Brian Gallager – Exhibition ‘Vernacular’ at the United Arts Club – Opens Thursday 25th May, 2017 at 8.00 pm

Brian’s third solo show ‘Vernacular’ opens at  in the United Arts Club on Thursday 25th May at 8.00pm.

This exhibition is an exploration of our environment and vernacular architecture via Scraperboard and mixed media.

Scraperboard is a Sgraffito medium.  The process is the reverse from usual mark making beginning with a black board there is a gradual removal of parts of its thin dark surface to reveal the white china clay beneath.

Influenced by Thomas Bewick and the generation of wood engravers like Brian’s art college tutor Peter Reddick.

The results are unique original one of pieces, not prints.

Join us for this wonderful  exhibition which will be opened by Una Sealy RHA

Una Sealy RHA

 

Nigel Mooney – Sunday JAZZ Sessions at the United Arts Club

Nigel Mooney is widely regarded as one of Ireland’s leading jazz singer and guitarists. A charismatic figure on the Dublin jazz and blues scenes since the early 1980’s, his Gripewater Blues Band spearheaded the blues movement in Ireland and drew many fans of both jazz and the blues. A self-taught musician, Mooney was influenced by the blues from an early age and his hard-bop style of guitar playing is expressive and melodic with a bluesy groove. He possesses a warm and rich tenor voice and has an almost flawless sense of pitch,

Johnny was born in London and studied classical piano and clarinet from a young age, playing in orchestras and gaining an ABRSM diploma in piano performance. Upon moving to Ireland, he became a music scholar at Trinity College and graduated with a First Class Honours degree in 2006. After studying with a scholarship at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Johnny returned to Dublin and began playing jazz full time. He currently leads his own piano trio as well as playing in the groups of various notable Irish musicians including  Cormac Kenevey, Alex Mathias and Suzanne Savage and Louis Stewart.

Nigel is now appearing  weekly at the United Arts Club Sunday JAZZ sessions 4.00-6.00pm

Non members are very welcome!

Nigel Mooney

Artist – Michael Gemmell

Michael Gemmell was born in 1950 in Coleraine, Co. Derry.  He studied at the National College of Art and Design from 1966 to 1968 and at the College of Art in Limerick from 1971 to 1972. As a self employed business man in the 1970s he specialized in Sign Writing, stained glass, gilding, mural painting and interior design before he retired from his business to paint full  time. He now exhibits regularly at the  RHA, Waldock Gallery, The Kennedy Gallery, The Leinster Gallery, The Sandford Gallery, The Kenny Gallery, The Kilcock Gallery,The Lavit Gallery and the 75 Gallery.

 

ALL THAT SURROUNDS US – new work by artist Michael Gemmell – opens at the United Arts Club – 4th May 2017

ALL THAT SURROUNDS US

NEW PAINTINGS

By

MICHAEL   GEMMELL

OPENING 8pm on Thursday 4th MAY

at The UNITED ARTS CLUB

3, Fitzwilliam St. Upper, Dublin 2.

Phone  –  (01)-6611411

Exhibition continues until Monday 22nd May

DONOVAN – visits the United Arts Club

Last Thursday 6th April 2017, we had the pleasure of a visit from the music legend Donovan.

Donovan was a dinner guest of Noelle Campbell Sharpe at the United Arts Club  after the opening of a joint  exhibition of his and his grand daughter artist Coco Sian beautiful artwork at her Origin Gallery

After dinner we enjoyed an impromptu session when Donovan sang his version of ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’.  He  was moved to be singing in the room where his hero WB Yeats had held his farewell dinner to Ireland in 1939.

Donovan was then taken on a guided tour of the United Arts Club by Honorary Secretary Martin Lynch where he had the opportunity to view our wonderful art collection and also meet our chef Anthony O’Grady.

A Family Affair at the Origin

Donovan and Honorary Secretary Martin Lynch

 

Donovan meets United Arts Club Chef Anthony O’Grady

Artist Coco Sian and Friends at the United Arts Club

Award winning poet and United Arts Club member Ray Mullen

Sideways

The mirror restores

the images we see

back from left to right.

– Or perhaps that’s right to left?

I wonder if there’s an axis in the middle?

Whatever.

It never switches up to down,

(or down to up for that matter)

even if you turn the mirror sideways.

It’s probably all gravity and stuff

that keeps some semblance

of normality on our world.

What’s up goes up,

what’s down stays down,

and so on.

It could be the other way around

of course,

– or maybe it’s all

just a little sideways.

Award winning poet and United Arts Club member Ray Mullen

 

Augustine

Some years ago, or yesterday,

I threw a book into the air,

a medium tome,

hard backed, gold edged and well bound.

I watched as it arced

slowly through each temporal cliché

from the dawn of time till Gabriel’s call,

becoming something new

within the changing quanta

of the universe.

I see it leave a fading rainbow

of trailing images

in the continuum that is the past.

As it twisted and splayed,

carrying its recorded magic

from one instant to the next,

I cannot tell if it stayed the same

or has such infinite existences

so as not to be at all.

Quite suddenly it is substance

in my hand once more,

its spine unbroken,

its future and its truth intact.

and from its pages beckoned

those meaningless words

once silently remembered

by the Holy Bishop of Hippo

Michael McWilliams Exhibition – New Works

MICHAEL McWILLIAMS – NEW WORK

Now on at the United Arts Club

Opened on March 2nd by Joe Dunne RHA

runs until 18th March 2017

Award winning Poet and United Arts Club member Ray Mullen

Da Capo

 

If you re-tell a life,

tell and re-tell things that had happened,

tell and re-tell old loves, friends and deaths

(if only to yourself), if you re-tell a life

events will swirl and stick to a line of time

like flies to poisoned  paper.

They will become like notes on a stave,

finding congruity and harmony in a key

that, in their soundless isolation, did not exist

 

And, as you tell and recount, you know it must be false;

harmony and progression are not singular;

melody moves only from silence to silence.

 

If you chose then not to re-tell the story,

the sequence and harmony seem to fail;

the sounds jangle and grate,

and they lie unplaced without resonance,

like old broken delft, the shadow memory of

a shattered pattern on a painted cup,

or some random flies scattered dead

in the corner of the dusty window frame.

 

If you re-tell a life

accidental structures

will emerge unbidden in the telling.

The shape and sound of words will

gather in the fragments of other things –

strange motes and specks that could be gold,

or broken cobwebs flecked with dead flies’ wings.

 

And so too are gathered in your wheezing pauses,

the breaths of breathing ghosts,

the creaking of the old house and

the banshee wind astride the high gables

screeching and re-screeching

like Minerva never wanting

and never finding peace.

 

A new word turns an old corner,

and a pattern shifts. Past and future

never really meet and the present

always returns

to an old beginning.