Pilbro's existential art exibitition

'Paradise: Lost and Found', an exhibition of new works by Anthony Pilbro will open in Alternative Entertainments Gallery at The Civic, Tallaght on Friday 2nd February 2007 from 5.30 – 7.30pm, to be opened by Orla Scannell, Arts Officers, South Dublin County Council.

The exhibition contains new work examining a continuous theme in Pilbro's work exploring the question ‘What is life about?' Pilbro's inspiration comes from such eclectic sources from popular culture to high culture, from Morrissey through to T.S Eliot, John Milton and Baudelaire. Throughout history, artists have been seen as protagonists, who with uncanny sight can reveal mankind's endeavors, loves, losses, trials and tribulations. In continuation of this theme, Pilbro is drawn to such characters as Tiresias, the blind seer bestowed with the gift of prophetic sight who ‘perceived the scene and foretold the rest',(T. S Eliot's The Wasteland) or Baudelaire's, flâneur, the ‘artist / poet', whom Baudelaire challenged to roam the metropolis of Paris in search of the hero of modern life to become, 'a botanist of the sidewalk', an analytical connoisseur of the urban fabric of the city.

Through the use of colour, form and space, Pilbro records the emotional and visionary experience of surviving the innate theatricality of daily life, finding a truth and fascination in the comic grotesqueness of human endeavour.

The spectator moves through the picture space, becoming the focal point, reading the work as a stream of consciousness; perhaps dreaming or waking, perhaps in the past, or in the future, seeing things glimpsed out of the corner of the eye, half remembered, incidental happenings and the view point keeps changing. The final image demands, with its expressive presence, that you, the viewer, question your perceptions of reality, and challenge your belief in normality. The exhibition runs until 28th February 2007.

More: info@altents.ie or call 01 452 0611