Transforming the Landscape, September 1st – September 24th, FREE
Launch: September 5th, 6:30pm
Official opening by Local Historian John Flannery
This exhibition Transforming the Landscape by Josephine Geaney was commissioned by Siga-Hydro to create a body of work inspired by the unique landscape of the Silvermines. Known for her evocative abstract style, Josephine draws on the textures, forms and atmosphere of the former mining lands capturing not only their visual presence but the layered memory and emotion they hold for the Mining Heritage and the work being carried out there by the Silvermines Hydro Project to repurpose and rehabilitate the land left behind by mining.
What inspired Josephine to paint this landscape was the beauty of the man-made lake which formed from the discarded open pit left over when mining operations ceased in 1993. In this exhibition Josephine addresses issues of climate change and renewable energy, painting the tension between the natural and man made environments that coexist beautifully in this landscape. Josephine captures not just the visual presence of the landscape but the layered memory and emotion it holds for the community. Her work reflects the dialogue between place, history and identity, transforming industrial remnants into expressive contemporary art.
Geaney’s paintings aim to challenge the viewer to analyse the paintings and to add their own emotions to it, and to indicate how we are at one with the landscape both in resilience and vulnerability.