Cork 2005: There are times, and this is one of them, when anyone following the programme for Cork 2005 has to take a deep breath, and ask a question. In this case the question is, "Am I really going to the Crawford Gallery to hear a Chinese artist talk about manhole covers?"
Add to this the fact that Chen Jia Le from Hangzhou has exhibited in the International Manhole Museum in Italy, and the quiver of disbelief that such an institution exists threatens, for a moment, to fracture confidence in this Cork Printmakers' programme of residencies, lectures, exhibitions and demonstrations.
Another moment banishes doubt. A slight figure with fluent English, Chen Jia Le has all the gentle authority of an artist in control of her metier. A printmaker working with woodblock techniques, she prefers the knife to the pen. She explains how both Chinese philosophy and Chinese geography influence her style, and questions from the 20 or so people gathered to hear her show that these are printmakers too, intrigued by her use of rice paper and special brushes and home-made glues. Her slides show the lids of drains, sewers and hydrants, and illustrate her use of their patterns to make rubbings of her own, sometimes overlaid with maps. This is a different kind of geography, after all.
There are Dublin covers and one made by the Shannon Foundry Limerick and now there are going to be prints of Cork covers as well, the unexpected art of the familiar blurring the cultural boundaries between Cork and Beijing, Zhejiang and Hangshou, cities now creatively linked by their drainage systems.
The curator for this Cork Printmakers Visiting Artists programme for Cork 2005 is Prawat Lauchareon, a Thai artist working in New York. Others taking part over the next five months include Ray Henshaw from Belfast, Desiree Alvarez from Manhattan, Arnaud Maguet from Nice, Mariette Linders from Amsterdam and Yuri Shtapakov from St. Petersburg. Further details from 021-4322422; info@corkprintmakers.ie
CITY LIMITS Other fundamental aspects of city life will be examined at St Luke's Hall on Summerhill North this evening when Charles Landry, founder of the European cultural planning consultancy COMEDIA and author of The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators initiates Cork City Council's lecture series on creating a cultural city. This series aims to provoke discussion on planning strategies and cultural awareness. Building developments (very much to the fore in Cork right now), physical and social change, commercial and industrial activity, recreation and tourism are all immediate concerns. Beginning at 7pm, this talk by an international expert on urban revitalisation is presented by the city council's Arts Office and is supported by the Arts Council and Cork 2005.
