Brian Lalor: Retrospective
27 July to 12 October 2024

You can view or download the gallery information and price list by clicking here.
All the artworks in the exhibition can be viewed on Brian Lalor's website here: https://www.brianlalor.ie/ with all sales going through Uillinn.

Brian will host a Printmaking Demonstration in the gallery on Saturday 28 September at 12 noon. All welcome, no booking necessary. 

https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/artsandculture/arid-41480026.html an interview by Marc O'Sullivan Vallig with Brian Lalor.

The opening event took place on Saturday 27 July at 2.00pm. The exhibition was opened by Communications Consultant, Barney Whelan, former Vice Chair of National Gallery of Ireland and board member of Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre.

This was followed by a Gallery Conversation between artist Brian Lalor and curator Vera Ryan. You can see the video of this below. 

Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre is delighted to present Brian Lalor: Retrospective, a retrospective survey exhibition of the work of West Cork-based artist and writer Brian Lalor. Curated by art historian Vera Ryan and including work from the seventies to the present, this exhibition provides an opportunity to explore the breadth of Brian Lalor’s practice over almost six decades and serves as a tribute to his lifelong dedication and contribution to Ireland's cultural heritage.

Brian Lalor has exhibited his prints and drawings internationally, while his books have been published in many countries. The recipient of numerous awards, he has occupied leadership positions in a wide range of organisations across the associated disciplines of art, architecture, archaeology, arts administration, editing and curating. Now in his eighties, Brian Lalor has made an enormous contribution to the artistic and cultural life of Ireland and this ambitious retrospective at Uillinn acknowledges and celebrates his life’s work.

Cork
Poems by Eileen Ní Chuilleanáin
Drawings by Brian Lalor
Published: The Gallery Press, 2024
Hardback, 108pp
€25 (not including postage)

Cork is a new, revised edition of a book first published in 1977 with poems by Eileen Ní Chuilleanáin and drawings by Brian Lalor. In it, a sequence of poems about her native city by one of the finest living writers articulates what is silently revealed in a visual portrait of Ireland’s Southern ‘capital’, its main streets, alleyways, churches, river scenes and quaysides.
As most of these exquisitely detailed drawings were completed half a century ago, often as the wrecking balls approached the buildings and streets they record, there is inevitably an element of remembrance, even of commemoration, of a world that is all but lost to us now.
Displaying the skills of two exceptional artists, Cork is an enduring act of harmony and evocation.
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin was born in Cork City in 1942. She was a founder member of Cyphers, the literary journal (1975). Her first collection, Acts and Monuments, won the Patrick Kavanagh Award. The Gallery Press has published her ten collections of poems including The Sun-fish which won the Griffin International Poetry Prize, The Mother House (2019), winner of the Irish Times Poetry Now Award, and The Map of the World (2023), shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize and winner of the Farmgate Poetry Award. Her Collected Poems (2020) won the Pigott Poetry Prize. Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin is a Fellow and Professor of English (Emeritus) at Trinity College Dublin. She served as Ireland Professor of Poetry from 2016-2019 and, in 2022, was elected a Saoi, the highest honour of Aosdána.
Brian Lalor has pursued a varied career as artist and writer with a background in architecture and archaeology. In his role as Director of the architectural department of the Temple Mount Excavations in Jerusalem he solved major issues regarding the city during the classical period. Subsequently he worked with the Smithsonian Institution, the British School of Archaeology and the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). Among his many publications are The Encyclopaedia of Ireland (2003) of which he was General Editor and Ink-Stained Hands (2011), a definitive history of fine-art printmaking in Ireland. He was Chair of Graphic Studio Dublin and Cork Printmakers and joint founder of Blue House Gallery in Schull, County Cork. He is curator of Ballydehob Arts Museum.

Brian Lalor: Retrospective
Published: Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, 2024
Softback, 64pp
€20 (not including postage)

This illustrated book was published on the occasion of Brian Lalor’s retrospective survey exhibition at Uillinn: West Cork arts Centre (27 July to 12 October 2024), with essays by Anne Hodge, Curator of Prints and Drawings at the National Gallery of Ireland; Dr. Angela Griffith, Assistant Professor, Dept. of History of Art and Architecture, TCD; as well as an extensive interview by curator Vera Ryan, concluding with an afterword by the artist.

WCAC acknowledges the financial support of Arts Council Ireland and Cork County Council in making these exhibitions possible.