Beyond the Beyonds: Work by John Kingerlee

The Crescent is delighted to present a new exhibition featuring recent paintings and prints by 81-year-old Internationally renowned artist, John Kingerlee.

The exhibition will feature work from the past three years and includes Grids, Landscapes, Heads and Prints. The centrepiece of the exhibition will be his very latest work titled SRIK paintings.

The SRIKS are an absorbing collection of work, which houses a lifetime's random collection of memorabilia. Old notes, old letters and old drawings that Kingerlee has carried for years, all passing out of his life and into the world of paintings. Kingerlee, the most remarkable environmental artist in the world is serving us a Universal message against global warming. He is by example, humbly and reverentially grateful for this source of inspiration. But ultimately it is us who should thank him for choosing to share it with us.

Professor Mike Catto who is an authority of Kingerlee’s work will open the exhibition on Thursday 11th January at 6pm at The Crescent, Belfast.

Accompanying the exhibition will be a premiere of new film on the life and work of the artist titled "Beyond The Beyonds", words penned by the great Seamus Heaney on viewing Kingerlee’s paintings for the first time. The film has recently won two major merit awards in California. The film will show on Thursday 18th January at 7.30pm and we are delighted to welcome Ros Drinkwater, who wrote the script, will be joining us.

About the Artist

John Kingerlee was born in Birmingham and moved with his wife to the wild and remote Beara Peninsula in the West Cork in 1982. The West of Ireland's wind-swept, elemental landscape of rock, sky and water has had a deep effect on his work, and his painting captures its essence in near abstract form.

Kingerlee works slowly on his paintings, building them up in layers over a period of months and years. He has also produce collages, which involve found printed matter and drawing, and figurative paintings including an ongoing series of heads.

His abstract grid paintings reflect both the walls of Fez and an acute sense of the power that resonates from a site such as the mound of Tara in County Meath, Ireland, reputed to have been the seat of the High King of Ireland. Some critics describe the grids as pneumas, from the ancient Greek word for breath or, when used in a religious context, spirit or soul.