New Works by Roisín Bateman, Leah Beggs, Rod Coyne, Simon Knowles & Bobby McLean

An exhibition of new works by five artists is to open in Galway, and will run until May 17th.

The exhibition will be officially opened by poet Gerard Hanberry at 6.00pm on the Friday 27th April at the Kenny Gallery.

This varied collection reacquaints The Kenny Gallery with some artists that have shown here some years ago, while it introduces others that are new to exhibiting in the west.

Roisín Bateman was born in Galway in 1964. In 1986 she moved to Sag Harbor, New York where she currently lives and works. She has had solo and group exhibitions in galleries in Ireland and the United States. Roisín attended Belfast College of Art, Northern Ireland, where she received her B.F.A. in 1986. The Kenny Gallery are delighted to welcome her home as part of this exhibition.

The work of Leah Beggs, originally from Dun Laoghaire, usually begins with a pictorial element of landscape in mind, but this acts only as a trigger to the final abstracted image. The artist's current work concerns the surrounding landscape and environmental effects in both rural and urban contexts; the soft rain masking the hills creating a delicate composition, compared to the defined structure of a cityscapes the muted colours of a winter landscape weighed against the rich colours of the bog in summer.

Coincidentally also born in Dun Laoghaire, Rod Coyne studied locally before qualifying in Cork. He returned to Ireland in 1999 after spending ten years in Germany. He exhibits extensively in Ireland and abroad including the RHA, RUA, London, Europe and the USA.

Simon Knowles was born in London in 1957. He studied Fine Art in the Falmouth School of Art from 1975-1978 and Art History in the Birmingham Polytechnic from 1978 - 1981. Recently his studio work has begun to focus on the subject of the invented landscape. This series of panels, each of which refers to a section of the city, such as Latin, French, Italian etc, plays on the idea of incommensurability, that is to say on the idea that current culture is a de-centred, plural structure in which no principles of order can be determined that retain any permanence. Instead Heterotopia is a place that endlessly reflects itself replicating its own de-centred shifting language of multicultural symbols.

Bobby McLean was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1957 and according to himself, had an undistinguished career in school and an equally undistinguished career as apprentice printer, bricklayer and line-man with British Rail. He enrolled as a student at Glasgow School of Art in 1985 and graduated with a BA honours degree in fine art in 1989.

He painted in Glasgow for a year before coming to Ireland. He was invited in 1990 for a two-week period to show a selection of landscape work at the Éigse Arts Festival and he has been in Carlow ever since. Bobby was awarded an artist-in-residence position from the Irish Arts Council in 1992.

This group exhibition is followed by a solo exhibition of renowned Irish painter Michael Gemmell. Gemmell works in oils, and his quest to capture colour and light led him to interpret bog land and mountain landscapes in varying atmospheric conditions. With high-keyed colours, his work is unmistakable. Flashing yellows, deep saturated blues and vivid orange flow sensually together in his paintings - his exhibition will be officially opened by Maryangela Keane, a historical geographer from Co.Clare, on Friday 18th May at 6.00pm.