Name: Interrogating the Polis: Lecture by Professor Liam Kelly
Start: 2026-05-30T13:30:00+01:00
End: 2026-05-30T15:30:00+01:00
Location: Void Gallery

An illustrated talk on the works of Philip Napier and Shane Cullen at the Orchard Gallery, delivered by former director Professor Liam Kelly
About this Event

Interrogating the Polis: Lecture by Professor Liam Kelly

We are delighted to announce an illustrated talk on the works of Philip Napier and Shane Cullen at the Orchard Gallery, delivered by former director Professor Liam Kelly:

Tom Paulin, in his essay, ‘A New Look at the Language Question’ reminds us 'that ‘…the history of a language is often a story of possession and dispossession, territorial struggle and the establishment or imposition of a culture'.

A number of Irish artists have deployed and interrogated language both orally and textually as a working strategy for engagement with a political context, such as in the North of Ireland. These artists include Philip Napier and Shane Cullen, both of whom exhibited at the Orchard Gallery, Derry, in the late 1990’s and whose work I will attempt to analyse in this talk.

Prof. Liam Kelly

Emeritus Professor of Irish Visual Culture, UU, Belfast

Former Director of The Orchard Gallery, Derry

Images:

Philip Napier, Gauge, 1997. Image from Exhibition Postcard for “Gauge”, Orchard Gallery, Derry, 1997.

Shane Cullen, Image from cover of Fragmens Sur Les Institutions Républicaines IV, Edited by Liam Kelly, Published by the Orchard Gallery and Centre d’art contemporain de Vassivière en Limousin, 1998.