Tony O’Malley Retrospective

This exhibition is a major retrospective of the work of the distinguished Irish artist Tony O’Malley, who died in 2003. O’Malley was one of the major figures in Irish contemporary art and this exhibition is a survey of his life’s work. Nature and history form the basic themes in O’Malley’s highly distinctive paintings.

Working intuitively over 40 years, he recorded the moods, movement and bird song of the countryside, usually of Ireland but also of the warmer, more exotic islands where he spent the winter. His paintings, on everything from scraps of recycled paper and canvas to the discarded hoops of an old Guinness barrel, also celebrate the medieval and Gaelic associations of such places as Callan, Jerpoint, and Kells, as well as his ancestral roots in Clare Island on the west coast of Co Mayo. Tony O’Malley is now recognised as one of the leading Irish painters of his time. In 1999 he was the recipient of the Glen Dimplex Award for a Sustained Contribution to the Visual Arts in Ireland, while a year later his work formed the central, visual focus for the Festival of Irish Culture, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, USA.

Tax Breaks for Irish Artists

The Irish artistic world has been galvanised by proposals to scrap the country’s long-treasured tax breaks for artists, warning that such a move would spark a crisis.

A committee of the Irish parliament this week heard pleas for its continuation, its defenders arguing that its abolition would be disastrous for the thriving Irish arts scene.

The Irish Republic has long been intensely proud of the measure, dating back to the 1960s, that exempts from tax income by artists, writers, composers and sculptors from the sale of their works. It is said to have helped keep financially afloat struggling artists who might otherwise have been lost to the arts, while at the same time attracting creative people to the country.

Artist Patrick Caulfield dies at 69

British painter and printmaker Patrick Caulfield, noted for his spare, precise studies of interiors and still life, has died, a gallery representing him announced today. He was 69.

Ulster Museum to get £12m refurbishment

The Ulster Museum is to get a multi-million pound refurbishment to attract more visitors.

Almost £12m will be spent improving the interior of the Belfast building which houses collections of art, archaeology, local history and natural sciences.

New Da Vinci Sketch Discovered

A new picture by Leonardo Da Vinci has been discovered beneath one of the artist’s most famous works, it emerged today. Experts at the National Gallery in London found the drawing using infrared technology underneath The Virgin On The Rocks, which hangs in the gallery.

Giancarlo Neri’s huge table gives food for thought

The 30ft (9m) sculpture, The Writer, will be on Parliament Hill for four months before returning to Italy. The tribute to the loneliness of writing is meant to inspire visitors to the heath, which has associations with writers Keats and Coleridge.

Britain’s Art Lands

An exhibition celebrating the British landscape opens at Tate Britain later this month with an accompanying series starting on BBC 1 tomorrow. Lisa Allardice asks five modern artists about the places that have fired their imaginations.

Congo the chimp’s art fetches £14,000

Like so many artists, Congo spent most of his life being misunderstood. Although Picasso is reputed to have framed one of his works and hung it in his studio, most people dismissed the diminutive painter as nothing more than a brush-wielding chimp. But Congo, who was indeed a brush-wielding chimp, had the last laugh yesterday as three of his paintings sold for more than £14,000.

Another place by Antony Gormley

It is an unusual place for an Antony Gormley art installation: a windswept and rain-soaked beach on Merseyside. But yesterday, the first of 100 iron figures was put in place on Crosby beach. Seawater lapped around the feet of one of the statues, which became almost submerged at high tide, as an Irish ferry chugged past in the distance.

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