The Model, Sligo, is set to re-open on Thursday 23 July. Adapting to the current situation due to Covid-19, the arts centre will open its award-winning building, galleries and cafe while maintaining appropriate social distancing guidelines and Covid-19 prevention protocols.
The last few months have been a profoundly difficult time for everyone as we navigated through a global pandemic, and we are very excited to re-open the doors of our beautiful building this July, to welcome back our local communities, and to share in the magic of art in our galleries once again. The work of artists – and indeed nature and the ocean – themes of our current exhibition The Sea Around Us, can offer enormous healing and recovery. We hope that The Model will be an important part of this journey for the people of Sligo in the coming months and years.
We are also delighted that we can present two major exhibitions, with special resonance for Sligo people – The Sea Around Us, a multi-sensory experience of visuals and sound, that invites audiences to drift outwards from the Sligo shoreline to explore the many different aspects of our relationship with the sea; and Jack Butler Yeats, ‘A Thought of Sligo’, which looks at the impact of Sligo and the West on the artist’s work.
New Covid-19 prevention protocols will be in place throughout the building to ensure that we can share our work and welcome back our audiences and artists in a safe environment. Hygiene and physical distancing will be of the utmost importance and will be clearly facilitated within the building. These measures will be outlined on our website in advance of opening so that visitors can be assured of a safe space to reconnect with the magic of art.
The Model remains free of charge but visitors will be asked to check in on entry. Opening hours will initially be Thursday-Saturday 12-4 pm in what is the first phase of a gradual reopening with further hours/days planned to be added over the Autumn. Entry is strictly via The Mall entrance and exit via Connaughton Road.
The Sea Around Us is an ambitious international exhibition, that invites viewers to contemplate the ebb and flow of the ocean, and reconsider the sea as a stage where a multiplicity of unseen – at times non-human, and at times inhumane – dramas are played out. The show is accompanied by no man’s land a new music score and sound installation composed by Karen Power. The piece, specially commissioned by The Model on the occasion of this exhibition, is based on field recordings gathered from the Sligo seaboard at Strandhill, Gibraltar Point, Deadman’s Point, Rosses Point, Lower Ross Beach, Lissadell Beach, Ballygilgan Nature Reserve, Streedagh Beach. The pairing of the human voice with sea continues Power’s enquiry into the basic function of language as used by all species. no man’s land places the voice in the centre of the sea as it searches for connection between superficially unconnected beings. The language that emerges between sea and voice lets us hear both in a new way, while potentially altering our future relationship with the sea around us.
For those who can’t wait until 23 July to experience this wonderful exhibition, a five-minute extract of the live premiere of no man’s land, can be experienced online at here