9th October 2009

Ireland’s most celebrated sculptor John Behan will exhibit an inspirational body of new work, under the title “The Silence of History”, at The Hunt Museum, Limerick, from November 5 – 22.
Roger Downer, Chairperson of the Hunt Museum Board of Directors, commented, “We are very excited by the prospect of hosting ‘The Silence of History”, a collection of over thirty works, including not just sculptures, but also paintings by John Behan, who is without doubt one of Ireland’s most influential contemporary artists”.
John Behan first showed his work publically forty years ago and in the decades since, his reputation has grown far beyond our shores.
Roger Downer suggested, “With the markets remaining volatile and interest rates at an all time low, now is a good time to invest in work by this very collectable artist, and I’m delighted to report that all of John Behan’s pieces on exhibit at the Hunt Museum will be for sale”.
Renowned composer, producer and arranger Bill Whelan will, officially launch “The Silence of History”, at 6pm on Thursday November 5, at the Hunt Museum.
Roger Downer concluded, “The Hunt Museum has bucked trends this year by recording its highest ever visitor numbers, up by an average 30 percent for the first nine months of 2009. This is an extraordinary feat during a recession, and with an exhibition of this calibre running through November, we anticipate this upward visitor number trend will continue”.

About John Behan
John Behan RHA was born in Dublin in 1938, and now living and working near Galway city where he continues to vary his style of expression, John Behan is firmly established as a sculptor of international stature.

After an apprenticeship in metal work and welding, the foundations for Behan's success were laid in the sixties, when he trained in London and Oslo and began to exhibit widely. But he also had a wider artistic vision, which saw him challenge the elitism of the art establishment and seek to popularise art. He was a founder member of the New Artists' group in 1962 and Dublin's innovative Project Art Centre in Dublin in 1967.

He has been awarded many honours and became a Member of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1990, having been an Associate of the Academy since 1973. He is also a member of Aosdána.

Celebrated for his early bull sculptures - described by playwright Brian Friel as 'enormously solid artefacts, 4-square on the earth, confident, assured, executed to a point of absolute completion' - Behan's style is still evolving and growing. In a general sense he can be credited with playing a major part in the development of sculpture in Ireland over the last forty years.

In June 2000 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the National University of Ireland, Galway on the same day his large commissioned sculpture, Twin Spires, was unveiled at the college.

His major public commissions include Flight of Birds, Famine Ship, Tree of Liberty, Daedalus, Millennium Child, Arrival and Equality Emerging, unveiled in Galway city in November 2001.

A film documentary of John Behan's work entitled 'Famine Ship' was broadcast in Ireland and the U.K. in 1999 and is distributed in North America by The Cinema Guild Inc. and the rest of the world by Network Television.

Seamus Heaney, Poet and Nobel Laureate said...
"Say the name John Behan and you see the bulls of Cooley and the Children of Lir and the bittern of Cathal Bui, the birds of Aengus, the boats of Broighter and the Ostfold Boat and the Ghost Boat and even the Boar of Ben Bulben. John Behan has made a mark in our collective imagination, that his work for many of us represents different stages of our life to us, that by now it’s simply part of our mental furniture. It was probably a hard enough fate to begin as an artist in Ireland in the nineteen sixties with a name like Behan.
With John Behan, there is no game playing, no artsy role-playing, no temperamental swank or masquerade. You meet the man, not the mask, the inner soul rather than the social exterior. There is something psychologically salubrious about him; it is as if you are encountering what the Upanishads call 'the ancient self', something previous to and underlying individual character, some kind of psychic bedrock. And the theme and motifs of this exhibition are, of course, consonant with that impression which John makes as a person.
These sculptures please us by their materiality, by their substantial physical presence, their bronze in-placeness, their this-worldness….for they are not in the least otherworldly. They are produced by somebody who knows the behaviour of bronze, as it was known in the workshops of Rodin and Michelangelo. And yet in spite of the down-to-earthiness and this-worldness of these images John has made, there is also present in them and behind them a sense that they are vessels of spirit, symbols of human knowledge, images, as Yeats said 'that yet/Fresh images beget'."

Artist's Statement

"My art is related to ancient culture as well as to modern technique. I feel that every artist, be they poet or writer or sculptor or painter, must have roots, roots that will tap into the ground. It's not to say that you don't live in the modern world - I use all the technology that I possibly can to express myself, I am very aware of what's going on in terms of technical innovation - but in terms of Irish art, we have had a gap between the Middle Ages and the 20th Century when no visual art was produced. So I had to go back: the future was in the past, if you like.

The Renaissance wasn't experienced in Ireland. So I felt I had to rediscover things and deal with them and bring them forward. I've also had a good look at the Classical civilisations - Greek and Roman, particularly the Greek - and that has had a huge impact on my recent work.

You have to deal with that; I think anybody with an Irish background does. Art must have a basis - if it takes it from other cultures that's fine, if it takes from its own culture that is also fine. What I have done is I have tried to combine all these different elements to find a solution for my own problems."

ENDS

For images or further information. Contact:
Naomi O’Nolan on: 061-312833
Margaret O’Brien on: 086-6009045

Press Release issued on: October 9, 2009 on behalf of:
The Hunt Museum
Rutland Street
Limerick

Website: www.huntmuseum.com

Tel: +00-353-61-312833

Museum Opening Hours:
Monday to Saturday 10 am - 5 pm
Sunday 2 pm - 5 pm