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin; she received an MA in Documentary Photography from the University of South Wales in 2009. Wallis teaches at the Burren College of Art in County Clare, at Griffith College, Dublin and NIU-Galway.

“Post-Picturesque” also introduces to American audiences the work of acclaimed Irish photographers Gary Coyle, Martin Cregg, David Farrell, Paul Gaffney, Anthony Haughey, Miriam O’Connor, Jill Quigley, and Anna Rackard—each, along with Wallis, bringing a new aesthetic and critical approach to the celebrated rural Irish landscape.

Light Lectureship in the Arts. The exhibit run through May 7 and is free and open to the public. For more information, including gallery hours and disability accommodations, call (507) 222-4342.

Image via Google Streetview