A new exhibition from UK-born, Galway-based artist Christopher Banahan, will  open at the gallery of the city’s Town Hall Theatre this Friday, November 29, and will run until Monday, December 23.

In Rest/less, which is part of an ongoing travelogue series, Christopher shares his observations of people’s behaviour when they’re on holiday.

He explores how people on holiday seem different from how they are at home, as they have space to reflect on and take stock of their lives from a safe distance.

“My recent artwork is influenced by film noir, widescreen cinema, Hitchcock and Edward Hopper, making my paintings appear like ‘storyboard scenes from other people’s lives’,” says Christopher who adds that “freeze-framed moments capture the ordinary and mundane”, and that such ordinary moments can “become captivating and extraordinary” by slowing them down.

Several paintings focus on his observations of people who seem to be resting in public parks, such as Lisbon’s Rossio Square.

But , he says, by looking more closely, the viewer will realise that these people are “restless, lonely, isolated or displaced from society”.

The viewer is invited to question if these people are run-aways, or refugees waiting for the war to end in their countries, or are they down-and-out, with nowhere else to go.

Christopher has a First Class Fine Art degree from Nottingham Trent University and an MA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, London, and an MA in Production and Direction from UG. A finalist in the John Richardson French Residency 2024 Award, he was shortlisted for the Zurich Portrait Prize in 2019, taking part in the finalists’ exhibition at the National Gallery of Ireland, and he featured in the Sky Arts TV Portrait Artist of the Year programme in 2017.

He has been awarded numerous artist residencies in Ireland and abroad, and has been involved in artist-in-prison schemes and artist-in-schools schemes, as well as receiving several commissions under the Percent for Art public scheme. His work is the collection of the Arts Council, the OPW, and the European Central Bank.

This exhibition will be opened by former City Arts Officer James Harrold at 5pm this Friday evening at the Town Hall Theatre.