Charting the theatraticality of human endeavour

'DAYS AND Nights of Strangers' is the curious title of an art exhibition by Mayo-based artist Anthony Pilbro which opens in the Watergate Theatre Upstairs Gallery on this Friday and continues until October 9.

Refuge

Anthony is a graduate of Croydon College of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art, London. He has exhibited widely in group and solo shows throughout his career, including the Dock, Leitrim, The Linenhall Arts Centre, Castlebar, The Ormond Gallery, Dublin, and internationally in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Pearson Gallery, London, and Pienza, Italy.

His work is also held in public and private collections in Ireland, UK, Europe and USA.

In his Watergate exhibition, the depiction of scenes from everyday life are shown under the title 'The Days and Nights of Strangers'. The work is part of an ongoing theme that the artist has been pursuing over a number of years - placing before the spectator the dilemma of the innate theatricality of human endeavour.

The inspiration for the exhibition has come from the poem 'The Watchers' by W.H. Auden:

Deeper towards the summer the year moves on.

What if the starving visionary have seen

The carnival within our gates,

Your bodies kicked about the streets,

We need your power still: use it, that none,

O, from their tables break uncontrollably away,

Lunging, insensible to injury,

Dangerous in a room or out wildly

Spinning like a top in the field,

Mopping and mowing through the sleepless day

The artist wants the spectator to read the exhibition as a frieze, moving though the work in a stream of consciousness – perhaps dream like - glimpsed from the corner of the eye, when walking past - half remembered - some incidental happening.

The viewpoint constantly changes through an emotional and visionary experience of continuous drama.

Opening hours: Monday–Friday 10am–7pm, Saturday 2pm–7pm