The Fold Torch Songs

The Fold
Issue 1 : Torch Songs
Arists - Jonathan Hunter, Markus Oakley, Stephen Loughman, Alison Pilkington. Roisin Lewis, Carly McNulty, Jason Oakley,

‘Torch Songs’ artists were invited to contribute artworks related to the theme of love, romance, broken heart and laments typified by the famous torch songs of singers such as Nina Simone and Billie Holiday. The result is a diverse mix of artworks and texts. This issue explored ideas related to contemporary romantic notions surrounding art and the creative process.
"Art should be distant and un-understandable, the sublime is where narrative ends and fear is part of the experience”
Anish Kapoor
Modern Painters vol 16 no 3

In Torch Songs we touched on the topic of painting in contemporay Irish art.;Has painting regained part of its position of dominance as an artform that or is it to remain doomed to a corner of the art world as an ‘option’ or ‘understudy’ to the serious artforms such as photography and installation.
In Irish Art the tradition of painting in particular landscape painting has been cited as the dominant art form in Irish Art . Bruce Arnold has written extensively about modernist influences on Irish painters such as Hone, Jelliet, Yeats and later William Scott. However it is important to revise ideas related to modernist notions of authenticty, originality purity and ‘truthfulness’ with reference to contemporay Irish painting.