Local artist, Joe Gregory, launches solo exhibition in Strule Arts Centre, Omagh
7th December 2023
Local artist, Joe Gregory, will launch his solo exhibition ‘History Again’ in the Strule Arts Centre, Omagh at 7pm on Thursday 4 January 2024.
The exhibition has a deep-rooted thematic link to the work he produced while at university in the evolving and everchanging cityscape of Liverpool through the 1980s and 1990s. Joe studied the hidden and ignored spaces revealed as the city gradually regenerated, exploring the theme through painting, ceramics and printmaking.
Over 30 years later, ‘History Again’, revisits the abandoned and overlooked, where the lives of history are stamped on the structures that were once inhabited and loved.
Now, Joe works almost exclusively with oil paint on canvas or wooden board, using textured media and abstracted compositions in search of that beauty, subtlety and history which is often ignored and concealed.
There are no landscapes or figures embedded in these works though much of the iconography of them can be gleaned by the individual viewer.
Though produced mainly through 2022-23, the works have a deliberate look of being aged and eroded by time. The elements and colours are muted and restrained with an intentional reference to the past and its tenuous hold on the present.
Speaking about his inspiration for this exhibition, Joe said:
“Many years ago in Liverpool, I discovered the empty, the forgotten and the abandoned including homes and factories, where lives had passed and memories were made. In every derelict, there are colours and forms, textures and echoes which speak not only of themselves, but of those who went before. This is my ongoing exposition of that history and of those stories. Every building must have its own soul.”
The exhibition will be open to Saturday 27 January 2024 from 9.30 am – 5pm, Monday – Saturday. Admission is free.
For more information on the exhibition, or Strule Arts Centre’s programme of events visit www.struleartscentre.co.uk, telephone 028 8224 7831 or email: strulearts@fermanaghomagh.com.