“The Return of the Outlaws
Cork’s Laneway Gallery
☆☆☆☆☆
According to Belgian artist Serge Le Belge, the name of Cork’s popular studio and art collective, Outlaws, draws inspiration from influential puppeteer Cliff Dolliver. The Tasmanian native desired an affordable workspace, and an offering came with the sharing of rent for a builder’s storage warehouse. Positioned at the top floor of an old Ford manufacturing hub in the city’s industrial marina, this was promising to be quite an adventure.
Dolliver seized the chance without hesitation and was greeted by rooms overflowing with leftover construction debris. However, from this chaos, he envisioned an artistic hub that could be transformed into numerous studios, an ideal place for young artists’ collaboration and co-operation. As events unfolded exactly as they were envisaged, one of the artists in support of Dolliver’s unique cultural background named the team ‘Outlaws’, which has since been a signature for the group.
Fast forward to two decades later, this collective with its focus primarily on studio practice has become an identifiable part of the city’s artistic society. Due to their tendency to stay low-key, they are not overly active online but still maintain a distinct collaboration among their spread-out members, ensuring their freedom remains uninhibited. Their latest exhibition displayed at the Shandon Street’s Laneway Gallery serves as a perfect testament to their assorted influences, styles and creative techniques.
Besides Le Belge, the exhibition includes artwork by several creators including Anne Hoel, Brian Leach, Tom Doig, Richard Coghlan, Megan Collins, Elisa Gallo Rosso, Kirstin Walsh, John Corkery, Tom Campbell, Jude O’Neill and Natasha Bourke. Despite the variety, there’s an evident commonality and interchange between the pieces on display. For example, Leach’s sound art piece featuring rusted metal sheets, a wooden frame and looped drones, finds surprising companionship with Coghlan’s monochromatic photography that displays a nude body under forest cover, distorted and veiled across time. The juxtaposition of these works indicates a shared interest in the philosophy of personal experience, and the materials used in their layered sound and imagery reflect a profound, structural quality. ”
Take a look at ‘Eminem: The Death of Slim Shady’, a disquieting tribute to his globally successful alternate persona, radiating lyrical prowess. Tickets, weather updates, set list, and stage timing for the Paloma Faith concert at Iveagh Gardens are now available. Marc Almond’s ‘I’m Not Anyone’, brimming with excellently selected tunes, is certainly wise in its musical offerings.
The show boasts pockets of vibrant colour, particularly in the works of Collins and Corkery, located in a room annexed to the centrepiece. Corkery’s large oil painting, ‘Snowwhite (Filmstar)’, richly expresses an array of purple, red, and yellow tones. Collins’s work, drawing from symbolist and folkloric figural artists such as Paula Rego, Frida Kahlo, and Franz von Stuck, depicts imaginatively surreal scenes. His pictures encapsulate not only the eerie presence of trauma and the suppression of women, but also somewhat restorative elements like personal redemption.
Given the show’s vastness, it’s simply not feasible to encompass everything, but Bourke’s exhibition film and photography deserve special mention. Following her lauded and boundary-breaking solo show Kilter, Matter and Ghosts at Gus Healy’s swimming pool the previous month, she has since grown in national prominence. Here, her artistry is a continuation of that project, with her captivating stills featuring multiple representations of Bourke herself, all taking part in strange ceremonies in an undefined, alien aquatic environment.
The intriguing exhibition can be seen at one of the city’s burgeoning art venues, The Laneway Gallery in Cork. The showcase, titled ‘The Outlaws are Back’, will be up until Saturday, July 20th.