Back
Back
News
Events

Barry Flanagan ‘Silâns’

22 February 2012

On 22 February, the Gallery will launch the facsimile edition of Silâns Magazine, the influential publication produced and edited between 1964 and 1965 by Barry Flanagan and his fellow students Alistair Jackson and Rudy Leenders in St. Martin’s School of Art.

The Silâns editions – the title is taken from the phonetic spelling of silence in French – are a valuable insight into a period of significant artistic creativity, experimentation and enquiry in London. In a letter to Anthony Caro during this period, Flanagan writes: “The Friday evening classes were good meat for my imagination. The classes prompted the writing of poetry, a play, film scripts, songs, the purchase of cine equipment and work on a means to translate movement and atmosphere into music. I might claim to be a sculptor and do everything else but sculpture. This is my dilemma.” In the first issue, distinctions in the unseen are defined and characterised. An epigraph from Joyce’s Ulysses “everything speaks in its own way” is followed by “A prelude to a sculpture that has never been seen” and “A prelude to a sculpture that has never been seen before”. In 2006, the Hugh Lane organised an outdoor exhibition, Barry Flanagan on O’Connell Street, comprising ten of Flanagan’s famous hare sculptures placed along Dublin’s main thoroughfare. In 1996 the artist donated Horse Mirrored: Sheep Boys: Cow Girls to the Hugh Lane Gallery.

A small exhibition of Barry Flanagan’s work on paper, sculpture and archival material accompanies the launch of Silâns.

View The Hugh Lane Press Release
View The Invitation Card
You might also be interested in
Back To Top Back To Top