Blacklion Arts and Hertitage Festival is pleased to be hosting an exhibition titled ‘Landscape and Memory’ curated by visual artist Marilyn Gaffney. The exhibition comprises of 22 international artists work. The exhibtion takes place at The Market House, Blacklion and will be on display during The Cathal Buí Festival 2015.

One of our deepest needs is for a sense of identity, belonging and human attachment to landscape and how we find identity in landscape and place. Landscape therefore is not simply what we see, but a way of seeing. We see it with our eye but interpret it with our mind and ascribe values to landscape for intangible spiritual reasons. Landscape can therefore be seen as a cultural construct in which our sense of place and memories inhere.

This group of artists gathered to talk in one shared language -as well as many tongues, on the matter of memory and landscape. Since the landscape changed in times for them, and as much as their eyes allowed, becoming their own. Many of them have come from other countries and cultures, adding to the personal voyage, the re- interpretation of the land by different experiences and tongues.

The landscape then changes, subtly transformed by memory, acquiring multiple forms: abstract digitized photos to fine painting; children playing in bucolic gardens that the artist eye turns sinister, portraits disintegrate to pixels, the human body as a textual form and repository for memories, human impact on the land, stating what matters is the personal voyage, the unique experience under the set point Memory and Landscape.

Exhibiting artists include: Malgorzata Dawidek Gryglicka (Poland), Nikolaos Lamprinos (Greece), Carly Zufelt (USA), Judith Mazzucco, (USA), Elena Feijoo (USA), Marilyn Gaffney (Ireland), Karen Esteves (USA), Madaline Walker (USA), Elaine Catherine Miller (USA), Tomás Castaño (Spain), Sasha Romashko (Ukraine), Stuart Gibson (USA), Andrew Reid Wildman (Great Britain), Xiaohong Zhang (USA), Reyhaneh Afzalian Naini (Iran), Marta Miranda (Argentina), Yami (France), Klaus Pinter (Austria), Vera L.P. Cauwenberghs (Belgium), Rachel Lin Weaver (USA), Courtney A. Henderson (USA), Zedekiah Schild (USA).