2nd-6th July
Studio 11, Belfast
Artists: Aaron Hughes, Daniel Berry, Andrew Train, Gareth Martin
So it is….
An Artists response to the contemporary culture of Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland is changing. In the past year the province has watched whilst the south of Ireland has become the first Nation to vote independently on same sex marriage. This vote not only signals the onset of the LGBT community having an equal right to marry who they want but also signals a sort of paradigm shift in public opinion.
But still in the North we watch through our fingers at a generation who still hold on to the past.
In the past year people watched in disbelief whilst a well known preacher was quoted as saying that ‘ISIS and homosexuals are God’s punishment on Europe’. A similar preacher described an entire religion as Satanic.
In our archaic laws on abortion women are still not totally in control of their bodies. Instead that power is held by men in robes and those who refer to carbon dating as a ‘Satanic trick’. New terms have been accepted into our lexicon like ‘fleg’ and ‘gay cake’. Both terms represent opposing ends of this cultural shift, the ‘fleg’ representing the conflict of the past whilst the argument over the ‘gay cake’ representing the post conflict sentiments of the present.
Feeling a sense of underrepresentation a group of artists have responded to some these changes in Zeitgeist feeling ‘caught in the middle’ They represent a growing minority who are mostly young, liberal, generally not religious or have moderate beliefs, do not pander to a particular religious/cultural factions one sided ideology and/or admit that each side is as bad as the other.
Through this exhibition they have presented artwork based on their own experiences of NI in a contemporary and typically sardonic fashion
Daniel Berry Art 