Adrienne on Drawing Box Tour

Dundalk artist Adrienne Finnerty has work on show in The Drawing Box, a touring exhibition curated by Diane Henshaw, the arts officer for Fermanagh & Omagh District Council, which is now on view virtually from the Galway Arts Centre.

Adrienne, who is now based in Barna, Co Galway, was instrumental in getting the exhibition to the City of the Tribes, after it opened in December in Fermanagh and before it travels to global venues.

The Drawing Box Facebook group was created in 2012 by John Crabtree, Andrew Crane, Patil Rajendra, and Diane Henshaw, with the idea of linking Irish and International artists who had an interest in contemporary drawing and global networking.

This went on to manifest itself in the form of a major small works unframed and unfunded touring exhibition and online network for members. Eventually the original drawing box expo went to archive and was gifted, post the international tour, to The National Irish Visual Arts Library in Dublin.

However, the group lapsed into inactivity, but was rekindled in March 2020 by Diane Henshaw. She invited 40 selected and culturally diverse members to post pre-recorded studio video clips and stills of artwork. The Arts Council of Northern Ireland awarded Diane some emergency Covid-19 arts funding to administrate the studio visits for the group.

Throughout 2020, the re-activated Drawing Box has helped to give artists some unique and unusual opportunities to be profiled internationally through the networks created, as well as through programming being developed, such as meeting the artist via online studio visits and exhibitions.

The Drawing Box can be viewed on www.galwayartscentre.ie and continues until January 16.

Adrienne was also one of the group 24 artists who shared work on Facebook in the very successful Art in Lockdown project, along with Petra Berntsson, Niamh O’Connor, Kate Bergin, and Roisin Duffy from Louth and Monaghan.

The exhibition proved extremely popular and earned some much needed sales for the artists at a time when physical galleries were closed.