Rock Art Exhibition – at the Cork Public Museum!

The Cork Public Museum has invited us to mount a Rock Art Exhibition and YOU are invited. Readers will remember the one we did last year in Ballydehob. Well, this one will be bigger and more comprehensive.

First of all, this time we have two partners. Ken Williams will be familiar to readers of this Journal – we profiled him in the post Shadows and Stone in Action, and he, and his photographs, figured largely in our famous Derrynablaha Expedition post. Ken is probably the foremost photographer of prehistoric monuments in Ireland, and certainly of prehistoric art. His website, Shadows and Stone is an invaluable resource of both images and information. He was recently profiled in The Irish Times Magazine – a wonderful two page spread.

Keith Payne has lived, painted and exhibited all over the world, including running his own gallery in France, but now he lives in West Cork.  He spent years travelling with the Rolling Stones creating stage sculptures and backdrops for their shows. 

Keith has always been inspired by prehistoric art – cave paintings, aboriginal rock paintings, and all forms of petroglyphs. The paintings he has contributed to the exhibition are based on West Cork rock art pieces but the form, and the amazing colours, are all his own. We are thrilled that he is participating.

Besides Ken’s photographs and Keith’s paintings, the exhibition will include many of my rock art drawings and some of Robert’s more recent ones. There will also be ‘real’ rock art on display – an unusual stone from Bluid, near Castletownshend, and of course the Cape Clear Stone, which is on permanent exhibit in the Museum. It’s an example of passage grave art rather than rock art, but the comparisons are fascinating and important. A ten minute walk away, at University College Cork, are two further examples of rock art, one from County Cork and one from County Waterford.

The Grand Opening will be at 2PM on Saturday October 31st. Please come if you can and say hello. But if you can’t make it, the exhibition will run until February 2016, so we hope you can drop by.