For some months now, a selection of my photos have been on display in Gallery ICA, a well situated gallery in the heart of Kinsale. I first got an email from Haydn Shaughnessy about a year ago, asking me if I’d be interested in displaying my work in his upcoming gallery. Needless to say I jumped at the opportunity, as did several other artists including fellow photographer Donncha O Caoimh. The gallery started life in a very scenic spot overlooking the bay up in a building behind the Pink Elephant restaurant in Kilbrittan, but moved to it’s new home across from the yacht club (between the Trident hotel and Actons hotel) in Kinsale.
It’s great to see the photos finally hanging in well made frames, printed with the gracious assistance of Hewlett Packard, who gave the use of one of their first Z3100 12 ink printers in Ireland to Haydn for a couple of day’s of intense printing. The results were staggering. Up till then, I’d seen my photos printed at 30×20 inches. He printed a few test shots that were 4 feet high. That’s slightly surreal. I guess now I can start making wallpaper out of my photos!?!
Both the quality of the paper and the print itself speaks volumes. It’s all too easy to get digital photos printed today; Walk into any chemist and you can have any number of prints within an hour. It is still quite an art form (as far as I’m concerned anyway) to print properly and onto paper that compliments the type of print. The printing exercise with the HP Z3100 was a great success.
I won’t go on at length about the other artists in the gallery, I’ll leave it to you to take a trip down to Kinsale and pop into the gallery to have a look at the unique artwork. Finally, much credit is due to Haydn on the truly stellar amount of time and energy he’s put into both organising the creation and the ongoing operation of the gallery. I for one am hugely grateful for the exposure that having my prints there has allowed me and even more so because he actually sold a print of mine a couple of weeks ago! Here’s hoping for a long and busy Christmas shopping season!!
Well done! I bet it feels good to see them hanging in a gallery. I was in Kinsale at the weekend and if I had known I would have definitely have popped in. Is there an end date to the exhibition or is it ongoing?