Artists who represented Ireland at the Olympic Games will be the focus of a new exhibition opening in Co Waterford next week.
The Waterford Gallery of Art will host 'Muscles & Mind: Irish Art Olympians' from 26 July until 26 November, with its opening coinciding with the Paris Olympics.
Launching the exhibition will be John Treacy, a native of Waterford who won silver in the Olympic marathon in Los Angeles in 1984.
Some of Ireland's most renowned artists who competed for their country in the Olympics between 1924 and 1948, while art was an Olympic discipline, will be included in the exhibition, such as Jack B Yeats, Letitia Hamilton, Mainie Jellett, Seán Keating, Flora Vere O'Brien, Sir John Lavery, and more.
Organisers say one of the main focuses of the exhibition is to highlight how integral art was to the early Olympics and question what is means to compete and represent your nation as an artist.
The gallery has made some exciting discoveries including Mainie Jellett’s ‘The Bathers/Baigneurs’ artwork that was painted in 1922, but only recently has been identified as featuring in the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics.
Also, enigmatic and somewhat eccentric artist, Flora Vere O’Brien was featured twice in the 1948 Olympics with a poem ‘A Song for the Road’ and a print, assumed lost, entitled ‘The Hurlers’.
Through the family of Ms O’Brien, the gallery has managed to locate one of the original editions of the print as well as the linocut the image was made from.
The granddaughter of artist Desmond Broe, Sonachú O’Callaghan-Broe, has located a treasure trove of his work including his 1948 London Olympic medal, competing certificate, images of his sculpture submitted in the 1948 Olympics and ‘Race of the Gael’, which was his sculpture featured in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics.
As part of the Creative Ireland funded ‘Muscles & Mind: Open-Call’, the gallery is also to present a group exhibition exploring themes of nationality, representation, and art as competition, by contemporary artists living and working in Ireland.
These artists include Catherine Barron, James Horan, Ramon Kassam, Alison Lowry, Séamus O’Brien, Noel O’Donoghue, Laurence O’Toole, Csilla Toldy, Duc Van Pham, Síle Walsh and Lee Welch.
Meanwhile, the Waterford Gallery of Art SETU Graduate Award Commission will officially launch a newly commissioned portrait of Olympic silver medal winner John Treacy, by recent SETU Waterford Visual Arts Graduate, Sammy Kane.
The exhibition is being staged with support from the Waterford Arts Office, Creative Ireland and the Olympic Federation of Ireland.
