James Waller - West Cork People

Arts centres and ‘meanwhile use’ and the community benefit

James Waller September, 2026

On September 1, the Clonakilty Community Arts Centre (CCAC) was given the keys to No. 8 Kent Street, a council building situated opposite the Old Mill Library. CCAC has been granted six months at No. 8 under an inaugural ‘meanwhile use’ scheme being trialled by Cork County Council. It is […]

Colour Mantras: work from the Blue House Gallery

James Waller September, 2026

Colours crisp as daylight, edges seamlessly rendered. The prints on show at the Blue House Gallery in August breathed out the colour mantras of 20th century modernism. Edges both hard and soft, prismatic primaries, diffused tertiaries, colour field teasing landscape, landscape teasing colour field. Through various media, including carborundum, screen […]

The Bayeux Tapestry: the art of continuous exposition

James Waller July, 2026

In my early twenties I developed a compositional structure which I consider to be a visual equivalent to a musical fugue. As a structure it is modular and capable, theoretically at least, of infinite extension. The temptation was then (and still is) to see how long I could make it. […]

Photography, ships and the myth of ‘Lange Wapper’

James Waller July, 2026

On a recent trip to Antwerp my intrepid partner and I found ourselves in hardhats traversing the city’s historic canals. But for flash lights we were in darkness, walking in a line along a canal bed, for the waterways, known as ‘ruien,’ had been vaulted over, enclosed, for many hundreds […]

Traversing the wine dark sea:‘boat people,’ Nerdrum and Gericault

James Waller June, 2026

It is one of life’s ironies that in the digital age shipping holds the key to human survival. Without shipping there is no oil. Without oil there is no transport. Without transport shelves are not stocked. On another level, traversing the sea is the last resort of the truly desperate. […]

The art of exclusion: the Venice Biennale rescinds its ban on Russia

James Waller May, 2026

In 2022, the year Russia rolled into Ukraine, I attended the Venice Biennale. I was filled with all things Venice: the golden interior of St. Mark’s, the lapping of the canals, the picaresque bridges, the bells, the periodic flooding. I was also filled with Anselm Kiefer, whose work had been […]

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