ART Delargy exhibition to open in Westport

PERFECT MOMENT?‘Whitepark Seabird I’ (2012, 46 x 30cm oil on board), by Diarmuid Delargy, from the ‘Art and Extinction’ series.?Pic: David Ruffles

Delargy exhibition to open in Westport


An exhibition of work by acclaimed Belfast-born artist Diarmuid Delargy is opening in the Custom House Studios Gallery this Friday evening, April 11.  
Over the past ten years, Delargy has produced a body of work on the theme ‘Art and Extinction’, and more specifically the ‘Shark Series’, which relates to this broader theme. The work is characterised by and loosely associated with the artist’s own ideas about art and extinction.
The samples of work included in the Custom House exhibition resulted from a series of on-going oil sketches that developed into bigger and more significant larger canvas and/or board artworks, using oil as the main medium. To date, this project has taken on a motif, that of a tope or a shark, a homage to the European natura morta tradition with a twist on the Pieta.
Reckoned to be one of the oldest creatures on the planet, a product of the ‘deep time’, sharks have reached the end of their evolution: Nature has perfected them. For Delargy, sharks are vehicles for expression. He is attracted by the idea of trying to paint and draw perfection – on a conceptual level it’s thought provoking – the imperfect responding to the perfect.
Delargy works mainly, although by no means exclusively, through the medium of oil paint. For him, oils still offer a range of possibilities not found in other media, allowing fluidity of expression and enabling the artist to be part of something that is still evolving, while retaining the ability to challenge and inform the viewer.
Diarmuid Delargy, a full-time practising painter and printmaker for the past 30 years, has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally, showing in Las Vegas, New York, San Francisco, Paris and Berlin among other locations.
His works are held in most major public and museum art collections in Ireland and in many private collections, including those of SeΡmus Heaney, Pat McCabe, Stephen Rea, Ciaran Carson, Paul Muldoon, Eoin McNamee and Michael Longley.

‘Exerpts from the ‘Art and Extinction’ series’, an exhibition of work by Diarmuid Delargy, in the Custom House Studios, The Quay, Wetport, will be officially opened by author Eoin McNamee this Friday, April 11. It will run until May 5.