“Skin on Skin” Bardejov Exhibition, October 2017

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On October41th I had the vernissage of my Skin on Skin exhibition at the Saris Museum in Bardejov, Slovakia. Originally, I was supposed to have it in February 2018 but following a cancellation, they asked me if I could hold it sooner. Because of this I had to abandon work on several paintings due to time constraints. However, I managed to scrape enough paintings together to adequately fill the enormous space. In the end I exhibited 24 paintings, 10 from my new collection.

Both the gallery people and myself were surprised at just how well the evening turned out. About 40 to 50 people turned up, many traveling some distance from Svidnik and Presov (there was even a Polish artist there). My latest collection – oil and acrylic on wild animal skins such as boar, deer and moufflon – is unique to Slovakia so it made quite a stir.

This is the bit I hate most – giving a speech in Slovak at the opening.

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The director of the gallery and the manager of the exhibition. I was amazed at how good she’d made my work look. It was great to have a big enough space to properly exhibit, as many of my paintings are quite large and the Saris Museum could present them with their own space rather than having them all crammed together.

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Some things just make me grin inwardly. Here are some old women “reading” some of my old ‘darker’ books. The books are not only written in English, which they can’t understand, but the one closest to the camera is written in my own invented alphabet. If only they knew what they were reading….

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Part of an artist’s lifestyle is giving interviews. This is Lucia Koscelníková from the Bardejovsky Reporter. her interview can be read HERE. I was extremely impressed that she gave the entire interview in English. Unlike the TV reporter, who bombarded me with the most obscure questions about my sources of inspiration in Slovak 5 minutes before I had to give my speech and my head was still filled with trying to work out how to pronounce certain words. She said that they’d edit the interview so that it was presentable but nothing came of it due to the fact that I merely garbled variations on What? Eh? and WTF? for several minutes.

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Several old friends turned up:

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And some family members:

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The Svidnik art scene also made a presence:

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Including two famous Svidnik artists, Tomas Olear and Jan Muchnasky

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I was extremely impressed that the motorcycle club I’m currently prospecting for, Tilters, turned up in force in their cuts. Big respect shown. It certainly made an interesting mixture of people at the vernissage.

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These photos were taken by Ivan Čižmár. The official invitation to the exhibition was as follows:

Hornošarišské osvetové stredisko v Bardejove a Prešovský samosprávny kraj vás pozývajú na výstavu Edward O´Toole

Vernisáž: 4. október 2017 (streda) o 16:30 hod.
Galéria HOS, Rhodyho 6, Bardejov

 

The exhibition runs until the start of November so if you’re in the area feel free to pop in

 

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