Art in the Eastside 2014 – Open Submissions now closed!!

We had an amazing response to our Open Submission Art in thetside Billboard Project this year, with over 500 images from local, national and international artists being submitted.  Successful artists will be notified early to mid September 2014, with the billboards and installations being on show during the Ulster Bank Festival at Queens during October. Creative Exchange Studios would just like to say a big thank you to all who submitted to this years project. We have added a few images from previous years projects to give you an idea of what Art In The Eastside is all about!

Art In The Eastside 2014 Submissions NOW OPEN

The Art in the East Side Billboard Project is the largest outdoor visual arts exhibition in Ireland and includes work from local, national and international artists.  Submissions for the 2014 Project are now open

As part of the Ulster Bank Belfast Festival at Queen’s programme, this dynamic public art project, celebrates the creative positive energy of East Belfast, through the use of high-quality visual art, on 50 Billboards and installations in public spaces. Collectively, it will create an outdoor gallery of positive and thought-provoking images. The artworks will be displayed in the heart of East Belfast in high-profile locations and arterial routes. Viewed by over 400,000 commuters, visitors and residents, Art in The Eastside is for many, an introduction to visual art. It is by its very nature accessible, presenting high-quality visual across the East of the city, adding colour, vibrancy to the urban landscape.

Art in the East Side have an open submission opportunity for artists wishing to participate in the “Art in the Eastside’ Billboard project and will include artists that are based locally, nationally and internationally.  All that is required is a digital image submitted be emailed. Submission is free of charge and selected artists will receive a small fee for their participation.

A selection panel consisting of Deirdre Robb from Creative Exchange, Joanna Harvey from  ACNI, Rob Hilken from VAI and Richard Wakley the Director of Belfast Festival at Queen’s will make he final choices regarding artwork to be included in  the exhibtion. Submissions will be anonymous when presented to the panel.

The deadline for submissions is 29 AUGUST 2014.                                                    Artists are also required to provide the following;

Image – dimensions detailed on Brief       AITE artist brief 2014       

CV and Statement

Submissions can be made via artintheeastside@gmail.com

 

 

2014…The Billboards Return

Plans are already under-way for the 2014 Art in the Eastside Project.  Dates and submission details will be posted around May 2014. Keep an eye on out Twitter, Facebook and website for more details nearer the time.

 

 

Gerry Gleason, 26 Upper Newtownards Road, billboard location no. 5

‘Titanic Boatmen’ captures the sinking and separation of the Titanic. Gleason creates movement with stills of the tragic ship as it descends through the fathoms of the Atlantic.  At one point the ship is supported by the mirrored image of two great dinosaur skeletons, these great prehistoric ribcages, spines and frames were sourced from the Ulster Museum. Beneath these posed bones the Titanic is laid to rest.

The sense of the magnitude of the ocean, the Titanic, and the dinosaur are achieved in this piece with the use of block colours; the navy sky, the cold blue of the Atlantic, and the black silt of the sea floor. Their purity means that we have to look to the other elements of the image to gauge scale. The distortion of proportion is achieved with the contrast in size of the dinosaur’s skeleton when compared with what at the time was the largest ship afloat, these elements play with the viewers notion of scale, making for an image that forces you to contemplate the balance of what is being shown.

Click here to view the map of  all our billboard locations.

Artwork available to purchase from the Engine Room Gallery from the 5th of September
The Engine Room Gallery
414 Newtownards Road
Belfast
BT4 4HH

Derick Hegarty, 242 Albertbridge Road, billboard location no. 14

‘Afterglow’ with its rust of reds, blacks and silver, is a mesmerizing glimpse into Hegarty’s inner ether. Elements from his day-to-day life are melted down in the crucible of his canvas and then allowed to coalesce with striking imagination. Scissors and steeples find their way onto the inky outcrops and through the red mists of this scrying pool. These sharp and angular objects planted in the piece with silvers and whites ,strike against the disembodied pools of colour that express Hegarty’s brooding and passionate mood. ‘Afterglow’ is a shifting map that outlines the lucid terrain of emotion.

Click here to view the map of  all our billboard locations.

Artwork available to purchase from the Engine Room Gallery from the 5th of September
The Engine Room Gallery
414 Newtownards Road
Belfast
BT4 4HH

David Fox, Newtownards Road at Holywood Road, billboard location no. 38

 

‘Doig at The Mac –Belfast’ is taken from a series of paintings by Fox that document gallery interiors. This piece is a painting of Peter Doig’s show, held locally at the MAC gallery Belfast back in November 2012. Curated by Hugh Mulholland, Fox describes the event as ground breaking for contemporary art and painting within Northern Ireland.

The painting itself is clean and cool, with the pinks, greens and oranges of the exhibited paintings emphasised against the polished grey of the floor and strong whites of the walls and strip lighting. There are no members of the public milling about, nor any staff, the attention is on the space, the architecture, and the artwork at rest.

 Click here to view the map of  all our billboard locations.

