New projects for 2014...

From January to March 2014, across two sites and two related exhibitions, The Glass Album: Dutch Tears at the impressive City Factory Gallery in Derry developed in 2013, and Mat Collishaw: The Yielding Glass at An Gailearai in Gweedore, the Glass Album project brings out into public view from the National Museums of Northern Ireland archives and private collections photographs by the nineteenth-century

Londonderry photographer James Glass, which are related to a famous 1889 ‘Land War’ murder trial of the priest Father McFadden from Gweedore, County Donegal.

The Glass Album is a major cross-border project delivered by BT Portrait of a City as one of the City of Culture elements that carries onto into 2014, the legacy year. The project demonstrates the fascinating connections that contemporary artists can make with Londonderry and Donegal as a border city and county, and their unique shared history and heritage.

The Glass Album archive itself is a series of late 19th Century photographs by 19th Century Londonderry photographer James Glass that were used in the Irish courts to protect the lives of civilians on a murder charge and facing the death penalty. The photographs depict the desperately poor inhabitants of Gweedore, clinging to the precious land that sustained them.

The current The Glass Album: Dutch Tears exhibition brings into public view for the first time complete editions of both existent archival albums of these James Glass collections of photographs of Gweedore in the 1870s and 1880s, some fifty-one photographs in total.

Alongside these historical works, the project features works made in response to the archival collection by international artists Walead Beshty, Mat Collishaw, Will Curwen, Eoghan McTigue.

The opening of the The Glass Album; ‘Dutch Tears’, will open at 6.30pm at the City Factory Gallery and is part wider visual arts offering opening at the old City Factory site on Patrick Street on Saturday evening. GROUND ZERO 360° will open at 7pm at The Shirt Factory space, followed by the launch of Anna Konik in Void at 7.30pm.

The Yielding Glass: Mat Collishaw opens at 7.30pm in An Gailearai Gweedore on Friday January 24 and runs until March 14.

The Glass Album: Dutch Tears opens at 6.30pm in The City Factory Derry on Saturday January 25 and runs until March 22.

The Glass Album project is curated by Declan Sheehan and Padraig Timoney.