The Ballinglen Museum of Art is located adjacent to The Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Ballycastle, County Mayo. Ballinglen Arts Foundation is an Irish non-profit organisation and was founded in 1992 by Margo Dolan and Peter Maxwell. The Foundation provides programmes designed to support serious artists making important work in ideal, inspiring conditions.
As part of the People & Places of North Mayo Video Series, meet the current Managing director, the wonderful Úna Forde, who tells us all about The Ballinglen Museum of Art.
Úna explains how the adjacent Ballinglen Arts Foundation which provides art residency programmes ensures that visitors to the museum will have the opportunity to view stunning paintings, prints and photographic images created by accomplished Irish and International artists. All artists have spent time here in North Mayo which has in turn inspired their beautiful, unique creations.
The gallery was the first museum devoted to contemporary art in the west of Ireland. The museum will have much needed storage for an archive of 850+ works of art. Ballinglen Fellows who have visited the region created all art works over the past thirty years. They stayed in the area for weeks at a time, consequently becoming part of the very fabric of the community.
Inspired by the local landscape, each piece of work has a poignancy as it relates to presence and time, cyclical returns, old places, light and its absence and of course the sky.
The work in the Ballinglen Permanent Collection has over the years become a record which marks the passing of time, presenting evidence of that which remains the same and that which has changed about this village.
The Ballinglen Museum of Art also include spaces for lectures, classes, workshops and meeting.
Workshops
The Foundation runs workshops and classes led by internationally renowned artists who have been Ballinglen Fellows.
The artists have an intimate knowledge of the local area which greatly benefits participants of the Workshops and Classes when they take part in the included local field trips. Participants have access to the extensive Dolan/Maxwell Library plus the support of the experienced, knowledgeable and supremely helpful staff – all of whom are from the local area.
Please see ballinglenworshops.com for more information.
Contact Ballinglen Museum of Art
Address: Main Street, Ballycastle, Co. Mayo, F26 RX61
Visit: ballinglenartsfoundation.org | Email: [email protected] | Call: +353 (0)96 43184