Artwork available to purchase from the Engine Room Gallery from the 5th of September
The Engine Room Gallery
414 Newtownards Road
Belfast
BT4 4HH

Barbara Craig, Holywood Road, Belfast, billboard location no. 8

‘Flying Flags’ is a painting that captures the kinetic energy of flags. Craig’s flags streak and fly, the colours are vibrant and the strokes energetic, bold reds, yellows and blues sail a cool blue sky whipped with white clouds.

Deliberately politically neutral, these flags are akin to the bunting and trimming of a fete or gala. Yet the wind that moves them seems powerful enough to cause the material to blur and merge in places,  even pull free from the string that anchors them. Perhaps an awareness by the artist that even these decorations, strung for their vibrancy and pleasing movement, can transform into other colours and shapes under the right conditions. That it is in fact the storm or calm that surrounds them that imbues them with their identity.

Click here to view the map of  all our billboard locations.

Artwork available to purchase from the Engine Room Gallery from the 5th of September
The Engine Room Gallery
414 Newtownards Road
Belfast
BT4 4HH

Aisling O’Beirn, 279 Albertbridge Road, billboard location no. 16

 
‘Liaka in Pre Flight Mode’ from the series ‘Some European Scientific Endeavors,’ is a reworking of a famous photograph of Liaka, the first living creature to be launched into space and the first animal to orbit the Earth. Liaka, meaning “Barker,” had been a stray on the streets of Moscow and was propelled into the heavens by the Soviet Union in 1957

Liaka travelled more than 900 miles, (nearly 1,500 km) above the Earth – at an orbiting speed of five miles (8km) a second, taking one hour and 42 minutes to circle the Earth. Scientists studied the data sent back in order to observe the effects of solar radiation and weightlessness on living organisms. Liaka died from overheating within hours of the launch, though this was not made public until 2002. A report circulated at the time stated that she died on the sixth day when the oxygen supply on board was scheduled to run out, the Soviet government also claimed she was euthanized prior to oxygen depletion. There is a small monument to Liaka near the military research facility in Moscow that trained her for space travel, the monument is of a dog standing on a rocket.

The Liaka of O’Beirn’s image receives the highest concentration of lines and detail, while the components and structure of the cabin are less defined. This graduated retreat from recognisable shapes such as the dog, to the less specific boundaries of Liaka’s pod, makes the white space around the image seem to leak in, threatening to overpower the strokes of the drawing. The title itself is telling, its use of ‘mode’ to describe an unwitting animal posed for a photograph in the cabin it will certainly die in, perhaps alludes to the clash that can occur between morals and progress in the pursuit of science. O’Beirn’s image captures the approaching oblivion of an animal that as far as we know was incapable of comprehending the space we sent her into. We who could begin to comprehend it, propelled her into all that vacancy and silence. Perhaps from way up there Liaka was able to look back at us.

Click here to view the map of  all our billboard locations.

Artwork available to purchase from the Engine Room Gallery from the 5th of September
The Engine Room Gallery
414 Newtownards Road
Belfast
BT4 4HH

Gemma Lalor, Central Station, billboard location no. 39

AKA Magically Overactive Imagination, Lalor captures themes of expiration, adolescence and perpetual circularity in ‘Nanny News’. Text taken from newspaper headlines punctuate the piece, while the character at its center, with a head that resembles a rolled up newspaper, wears a zombified expression. The impression this mixture of direct and indirect communication leaves is one that bemoans a sense of regurgitated news and therefore, the recycled lives lead by the people who inspired the headlines. Whether this is the media’s fault or ours remains somewhat ambiguous, but the dependency is ever present. The raised street on which the central character walks tells of a world that has become less a stage and more a loop, yet splashes of originality still pierce the recycled film perpetuated by hype and the scandal of fresh ink; the walking stick that resembles a candy cane, the purple rinsed figure that leans on it, the quarter lengths trousers and stripy socks she wears offer some hope, even if we’ve seen it all before. 

Click here to view the map of  all our billboard locations.

Artwork available to purchase from the Engine Room Gallery from the 5th of September

The Engine Room Gallery
414 Newtownards Road
Belfast
BT4 4HH

Clinton Kirkpatrick, Beersbridge Road, billboard location no. 33

‘Boxed’ is a woodcut print that describes captivity. Kirkpatrick states that the positioning of the character is both uncomfortable and deliberate, suggesting that the folded figure could be hiding or self-imprisoned. There is a tension here between the motivation and the impact of the confinement on the figure. The image stirs parallels with an internal conflict akin to Jekyll and Hyde, the wide-open eyes convey a sense of alarm but not panic, the entrapment is interpretable as an expression of a past guilt or future potential shame. The figure’s muscular form and yet pliable shape, further conveys a sense that the figure is self-imprisoned or at least compliant, as it is not straining or resisting. The warm reds and yellows convey a sense of as yet unharnessed power, the green about the eyes, lips and coiled flesh, suggests a rationality to the rawer reds, yellows and thick blacks. The figure seems to understand the dimensions of the box it inhabits, the box has become a chrysalis of sorts, but will the figure pupate or remain pubescent.

Click here to view the map of  all our billboard locations.

Artwork available to purchase from the Engine Room Gallery from the 5th of September

The Engine Room Gallery
414 Newtownards Road
Belfast
BT4 4HH