Culture Night 2024 in Athlone
The art scene in Athlone has much potential
Each year towards the end of September a number of events around Ireland mark Culture Night.
This year Culture Night happened on Friday 20th September with a vast selection of visual art exhibitions, music, performances and more.
Culture Night in Athlone
The local paper listed some but not all of the events that were happening in Athlone on Culture Night.
Alongside the more publicised events there was more to discover and I chose to go off the beaten track.
I first went to an exhibition that was only promoted via social media and through the Westmeath Arts website, which was displayed at Athlone Art Gallery, a relatively new space within The Village at Burgess retail centre. The Village hosts, among others, a bookshop, a sushi restaurant, a cafe and a hair salon.
The exhibition celebrated the work of the Guerilla Girls, a group of avant-garde feminist artists and activists that started in the States in the 80s to raise awareness of the lack of diversity in the art world. Their strapline is “Conscience of the art world”.
Hard data in hand, the Guerilla Girls created art forms that communicated the urgent need for more female and people of colour representation. For example, one of the pieces from the exhibition was a poster that read: “You’re seeing less than half the picture without the vision of women artists and artists of color.” Another piece quoted directly from a 1989 report published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, saying “Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female”.
There was also a poster that looked like a handwritten love letter, but with a punchy message: “Dearest Art Collector, It has come to our attention that your collection, like most, does not contain enough art by women. We know that you feel terrible about this and will rectify the situation immediately. All our love, Guerrilla Girls”.
After a quick pitstop for a beer, I went to another art space that usually is not open to the public. In fact, you need to wait for something like Culture Night to be allowed in.
This space is called Shambles Art Studio and it’s a small venue used exclusively by artists. To celebrate Culture Night the Studio opened its doors and you were able to see paintings from local artists ranging from human figures to landscapes.
This event was not advertised in the media and I hadn’t even started following the Studio on Instagram (something I rectified straight away as soon as I got there!). So, how did I find out about it? I had taken myself for a walk around Athlone before going to see some art as it was the last sunny day of summer (and, trust me, sunny days were at a premium this year in Ireland) and I had noticed that the Studio was going to be open in the evening for Culture Night. Everyone was invited to come in and see the art on display.
I had this Studio on my “places to visit” list on Google Maps so it was good to tick it off the list! The main exhibition room is quite small so not many paintings were on display, with some prints for sale that were available in a large concertina-style stand.
The local artists were delighted to welcome people to their exhibition and Culture Night gave them an opportunity to meet potential buyers.
While other cities in Ireland celebrated Culture Night in spectacular ways with parades, acrobats, multimedia presentations and more, Culture Night in Athlone was a smaller affair and in my view it could be more ambitious in coming years. Overall, I thought it’s a great initiative and a great way to make art more accessible as not many museums and art galleries are open in the evening. If I can make one simple suggestion it would be to not have all the events running exactly at the same time between 6pm and 9pm, considering that many people may not be able to arrive to one single venue before 7pm.
If you are reading this from Ireland, did you go to Culture Night and what did you see? Please let me know in the comments.
@maryld Here it is! My recap of Culture Night 🖼️