DA23002 - Cork, Ireland - Visual Centre of Excellence

 With me inheriting some Irish DNA from my father’s mother maybe this accounts for me being an enthusiast for the Irish. Plus both my father and grandfather, who were Bannister’s, were water colour artists so I have inherited some of their artistic DNA. It also appears that the Irish particularly in Ireland have for some reason managed to delay rushing into the full madness of the 21^st Century something I whole heartily celebrate. We are not basing social development on any measures of individual happiness. We are letting the capitalistic commercial drivers define our society in an uncontrolled way. Social development is more random than ever letting any forces take control over its direction of travel. The younger generation are being deprived of many of the opportunities (housing) and security (jobs) that existed in my youth on which you built your life. How can you take out a huge mortgage when your job can be as insecure as they are these days. No wonder mental health is such an issue for the younger generation if not all generations. Survival in a western capitalistic democracy is now extremely tough. Bit of a rant but that’s why it’s a blog!

Talking of the Irish one of my great past pleasures was to spend a night in the Cheltenham pubs when the Cheltenham Races were on in the company of the Irish race goers. Owning a flat in Gloucester Docks, now sold in 2022, this was an annual event. The atmosphere with all those Irish accents and laughter was like being part of the Irish community but in Cheltenham. Then being a plane enthusiast back to the Gloucester and Cheltenham Airport (Staverton) to see them fly off back home to Ireland. I remember a group of four all drinking in the airport café serving alcohol before setting off back home to Ireland in their small four seater aircraft. I could not help but imagine them flying above the Irish Sea in the pitch black laughing and joking about their day whilst hoping the pilot was sober enough to find their way home. So where does art come into this blog?

The Irish Government seems to be a think outside of the box type government maybe not so much now but this was certainly the case back in 1996. The Irish Arts Council put forward a plan for 1995-1997 to create centres of excellence across Ireland with Cork dedicated to the visual arts rather than music or theatre. Not only did they involve the Cork bedrock art institutions but they involved all the local artist collectives. But they were less effective at attracting any of the commercially orientated Gallery’s being too out of the way for their normal customer base of rich London tourist traffic. The important decision was to create a Cork Arts Development Committee (CADC) which has since 1996 morphed into an Arts Office within their Council Services. This supports the Cork City Council Arts and Culture Strategy 2022-2026 which includes encouraging artists to live and earn their livings in Cork. Unfortunately like everywhere Cork is not immune from the cut backs being made to art budgets. By coincidence Cheltenham is very strong on encouraging the arts particularly the literary side inclusive of authors and their books through their Cheltenham Arts Festival. So why have I ended up taking an interest in Cork of all places?

Well it has evolved purely from one of the best websites I have viewed on the History of Art. Written in what I term legacy internet technology the designer has used visual structures to make it a very effective user interface (AX) where it tells me the facts in a simple effective way. I can only assume that its development came out of the original 1995 - 1997 plan to make Cork a centre of excellence for Visual Arts. My only criticism of it as a site now is it tells me nothing “About” who is looking after it now and what the plans are for its future. Too often these days I find an internet resource that I have come to depend upon disappears overnight as funding for it is lost. Some historical archiving is in place to capture these dead sites at their point of demise but this does not always happen and often the site becomes unattractive to use in its archived format. Sadly many of these are the original legacy internet sites “hand coded in HTML” by real internet enthusiasts now being completely swept away and lost. This rate of original legacy website loss is unaccounted for particularly with the generation that created them dying off themselves along with the skills needed now no longer available in the new generation to maintain the sites. Once again no Government will exists nor could be funded these days to try and capture this loss where it really requires a “digital museum” type initiative implemented now.

So let us look at this brilliant Cork Visual Arts Knowledge Base (What I have called it.) We will look at the main site Homepage first from which you can use the options to get around but I will then take you directly to some of the things that impress me within the site.

Cork Visual Arts Knowledge Base Homepage

http://www.visual-arts-cork.com

On the same site directly to the History of Art

http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of art.htm

I particularly like this way this “timeline” through the Visual Arts is displayed

http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/site/timeline.htm

 

There are other sites related to Cork that are worth taking a look at plus I am sure your own exploration will uncover even more of interest.

Backwater Studio

http://www.backwaterartists.ie

National Sculpture Factory

http://nationalsculpture.org

 

I am not going to bother listing any more links here since go to the Links page on the Cork Artists Collective website below where you are absolutely spoilt for choice.

http://www.thecollective.ie

 

 

Postscript

One of the benefits for me having found this site is to get some sort of order into my artistic interests. I definitely have, like most art enthusiasts, particular types of visual art that appeal to me. I can immediately eliminate all abstract art. I have to admit a tendency towards true to life visual representation. Not into impressionist. I don’t want to stand back to far and prefer to look closely at the artist’s detailed work. I like all poster type work due to its simplicity of style but in particular the emotions it can generate by the use of “block colouring”. I Iike large oils, watercolours or acrylics if they have a photographic type representation of things. I like all pencil sketches. I like still life. I, like most people, immediately know when a piece of art fires my inner emotions to want to own it or at least view again.

I shall now be able using the Cork Visual Art knowledge Base to accurately define my preferences in terms of visual art using a standard artistic methodology. This should allow me to focus more on the specific areas avoiding the randomness of my normal approach to art. I must admit looking at the current trends in high street sold commercial art galleries little appears to my eye. This trend for a visual artists to build their collections on some obscure “signature” attribute (eg balloons, kites) fails to impress me. Although maybe using the Cork Visual Art Knowledge Base it might introduce me to a new category that appeals to me.