FOR IMMEDIATE PRESS RELEASE

Severance

Rita Duffy

15th June to 15th July 2011

Rita Duffy’s ‘Severance’ exhibition at Pyms Gallery arrives in the wake of a compelling

fascination with the ‘Nordic Noir’. Films, novels and TV crime drama set in the menacing

Scandinavian landscape have captured the public imagination.

Duffy’s short residency in Tromsø, Norway’s most northerly city, takes us to the edges of the tundra

where reason sleeps, autobiography is laced with fairy tale, and deers, hares, birds and bears emerge from

the forest to menace strangely stunted figures.

The Belfast painter who began her career as a Feminist enfant terrible rocking the Irish art world,

dispensed with stage Irishry and Celtic mysticism to represent the working class women of a segregated

city scarred by sectarian violence. Regarded as one of the most interesting artists to emerge in the 1990s,

she has carried out community projects, collaborated with poets and film-makers, and exhibited widely in

Europe and the United States.

However in winter, when Tromsø is cloaked in darkness for

much of the day, the invitation from the Nordic Irish Studies

Network at first seemed somewhat bizarre. Yet as the Pyms

Gallery exhibition reveals, in its black stillness, visual

distraction is pared away and what remains is Duffy’s most

captivating work to date.

Opening Hours:

Monday to Friday – 10.00am -5.00pm

Saturday – by appointment

For further details contact Lara Daly on 02076292020

Email: paintings@pymsgallery.com

PYMS GALLERY

FINE ART DEALERS

9 Mount Street Mayfair London W1K 3NG

www.pymsgallery.com