CORK.- Crawford Art Gallery is presenting 1916 Ireland in Contemporary Art. Commissioned by Larry Lambe, the exhibition features artists including Alice Maher, Robert Ballagh, Rita Duffy, Michael Coady and David Lilburn.

Varying in scale and media, from painting to poetry, the only instruction the commissioned artists received from Lambe was that the work should be linked with any event of 1916 that affected Ireland, including the Easter Rising.

The commissioning process started in 2009 in order to give each artist time to have a mature look and consider the commission over a generous time-span. Within the exhibition Alice Maher’s Remember Me highlights the overlooked human rights activist Alice Milligan (1866-1953), whose image is engraved, using the scrimshaw techn,ique on an ostrich egg. Dermot Bolger’s evocative poem recalls the great number of civilians who lost their lives in the Easter Rising whilst Robert Ballagh’s Not For Sale painting references the concern that many significant national artefacts have been lost to the national collection on many occasions where the Irish State has been outbid at sales auctions.

In addition to the exhibits, the artists have been invited to write in relation to their created work, which accompanies each work offering the viewer an added layer of context and mediation. The exhibition features the work of Dermot Bolger, Alice Maher, David Lilburn, Rita Duffy, Padraig Lynch, Robert Ballagh, Sandro Chia, Lorcan Lambe, Sean Hillen, Michael Cullen, Sonja Landweer and Michael Coady.

The exhibition is created in partnership with the Toradh Gallery, Co. Meath and the Galway City Museum.