A new exhibition by artists Leonie King and Sioban Piercy will open in the Gallery Café Gort on Sunday, February 18, at 7pm and will run for two months.

Leonie lives in Oranmore and Sioban is based in Athenry, and they’ve had a long shared artistic history.

Both lectured in the Art and Design Department at GMIT (now ATU) and have been exhibiting for many years as members of the all-women AKIN Artist Collective.

They also founded the imPRESSions Original Print Biennial, which was a feature of the Galway International Arts Festival for years.

Leonie’s vibrant, layered work is inspired by the land and seascape around her in Oranmore, as well as by her travels to places auch as South American India and Morocco.

Her work explores the notion of eternity, stretching backwards and forwards in time.

She trained in the London School of Art and Design and the London College of Printing and her work has been shown widely in Ireland and abroad.

Her AKIN colleague Sioban Piercy makes sculptures that she refers to as ‘books’ and her work explores the nature of the thing we humans refer to as ‘a book’.

Sioban is intrigued by this item we use to tell stories to ourselves about ourselves. She explores how book are physical things, made of everyday materials such as paper and ink, but these seemingly ordinary items can be used to manifest something else when assembled in certain ways. Books, made of paper and ink, become structures of imagination and self-explanation.

For this exhibition, Sioban is showing a series of drawings which are studies for a new set of books she’s working on.

She plays with viewers’ perceptions by making marks that suggest writing or a handwritten text but in fact are documenting the world – in this case seascapes – in a different way.

By doing this, she toys with how people ‘read’ the drawing and the book.

Their exhibition will be opened this Sunday evening by Ruth Curtis and runs for two months at The Gallery Café, The Square, Gort. It is open during restaurant hours.

www.thegallerycafegort.com for more information.

Pictured: Sioban Piercy working on her books sculptures.